Lady Gaga Rips Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer for "supporting misogyny"

.@SenatorFischer you are a female senator supporting misogyny. Putting our daughters in danger. Has your young courage faded?

— JOANNE (@ladygaga) October 12, 2016

Politico documented Fischer's about face on calling on Trump to drop out of the race (last Saturday after Pussygate broke) then reversing herself after Trump's second debate with Hillary, in which he did not self-destruct (or prevail).

Saudi cluster bombs are killing Yemeni kids, so Sens Sasse and Fischer voted to sell them more arms

Yesterday, 27 senators (4 Repubs, 22 Dems and Bernie) voted to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, that beach paradise whose citizens brought America the Arab Oil Embargo in the 1970s and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Sasse and Fischer helped defeat the resolution.
     Apparently, the Saudis haven't been using American weapons very nicely, unless you consider dropping cluster bombs on Yemeni schools and hospitals nice.
     The usual GOP suspects (McCain et al) claim the Saudis MUST do this because IRAN! Meaning Yemen's civil war is really a proxy war directed by Iran. The Intercept begs to differ:

     At least 40 members of Congress (not including anyone from Nebraska) weren't buying that bullshit and said so in a letter to Obama in August (click to enlarge):

     If you're still wondering why so many in the Middle East hate America, it may not be because of our freedoms, but because of the unprecedented amount of arms your senators Sasse and Fischer allow to be sold to every bloodthirsty Middle East faction.
     Here's what Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said (not included in the video excerpt below):

     Murphy argued that all of the Saudi bombs, provided by the US, are being dropped on civilians and Yemen's Houthi faction, rather than being used against “our sworn enemy, Al-Qaeda.”
     This war has given opportunity for Al Qaeda and Islamic State (IS, also known as ISIS/ISIL) to grow in leaps and bounds, he said.
     “How can you say you’re serious about strangling ISIL when the textbooks that are produced inside Saudi Arabia are the very same textbooks that are handed out to recruit suicide bombers?" Murphy asked on the Senate floor.

Gen. Don Bacon's biggest campaign lie: his TV claim that the USAF's honor code means it doesn't lie. His Air Force has been telling whoppers for 68 years

Related: read about USAF Gen. Don Bacon's very conspicuous silence regarding Sen. Deb Fischer's sleazy vote to hide Air Force B-21 development costs from the public.

Retired Air Force General Don Bacon's new TV campaign ad to unseat Rep. Brad Ashford says: "The Air Force has an honor code. We will not lie, cheat or steal or tolerate anyone who does."
     Brave words from a man steeped in the culture of the U.S. Air Force, for years a poster child of budget-busting waste in government (example: the B-22 program) and disingenuous, untruthful excuses about such wretched excess. Bacon's preposterous claim that the Air Force doesn't lie is itself a huge lie.
     The Air Force has been lying to the public since it was one year old, in 1948. Its first whopper was to the wives of airmen killed in a B-29 crash, which resulted in the evidentiary rule precedent of the so-called "state secrets privilege," which has been used ever since by the U.S. government to stonewall citizen inquiries and to hide misconduct by playing the "threat to national security" card to dismiss lawsuits:

     In United States v. Reynolds (1953), the widows of three crew members of a B-29 Superfortress bomber that had crashed in 1948 sought accident reports on the crash, but were told the release of such details would threaten national security by revealing the nature of the bomber's top-secret mission. The Supreme Court ruled that the executive branch could bar evidence from the court if it deemed that its release would impair national security. In 1996, the accident reports in question were declassified and released, and when discovered in 2000 were found to contain no secret information. They did, however, contain information about the poor condition of the aircraft itself, which would have been very compromising to the Air Force's case.

Bacon TV ad about Air Force "honor" and truthfulness

     Recently, when the press began to get wind of the fact that the hugely expensive and horribly broken F-35, designed to replace the F-15, was actually quite a dog in dogfights, General Don Bacon's Air Force pulled out all the stops to fool the public by coaching airmen on how to deceptively answer skeptical inquiries about the colossal cost ($400,000 per helmet!) and poor performance of the plane. From Popular Mechanics:

     In response to the potential question "I heard this aircraft can't dogfight, and it's not maneuverable. Is that true?" the document blasts reports about the F-16 versus F-35 dogfights.
     "The F-35 is designed to be comparable to current tactical fighters in terms of maneuverability, but the design is optimized for stealth and sensor superiority. News reports on the F-35's performance against an F-16 was an early look at the F-35's flight control authority software logic, and not an assessment of its ability in a dogfight situation [...] There have been numerous occasions where a four-ship of F-35s has engaged a four-ship of F-16s in simulated combat scenarios and the F-35s won each of those 4 v 4 encounters because of its sensors, weapons, and stealth technology."
     To be fair, these "guidance documents" are not uncommon in the military, and mainly meant for PR flacks. Still, the document states that "wings will also identify pilots and maintainers who are proficient at telling the F-35 story and are willing to lend their name and image to the effort."
     What makes this surprising is that it contradicts some of the Air Force's own internal documents found in July, which blasted the F-35 for multiple failures. For instance, the F-35's poor maneuverability in a dogfight was because, according to the test pilot, "the F-35 was at a distinct energy disadvantage." That's not something you can fix with better "flight control authority software logic."

Some "honor code," Don.

End mass shootings the Deb Fischer way with the Thoughts and Prayers video game!

Click on the link below the graphic to play.

www.thoughtsandprayers.com

Are voters getting fed up with Sen. Fischer's "thoughts and prayers" song and dance on assault weapons?

Senator Deb Fischer has done a lot of obnoxious things so far, including:

• Targeting LGBTs with a fraudulent bill the New York Times called an attack on the First Amendment 
• Backing a Big Brother bill opposed by both the ACLU and ultraconservative CATO Institute 
• Violating the Logan Act, and threatening the integrity of nearly 4,000 executive agreements signed since the begining of the Carter administration
• Voting, in 2005, even before she was in a position to create right-wing mischief on a national scale, to make Nebraskans hostages of slow, costly Internet service while she was still in the Unicameral

     But none of that is resonating more than the increasing glaring gap between her boilerplate "thoughts and prayers" reactions to gun carnage and her actions in the Senate to block attempts to stop such carnage with common sense laws placing large bullet magazines and high-velocity assault weapons out of the hands of civilians.
     (Click on pictures of tweets, below, to enlarge for easier reading.)

The 54 Senators (4 from NE and IA) who blocked law which could have saved 49 people at gay Orlando club

In 2015, a law to prevent persons on the government's terror watch list from buying guns was defeated in the Senate, mostly by the GOP.
     While AKSARBENT doesn't think Americans on secret government lists should have their rights abridged without recourse, the usual suspects below and at right generally do what the NRA tells them, no matter who gets killed or how disturbed their constituents are about high-velocity military assault rifles being sold to civilians with anger issues or crushes on ISIS.
     We did the math for you: Nebraska Senator Deb Fischer got $101.02 from the NRA per dead body at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Joni Ernst got $202.04 per corpse. But Chuck Grassley got a whopping $465.30 for each person shot in the head, heart or who simply bled out during the hours it took for the cops to break into the club. Way to go, Chuck!
     Curiously, Ben Sasse didn't get any money from the NRA.
     Unlike Deb Fischer, he apparently doesn't need to be paid off by Pepé Le Pew Wayne LaPierre of the NRA to do the wrong thing — it just comes naturally to him. 
     Below are all 54 senators with their phone numbers and the amount of blood money they get from the NRA.
https://t.co/2lSLllfPLg

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 17, 2016

Sens. Sasse and Fischer target LGBTs with fraudulent law New York Times calls attack on 1st amendment

In the Senate, the so-called First Amendment Defense Act is called S. 1598. The House version, H.R. 2802, is sponsored by Jeff Fortenberry. Like much of what Sasse and Fischer and Fortenberry do and say, the bill is completely bogus. Here's what the New York Times wrote:

     It would do many things, but one thing it would not do is defend the First Amendment. To the contrary, it would deliberately warp the bedrock principle of religious freedom under the Constitution.
     The bill, versions of which have been circulating since 2013, gained a sudden wave of support after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. It is being hawked with the specter of clergy members being forced to officiate such marriages. This is a ploy, as the bill’s backers surely know: There has never been any doubt that the First Amendment protects members of the clergy from performing weddings against their will.

Attacking LGBTs in House:
Rep. Jeff Fortenberry

     In reality, the act would bar the federal government from taking “any discriminatory action” — including the denial of tax benefits, grants, contracts or licenses — against those who oppose same-sex marriage for religious or moral reasons. In other words, it would use taxpayers’ money to negate federal anti-discrimination measures protecting gays and lesbians, using the idea of religious freedom as cover.
     For example, a religiously affiliated college that receives federal grants could fire a professor simply for being gay and still receive those grants. Or federal workers could refuse to process the tax returns of same-sex couples simply because of bigotry against their marriages...

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How radical, right-wing and out of touch is Sen. Deb Fischer? She's backing Big Brother bill opposed by ultraconservative Cato Institute AND the ACLU

Here's what The Hill reported last month on Sen. Fischer's latest legislative assault on your privacy:

Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) expressed optimism Thursday about the chances of moving a stalled cybersecurity bill through the Senate.
     “The leader wants to be able to get a bill out,” Fischer said an event hosted by The Hill and sponsored by Visa, referring to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “I think he has the support of the majority of members in our conference and I would hope the American people would continue to push all members to say we need to get this done.”
     Cybersecurity is “at the forefront of discussions that we’ve had in leadership since the beginning of the session,” she added.
     In the wake of the recent blistering cyberattack on federal networks, the upper chamber tried to attach a major cyber bill — intended to bolster the public-private exchange of data on hackers — to a defense authorization measure.
     Democrats rebelled, angry they would not be able to offer privacy-enhancing amendments to the bill, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). With the help of a few Republicans, they blocked the maneuver.
     Civil liberties advocates have argued CISA could shuttle sensitive data to the National Security Agency (NSA), empowering the spy agency weeks after Congress voted to rein in its authority.

Words cannot express how terribly sorry Deb Fischer is about the death of that Omaha cop — and neither can her Senate votes

Update: cop shot 97 minutes after NE voted to abolish death penalty has died

She was Officer Kerrie Orozco, a 29-year-old gang unit member so dedicated that she delayed her maternity leave until her newborn preemie, in the very hospital in which she died today, was scheduled to be released — tomorrow.
     In her spare time, Orozco took in rescued dogs and coached softball. She had two stepchildren.
     The gang member on whom she was serving an arrest warrant, Marcus Wheeler, also is dead. A semi-automatic handgun with a drum magazine was found near his body.
     In 2013, Senator Deb Fischer voted against banning large capacity drum magazines like the one used to kill Orozco.
     Thanks Deb.

Huckabee, Santorum face gauntlet of gay protesters in Iowa

ALSO: Who killed LGBT employment antibias bill in Nebraska last week?

Judging from the TV footage, as many protesters turned out to protest Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee as turned out to listen to them at a forum organized by Bob Vander Plaats at Cedar Falls High School Monday night.
     Inside, Huckabee accused the protesters of being part of a war on Christians.
     You may recall that in 2012, in neighboring Waterloo, Paris Anding was convicted of killing Marcellus Andrews with a baseball bat after taunting him with antigay slurs.
     Cedar Falls is a progressive "gigabit" community visited by President Obama last January as part of his Net Neutrality push. Unfortunately, due to the efforts of politicians like NE Sen. Deb Fischer, high-speed community-sponsored broadband, like that in Cedar Falls and Chattanooga, is illegal in Nebraska.

KWWL - Eastern Iowa Breaking News, Weather, Closings

     Here's AKSARBENT footage of Bob Vander Plaats' war on Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins in 2012. Vander Plaats lost his battle to eject Wiggins from the Iowa Supreme Court for ruling that denying gay couples civil marriage was unconstitutional, in a unanimous decision.

NE senator accuses Barack Obama of misleading two senators and a governor on Keystone XL

Two years ago the president came to a Republican luncheon at the capitol, just about exactly two years ago, and he was asked by two different senators, Sen. Barrasso and then Sen. Hoeven, "When are you going to make a decision on the [Keystone XL] pipeline?" This was in March of 2013. And he said, "I'll make a decision in a couple months." Well, we haven't heard anything. And I know when Governor Heineman was there a couple months later, he asked the President, "When are you going to make a decision?" and he said, "I'll have a decision by the end of the year." Well, that was the end of 2013. We still haven't heard anything.

— Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer

KLIN podcast posted 3/31/2015 8:05:00 AM

http://www.klin.com/JackandDavePodcast.aspx

Nebraska's Sen. Deb trolled by Michigan's Sen. Debbie

Chances are slight that the Tom Cotton's gang of 47 (including Sen. Deb Fischer and Sen. Ben Sasse) will have their stationery allowance cut off, but AKSARBENT can dream, can't it?

Sens. Fischer, Sasse unconcerned about outrage to their attempt to sabotage nuclear agreement with Iran

The menacing letter they signed, almost certainly a violation of the Logan Act, was written by Sen. Tom Cotton, and threatened the integrity of nearly 4,000 executive agreements signed since the begining of the Carter administration alone.
     It falsely attempted to persuade the government of Iran that the United States is not bound by executive agreements and implied that President Obama's successor could revoke any agreement signed by the United States with Iran.
     Secretary of State Kerry said their recklessness undermined U.S. foreign policy, was legally incorrect, and "ignored more than two centuries of precedent in the conduct of American foreign policy."
     Iran's foreign minister, a professor of international law with advanced degrees from three U.S. universities, said this:

     Sen. Deb Fischer dismissed criticism of her action as "partisan noise."
     Sen. Ben Sasse adopted a mien of incredulity, passing off his attempt at diplomatic meddling as merely "a letter that says we have a Constitution." He then went further, telling the World-Herald:

     It's breathtaking to me that anybody can think a letter that says we have a Constitution is surprising."
     Pressed as to his reason for signing the letter, Sasse said that shouldn't be the issue...

Watch: Maine's independent Senator King appalled by reckless Cotton letter signed by Sens. Sasse and Fischer

Arkansas' hothead freshman senator, Tom Cotton, has "split unified American sentiment on Iran into a partisan issue [even within the GOP] and undermined the president, congressional authority, and U.S. allies in the process" — with the help of signatories like Sen. Ben Sasse and Sen. Deb Fischer (bracketed comment in quotation added by AKSARBENT)..

Bloomberg wonders if right-wing extremists like Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer just signed a treasonous letter

Both Nebraska senators (as well as Iowa Sens. Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley) have signed a letter intended to sabotage President Obama's negotiations with Iran. Via Bloomberg:

     The letter, organized by Senator Tom Cotton, a freshman from Arkansas, warned Iran that "...we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by the Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time."
     White House press secretary Josh Earnest said the letter's goal was to "undermine" negotiations with Iran, but also noted that if the Obama administration reached an agreement over Iran's nuclear program that it would not be a treaty subject to congressional ratification.

In a response, Iran's foreign minister seems to display more knowledge about the U.S. Constitution than either grandstanding senator from Nebraska:

Zarif expressed the hope that his comments "may enrich the knowledge of the authors to recognize that according to international law, Congress may not modify the terms of the agreement at any time as they claim, and if Congress adopts any measure to impede its implementation, it will have committed a material breach of US obligations.

Crooks and Liars added: Republican idjuts like Senator Tom Cotton [this would include Sasse, Fischer, Ernst and Grassley, who all signed his ignorant letter] may think it's cool to play cowboy with international relations, but we're fortunate to have some adults in the room still.
     Mother Jones reminds us that Tom Cotton,first gained notoriety after writing a letter to the editor of the New York Times demanding that everyone who worked on a story on a top-secret terrorist tracking program be tried for treason
     Now it seems that he has graduated to conspiring to commit treasonous activities his own self.

Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse welcome Bibi to Congress!

 

We welcome Prime Minister Netanyahu to Congress and look forward to hearing his perspective on the nuclear negotiations and their implications for the future security of the Middle East.”







Maybe after Senators Sasse and Fischer have finished representing Israel's interests, they could devote some time to representing the interests of Nebraska farmers and ranchers being threatened with emininent domain condemnation by a foreign oil company which doesn't have a pipeline permit.

In '05 Deb Fischer voted to make Nebraskans hostages of slow, costly Internet service. Obama changed that

Last month, right wing extremist Sen. Deb Fischer called Obama's FCC Net Neutrality lobbying  "a new federal takeover of state laws governing broadband and the Internet," one of her more ridiculous lies.
     In doing so, she sided once again with Wall St. and against Main St. Nebraska businesses and consumers, telling yet another whopper to spin her corporate sellout.
     The FCC made two significant rulings Thursday: one, treating Internet Service Providers as common carriers, will go a long way toward insuring Net Neutrality.
     Unsurprisingly, the three Democrats on the FCC Board voted to protect Net Neutrality and the two Republicans did not. Surprisingly, not all ISPs are opposed to Net Neutrality. Sprint and T-Mobile, for example, are not lobbying against it like AT&T and Verizon.
     The FCC's other important decision today slapped down laws in two states restricting broadband services by municipalities. Nebraska is one of 19 other states that do that, because in  2005 the Nebraska Unicameral rolled over for ISPs wanting to ban any municipal competition to their substandard offerings, passing what we here at AKSARBENT like to call the Lousy ISP Protection Act (actually LB645).
     Here's who voted for it (you're welcome):

     
     The class will note Deb Fischer's "Yes" vote (when she was in the Unicameral) to kill off options for rural communities whose private internet service is so bad that they might want to build their own. Several cities have done that, a prospect that scares substandard, greedy ISPs to death. (Broadband can be very profitable: telecom analyst Craig Moffett points out that margins are north of 97%!)
     In his visit (video below) to Cedar Falls, Iowa, President Obama cited cities like Cedar Falls, Chattanooga, Tennessee and Lafayette, Louisiana which built their own broadband services — and which now offer their residents bandwidth "nearly 100 times faster than the national average and deliver it at an affordable price." (When Lafayette Utilities System announced its intention to build a municipal broadband network, it faced three years of court battles with two private, incumbent Internet providers of inferior speed, costing Layfayette $4 million, according to a report from the Center for Public Integrity.)

(At 8:33, above): Right now, about 45 million Americans cannot purchase next-generation broadband... And by the way, only 1/2 of rural Americans can log on at that superfast rate. And if folks do have good, fast Internet, chances are they only have one provider to pick from... What happens when there's no competition? You're stuck on hold, you're watching the  loading icon spin. You're waiting... and waiting... and waiting... and meanwhile, you're wondering why your rates keep getting jacked up when the service doesn't seem to improve...
     In too many places across America, some big companies are doing everything they can to keep out competitors. Today, in 19 states, we've got laws on the books that stamp out competition, that make it really difficult for communities to provide their own broadband the way you guys are. In some states it is virtually impossible to create a community network like the one that you've got here in Cedar Falls. So today I'm saying, we're going to change that. Enough's enough. We're going to change that so every community can do the smart things you guys are doing... I believe that a community has the right to make its own choice and to provide its own broadband if it wants to.
     ...The facts speak for themselves: competition works – when it is allowed to. Throughout the country where we have seen competitive broadband providers come in to a market, prices have gone down and broadband speeds have gone up. No wonder incumbent broadband providers want to legislate rather than innovate.
     ...Removing restrictions on community broadband can expand high-speed Internet access in underserved areas, spurring economic growth and improvements in government services, while enhancing competition.

Here are some informative links about the sorry state of broadband in much of the U.S.A. and what can be done to improve the situation

• http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/01/15/arguing-faster-internet-obama-goes-bat-municipal-broadband
• https://www.fcc.gov/blog/removing-barriers-competitive-community-broadband
• http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/02/isp-lobby-has-already-won-limits-on-public-broadband-in-20-states/
• https://www.fcc.gov/blog/removing-barriers-competitive-community-broadband
• http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/#DirectSale
• http://www.propublica.org/article/obama-wants-you-to-have-cheap-fast-internet-but-many-cities-arent-allowed-t

     Telecom industry groups such as the National Cable & Telecommunications Association have argued that municipal networks are risky investments that could drive cities into debt. These firms and their trade groups have donated millions of dollars to state and federal politicians on both sides of the aisle.
     Besides contributions, the cable lobby has directly submitted legislation to restrict municipal broadband networks and taken fledgling networks to court. Last year, according to a report by Ars Technica, the Kansas Legislature squashed a bill to limit municipal broadband networks that was drafted and submitted by the Kansas Cable Telecommunications Association.

The cheap GOP semantics Ben Sasse and Deb Fischer are using to deny the human cause of global warming

On Wednesday the Senate voted 98-1 that climate change is real and not a hoax — a shabby scam by the GOP to con voters into believing that the party isn't denying science. Republicans will doubtless point to this when critics lambaste it.
     What the GOP won't point to are the two previous votes on the propositions that "Climate change is real; and human activity contributes to climate change" and "climate change is real (and) human activity significantly contributes to climate change"
     Senators Deb Fischer, Ben Sasse and Joni Ernst all voted for the not-a-hoax pronouncement and against the statements acknowledging human complicity in global warming.
     None of them — not even Joni Ernst — is that dumb. All of them are that dishonest, that reckless and that corrupted by Big Oil and the Republican Party's deepest reserves of lethal amorality on a global scale.
     The civilization whose destruction they hasten will be one of hunger, strife and desperate misery.
     As Agnostics, we dearly wish there really were an eternal hell to which Sasse, Ernst and Fischer could be dispatched at the end of their conniving lives, but even that would not indemnify the billions of futures they are helping to wreck.

Deb Fischer: Obama 'clinging to a reactionary foreign policy that has shaken the faith of our allies'

We won't even try to figure out what the hell Senator Fischer was talking about.
     Suffice it to say that for Fischer to accuse any Democrat of being reactionary is like Bill Cosby accusing Bill Clinton of disrespecting women.
     Maybe she just doesn't know what the word reactionary means to most people who speak English.
     Maybe she meant reactive. 
     Fischer's video response to the SOTU address had washed-out highlights and a rumble in the audio (maybe she lets TransCanada drill for oil under her office). It had been viewed a whopping 189 times when we looked.