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[Cin]

This just makes me sick to my stomach. How can you live with yourself doing shit like this? I mean don't people with Down Syndrome have enough they have to deal with every day. Now we can add the possibility the cops will just kill them for being a special needs person and acting accordingly. We haven't come very far from when experiments like feeding the mentally handicapped radioactive cereal were commonplace. If we refuse to protect the most vulnerable members of a civilized society then we are not very civilized or much of a society at all.

Killed by Cops Over a Movie Ticket: How Police Hurt the Disabled
A man with Down syndrome died in a confrontation with police. Officers need better training before more people die.
October 9, 2013 |

On Jan. 12, Robert “Ethan” Saylor of Frederick County, Md., a 26-year-old man with Down syndrome and an IQ of 40, died of asphyxiation after a confrontation with three off-duty police officers. He was being restrained for attempting to see “Zero Dark Thirty” for a second time without a ticket. According to witnesses, Saylor’s last words included “it hurt” and “call my mom.”

Saylor’s ashes now sit in the family’s living room while the three officers continue their usual shifts. No charges have been filed.

Saylor’s death stands out as especially tragic, not only because he loved police officers. Despite testimony from Saylor’s aide that she told the officers to “be patient” and let her “handle it,” a local grand jury decided not to file criminal charges. In late July, the federal government finally took note and opened an investigation into whether police violated Saylor’s civil rights.

This slow-moving process reveals something disturbing: Our law enforcement system often fails to protect people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and, in some cases, is complicit in their abuse.

Saylor is far from the first person with special needs to be harmed by police. In 2010, Steven Eugene Washington of Los Angeles, a 27-year-old man with autism, was shot dead after his inability to follow police’s directions made officers suspicious. He reached into his waistband, leading officers to fear he had a gun; he did not. In 2010, North Miami Beach police shot Ernest Vassell, 56, a man with mental disabilities, who was playing with a toy gun that they believed was real after he, too, had difficulty complying with officers’ commands.

Police can misinterpret the behavior of people with special needs because they do not even recognize that the person has cognitive or intellectual impairments. “We as human beings tend to approach everything through our own prism, and if someone is acting extremely peculiar, we’re immediately frightened,” said James Mulvaney, a professor at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an autism advocate. “If you’re a cop, you’re probably thinking this person is a danger.”

Police academies often devote only a brief amount of time to studying disabilities, and deal with physical, mental and other disabilities all together with little time specifically focused on developmental or intellectual ones, according to Leslie Morrison of Disability Rights California. “Those are very different categories.”

“Most officers have more knowledge about mental illness,” than about developmental or intellectual disabilities, said Leigh Anna Davis of the Arc, a community-based advocacy group for people with such disabilities. “In fact, they may think they are the same thing.” She added, “Without face to face contact, it’s hard to help officers realize the need to change their behavior or ways of interacting.”

People with autism may be at elevated risk because, unlike with people with Down syndrome, there are no tell-tale physical features of the disability. As a result, when they do not quickly follow police directions, they are often misconstrued as being disobedient or suspicious.

In fact, because it was so apparent that Saylor did have special needs, his case is all the more “confounding,” said David Whalen, the New York statewide project coordinator of disability awareness training. Whalen runs one of the few programs in the country that exhaustively trains law enforcement in recognizing and appropriately responding to people with a range of disabilities. “Down syndrome is not hidden. The lack of recognition of the individual having a disability is baffling to me,” he said.

Unfortunately, Frederick County officers not only apparently failed to comprehend what Saylor’s disability entailed, but also quickly made it a physically aggressive situation, allegedly refusing to listen to the aide’s plea for patience.

The rest of the article:
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/06/killed_over_a_movie_ticket_how_law_enforcement_hur ts_people_with_disabilities/

[Cin]

My comments: Leaders of 12 powerful countries will meet behind closed doors to seal an extreme Internet censorship plan called the Trans Pacific Partnership. The TPP will make the Internet more expensive, censored, and policed. Even if you have the extra money to pay I can pretty much guarantee you will not like the censorship. They will be able to monitor internet use, censor content and even remove whole websites deemed unacceptable. The possible repercussions are infinite. This is some scary shit that will negatively affect all our lives.

There's an International Plan to Censor the Internet in the Works -- Let's Stop It in Its Tracks
How the Trans Pacific Partnership making its way through Washington seriously undermine citizens’ rights to participate in a free and open Internet.

One month.

That’s the time left before the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) could become a finalized agreement. For those who are drawing blank looks -- and understandably so -- the TPP is a highly secretive trade deal involving 12 nations around the Pacific Rim.

Described by experts Lori Wallach and Ben Beachy of Public Citizen as“one of the most significant international commercial agreements since the creation of WTO”, the TPP is more than a trade agreement - it’s an underhanded attempt by old industry interests to censor the Internet.

The lack of general awareness about the TPP is exactly what unelected trade officials and lobbyists hope for; the more covert the negotiations, the easier it is to usher in extreme new Internet censorship rules.

The TPP’s extreme Internet censorship plan

The changes proposed by the TPP could seriously undermine citizens’ rights to participate in a free and open Internet. We know fromleaked drafts that these draconian measures could criminalize your everyday use of the Internet, force service providers to collect and hand over your private data, and give old industry conglomerates more power to fine you for Internet use. As opposed to fostering a global forum in which citizens can engage with one another, the TPP would stifle any kind of innovation within the Internet community.

TheElectronic Frontier Foundation underlines the dangers of the TPP:

“The copyright provisions in the TPP will carve a highly restrictive copyright regime into stone and prevent countries from enacting laws that best address and promote users’ interests. In this final stage, it’s time for us to demand that our lawmakers join those who are already denouncing this agreement. We must drag this out into the light and reject international laws that uphold corporate interests at the expense of users’ rights.”

Obama fast tracks the TPP, bypasses democracy

If it isn’t bad enough that these talks have occurred behind closed doors, President Obama is now taking this secrecy even further by attempting to “fast track” the deal through Congress.

This means that elected U.S. Congress members would be forced to vote on the agreement without the possibility of sharing, discussing, or amending its contents. Under such intense pressure from the President, it seems as though the most comprehensive and covert post-WTO trade agreement could be finalized by as early as the end of October. The urgency to wrap up this controversial deal is reaffirmed by the White House’s recent announcement that they’ll go ahead with the TPP -- despite the current government shutdown.

Unsurprisingly, Congress members have not taken to Obama’s undemocratic, fast track plans without protest. Several representatives have recently spoken out against this backdoor deal, including Rep. Rosa DeLauro: “I oppose fast-track authority like what we have had in the past [...] we are not just here to rubber stamp what gets done.” Echoing this sentiment is Rep. Alan Grayson, who has described the Obama Administration’s secrecy about the TPP as “an assault on democratic government.”

Over 100,000 citizens against Internet censorship

It’s not just Congress that has spoken up. Over 100,000 citizens from all across the Trans-Pacific region have made it clear that they’re against the TPP’s dangerous Internet censorship plan. As negotiations are set to wrap up by the end of this month, this really is the last chance for global citizens to let their decision-makers know that they will pay a hefty political price for supporting a deal that censors the Internet.

It’s time to put an end to Internet censorship now. Join the over 100,000 others who have spoken up and sign the petition against Internet censorshiptoday at https://openmedia.org/censorship

http://www.alternet.org/theres-international-plan-censor-internet-works-lets-stop-it-its-tracks?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Kobi]

Privacy advocates were dealt a one-two punch this week as Google announced plans to sell some of its users’ information for use in advertisements, and Facebook said it’s removing the privacy setting for Timeline searches.

The former came yesterday, when Google revealed that, beginning Nov. 11, some of the ads it displays will include users’ names, photos and endorsements they’ve made on Google+ and other Google services like YouTube.

The change in its terms of service will not apply to users under 18, and adults will be able to opt out on Google+’s settings page.

Google did not return calls yesterday, and Facebook declined to comment. But Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said users “should not have to restore their privacy defaults when Google changes its business model.”

The company shouldn’t use people’s names, photos or posts for commercial purposes without their consent “because it’s taking something of value from somebody without their agreement,” Rotenberg said.

The center also bristled at Facebook’s announcement on Thursday that it’s finishing the removal of a setting that controls whether users’ Timelines can be found when people search for them by name.

The setting was removed last year for people who weren’t using it. The “small percentage” of those who still are will see reminders about its removal in the coming weeks, Facebook said on its Newsroom page.

“This is another unilateral change by Facebook that reduces users’ ability to control their personal information,” said David Jacobs, EPIC’s consumer protection counsel.

David Gerzof Richard, professor of social media and marketing at Emerson College, urged people to comb their Facebook and Google+ pages for anything they wouldn’t want to show up in an ad on Google or in a search on Facebook.

“These platforms are free, but we’re paying by giving up our privacy,” Gerzof Richard said. “Corporations look at their own interests first. And both Google and Facebook know that what sells products best are third-party endorsements. Any advertising campaign out there doesn’t compare to the power of the voice of consumers. It’s only when there’s extreme push-back that corporations reconsider.” -

See more at: http://bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2013/10/privacy_advocates_slam_google_facebook_changes#sth ash.Gw4S4vVG.dpuf

[Cin]

Will Obama Abandon Tens of Millions of Seniors to Get a Budget Deal with Right-Wing Republicans?
Are cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the table?

The next few days may be the most perilous for ordinary Americans in Obama’s presidency, as the White House is looking for a deal with far-right Republicans that takes Obamacare off the budget-cutting table, reopens the federal government and raises its debt ceiling.

As the government shutdown continues, Democrats have seen their approval ratings soar, prompting pollsters to say that the GOP will be punished in the next federal election. But what’s shaping up 13 months from now is less important than what will shape up in the next 13 or so days. That’s because the White House’s openness to revive “grand bargain” talks with GOP radicals over future funding for entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, and more tax cuts for the wealthy, can only end badly for the middle- and working-class Americans.

“If we went into serious negotiations, then I think that could be taken in short order,” Rep. Tom Cole, R-OK and House Appropriations Committee member, said Friday, after negotiating Thursday night with other House GOP leaders at the White House over ending the shutdown and debt stalement.

The problem that Democrats face is that the agenda of the House’s slightly less-extreme Republicans is not new. It is still so far to the right that a deal could imperil programs that Democrats have built over decades, starting with the cornerstone of the 1930s New Deal, Social Security, and continuing in the 1960s War on Poverty, with Medicare, or health care for seniors. Fully funding retirement security programs is needed more than ever today, as near-retirees owe an average of $102,000 on home loans and $18,000 on credit cards, according to Social Security Administration statistics.

Polls continuously find that the vast majority of Americans, regardless of political party, do not want entitlements like Social Security or Medicare cut. But these big-ticket items have consistently been in right-wingers’ budget-cutting crosshairs, where they are falsely but deliberately blamed for outsized roles in creating the federal debt—instead of George W. Bush-era tax cuts and a war of choice in Iraq. The hard right, now driving the federal shutdown, has been laboring for years to end America’s social welfare programs. That attitude is part of why the right hates Obamacare, as it is seen as expanding that legacy.

It appears that the GOP’s price for reopening government and raising the debt limit is for Obama to “seriously consider,” as Cole said, an array of policy options targeting these needed and popular entitlements. This menu would include the unbalanced Simpson-Bowles plan of cutting retirement benefits while lowering federal income tax rates, especially in the top brackets. Or, as Obama has said, possibly changing the inflation formula that calculates Social Security increases, which would hurt the majority of seniors who have little lifetime savings.

These “grand bargain” proposals are nowhere near the political 50-yard-lines. They are far to the right, just as the shutdown and debt fight are driven by even more extreme right-wingers. Yet mainstream media coverage of would-be dealmakers is filled with revisionist history or worse, historical amnesia. Republicans who a year ago were seen as being out-of-touch—notably 2012 Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan—are today touted as “adults” that the White House can deal with. That’s how The New York Times portrayed Ryan this week, glossing over his slash-and-burn agenda that voters rejected in the 2012 presidential election.

There’s a real danger that the Republican extremists will move from their 5 yard line to their 15 yard line and stop there, bellowing that they have compromised while demanding lasting cuts to safety nets. Obama would then look intransigent if he keeps saying no.

The end game is dicey. In 1995, when the government was shut down by Republicans led by then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, that revolt came after President Bill Clinton did what no Democrat thought that their party would do—support and pass punitive welfare reform. Then and now, some of the same dynamics are at play. Republicans, seeking to sound reasonable, have begun talk of reforming programs that they just want to kill.

“Everyone was being cute,” The Washington Post’s Elizabeth Drew wrote in her 1996 book, Showdown, about the Gingrich shutdown and welfare law. “The Republicans were pretending to be ‘reforming’ a program they were trying to destroy. The President was dodging the most important issue and dealing in word games, while his aides encouraged people to think whatever they wanted to think were his intentions.”

Then, like now, a Democratic president was willing to meet the GOP partway. Will Obama be the Democratic president who is willing to par back some of the most popular and needed federal programs ever, including Social Security and Medicare? Will he back the Keystone XL pipeline in a grand deal, despite a deepening climate change crisis?

Americans across the political spectrum should take heed. These are perilous times.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/obama-deal-could-target-retirement-programs?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Corkey]

http://freakoutnation.com/2013/10/13/house-republicans-we-hereby-charge-you-guilty-of-sedition-let-the-building-of-the-gallows-commence/

In case anyone missed the change to our representative "democracy".

[Jesse]

It's over! Well, as over as it is ever going to be.


http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SHUTDOWN_FURLOUGHED_WORKERS?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-10-17-01-19-44

[Cin]

Support the FTT, make some noise, tell your representatives in Washington.

A Simple Reform Could Save America From Wall Street and Boost the Economy: What’s Washington Waiting For?

Financiers have been getting a free ride for too long. Let's make them pay their share instead of robbing seniors.

It’s a simple tweak that would reign in an out-of-control financial sector, stimulate jobs, generate billions of revenue, and possibly prevent another heart-wrenching crisis. Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman want it. Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates want it. Polls show the majority of Americans want it. Even the Pope wants it.

We’re talking about a financial transaction tax (FTT) — a tiny tax of, say, less than half a percent: maybe 3 cents per $100 — on Wall Street trading. It’s simple, more than fair, widely supported by the public, and long overdue.

Over the last weeks, Americans have been kept from going to work, asked to go without food inspections and postpone their visits to national parks. The Centers for Disease Control couldn't help protect us from salmonella outbreaks. The families of fallen service members were unable to get death benefits. The fragile economy has been strained as members of Congress wrangle over another phony budget crisis, even as the deficit is shrinking. Meanwhile, Wall Street is raking in billions of dollars in profits from financial transactions. And theypay not a penny in taxes on most of them.

Instead of talking about nickel-and-diming seniors by cutting their Social Security and Medicare, letting our infrastructure crumble, and forcing our children to go without proper education or medicine, we could be returning sanity and balance to our financial system. The FTT would put the breaks on the sort of reckless, breakneck-speed computer gambling that helped tank the American economy five years ago. It could raise hundreds of billions annually. Did you hear that, deficit hawks? We’d have enough to close the funding gaps in states that had their budgets destroyed by Wall Street’s risky behavior and predation. We’d even have enough to invest in new jobs.

As Jeremy Scott of Forbes put it: “What is important is that the financial sector, which bears a disproportionate share of the blame for the deep recession that is still affecting employment and growth, share in the costs of insuring against future bailouts and be forced to restructure itself to better insulate the rest of the economy from excessive risk.”

Once upon a time, we had a financial transaction tax in America, and it served us well from 1914 to 1966. Wall Street leaders at the time complained bitterly that the tax would be ruinous, but if you stop and think about those years, you notice that the American economy was actually much healthier than it is today. Income inequality was much lower, and jobs were more secure. After the Wall Street crash of 1987, major politicians, including Senate Majority leader Bob Dole and President H.W. Bush, called for a return of the FTT. Since the Wall Street-driven crash of 2008, renewed support for the tax has surged from every direction — except, of course, from Wall Street and the politicians who rely on their donations.

Because of their outlandish size and undue influence, financial firms have wriggled out of just about every attempt to introduce sane rules of the road since 2008, and they’re more dangerous and concentrated today than they before the crisis. Bankers and financiers left millions of Americans to suffer, and if something is not done soon, they will almost certainly do it again. It’s merely a question of when.

One of the biggest arguments against the FTT is that it will somehow hurt the economy by discouraging Wall Street activity. Of course, what it would actually do is protect Wall Street from itself by reducing the wild volatility of the market and the speculation fever which have prompted ordinary investors to run scared and caused jitters in the overall economy. Over the last decade, speculative activity has skyrocketed 400 percent — and only a miniscule fraction of that actually does anything to build the real economy in goods and services. The vast majority of it is just arbitrage, high-speed trading, casino gambling, and siphoning more money from ordinary people to the super-rich.

Another argument you hear is that regular folks would be hurt when they do things like make transactions on their 401(k)s or use a debit card. But this is nonsense. The tax would not apply to normal consumer activities, and traders could also be legally blocked from dumping costs onto consumers. The FTT is about giant banks and investment firms — behemoth companies like Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs. Not you and me. Some huff that high-frequency traders will simply leave the country if we slow them down. Here’s an idea: can we help you pack? Seriously, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Many industrial nations already have some form of FTT, including Hong Kong and Singapore. Some members of the European Union have tried to push ahead with an FTT, but it has gotten caught in the complicated web of the European legal framework. Naturally, the big financial firms have lobbied relentlessly to block it and convince the media (much of which relies on advertising dollars from Big Finance) that it’s a bad idea. They’ve succeeded in getting the tax’s effective date pushed into the middle of 2014.

Over on this side of the Atlantic, you may have heard that bank CEOs having been meeting with the president during the shutdown. It’s not hard to imagine what they had to say: Just carve another pound of flesh from the American populace in the form of cuts to Medicare and Social Security, and leave us to make our billions at their expense. Protect Big Finance at any cost. So far, Obama has done pretty much just that. He has surrounded himself with economic advisors, like Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers who have played Santa Claus to bankers and oppose the FTT. Current Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew is against the tax and gives us the official White House position: "The administration has consistently opposed a financial transaction tax on the grounds that it would be vulnerable to evasion, create incentives for financial re-engineering and burden retail investors.” Which is all a big pile of baloney.

So is there any hope? Much of Congress, attentive only to the drumbeat from Wall Street, has turned a deaf ear to the idea, despite a recent proposal from Sen. Tom Harkin and Rep. Peter DeFazio. The bottom line is that we need people in Washington willing to challenge banks. You could take Elizabeth Warren’s election to the Senate as a sign that we might finally be getting somewhere. She is a very popular politician, and if she were to get behind the FTT, there could actually be a chance of getting it passed.

In the meantime, we really need to mob our representatives with messages of support for the FTT. Flood them with letters, emails, and phone calls. Make noise. Tell them that if they are not willing to champion the public good, they will not get your vote.

And if the President dares to move forward with cuts to social programs, public services, Medicare, and Social Security while such a strong, sane idea as the FTT is supported by the population, well, maybe it’s time to take to the streets.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/simple-reform-could-save-america-wall-street-and-boost-economy-whats-washington-waiting?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

police officer shoots a guy 4 times in the gut after being on the scene for like 10 seconds and having the suspect make no threatening movements or gestures.

http://www.alternet.org/dallas-police-shoot-mentally-ill-man-standing-street

What makes this different from all the many times the police in various cities and states throughout the country have used excessive force in the past is there is a video. It's kind of amazing to watch. It looks likes the cops just get out of the squad car, walk over and shoot the guy.

I can almost imagine them pushing one of the easy buttons you get in Staples that say "THAT WAS EASY!"

Makes a good case for thinking twice before you call the police.



?feature=player_detailpage&v=5lUSNN5WTfY

[Slowpurr]

Video is deemed private on YouTube and a few other sites but is still available here along with quite a few other questionable shootings.

The Mom claims she was not let into the hospital to see her son. Police told her she he was under arrest for trying to hurt police officers.

http://benswann.com/caught-on-tape-dallas-cop-shoots-mentally-ill-man/



police officer shoots a guy 4 times in the gut after being on the scene for like 10 seconds and having the suspect make no threatening movements or gestures.

What makes this different from all the many times the police in various cities and states throughout the country have used excessive force in the past is there is a video. It's kind of amazing to watch. It looks likes the cops just get out of the squad car, walk over and shoot the guy.

I can almost imagine them pushing one of the easy buttons you get in Staples that say "THAT WAS EASY!"

Makes a good case for thinking twice before you call the police.



?feature=player_detailpage&v=5lUSNN5WTfY

[Cin]

The Mom claims she was not let into the hospital to see her son. Police told her she he was under arrest for trying to hurt police officers.

Well standing motionless with your hands by your side is certainly dangerous to others. It was just dumb luck those cops weren't hurt.

[Slowpurr]

Dumb luck? That is called training.

Well standing motionless with your hands by your side is certainly dangerous to others. It was just dumb luck those cops weren't hurt.

[Okiebug61]

Same-sex Oklahoma couple marries legally under tribal law
First-of-its-kind marriage in Oklahoma

Published 8:12 PM CDT Oct 21, 2013



4
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Okla. gay couple legally married in Okla., which doesn’t recognize gay marriage

SHOW TRANSCRIPT
OKLAHOMA CITY —It is the first of its kind in Oklahoma, a legal same-sex marriage in a state that doesn’t even recognize it.

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For years, the state of Oklahoma made it clear where they stand on the issue. In 2004, 76 percent of voters defined marriage as between a man and a woman, but for one local couple, a recent Supreme Court decision opens a little known door.

It's the photo Jason Pickel still can't believe, the moment capturing a marriage -- he thought would never happen.

“That's the biggest trip I've had so far,” said Pickel. “I'm not even sure how to even react. I'm very excited about getting married. It's been eight and a half years."

For the past five years, Jason's wanted to marry boyfriend Darren Black Bear. The two even planned a trip to Iowa, a state that recognizes same-sex marriage. But when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last June, Pickel had an idea. He called the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe's courthouse and asked a simple question.

"I was really expecting a big no,” said Pickel. “I thought we're on our way to Iowa, but I called the tribe and they said, 'Yeah come on down, it's twenty bucks.'"

Twenty dollars for what no amount of money could buy in Oklahoma -- a marriage license made legal by the tribal code. Its requirements, both people be of Native American descent and live within the tribe's jurisdiction. Nowhere does it specify gender.

“I do know at the end of the day the state offices won't recognize it, but they kind of have to,” said Pickel.

That's because on sovereign Indian land, state laws don't apply, making Jason and Darren the first publicly married same-sex couple in Oklahoma, a milestone, he hopes is followed.

“When we have equality in all 50 states and all U.S. territories that is when we'll have true equality,” said Pickel. “That's when I will be truly, truly happy.”

Due to Pickel and Black Bear’s marriage, the couple is allowed to file for federal tax credits benefiting couples. They plan on holding an open wedding celebration on Halloween.







Copyright 2013 by KOCO.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tags Same-Sex Marriage Oklahoma City


Read more: http://www.koco.com/news/oklahomanews/around-oklahoma/samesex-oklahoma-couple-marries-legally-under-tribal-law/-/12530084/22553184/-/101ihp0z/-/index.html#ixzz2iPuBydad

[Okiebug61]

Please email or phone this legislature and let him know what you think!

http://www.okhouse.gov/District.aspx?District=60

http://www.koco.com/news/oklahomanews/okc/legislature-attempting-to-stop-satirical-theatrical-performance/-/11777584/22557370/-/26va7f/-/index.html

[Cin]

Idaho Cops Kill Dog In Front of Two-Year-Old Boy
The owners of the animal dispute the police's claims that they were threatened by the dog.

Full article here:http://www.alternet.org/idaho-cops-kill-dog-front-two-year-old-boy

Idaho police shot and killed a dog over the weekend in front of a two-year-old boy. While the cops from Boise, Idaho say they felt threatened by the dog, named Kita, the owners of the dog dispute those claims, according to a report by Idaho media outlet KTVB.

On Sunday, two officers were investigating a theft in the area where Kita and the Stropkai family lived.

Gabrielle Stropkai said the cops quickly decided to shoot Kita. “In about five seconds he pulled his weapon, asked whose dog it was, and shot her in the back of the head,” she told KTVB. This was all done in front of her two-year-old son named Hayden.



It's certainly not surprising it only took cops five seconds to shoot the dog. Here's a video of a cop shooting a guy just standing with his arms by his side within about ten seconds of the police arriving on the scene.

?feature=player_detailpage&v=FKZcwwTOk34

Here's a cartoon that just about covers it:
http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/screen_shot_2013-10-22_at_11.38.30_am.png

http://www.alternet.org/comics/matt-bors-right-wing-hypocrisy-over-police-violence

[Cin]

Apparently shopping while black is as dangerous as driving while black.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/trayon-christian-lawsuit-barneys-new-york-nypd_n_4148490.html


Here's an article about a black woman getting fired for having blond highlights.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/farryn-johnson-fired-hooters-blond-highlights-_n_4142108.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[Cin]

Social Security, Medicare and Veteran's Benefits are facing cuts this fall. Those veterans that are so well loved that the thought of a veteran facing a gate at a monument on Veteran's Day was horrific beyond belief apparently can have their benefits slashed without issue. Ah GOP love, it's so conditional.

Now that there is an unholy alliance between the far-right Arnold Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust it is no wonder that the Pew Foundation is spreading the lie that social security is in trouble. The only danger for SSI is coming from Obama and the GOP who want to gut it. Despite claims it will run out of money in 20 years, Social Security has a surplus of more than $2 trillion. Allowing for normal economic growth rates there is no reason that SSI money would not last indefinitely/forever. However, given the fact that the obscenely wealthy, who are really the ones who take advantage of government hand outs and constantly suck on the public tit, can't take their greedy eyes off of Federal and State Social Security money, I doubt it will last even until 2030.

A couple of interesting articles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/cut-social-security-veter_b_3040226.html

http://www.alternet.org/economy/nine-democratic-senators-side-gop-entitlement-cuts?page=0%2C1

[Cin]

It’s not the 1% anymore.

Globally, 0.7 percent of the people control 41 percent of the world’s wealth.

The wealth of this net group approaches $99 trillion dollars.

Global Wealth Reaches All-Time High. (For the .7 anyway. It’s working out so well for the rich let’s be sure to continue with those austerity measures)

The recent explosion of U.S. wealth means the richest Americans dominate the global rich. (Yay. Let’s cut social security, medicare and Veteran’s Benefits)

Below the .7% is the 7.7% who hold around 42% of the global wealth.

The remaining 91.6 percent of humanity splits around 17 percent of the wealth.

U.S. Congress is poised to begin a historic debate on cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That debate starts with the assumption that there’s not enough money around for social safety nets.

Which is a lie. There is plenty of money for social safety nets. And Social Security is not going to run out of money. It is solvent.

But if you really believe it is not then make it solvent by lifting the cap and making all income, not just income under $86,000/year, subject to FICA taxes. Because as it has been determined those who make under $86,000 a year hold only 17% of the wealth. Shouldn't some help come from the segment of the population who owns 83% of the money?

Or cut farm subsidies to rich farmers.

Eliminate tax cuts for the rich and zero taxes for 40% of Corporations.

Or cut the pentagon budget for the $163 billion you say you need. Buy 2190 planes instead of 2457, cutting 247 planes gives you $163 billion. Don’t force millions of seniors into an insecure old age.

Why take the money from the segment of the population who splits only 17% of the wealth as it is?

The richest Americans are doing quite well, thank you, and with trillions of new wealth added to the U.S. economy since 2008’s market collapse, it’s not unreasonable for Congress to ask them to shore up safety nets for the rest of their country.

Here is an article about the new name for the millionaires club - point seveners. http://www.alternet.org/economy/point-seveners-new-name-millionaires-club?page=0%2C0

[Cin]

10 Jaw-dropping Absurdities Brought to You By the Right Wing

1. Kevin Swanson is begging you not to buy those lesbian Girl Scout cookies

2. Men’s Righter, Paul Elam: It’s okay not to care about female rape victims

3. N.C. Republican official doesn’t want those lazy blacks voting

4. N.C. (yes, again) State Rep. Larry Pittman: Obama not a traitor (to Kenya, where he was born, of course)

5. Sherman Adelson: Nuke Iran

6. Joe the former Plumber: Democrats are the lynchers

7. Coach Daubenmire: Christians are being bullied into not bullying gays

8. Bradlee Dean, President Obama is both secretly pushing Shariah law, and secretly gay

9. Group of Christians refuse to tip waiter, but are nice enough to leave a note explaining his “homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God”

10. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman: Ted Cruz is a brilliant, heroic, visionary leader


How you might ask can a cookie be a lesbian? Yes, how indeed.
For a more detailed description of each absurdity:
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/10-jaw-dropping-absurdities-brought-you-right-wing?page=0%2C0

[*Anya*]

Texas’ voter ID law that could disenfranchise women voters targets trans voters in general
By JOS |

Published: OCTOBER 22, 2013


Apparently it’s Blog About “Show Us Your Papers” Laws Day at Feministing. Get it together America.

Over the past few days, publications have jumped on the story of a Texas voter ID law, which recently went into effect after initially being blocked by the courts. Texas voters are required to provide an ID that matches their most up-to-date legal name. This may seem like a minor issue to some, but name changes can be time consuming, complicated, and expensive. Every article I’ve seen about this issue focuses on married women who’ve changed their names. The thinking is that Wendy Davis and other pro-rights, anti-bigotry politicians would be hurt most by keeping women from the polls.

A lot of my concern is about lady voters being disenfranchised, too. But I’m not just thinking about recently married women – I’m thinking about trans women (married or not), as well as trans folks in general who could be blocked from voting.

As is often the case, this law may prove more successful at keeping voters from the polls by making them think they won’t be able to vote, rather than them actually being excluded by the rule. Poll workers get to use discretion when checking people’s IDs. Unfortunately, this could end up being worse for trans folks because of widespread transphobia, whereas a majority of people think married women should change their last name, so that name change is generally viewed positively in our culture. When trans folks have been targeted this way our whole lives, it can suck to walk into a situation where we know we could be misgendered and excluded again.

The Williams Institute published a report in 2012 outlining how voter ID laws could keep trans voters from the polls:

According to the new Williams Institute report, 41 percent of transgender citizens who have transitioned reported not having an updated driver’s license and 74 percent did not have an updated U.S. passport. Moreover, 27 percent of transgender citizens who have transitioned reported that they had no identity documents or records that list their current gender. People of color, youth, students, those with low incomes, and respondents with disabilities are likely to be disproportionately impacted.

This study was covered by a couple great publications, but it didn’t blow up in nearly the way this story did when it focused on married women (who could be trans too, but who, let’s face it, most of us will assume are cis, cause that’s the culturally enforced norm).

I’ve written before about how it hurts to read feminist critique of sexism that polices the boundaries of “woman” and excludes trans women, and not see a trans critique even come up. It means that, for whatever reason, transphobia and transmisogyny aren’t issues authors and editors are thinking about when they analyze sexism. When they’re thinking about who gets targeted, they’re not thinking of me. Whereas when I see an issue that’s about name changes and legal documents, I instantly think about how it will impact trans folks, because that’s my life experience and because I know it’s a common way we get marginalized.

There’s this unfortunately too common thing that happens when a trans woman tells a cis woman about an experience of sexism and the response is, “Welcome to being a woman!” However unintentional, it’s an incredibly hurtful thing to say to a woman who’s experienced the sexism that says she’s not the right kind of woman. Cases like this almost make me want to turn that response around. Not that I’d actually treat anyone’s experience this way, especially because defining “woman” by the sexism we experience let’s the bigots define who we are. And of course, this kind of bigotry doesn’t just target women, as it can disenfranchise trans voters generally. But this sort of targeting is so central to my experience of gendered bigotry that I have a bit of a “Welcome to my bullshit” moment. So it’s notable to me when these ID rules get highlighted by feminists without acknowledgement of how they hurt trans folks.

It’s possible the Texas GOP meant to stop the votes of married women with this law. Many transphobes are so stuck on the “man in a dress” stereotype that they probably don’t know enough about our real lives to successfully, intentionally attack us like this. However, trans folks are demonized by the right with increasing frequency, and have been directly targeted with voter suppression tactics, so this could very well be aimed at us as well. Trans folks may be a marginalized minority, but there’s also a badass trans organizing community in Texas that the right certainly knows about. Regardless of intent, this law has potential to keep trans folks from exercising our right to vote, and that’s something we should be talking about as well.

Jos Truitt has been a woman who experiences sexism this whole time.

http://feministing.com/2013/10/22/texas-voter-id-law-that-could-disenfranchise-women-voters-targets-trans-voters-in-general/

[Cin]

Macy's Also Gets Slapped With Racial Discrimination Lawsuit By Black Shopper

“It’s an epidemic. It’s unbelievable,” Nicholas Elefterakis, Brown's attorney, told The Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/25/macys-racial-discrimination-lawsuit-black-shopper_n_4164823.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Barney's hires a civil rights pro to show them how not to harass black shoppers. Go figure it's that difficult a concept for them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/barneys-new-york-civil-rights-pro-amid-discrimination-claims_n_4165161.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

[Cin]

Meet 3 Master Manipulators of America’s Oligarchy
Financiers Stanley Druckenmiller, Pete Peterson and John Arnold form a trifecta of treachery.

Ideas are costly, especially bogus ones. And a growing class of billionaires is more than willing to pay.

Whether they’re ginning up deficit hysteria to cut Social Security or blaming teachers and firefighters for state budget crises, these 1 percenters pose as defenders of your interests while arranging things so that they can plunder America and leave hard-working people with scraps. They fully understand mechanisms of manipulating public opinion, and they can pay off pundits and politicians to subscribe to whatever ideas best justify their greed and abuse.

It’s not enough that we now have the widest divide between rich and poor in living memory. These men are determined to crack open that gulf even wider.

We bring you profiles of three financiers who never made a useful thing in their lives, including one who helped bring you the Enron disaster. They are united in their efforts to blame ordinary people for Wall Street-driven economic woes and carve out another pound of your flesh for the rich. Money is no object in their quest.

Here’s a look at how these three made their money, how they’re conning the public, and what they don’t want you to know.

1. Stanley Druckenmiller

His stash: $2.9 billion, made from hedge funds.

His con: Turn young people against seniors by scapegoating Social Security and Medicare.

Stanley Druckenmiller is the most insidious kind of capitalist charlatan—a rapacious wolf of an oligarch hiding in sheep’s clothing. “I just want what’s best for young people!” he cries. But his fangs are so long and sharp that only a fool could overlook them.

Druckenmiller, long a funder of right-wing causes and politicians, has lately been popping up on college campuses promoting economic nonsense in an effort to convince young people that greedy grandparents are to blame for America’s weak economy. Yep, that’s right. He sells the notion that instead of student debt, shitty jobs with few protections, and the hangover from a Wall Street-driven financial crisis, Social Security is what’s hurting today’s youth. Seriously.

Druckenmiller tarts himself up as a generational and class warrior who wants to save young people from their elders by slashing the social insurance programs that keep them out of poverty. Never mind that these young people will one day reach an age where they will need these programs even more than the current generation of retirees because they will likely have no pensions and will have saved into disastrous 401(k) plans—that is, when they can actually find jobs that have any kind of retirement plan at all.

Druckenmiller plays on the psychological tendencies of young people to get pissed off at older folks. He manipulates that habit in order to deflect blame from those who are actually hampering and destabilizing the economy, such as greedy financiers like himself. He cleverly tosses in enough populist-sounding tidbits, like raising taxes on capital gains, to pretend that he’s really on the side of the regular folks.

Which is bullsh*t.

The truth is that we ought to be expanding the social safety net because we’ve got a retirement train wreck coming and a political system that’s transferring wealth from working people to the rich. Taking money out of the pockets of seniors actually stalls economic growth by decreasing the demand for goods and services, as anyone who has taken Econ 101 is aware. Programs like Social Security actually save America money because they are inexpensive to run, and unlike private plans, don’t gouge citizens with high fees. By the standards of advanced countries, our programs are pretty paltry to begin with, and cuts bring us closer to the Dickensian world that is no doubt what greed-blossoms like Druckenmiller dream about at night.

Despite the destructive stupidity of his ideas, Druckenmiller knows how to get the media to carry his poison. His nonsense was recently championed by Tom Friedman in the New York Times and James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal.

As Robert Kuttner has recently explained, it takes a lot of freaking nerve for an oligarch to argue that the “income distribution problem is somehow generational and that he, as a billionaire, has anything whatever in common with most college students or most recipients of Social Security.”

Druckenmiller has that nerve, and then some. Where are the pitchforks?

2. Peter G. Peterson

His stash: $1.5 billion, made from private equity.

His con: Stoke deficit hysteria in order to shrink the government and let the wild horses of capitalism trample the masses.

Pete Peterson is the ultimate phony patriot. He has served as commerce secretary under President Richard Nixon, made billions on Wall Street buying companies in order to loot them, and has been tireless in his campaign to blame all of America's ills on a federal budget deficit — you know, the one that is actually declining. Through his Peter G. Peterson Foundation, this elder statesman of the oligarchy has spent about a billion dollars of his own stash to get us to buy the idea that America is broke, despite the fact that it is the richest country in the world. And guess who must open their wallet? You!

There is nothing Peterson will not buy to further his agenda: school curricula, think tanks across the political spectrum, seminars, TV ads, politicians—hell, he even bought his own newspaper, the Fiscal Times, where propagandists calling themselves reporters spread his deficit hysteria and promote Peterson’s fondest wish, which is to kill Social Security and Medicare.

Though the public repeatedly rejects his nonsense, Peterson is able to pay influential politicians to sing his tune, including Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who have been trotting out their discredited reports on the deficit ever since Obama appointed them to his fiscal commission in 2010.

Peterson is the oligarch behind the “Fix the Debt” campaign, a consortium of corporate honchos and wealthy individuals who have made it their mission to bring deficit scare-mongering to D.C. in order to achieve cuts to essential programs and secretly push through their main goal, which is lowering taxes on the wealthy.

Over and over, Peterson & Co. will try to gin up artificial crises so they can force Congress to do their bidding. Whenever you hear the phrase “grand bargain,” somewhere out there a Peterson crony is smacking his chops. And the tasty treat is your pocketbook.

3. John Arnold

His stash: $2.8 billion, courtesy of Enron.

His con: Enrich Wall Street by blaming state budget crises on teachers, firefighters and other public workers.

If you were writing a movie script about unbridled capitalism, you could do no better than John Arnold as your villain.

Young, clean-cut and soft-spoken, Arnold looks like he just wants what’s best for America. But that would be his America, not yours.

For starters, Arnold made his fortune at Enron, where he worked with a gang of criminal fraudsters to wreck, among other things, California’s economy. Now he is actually using a front group to loot California’s pension system.

The 39-year-old Arnold left his work as an energy trader in 2012 to style himself as a new breed of philanthropist who will change the course of history—in favor of the 1 percent.

As David Sirota and Matt Taibbi have explained, Arnold’s game is promoting a “pension reform” movement designed to channel billions of dollars in public pensions to hedge funds and Wall Street players who can charge exorbitant fees while mismanaging public money and hiding their shenanigans from the citizenry.

Arnold disguises his agenda by doing things like donating to the federal Head Start program—purportedly to help it through the government shutdown.

But don’t be fooled. He’s been very busy behind the scenes with other activities. He joined forces with Pew Charitable Trusts to create a campaign to cut pensions and he has tirelessly spewed impressive-sounding actuarial nonsense at elected officials and members of the media to get governments to transfer wealth from public workers to Wall Street. Gina Raimondo, the Rhode Island state treasurer, is an Arnold-acolyte and has allowed the state’s pensions to fall victim to a Wall Street coup that will let financiers to fatten their wallets at the expense of people whose only crime was to get up in the morning and go to work serving their communities.

The reasons state and municipal budgets are having troubles has little to do with the fact that teachers and other workers will end up with pensions that average around $25,000 a year (and many of them won’t get Social Security). They are hurting because Wall Street has been ripping them off for decades, and then socked them with a horrific financial crisis which killed revenue streams. That plus the plague of unscrupulous politicians who have been shoveling money meant for pensions into their pet projects is why states are suffering and pensions are dealing with shortfalls — though usually not the hysterical crises Arnold and his cohorts would have you believe. Robbing teachers and firefighters will not solve these problems. Reining in financial criminals and crooked politicians will.

Enron’s collapse already wiped out 401(k) plans and gutted pension benefits that many workers counted on for retirement. But somehow that blow to society did not satisfy Arnold. He’d like to bring more retirement disasters to a neighborhood near you.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/stanley-druckenmiller-pete-peterson-and-john-arnold?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Noam Chomsky: How the U.S.-Mexico Border Is Cruel by Design
“The US-Mexican border, like most borders, was established by violence — and its architecture is the architecture of violence.”
October 28, 2013 |

In order to understand the rationale behind the fortification of the border and the physical form it has taken in recent years, it is necessary to go back a little first. The US-Mexican border, like most borders, was established by violence – and its architecture is the architecture of violence. The US basically invaded Mexico in a pretty brutal war back in the 1840s. The war was described by President-General Ulysses S. Grant, as “the most wicked war in history”. [9*] That may be an exaggeration, but it was a pretty wicked war. It was based on deeply racist ideas. First of all, it started with the annexation of Texas, which was called the re-annexation of Texas on the grounds that it was “really ours all along” […], that they stole it from us, and now we have to re-annex it. That took Texas away from Mexico. The rest of the war, and the later historical period, basically involved additional land grabs.

In order to understand it, you should read the progressive writers like Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. The position was, as Whitman put it eloquently, that “backward Mexico had to be annexed as part of bringing civilization to the world”—which the US was seen as leading. [10]Emerson said it in more flowery language along the lines of, “it really doesn’t matter by what means Mexico is taken, as it contributes to the mission of ‘civilizing the world’ and, in the long run, it will be forgotten”. [11] Of course, that’s why we have names like San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Fe all over the southwest and the west of the United States. We should really call it Occupied Mexico.

Like many borders around the world, it is artificially imposed and, like those many other borders imposed by external powers, it bears no relationship to the interests or the concerns of the people of the country—and it has a history of horrible conflict and strife. Take the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example. The British imposed the borderline. They partitioned the overall area nearly in half and arbitrarily divided the land. No Afghan government has ever accepted it, and nor should they. This has happened all across Africa as well, of course, and so the Mexican border is no exception.

After the war of the 1840s the US-Mexican border remained fairly open. Basically the same people lived on the same sides of it, so people would cross to visit relatives or to engage in commerce, or something else. [12] It was pretty much an open border until the early 1990’s. In 1994, the Clinton administration initiated the program of militarizing the border, and that was extended greatly under George W. Bush in the 2000s—largely under the guise of safety and defence from terrorism. [13]The two key pieces of legislation were called “The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005” and the “Secure Fence Act of 2006″. [14] That was interesting, and revealing, because the warnings from the security services were that the dangerous border, with regard the possible incursion of terrorists into the US, was the Canadian border. If you take a look, you can see why. The Canadian border is so porous that you and I can cross it in some forested areas. If you were worried about terrorism, you would fortify the Canadian border. Instead, they fortified the Mexican border where there is no threat of terrorism; it was, clearly, for other reasons.

The rest:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/noam-chomsky-americas-suburban-nightmare-and-how-us-mexico-border-cruel-design

[Corkey]

ALOHA! Hawaii passed marriage equality!

[MsTinkerbelly]

ALOHA! Hawaii passed marriage equality!

It passed the State Legislature, and will go to the House of Representives tomorrow. It should be ready to sign next week if it passes.

[Cin]

This kid should be governor of NC.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/watch-12-year-old-nails-nc-governor-voting-rights-restrictions

Watch: 12-Year-Old Nails N.C. Governor on Voting Rights Restrictions
Modern day suffragette Madison Kimrey: "The match has been lit and my fire burns bright."

12-year-old Madison Madison Kimrey, founder of NC Youth Rocks, gave a rousing speech at a recent NAACP event, taking on Governor Pat McCrory, and the state's recent highly restrictive Voter I.D. laws. Being 12, her particular concern was the elimination of the state's pre-registration for 16 and 17-year-olds through schools and the state's DMV that enables them to automatically be added to the voting rolls when they turn 18.

She completely nails Gov. McCrory, who refused to meet with her, calling her "ridiculous" and a "liberal prop." Her response: "I am not a prop. I am part of a new generation of sufragettes."

Gov. McCrory also said, according to Kimrey: "He had not read that part of the bill."

In the words of Alicia Keyes: "This girl is on fire."

?v=3CRSK0HItoI&feature=player_embedded

[*Anya*]

Instead of freedom, Marissa Alexander gets new trial date

By MAYA | Published: OCTOBER 31, 2013

Marissa Alexander, the black Florida mother who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot against her abusive husband, will get a new trial this spring. But her supporters were calling for the charges to be dropped altogether.

As we’ve previously covered, Alexander had a restraining order against her husband when he yelled, “Bitch, I will kill you!” and charged toward her during the incident in 2010. She fired a single shot into the ceiling, and no one was hurt. The sentence Alexander received would seem absurdly harsh in general, but especially since we’re talking about Florida here, where the right to “stand your ground” apparently applies to aggressors “threatened” by a bag of Skittles, but not to abused black women.

Last month, a court overturned Alexander’s original guilty verdict, and activists have called for the charges to be dropped. Instead the state is going to prosecute her once again. Alexander, who has already been in jail for three years while this all plays out, will find out next week whether she will be released on bail. The Free Marissa Now campaign will be fundraising to cover her legal costs for the new trial in March. The goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the year, and you can help here.

While today’s hearing is a huge disappointment, it’s inspiring to see such powerful grassroots mobilization around this case. The Free Marissa Now effort, as well as the #31forMARISSA letter writing campaign that Mychal covered recently, has worked tirelessly to not only free Alexander but also raise awareness more generally about how women–especially black women and other marginalized groups–are likely to be criminalized for fighting back against domestic violence. As Mariame Kaba of the restorative justice organization Project NIA explained at Colorlines recently:

Marissa is a black woman, and we need to be really clear about that in this case. We’re not seen as potentially violable, we’re not seen as people who can be victimized too often. We’re always seen by everybody—including sometimes even in our own communities—as not being able to feel pain or be abused, and not being real “victims.” What we’re trying to do here, with Marissa, is asserting very clearly and specifically her humanity. We want to make it clear that we do feel pain. Making it clear that the continuing criminalization of black women is completely unacceptable, immoral and despicable.

My own personal sense of heartbreak has been around the notion, in this case, that Marissa couldn’t be afraid, that she couldn’t feel fear, and that the jury couldn’t believe that she was afraid. That’s deep. And that’s why having another trial feels to me like a recipe for disaster—because I don’t think her humanity is taken into account. I don’t think people think that black women can feel scared, or that we have the ability to feel pain.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

http://feministing.com/2013/10/31/instead-of-freedom-marissa-alexander-gets-new-trial-date/

"[Feministing] is head and shoulders above almost any writing on women's issues in mainstream media." -Columbia Journalism Review

[MsTinkerbelly]

LAX Airport shooting.

I'm watching all the news, and at least 3 people have been shot, at least one dead. The suspect is in custody, and the Airport is shutdown to all new departing flights, and all flights not already in the air from other places.

A witness described the shooter as a white male, approximately 18 years old.

***side note, my Kasey was supposed to leave today for England, but the trip was canceled due to my health. Thank you God for keeping her out of harms way.

[MsTinkerbelly]

LAX Airport shooting.

I'm watching all the news, and at least 3 people have been shot, at least one dead. The suspect is in custody, and the Airport is shutdown to all new departing flights, and all flights not already in the air from other places.

A witness described the shooter as a white male, approximately 18 years old.

***side note, my Kasey was supposed to leave today for England, but the trip was canceled due to my health. Thank you God for keeping her out of harms way.

7 people shot or injured by falling down the escalator (he was shooting down the escalator), 1 dead.

Sad day for a lot of people.

[*Anya*]

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A man armed with what police say was an assault rifle and carrying materials expressing anti-government sentiment opened fire Friday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one person before being chased down himself, authorities said.
Eyewitnesses said the suspect asked people, "Hey, are you TSA?" -- the acronym for the Transportation Security Administration -- according to a federal law enforcement official. If they said "no," he would move on.
In the aftermath of the shooting, investigators found information on the suspect expressing not just anti-federal government sentiment but also anger at the TSA specifically, according to the federal law enforcement official.
By then, a TSA officer was dead -- the first employee of that relatively new agency to be killed in the line of duty, according to American Federation of Government Employees president J. David Cox.
Two others were also shot, FBI special agent in charge David Bowdich said. At least one of them was a TSA employee who was shot in the leg, according to a former Los Angeles Police Department ranking officer who was briefed by investigators.
The suspected gunman himself was detained after being shot in the chest multiple times, according to an intelligence source briefed by Los Angeles police.
He was identified later by the FBI as Paul Anthony Ciancia, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles. Law enforcement sources told CNN that, in addition to the southern California city, the suspect also had an address in New Jersey.
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said that, hours after the incident, it received three male victims -- one in critical condition and two in fair condition. One of the two in fair condition suffered gunshot wounds, another suffered an unspecified injury, said Dr. Lynne McCullough, an emergency physician at the Los Angeles hospital.
Two patients were transported to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, said David Klurad, a trauma surgeon there.
One was what Klurad described as a "middle-aged" person with minor injuries from being shot in the shoulder. The other had no signs of life when he arrived at the hospital, the surgeon added. It wasn't known if this person was the slain TSA officer.
TSA: Number of guns discovered in airports rising
The episode caused what airport police Chief Patrick Gannon, who had said the shooter used an "assault rifle," described as a "large amount of chaos." People ran for their lives and took shelter wherever they could as authorities pursued the gunman.
Chuck Ocheret was among those in the busy airport when he heard two "loud pops."
"Then I heard this mad rush of people, and there was a stampede of people coming from this direction," Ocheret told CNN. "Nobody really knew what was going on."
Still, by Friday afternoon, authorities believes the worst was over. Gannon noted it is believed there was only one shooter.
Source: Gunman had 3 magazines for weapon
An otherwise normal day in the airport's Terminal 3 turned upside down around 9:20 a.m. (12:20 p.m. ET), as the suspect approached a checkpoint.
There, he "pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and began to open fire," Gannon said.
The suspect didn't stop there. Equipped with three magazines for his weapon, according to the intelligence source briefed by Los Angeles police, he began running down Terminal 3.
Traveler Vernon Cardenas was sitting at one end of the terminal, when he heard noise and saw a mass of people running toward him. He and others bolted through a kicked-open exit door and ran onto the tarmac -- believing then it was safer there -- even with then still-arriving and departing jetliners -- than in the concourse above.
The circular area where Cardenas had been is where the bloodshed finally ended with the gunman's shooting by law enforcement, according to the intelligence source.
Actor Tim Daly said that when he was eventually led out of the the Virgin America first-class lounge, he saw where the incident came to a head around Gates 35 and 36. After being told not to step on any blood or glass, Daly spotted a high-powered rifle on the ground along with three magazines, a pair of black shoes and several bags strewn across the floor.
The episode soon rendered one of the world's busiest airports a ghost town. Large portions were evacuated as authorities ordered a "ground stop" for arriving places, said police and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Almost every flight scheduled to leave the airport on Friday will be "significantly late," said Gina Marie Lindsay, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports.
The area around the airport was jammed with cars as police shut down access to the airport.
The airport was still accepting incoming flights, but doing so at less than half the normal rate as a few were rerouted, Lindsay said. Some flights that did arrive sat on the tarmac as the investigation continued.
Police at Los Angeles International Airport announced around 2 p.m. Pacific time over a loudspeaker that they were going to start allowing workers back into the airport so operations such as processing incoming and outbound flights could resume.

[Cin]

America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom
Why do we put up with such injustices?


There are 16.4 million American children living in poverty. That's nearly one quarter (22.6%) of all of our children. More alarming is that the percentage of poor children has climbed by 4.5 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. And poor means poor. For a family of three with one child under 18, the poverty line is $18,400.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming. Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms are making tens of billions of dollars again, while the luxury housing and goods markets are skyrocketing.

Most amazing of all is the fact that 95 percent of the so-called "recovery" has gone to the top 1 percent who have seen their incomes rise by 34%. For the 99 percent there's been an undeclared wage freeze: the average wage has climbed by only 0.4 percent.

To add to the misery, Washington has decided that the best way to tackle childhood poverty is to have poor kids eat less. Both parties already have agreed to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). Starting this November 1, payments are scheduled to drop from $668 a month to $632 for more than 47 million lower-income people -- 1 in 7 Americans, most of them children. (Three incredible graphs that visualize the issues in this story are at the bottom of this article.)

And more cuts are coming. The Tea Party House passed a bill to cut food stamps by $4 billion a year, while the Senate calls for $400 million in cuts. How humane! And since it will be part of the omnibus Farm Bill, President Obama will sign it. (I wonder how our former community organizer will explain this to the poor children he once tried to help in Chicago.)

But that's just the start. More austerity is coming in the form of cuts to Social Security as well as a host of other social programs. When times get tough, you've got to suck it up and take more from the poor.

Rewarding Billionaires Who Increase Poverty?

It gets even more revolting when we realize that the financial billionaires who are profiting so handsomely from the recovery are the very same who took down the economy in the first place. They were the ones who created and pedaled the toxic securities that puffed up and then burst the housing bubble. Those financial plutocrats caused 8 million workers to lose their jobs in a matter of months. Those bankers, hedge fund honchos and fund managers are directly responsible for the rise in child poverty rates. Washington bailed out those billionaires and is now asking the poor and the middle class to pay for the ensuing deficits with further cuts in social programs at every level of government.

Why do we put up with such injustices?

Washington Is in Wall Street's Pocket

Before we entirely succumb to financial amnesia, let's recall how we got here. Since the late 1970s, the financial sector has been on a crusade to remove any and all financial regulations. The goal was to undo all the controls put in place during the Great Depression that so effectively curtailed financial speculation and outright gambling. Once deregulated Wall Street engineered a Ponzi-like housing bubble that netted it astronomical sums. By the time it burst in 2007, 40% of all corporate profits flowed into the financial sector. Wall Street wages grew by leaps and bounds.

As the crash hit, all the largest Wall Street firms, not just Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were in serious trouble. Had AIG gone under, so would nearly every major bank and investment house, along with thousands of hedge funds that depended on AIG to ensure its toxic bets. So Wall Street's Washington cadre engineered a $13 trillion bailout consisting of cash, no interest loans and a program by which the Federal Reserve would buy up Wall Street's toxic waste at par value. To produce a financial recovery, the Fed also drove down bond interest rates which in turn drove money into the stock market, sending it to new heights.

Here's the best of all. After getting $480 billion in bailout cash, the top financiers in the country paid themselves more than $150 billion in bonus money for a job well done. Is this a great country or what?

What didn't happen is this: Mortgages were not written down in mass to assist underwater home owners and those who suffered from predatory loans. No lasting jobs programs were created to put the unemployed back to work. No lasting penalties were paid by the individuals who took down the economy. And there was no serious effort at all to cap financial wages and bonuses in the name of justice.

All in all, you could not have designed a more perfect program to enrich the rich and do absolutely nothing for the 99 percent -- and as a result, sink ever more children into poverty.

Waiting for the Recovery That Will Never Come

We are constantly told that the recovery is just around the corner. Liberals say we need more stimulus. Conservatives call for more austerity and cuts in regulations. But all agree that sooner or later more growth will benefit the 99 percent. Unfortunately, it's not happening and it won't happen. Here's why.

First of all, they assume that trickledown actually works, that there is something mechanical within our heavily financialized economy that will bring renewed prosperity to the 99 percent. They look back at previous recessions and recoveries and continue to believe that slumps are followed by renewed growth and income gains for all.

But as financialization has spread throughout the economy, new mechanisms are in place that siphon off wealth into financial gains for the very few. Productive enterprises are turned into financial enterprises that are loaded up with debt and then carved and slaughtered so that wealth can be extracted for hedge funds and private equity firms. In our brave new financialized economy renewed growth turns into renewed incomes primarily for the investment class. The stock market will rise but jobs and incomes won't. The traditional capitalist slump-recovery process died more than a decade ago. Adam Smith's invisible hand no longer produces shared prosperity -- instead it picks our pockets.

Waiting for the Political Pendulum to Swing

Second, we are told how America is essentially a moderate country -- how there's a kind of invisible political pendulum that swings from the extremes back to the sensible center. When the left or the Tea Party gets too wild, the center supposedly pulls them back and common sense economics prevails. But this consoling media meme obscures the fact that our politics are moving ever more rightward. Moderate Democrats and Republicans today are to the right of Eisenhower, Nixon and even Herbert Hoover. They have already agreed to cut the very entitlements that are needed to help alleviate poverty. In fact, they have agreed it's quite OK for America to have 442 billionaires and also have 22.6% of its children living in poverty. The sensible center now sees its role as forging a "compromise" on how much to cut food stamps and other supports for the poor.

Obviously, both political parties lose little sleep worrying about economic injustices. Even most Democrats no longer have a serious game plan to eradicate poverty. That's considered to be 1960s stuff that doesn't make sense in a world where politicians have to make peace with at least some players in the billionaire class in order to survive. As for the poor, alas, they will always be with us.

America Leads the World

Not a day goes by without hearing about "American exceptionalism." We are told by our leaders and pundits that we are the best, the greatest, the mightiest and the most democratic of all nations. It is our mission in life to uphold justice and freedom around the world. But as this chart shows, when it comes to child poverty, we are just about dead last.

Why is that? Because in wealthy nations, children live in poverty if and only if that nation allows it. Our nation, the richest in history, has more than enough wealth to go from the bottom of this list to the top, right next to Finland, if only we decided to act justly.

A Simple Proposal to end Child Poverty

America has 442 billionaires with an average net worth of $4.2 billion each according to Forbes. That means collectively these 442 Americans have nearly $1.9 trillion in wealth.

During the current "recovery," these 442 billions saw their wealth rise on average by over 12 percent per year. What would happened if those billionaires received only 6 percent a year and the other 6 percent were taxed away in order to pull all of our children out of poverty?

That would provide sufficient revenue so that each child now living in poverty would receive an extra $7,000 per year which would pull nearly all of their families above the poverty line. The 442 billionaires would not suffer. No one in their families would go hungry. No luxury goods or services would be out of reach. No cooks, maids, chauffeurs or pilots would have to be let go. The 442 billionaires would feel no pain at all -- not even an itch. As a result of this painless tax, America would eradicate childhood poverty overnight.

Dream on?

Of course, our simple proposal sounds insane in a world where austerity reigns supreme and where billionaires are immune from such redistributive proposals. But I wonder who is sane and who isn't. It seems utterly psychotic to live in a society that chooses to spread poverty to its young. It also seems psychotic to claim that cuts in food stamps are good for the poor while at the same time saying that it's quite OK for billionaires to pile up unearned, tax-sheltered income. The fact that we're putting up with all this should be driving us all insane.

Sooner or later, the millions of Americans who still have souls that ache for justice will take democracy into their own hands. I don't know how it will happen or when, but one day we will eradicate needless poverty and reclaim our nation from those who are robbing it blind.

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/americas-greatest-shame-child-poverty-rises-and-food-stamps-cut-while-billionaires?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Why should poor people think they have some kind of a right to eat?

Rand Paul would tell you this himself: Food, like healthcare, is not a right! If some Americans have to starve to death, this is what it takes to preserve our freedom!

They call the poor “useless eaters” and seriously don’t give a crap if we all starve.

This may be how the rich really feel about the working class. But they are not going to say that, at least not all of them, all of the time.

They do have more palatable ways to get those of us who are not yet hungry to agree with their austerity measures. They have skewed, suspect and just plain "old" outdated data that they can use to spin fairy tales about the really, really well off poor people who live in the US. You know the ones who live in the realm of the Welfare Queen.

For example the Washington DC based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has been telling us for years that there are no poor people in the US.

They say stuff like the average family with very low food security ( here is an even more innocuous term than food insecure, when did we stop saying hungry?) experienced disrupted food intakes in only seven months of the year, for one to seven days per month. They say it like it is a good thing. So if you only go without food for one week a month for more than half the year you are not really poor and your children are not really hungry. Hunger is what kids in developing countries suffer. According to the Heritage Foundation only 2.6% of American children’s growth is stunted by malnutrition compared to 42.7% in developing countries. And to these brilliant conservative minds that means we can take a lot more from the 99% than we have up to this point before we are on par with developing nations. A lofty goal indeed.

They say that “the mainstream press and activist groups frequently conflate poverty with homelessness. They insist this depiction is seriously misleading because only a small portion of persons 'living in poverty' will become homeless over the course of a year. The overwhelming majority of the poor reside throughout the year in non-crowded housing that is in good repair.” Seriously. Good repair? They have statistics that say 50% of the poor live in single family homes and not in apartments or mobile homes. WTF? Really? I’ve never lived in a single family home in my entire life. Never. And I don’t consider myself as living below the poverty line. But all around me families whose incomes do fall under the poverty line own their own homes. Who knew? Conservatives that’s who!

Not only that but “nearly all poor households have commonplace amenities such as color TVs, telephones, and kitchens equipped with an oven, stove, and refrigerator. WOW! The nerve of these people.

In 2005, more than half of poor households had at least five of the following 10 conveniences: a computer, cable or satellite TV, air conditioning, Internet service, a large-screen TV, non-portable stereo, computer printer, separate freezer or second refrigerator, microwave, and at least one color TV. One-fourth of the poor had seven or more of these 10 items in their homes.” I wonder if when gathering all this skewed and suspect data these geniuses take in to account the reality that most poor households didn’t just manifest themselves into existence fully actualized as poverty stricken. Contrary to popular belief the poor are made not born. Many poor people were not always “useless eaters”. They actually had jobs back in the day when there were jobs to be had. Maybe they bought some of that stuff then? Back in 2005 (since this is when this data was compiled) before Wall St. destroyed the economy and then got the government to bail them out by taking the food out of mouths of the working class. Maybe even back before the government gave corporations humongous tax cuts for taking jobs and businesses out of the US and bringing them to other countries. Probably the very countries where the brains at the Heritage Foundation explain the “real poor people live” countries where the government doesn’t even have to pretend to give a shit about its people, where corporations can pollute, pillage and use up people to their hearts content. But we can all cheer up because if conservatives like those highly intelligent individuals at the Heritage Foundation think tank have anything to say about it soon enough the real poor people will live here as well. More austerity measures coming soon to a town near you.

Crossing children off their laundry list for now, elderly people get ready, they're coming for you next. And our beloved veterans as well. You know all that supposed support we have for you? Well they forgot to mention that's just while you are actually troops, once you are no longer active then you are subject to being screwed like the rest of the 99%.

I'm adding this link to show where I got some of my information. It is by no means an endorsement of or encouragement to read this shit.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor

[DapperButch]

Hey, Miss Tick. I saw that the article was written two years ago (9/2011), which they based off of 2010 census data (which no doubt that twisted into a pretty bow).

I am wondering why you are posting this now?

[Cin]

Hey, Miss Tick. I saw that the article was written two years ago (9/2011), which they based off of 2010 census data (which no doubt that twisted into a pretty bow).

I am wondering why you are posting this now?

It's an old article because I want to show how it has been a long held belief, an old meme of conservatives that the poor in the US do not exist. This belief justifies their actions against social programs at a time when only a small elite percentage of Americans are recovering and these same elite continue to get social welfare. It's not about the article it's about the mindset.

I posted the first article about the food stamp cut and thought it would be useful to examine and understand the process that goes into twisting yourself into believing its a good, adult, grown up decision (phraseology the GOP is using now in 2013)to cut food stamps at a time when more people than ever are using them to make ends meet. What I did was look at the ideas the GOP has long held to justify their belief in the non existence of poor in the US and the brilliant conservative minds who mold data and twist facts to support their beliefs. This is how they cut social programs, this is how they will cut social security and make our golden years financially insecure. It's the mind set i was trying to show. The article was just an afterthought to prove I don't pull this shit out of my ass.

I hope this makes sense. It's not like anything has changed. This is what they believe whether it's 1972 or 2013. And it's only news in that it helps justify current cuts in social programs.

I just want to add if you try to find data to prove there are no poor in the US in 2013 all that comes up are articles exploding with indignation at the cutting of social programs. Articles talking about how terrible it is and Republicans talking about how necessary it is and how grown up and adult it is. It's easy to talk about how insensitive the GOP is and how cruel etc. but it doesn't show how they think and why they believe what they are doing is perfectly fine and logical. I want to understand my enemy. I want to know what makes them tic.

[Cin]

America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom
Why do we put up with such injustices?


There are 16.4 million American children living in poverty. That's nearly one quarter (22.6%) of all of our children. More alarming is that the percentage of poor children has climbed by 4.5 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. And poor means poor. For a family of three with one child under 18, the poverty line is $18,400.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming. Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms are making tens of billions of dollars again, while the luxury housing and goods markets are skyrocketing.

Most amazing of all is the fact that 95 percent of the so-called "recovery" has gone to the top 1 percent who have seen their incomes rise by 34%. For the 99 percent there's been an undeclared wage freeze: the average wage has climbed by only 0.4 percent.

To add to the misery, Washington has decided that the best way to tackle childhood poverty is to have poor kids eat less. Both parties already have agreed to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). Starting this November 1, payments are scheduled to drop from $668 a month to $632 for more than 47 million lower-income people -- 1 in 7 Americans, most of them children. (Three incredible graphs that visualize the issues in this story are at the bottom of this article.)

And more cuts are coming. The Tea Party House passed a bill to cut food stamps by $4 billion a year, while the Senate calls for $400 million in cuts. How humane! And since it will be part of the omnibus Farm Bill, President Obama will sign it. (I wonder how our former community organizer will explain this to the poor children he once tried to help in Chicago.)

But that's just the start. More austerity is coming in the form of cuts to Social Security as well as a host of other social programs. When times get tough, you've got to suck it up and take more from the poor.

Rewarding Billionaires Who Increase Poverty?

It gets even more revolting when we realize that the financial billionaires who are profiting so handsomely from the recovery are the very same who took down the economy in the first place. They were the ones who created and pedaled the toxic securities that puffed up and then burst the housing bubble. Those financial plutocrats caused 8 million workers to lose their jobs in a matter of months. Those bankers, hedge fund honchos and fund managers are directly responsible for the rise in child poverty rates. Washington bailed out those billionaires and is now asking the poor and the middle class to pay for the ensuing deficits with further cuts in social programs at every level of government.

Why do we put up with such injustices?

Washington Is in Wall Street's Pocket

Before we entirely succumb to financial amnesia, let's recall how we got here. Since the late 1970s, the financial sector has been on a crusade to remove any and all financial regulations. The goal was to undo all the controls put in place during the Great Depression that so effectively curtailed financial speculation and outright gambling. Once deregulated Wall Street engineered a Ponzi-like housing bubble that netted it astronomical sums. By the time it burst in 2007, 40% of all corporate profits flowed into the financial sector. Wall Street wages grew by leaps and bounds.

As the crash hit, all the largest Wall Street firms, not just Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were in serious trouble. Had AIG gone under, so would nearly every major bank and investment house, along with thousands of hedge funds that depended on AIG to ensure its toxic bets. So Wall Street's Washington cadre engineered a $13 trillion bailout consisting of cash, no interest loans and a program by which the Federal Reserve would buy up Wall Street's toxic waste at par value. To produce a financial recovery, the Fed also drove down bond interest rates which in turn drove money into the stock market, sending it to new heights.

Here's the best of all. After getting $480 billion in bailout cash, the top financiers in the country paid themselves more than $150 billion in bonus money for a job well done. Is this a great country or what?

What didn't happen is this: Mortgages were not written down in mass to assist underwater home owners and those who suffered from predatory loans. No lasting jobs programs were created to put the unemployed back to work. No lasting penalties were paid by the individuals who took down the economy. And there was no serious effort at all to cap financial wages and bonuses in the name of justice.

All in all, you could not have designed a more perfect program to enrich the rich and do absolutely nothing for the 99 percent -- and as a result, sink ever more children into poverty.

Waiting for the Recovery That Will Never Come

We are constantly told that the recovery is just around the corner. Liberals say we need more stimulus. Conservatives call for more austerity and cuts in regulations. But all agree that sooner or later more growth will benefit the 99 percent. Unfortunately, it's not happening and it won't happen. Here's why.

First of all, they assume that trickledown actually works, that there is something mechanical within our heavily financialized economy that will bring renewed prosperity to the 99 percent. They look back at previous recessions and recoveries and continue to believe that slumps are followed by renewed growth and income gains for all.

But as financialization has spread throughout the economy, new mechanisms are in place that siphon off wealth into financial gains for the very few. Productive enterprises are turned into financial enterprises that are loaded up with debt and then carved and slaughtered so that wealth can be extracted for hedge funds and private equity firms. In our brave new financialized economy renewed growth turns into renewed incomes primarily for the investment class. The stock market will rise but jobs and incomes won't. The traditional capitalist slump-recovery process died more than a decade ago. Adam Smith's invisible hand no longer produces shared prosperity -- instead it picks our pockets.

Waiting for the Political Pendulum to Swing

Second, we are told how America is essentially a moderate country -- how there's a kind of invisible political pendulum that swings from the extremes back to the sensible center. When the left or the Tea Party gets too wild, the center supposedly pulls them back and common sense economics prevails. But this consoling media meme obscures the fact that our politics are moving ever more rightward. Moderate Democrats and Republicans today are to the right of Eisenhower, Nixon and even Herbert Hoover. They have already agreed to cut the very entitlements that are needed to help alleviate poverty. In fact, they have agreed it's quite OK for America to have 442 billionaires and also have 22.6% of its children living in poverty. The sensible center now sees its role as forging a "compromise" on how much to cut food stamps and other supports for the poor.

Obviously, both political parties lose little sleep worrying about economic injustices. Even most Democrats no longer have a serious game plan to eradicate poverty. That's considered to be 1960s stuff that doesn't make sense in a world where politicians have to make peace with at least some players in the billionaire class in order to survive. As for the poor, alas, they will always be with us.

America Leads the World

Not a day goes by without hearing about "American exceptionalism." We are told by our leaders and pundits that we are the best, the greatest, the mightiest and the most democratic of all nations. It is our mission in life to uphold justice and freedom around the world. But as this chart shows, when it comes to child poverty, we are just about dead last.

Why is that? Because in wealthy nations, children live in poverty if and only if that nation allows it. Our nation, the richest in history, has more than enough wealth to go from the bottom of this list to the top, right next to Finland, if only we decided to act justly.

A Simple Proposal to end Child Poverty

America has 442 billionaires with an average net worth of $4.2 billion each according to Forbes. That means collectively these 442 Americans have nearly $1.9 trillion in wealth.

During the current "recovery," these 442 billions saw their wealth rise on average by over 12 percent per year. What would happened if those billionaires received only 6 percent a year and the other 6 percent were taxed away in order to pull all of our children out of poverty?

That would provide sufficient revenue so that each child now living in poverty would receive an extra $7,000 per year which would pull nearly all of their families above the poverty line. The 442 billionaires would not suffer. No one in their families would go hungry. No luxury goods or services would be out of reach. No cooks, maids, chauffeurs or pilots would have to be let go. The 442 billionaires would feel no pain at all -- not even an itch. As a result of this painless tax, America would eradicate childhood poverty overnight.

Dream on?

Of course, our simple proposal sounds insane in a world where austerity reigns supreme and where billionaires are immune from such redistributive proposals. But I wonder who is sane and who isn't. It seems utterly psychotic to live in a society that chooses to spread poverty to its young. It also seems psychotic to claim that cuts in food stamps are good for the poor while at the same time saying that it's quite OK for billionaires to pile up unearned, tax-sheltered income. The fact that we're putting up with all this should be driving us all insane.

Sooner or later, the millions of Americans who still have souls that ache for justice will take democracy into their own hands. I don't know how it will happen or when, but one day we will eradicate needless poverty and reclaim our nation from those who are robbing it blind.

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-usa/americas-greatest-shame-child-poverty-rises-and-food-stamps-cut-while-billionaires?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

This is actually the "In The News" article that is important as a current immediate issue that is happening as we speak. The other post is about why the conservatives believe cutting social programs is warranted. It a look at the mindset that allows them to take the food out of the mouths of babies and still sleep at night and pray to their god on Sunday.

[Cin]

GOP rep.: Slashing food stamps by $40 billion means ‘more money’ for the hungry

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MA) in September asserted that cutting $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years would actually provide “more money” to hungry Americans.

A bill introduced by House Republicans this month almost doubled the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed earlier this year after that plan was rejected by conservative lawmakers. GOP leaders were expected to bring the bill up for a vote on Thursday.

CNN’s Carol Costello pointed out to Harris in a Thursday interview that critics had said that a $40 billion cut was “way too much” because the poverty rate in the United States has risen to more than 13 percent.

“It’s a 5 percent decrease, when we know that there is 10.5 percent of the stores that take food stamps are engaged in trafficking,” Harris replied. “So we know the fraud stands at 10 percent of the stores. We only want to cut 5 percent.”

“That ought to leave more money getting to the hands of the people who do need it,” he added. “And there are millions of Americans who need that benefit.”

“But if you change the requirement, some people will be eliminated from qualifying for food stamps,” Costello noted. “There are critics who say that those people need them too. And how do you decide who needs food stamps and who doesn’t?”

“Well, again, there’s the one study that showed — by the Dept. of Agriculture — 10.5 percent of stores are committing fraud,” Harris insisted. “And, you know what we’re doing, is we’re just saying, ‘Look, if we’re going to help you with food stamps — and we are — then we need you to either work, look for employment — if you’re able bodied, not disabled and able to work — either look for work or engage in job training.’ We think that’s a common-sense trade-off for getting help from the American taxpayer that needy people need.”

“Well, some might say it’s easy to say, ‘Get some job training, get a new job, get a better paying job,’” Costello observed. “But there aren’t that many jobs available at this particular time in our economy to accomplish that.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that 14 million less people would be participating in the SNAP program by 2023 if the Republican House bill was enacted.

“Critics’ attempts to justify big cuts by claiming that SNAP participants are eschewing work are unfounded,” according to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. “The fact that the majority of SNAP households with an adult who is not elderly or disabled work while they receive SNAP assistance, and that more than 80 percent of such households work in the year before or after SNAP receipt, makes clear the program is an important support for working families that fall on hard times.”

“As the nation slowly climbs out of the deepest recession in decades, many families continue to face a shortage of jobs or to be paid wages too low to enable them to provide adequate food, and struggle to meet basic nutritional needs. The House SNAP proposal pays little heed to these economic conditions. Instead, it would deny food assistance to millions of low-income Americans and cause substantial increases in hardship.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/19/gop-rep-slashing-food-stamps-by-40-billion-means-more-money-for-the-hungry/


How Republicans Who Took Millions In Farm Subsidies Justify Cutting Food Stamps

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/06/18/2177171/how-republicans-who-took-millions-in-farm-subsidies-justify-cutting-food-stamps/

There are a lot of justifications used to explain why it is okay to cut food stamps and social programs from invoking the soviet constitution and Lenin to misquoting the bible but the truth is that when conservatives bother to think of the poor they don't believe in them. This is why it is so easy to do what they do. They don't believe there are really poor people or rather I should say they don't believe there are any deserving poor. And to examine that we could actually go back to the early 1800s and see how decisions were made surrounding who is deserving and who is not.

[DapperButch]

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

[Cin]

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

I didn't think you did. I just get so excited when someone asks me something about a news article I tend to overkill I guess. I either disturb them with my over zealousness or I overwhelm them with way too much information that it seems like an attack of some sort. Please don't take it that way. I just thought if you were interested enough to ask a question you might enjoy a lot of answer.

Sorry I didn't make a note of the fact that it was an older article. In retrospect I probably should have. I was side tracked for the reasons I explained. It wasn't about the time frame of the article it was the thinking behind the think tank. And in my defense i did say when introducing the information that "the Washington DC based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has been telling us for years that there are no poor people in the US." I also mentioned the dates of the data a few times: "In 2005, more than half of poor households had at least five of the following 10 conveniences" and "Back in 2005 (since this is when this data was compiled)"

Anyway sorry if I gave too much information but I hope it at least makes sense why i would post the information. The article was not the post really, a lot of the words contained in the post were my words and not the words of an article, I Just posted the article for back up as reference for where i pulled some of the stuff i was responding too from.

My wife often tells me that for such a clarity freak I am sometimes not very clear.

Oh dear I hope I didn't do it again and say too much that it feels like well, like too much. Besides trying to explain my thought process for referencing the article my only other concern is trying to ascertain if my response makes sense to you?

And honestly I didn't take it any way at all except as a question. I wouldn't take it as anything but a question from anyone, but from you I certainly wouldn't give it a second thought except to try extra hard to explain to you my thought process.

[Cin]

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

I just want to add that when I originally posted the article "America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom" I considered adding my second post to that instead of making a whole new one.

It was early and I had just woke up and was still sleepy and decided it might be too long and too confusing so I added the second post which was really an extension of the first and it ended up that the first post ended a page and the second post was the first post on a new page. So that really separated the first article from my post and the reference article. Maybe it would have made more sense if they had been together. Or maybe not. I'm just going to stop explaining now. LOL. I even tire myself out:|

[DapperButch]

Wow. You are way worse than me. I love it. ha! :seeingstars:

[Cin]

Be Very Afraid: The American Economy Is Cannibalizing Itself, and We the People Are Going to Pay a Huge Price
The bottom 90 percent of Americans have disappeared from official Washington.
November 3, 2013

So how to explain this paradox?

As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.

We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers – including the nation’s largest, Walmart – now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.

The larger reality is that most Americans are still living in the Great Recession. Median household income continues to drop. In last week’s Washington Post-ABC poll, 75 percent rated the state of the economy as “negative” or “poor.”

So why is Washington whacking safety nets and services that a large portion of Americans need, when we still very much need them?

It’s easy to blame Republicans and the rightwing billionaires that bankroll them, and their unceasing demonization of “big government” as well as deficits. But Democrats in Washington bear some of the responsibility. In last year’s fiscal cliff debate neither party pushed to extend the payroll tax holiday or find other ways to help the working middle class and poor.

Here’s a clue: A new survey of families in the top 10 percent of net worth (done by the American Affluence Research Center) shows they’re feeling better than they’ve felt since 2007, before the Great Recession.

It’s not just that the top 10 percent have jobs and their wages are rising. The top 10 percent also owns 80 percent of the stock market. And the stock market is up a whopping 24 percent this year.

The stock market is up even though most Americans are down for two big reasons.

First, businesses are busily handing their cash back to their shareholders – buying back their stock and thereby boosting share prices – rather than using the cash to expand and hire. It makes no sense to expand and hire when most Americans don’t have the money to buy.

The S&P 500 “Buyback Index,” which measures the 100 stocks with the highest buyback ratios, has surged 40 percent this year, compared with a 24% rally for the S&P 500.

IBM has just approved another $15 billion for share buybacks on top of about $5.6 billion it set aside previously, thereby boosting its share prices even though business is sluggish. In April, Apple announced a $50 billion increase in buybacks plus a 15% rise in dividends, but even this wasn’t enough for multi-billionaire Carl Icahn, who’s now demanding that Apple use more of its $170 billion cash stash to buy back its stock and make Ichan even richer.

Big corporations can also borrow at rock-bottom rates these days in order to buy back even more of their stock — courtesy of the Fed’s $85 billion a month bond-buying program. (Ichan also wants Apple to borrow $150 billion at 3 percent interest, in order to buy back more stock and further enrich himself.)

The second big reason why shares are up while most Americans are down is corporations continue to find new ways to boost profits and share prices by cutting their labor costs – substituting software for people, cutting wages and benefits, and piling more responsibilities on each of the employees that remain.

Neither of these two strategies – buying back stock and paring payrolls – can be sustained over the long run (so you have every right to worry about another Wall Street bubble). They don’t improve a company’s products or customer service.

But in an era of sluggish sales – when the vast American middle class lacks the purchasing power to keep the economy going – these two strategies at least keep shareholders happy. And that means they keep the top 10 percent happy.

Congress, meanwhile, doesn’t know much about the bottom 90 percent. The top 10 percent provide almost all campaign contributions and funding of “independent” ads.

Moreover, just about all members of Congress are drawn from the same top 10 percent – as are almost all their friends and associates, and even the media who report on them.

Get it? The bottom 90 percent of Americans — most of whom are still suffering from the Great Recession, most of whom have been on a downward escalator for decades — have disappeared from official Washington.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/be-very-afraid-american-economy-cannibalizing-itself-and-we-people-are-going-pay-huge-price?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[*Anya*]

Senate passes ENDA

With 61 votes, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of cloture on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, clearing the way for a final up-or-down vote later this week.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM NOVEMBER 04 2013 6:18 PM ET UPDATED: NOVEMBER 04 2013 9:16 PM ET

For the first time since it was originally introduced in 1996, the U.S. Senate took an important step toward passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, voting in favor of cloture — a procedural move intended to overcome any attempted filibuster — in a bipartisan vote of 61-30.

Several senators from both sides of the aisle rose to speak in support of the legislation, which would make it a federal offense for employers to fire, refuse to hire, or decline to promote employees on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

Following Monday's vote for cloture, the Senate is expected to take a final vote on ENDA after additional testimony is filed, likely on Wednesday.

The bipartisan vote included 54 Senate Democrats (Missouri Democratic senator Claire McCaskill was absent), and seven Republicans, including some surprising "aye" votes from New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, and Ohio's Rob Portman, who came out for marriage equality earlier this year. Among Republicans who had previously expressed support for the legislation were Utah's Orrin Hatch, Illinois's Mark Kirk, Nevada's Dean Heller, and Maine's Susan Collins. Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted for the bill in committee, was absent from the chamber when roll call was taken.

The nation's first openly gay senator elected took the Senate floor first, asking her colleagues to vote in favor of ENDA and stand on the right side of history.

"I realize that for some, this is not an easy vote," said Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin on the Senate floor. "I understand that for some, they may believe that it’s not good politics. But I want to say that I have a deep respect for those who choose to stand on the side of progress for our country this week. So for those that stand up this week and answer the call for courage, I can say with confidence your courage will be respected and remembered when the history of this struggle is written."

Both senators from Illinois also rose in support of the bill, including Republican Mark Kirk, who has been largely silent and absent from congressional debate on the legislation through the past two years due to a stroke.

"This is not a major change to law," said Kirk. "It's already the law in 21 states, and I think it's particularly appropriate for an Illinois Republican to speak on behalf of this measure, in the true spirit of Everett McKinley Dirksen and Abraham Lincoln, who gave us the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution."

Kirk wasn't the only Republican to rise in support of the bill — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine also testified in support, saying ENDA provides all Americans a fair opportunity to pursue the American dream. "I'm dismayed that so many years have gone by — more than a decade — and this bill still has not become law," said Collins. "It is time for us to enact this important legislation.

Notably, no senators rose to speak in opposition to the bill, though that's unlikely to be the case in the Republican-controlled House, where the bill faces a much tougher journey to becoming law.

Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy closed his remarks with a none-too-subtle message for those lawmakers opposed to outlawing discrimination in the lower chamber of Congress.

"So I hope my fellow senators will come together and support this important bipartisan bill without delay," said Leahy in his closing remarks. "And If the other body has the courage of standing up for America, to stand up for all Americans — every single american there is — and vote for the same legislation."

Late Sunday night, President Obama published an op-ed in The Huffington Post urging the Senate to pass the legislation, and Monday morning, Nevada Republican Dean Heller announced his support for ENDA, breaching the 60-vote threshold needed for a successful cloture vote to move debate on the bill forward.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/2013/11/04/breaking-senate-passes-enda-procedural-vote

Fired For Being LGBT: ENDA gets another vote

BY NEAL BROVERMAN AND MICHELLE GARCIA MAY 08 2013 2:00 AM ET UPDATED: NOVEMBER 01 2013 7:33 PM ET
151

Sixty years ago, the federal government spearheaded a massive purge of gay employees, no matter how qualified or essential they were to their department's operations. The firings were the result of an executive order by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 27, 1953. As told in the documentary Lavender Scare, even LGBT private sector workers who were under contract with the federal government were also fired or forced to resign.

Why? Because gay people were viewed as a godless, immoral group likely to work with communists to spill government secrets.

After decades of activism, policy changes at federal agencies, and state laws protecting LGBT citizens, 94 percent of the top 100 companies in the U.S. — the top 50 federal contractors and the top 50 Fortune 500 companies — have policies prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 78 percent of the companies have policies prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.

Nine in every 10 American voters believe that there are already laws to protect employees in the workplace, just like policies for women, people with disabilities, racial minorities, or people with particular religious affiliations. But that's not the case. An employee could still be fired in 29 states for being gay, and in 34 states for being transgender or gender non-conforming.

So as we mark 60 years since the federal government's mass firings, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is finally set for a vote in the Senate on Monday (the 19th time Congress has considered it). With a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, ENDA might be tough to gain momentum even though, according to the Center for American Progress, 73 percent of voters support protections for LGBT workers (even 66 percent among Republicans voters).


http://www.advocate.com/politics/2013/05/08/fired-being-lgbt?page=full


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/pressure-rises-senate-readies-enda-vote

[Cin]

I guess Rand Paul wants to challenge Rachel Maddow to a duel. He laments the fact that it would be illegal to shoot her in the face. I suppose it would definitely cut down on the amount of 'truth out' we would see from journalists if you could just challenge them to a duel and kill them if they caught you doing something wrong. Sheesh, wouldn't it be easier to just own it, apologize for the mistake and make sure it doesn't happen again? Politicians seeking public office need to be more careful that's all. And when caught screwing up they need to act like adults. I mean aren't the Republicans big on acting like adults or is that just when they are talking about having to starve children and steal money from old people.


Rand Paul’s Wacko Public Meltdown
The proven plagiarist trashes his “haters” and wishes he could challenge them to a duel.

Just when Sen. Ted Cruz’s self-promoting extremism seemed to create room for a far-right 2016 rival who wouldn’t scare children (and the donor class), Sen. Rand Paul is blowing his big chance.

Last week the New York Times reported that in the wake of Cruz’s implosion, Paul’s aides had taken to calling Cruz “the chief of the wacko birds,” using John McCain’s memorable epithet for the junior Texas senator. Paul himself, Jonathan Martin reported, “has quietly been reaching out to more establishment forces within the Republican Party, trying to prove to big donors and mainline Republican organizations that he is more than a Tea Party figure or a rerun of his father’s failed candidacies.” And establishment Republicans were beginning to use the word “grown” and “matured” to describe Paul.

That’s not the word they’re using today, on the heels of a crazy appearance on ABC’s “This Week” where he wished he could challenge the journalists who’ve accused him of plagiarism to a duel.

On the one hand, the revelation that he lifted material from several speeches as well as whole pages of his book from other sources, without attribution, isn’t necessarily a 2016 candidacy-ender. What’s most politically self-destructive is Paul’s bizarre reaction to the charges – which really aren’t “charges,” they’re fact. Instead of admitting he or someone on his staff made an error and promising to toughen his standards, he’s attacked Rachel Maddow, who found the first instance of plagiarism, repeatedly and personally.

“This is really about information and attacks coming from haters,” he told ABC’s Latino-focused network Fusion. “The person who’s leading this attack — she’s been spreading hate on me for about three years now.” Ew, “spreading hate on me,” that sounds kind of disgusting, Rachel – really?

And then, in a bizarre, likely candidacy-ending interview with ABC’s “This Week,” he began talking about a duel.

“Yes, there are times when [speeches] have been sloppy or not correct or we’ve made an error,” Paul said. “But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so.”

He went on: “And like I say, if, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”

“I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters.”

Paul’s assumption that normal people will hear his reference to fighting a duel and say, “Hell yeah!” betrays his permanent residency on the American fringe. He lives in a world where it’s always the 19th century south, and troubles are best handled with guns and guts, not government. Paul acts like nobody’s ever been either smart enough, or brave enough, to tell the plain truth – and once he does, common sense voters will recognize it and reward him. Instead, they recoil and go, “Huh?”

It reminds me of his first run-in with Rachel Maddow, in May 2010, when he told her he didn’t think the Civil Rights Act should apply to private businesses. He bobbed and he weaved but when Maddow asked point blank, “Do you think that a private business has the right to say ‘we don’t serve black people?’” He answered, “Yes,” and defended their “right” to discriminate as “freedom of speech.” (He also said he thought if he’d been alive back then, he’d have marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) That’s the interview that made Maddow a “hater,” in Paul’s view.

I saw the same thing in his under-covered response to the revelation that his aide Jack Hunter was a neo-confederate racist who’d written a column headlined “John Wilkes Booth was right,” defending the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Paul, of course, came out against assassination – but then he went on to describe Lincoln the way neo-confederates do, as a tyrannical racist hypocrite who fought the Civil War not to end slavery but to consolidate Northern power. He thought he could get away with repudiating the most extreme expression of neo-confederate beliefs while validating their core. And that time, at least, he did.

There’s another problem with Paul’s over the top response to the plagiarism controversy: It suggests that he doesn’t understand the meaning of the term “plagiarism.” He has repeatedly insisted that he credited the original source of his speech material – the movie “Gattaca,” in one instance, and “Stand and Deliver” in another. But he does not seem to get that you can’t lift words directly from Wikipedia and claim them as your own – even though that’s something every sixth-grader knows.

Only a few days after Tailgunner Ted Cruz seemed to be facing a credible Tea Party rival, that rival is melting down. For his part, in the Times piece Cruz was said to be telling GOP donors that Paul can never be elected president “because he can never fully detach himself from the strident libertarianism of his father.” An even bigger problem: Rand Paul can never fully detach himself from himself.

[Cin]

'12 Years a Slave' Highlights America’s Shocking Record of Female Subjugation
The U.S. has not yet reckoned with the trauma of enslaved and oppressed women.


Excerpt:
Did Patsey survive to have children? We’ll never know. Enslaved women sometimes used abortion and infanticide to undermine their oppressions. If she did have children who survived, it’s sobering to imagine where their descendants might be today if chance had kept them on Louisiana’s bayous.

For African Americans living in Louisiana, hunger rates are twice the national average, and the poverty rate is 45 percent. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, Louisiana is the worst place to be a woman in the nation. Women get paid 67 cents on the dollar compared to men, their jobs are more insecure, they hold fewer public offices, and they fare worse in health outcomes. Louisiana ranks ninth in the rate of women murdered by men.

Louisiana is one of the only states in the country that does not have its own minimum wage law. It is a state that relies on the service industry, and we can imagine a descendant of Patsey finding herself in a job—if she could even find a job at all— without health benefits or basic protections, like paid sick leave. Maybe she’s a domestic worker. Or perhaps she packs boxes at a Walmart factory. She would have to stay at work regardless of whether there were sick children at home. With high job insecurity, saying no to whatever her employer’s demands might be could easily lead to firing, so she works extra hours without overtime and tries to ignore it when her manager eyes her lustfully.

Patsey’s descendant would face the fact that in Louisiana, her right to control her own body is constantly under assault. She would be forced to undergo an invasive and unnecessary ultrasound procedure before a doctor could perform an abortion—if she could even find a clinic.

In the very state where her foremother was tortured, deprived and violated, Patsey’s descendant would stand a good chance of getting trapped in unrelenting poverty, health crises and humiliation. During slavery, many Americans justified oppression by claiming that black people were naturally inferior and thus deserved their condition. Today, conservative Republicans suggest that the poor are poor because of their own inferiority, and do not deserve any better than what they have. The ideology of slavery posited a false God who instated a natural order in which some human beings were made to suffer at the hands of others. The ideology of capitalism proposes the supernatural force of the "market," which can never be wrong. Those whom the invisible hand crushes deserve their fate.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/12-years-slave-highlights-americas-shocking-record-female-subjugation?page=0%2C2&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

It's easy to watch a movie about particular times in history and believe the past is the past and these injustices no longer exist. The truth is the same ideology that allows one human being to erase the humanity of another is alive and well in our society. Many still believe there are deserving and undeserving people and we are taught to care little for the undeserving among us. Their fates are of their own doing. Soon many more people will learn first hand how unfair and unjust that belief is.

[Allison W]

Isn't Ted Cruz ineligible to be president? That alone makes the prospect of him ending up the GOP frontrunner extremely amusing, and would make me feel much more confident in a Democratic win in 2016. More confident than I already am, I mean.

[Corkey]

Cruz would be eligible the same as Obama was eligible. The only thing keeping Cruz from running right now is his dual citizenship. If he doesn't get that cleared up in time then he will be ineligible.

[Cin]

Ya, his mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth. A natural born citizen includes those who are entitled to US citizenship at birth. And I'm sure Canada will be more than happy to cut him lose.

[Allison W]

Thanks for clearing that up. I'd heard he's Canadian. Apparently that's true, but not in the way that I had thought. I don't doubt he'd give up his dual citizenship for the presidency, so the prospect of him being the Republican frontrunner is now considerably less amusing. The man is batshit--Paul is at least right about that, in the same way that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[CherylNYC]

Cruz would be eligible the same as Obama was eligible.


Well, not exactly the same way. President Obama was born in the U.S., (Hawaii to be exact), to an American mother and a Kenyan father. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Canadian father. If Cruz does run it will be interesting to see the Tea Baggers and crazed Birthers tie themselves in knots about why that's OK when they never stopped nattering about Obama's supposed Kenyan birthplace.

[Corkey]

Well, not exactly the same way. President Obama was born in the U.S., (Hawaii to be exact), to an American mother and a Kenyan father. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Canadian father. If Cruz does run it will be interesting to see the Tea Baggers and crazed Birthers tie themselves in knots about why that's OK when they never stopped nattering about Obama's supposed Kenyan birthplace.

Yep not exactly, but we shouldn't be reverse birthers either lol

[Cin]

Actually I think Cruz's father was born in Cuba. Doesn't change anything but it is interesting I think.

[CherylNYC]

Actually I think Cruz's father was born in Cuba. Doesn't change anything but it is interesting I think.

And John McCain was born in Panama. Well, if I were to recognise as legitimate the past colonization of the area by the U.S. I would say he was born in the americanized Panama Canal Zone, which was under U.S. control at the time.

[Cin]

And John McCain was born in Panama. Well, if I were to recognise as legitimate the past colonization of the area by the U.S. I would say he was born in the americanized Panama Canal Zone, which was under U.S. control at the time.

LOL. I don't suppose it matters since I assume he was born to US citizens which makes him a naturalized citizen. At least I think that is what they have decided to go with for the definition of naturalized citizen. But I bet that won't be the last we hear of it come 2016.

But by that definition all people born at that time in Panama are also US citizens.

It seems to me the whole South and Central America went through some Americanized rough patches (although not exactly recognized). I mean the US has long looked at all of it as our backyard to do what as we wish. They should all be considered citizens. Especially Mexico since half their country somehow ended up in the US. Well maybe not half, but a sizable chunk

[Cin]

MI Police 'Pursue Charges' Against Homeowner Who Shot 19-Year-Old Black Woman Dead After She Knocked on His Door

But in a 'stand-your-ground' state, will they stick?

Police say they are seeking charges against the Dearborn Heights, Michigan resident who shot a young African-American woman dead after she knocked on his door for help after a car accident. But since Michigan has a "Stand-your-ground" law, many wonder if charges, even if filed, will stick, since the law gives wide latitude to homeowners who claim they felt threatened.

The facts, as have been reported by several news outlets, are as startling as they are outrageous, and have the family of the victim, Renisha McBride, both asking why and demanding action.

McBride, all of 19 years old, had a car accident at roughly 2:30 am on Saturday in Dearborn Heights, a predominantly white neighborhood of Detroit. Her cellphone battery dead, she knocked on the door of a home in the 16000 block of Outer Drive. As she turned to leave the porch, she was shot in the head with a shotgun. The homeowner, whom police have refused to name, was initially arrested and released, having apparently convnced police that he thought she was an intruder trying to break in.

“He shot her in the head, [and] for what? For knocking on his door,” McBride’s aunt, Bernita Spinks said to the Detroit Free Press. “If he felt scared or threatened, he should have called 911.”

Police also reportedly mislead the family about where McBride's body was found. According to Raw Story, they were first told that her body had been dumped near Warren Avenue, some blocks away, where it was later found by authorities. Police soon, however, recanted their prior statement, saying instead that the woman died on the home’s front porch.

Race is an inescapable part of the story, McBride's family and other observers have pointed out, as is often the case when "Stand your ground" laws are applied to incidents where African Americans end up on the wrong end of the gun. McBride's murder follows the September 14 shooting of 24-year-old Jonathan Ferrell, a Black former college football player, who was shot and killed by police in North Carolina while seeking asistance after a car crash late at night from a nearby home. In that case, an officer who responded to the homeowner’s 911 call fired 12 shots at the already injured Ferrell, hitting him 10 times, and is now charged with voluntary manslaughter.

Few details have been released about the details of McBride’s death, but police on Wednesday reportedly asked the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office to issue a warrant for the resident charged with the fatal shooting. However the office sent the request back late Wednesday, asking for “further investigation by the police that must be submitted before a decision will be made.” T The halting of a potential arrest is devastating sign, perhaps, that Michigan’s upholding of the Stand-Your-Ground-Law may derail any charges.

“She didn’t break in his house; she didn’t break a window,”Spinks has said. “What, you see somebody on your porch and you just start shooting? And then you say it was accidental? That wasn’t accidental; that wasn’t accidental, no.”

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/mi-police-pursue-charges-against-homeowner-who-shot-19-year-old-black-woman-dead

[Cin]

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/comic_sorensen.png

[Cin]

How the Unholy Alliance Between the Christian Right and Wall Street Is 'Crucifying America'

A new book argues that the Atheist's battles are misplaced… Polls show a majority of Americans favor liberal policies, but our courts and legislatures are increasingly controlled and driven by the Christian Right.
November 8, 2013 |

The following is an excerpt from Crucifying America: the unholy alliance between the Christian Right and Wall Street by CJ Werleman (Dangerous Little Books, 2013).

Atheist groups, associations, and networks have literally sprung up in every town and city in America. Million dollar social awareness campaigns have rolled across small towns and big cities throughout America. In major cities, you see billboards with messages like, “Are you Good Without God? Millions Are!” “Don’t Believe in God? You Are Not Alone.” Others say, “In the Beginning, Man Created God.” These campaigns have helped coerce millions of Americans out of the theological closet. They have helped many in-private atheists step out of the shadows. The trend is very much that Americans raised in Christian households are shunning the religion of their parents for any number of reasons: the advancement of human understanding; greater access to information; the scandals of the Catholic Church; and the over zealousness of the Christian Right.

Political scientists Robert Putman and David Campbell, and authors of American Grace, argue that the Christian Right’s politicization of faith in the 1990s turned younger, socially liberal Christians away from churches, even as conservatives became more zealous. “While the Republican base has become ever more committed to mixing religion and politics, the rest of the country has been moving in the opposite direction.”

When you add all these things together, it leads you to a dramatic yet never mentioned dynamic: atheists are the fastest growing minority in the U.S. today. More significantly, we make for being one of the most powerful voting blocs in the country, at least potentially. We now have the required critical mass to shape elections, laws, and leaders. Safety in numbers is growing into power in numbers. In 10, 20, 50 years, the Christian Right will hold little to no sway over the nation’s identity. From these facts, among others, we can boast that ideological victory is within sight.

Now for the bad news:

We are winning the wrong game!

We are losing the right game. We are winning the cultural war, but the Christian Right is winning in the race to control the levers of power. They hold the keys to our democracy, while we have clever bumper stickers, funny t-shirts, and books that deride virgin births and angry sky gods. The soldiers of God are playing a game that can only be described as Jedi Knight-ish. Meanwhile, we are being made to look juvenile, bellicose, and down right moronic. The Christian Right is ripping our arms off at the shoulder and then slapping us in the face with the soggy bits. It’s embarrassing, and if this were a football game the scoreboard would read: Christian right –120 versus free thinkers – 3. Someone invoke the mercy rule! Also, I hate football metaphors.

You see, all around this great country, atheists are meeting in cafes, living rooms and Holiday Inn conference rooms to meet, share donuts and talk about how we can remove “In God We Trust” from the dollar bill; and how best we deal with removing “One nation under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, in an attempt to reverse the sneaky-handed 1954 bill pushed through congress in 1954 by Christian zealot President Eisenhower. We protest home school conventions; any display of the Ten Commandments; and there are even atheist groups who file lawsuits every winter in their respective cities to ensure nothing but the secular “meaning” of Christmas is promoted.

Look, all these actions are fine with me but, let’s be honest, they make us look like assholes. And frankly, if you’re filing legal action to prevent others from declaring, “Merry Christmas”, then you most definitely are an asshole!

What’s worse is that atheists are wasting far too much intellectual and emotional energy on battles that lack real political gain or consequence. In other words, we’re taking pot shots at an ideological enemy that’s out of range and forward marching in another direction, and where they’re dropping their ordinance is hurting us. Greatly!

While we are busy playing the role of the nation’s police force for political correctness, they are gerrymandering voting districts to ensure they regain and maintain control of the levers of congressional and gubernatorial power. While we chant, “Keep the Bible out of the classroom”, they are helping legislate voter ID laws that disenfranchise millions of black, Hispanic, and student voters. While we demand a removal of God from the Pledge of Allegiance, they are stacking the courts with their ideological judicial wingnuts. While we are correcting Christmas carolers with, “Happy Holidays”, they are mobilizing to ensure money buys them judges, congressmen and governors, which not only protects the interests of big corporations at the expense of the little guy, but will also protect the interests of the Christian Right – namely, putting an end to the gay, secular, liberal agenda, and, in turn, setting gender and racial equality back 50 years.

Poll after poll shows that a majority of Americans favor liberal policies, but our courts and legislatures are increasingly becoming controlled and driven by the Christian Right. Their victories are having a far more reaching impact on our lives and our secular democratic values than our small-minded wins to remove the 10 Commandments from some hic town’s courthouse.

The 2012 election was a rejection of the Ayn Rand, “Fuck you, I have mine” thinking that permeates the Republican base. Recall that moment during the 2012 GOP debates when the moderator asked the following hypothetical: “What should happen if a healthy 30-year-old man who can afford insurance chooses not to buy it and then becomes catastrophically ill and needs intensive care for six months?” In unison, the predominantly Tea Party (Christian Right) audience yelled, “Let him die!” Thankfully a majority of the American public spurned that callous thinking, as the national electorate went on to demonstrate that a majority of Americans see this country as a center-left country. Simply, we don’t want to be a country that says there’s legitimate rape and there’s illegitimate rape. There’s just rape! We don’t want to be a country that rejects science and facts. We want our kids to accept what 99.9 percent of the scientific community agrees to when it comes to evolution. We want our kids to accept climate change as fact, then fight to do something about it, so as to preserve their kids’ future. We don’t want our politicians to hold prayer sessions as the main means for fighting poverty. We don’t want our political leaders to believe poverty is caused by the individual’s lack of religious faith. We don’t want a country that demonizes the less fortunate. We want a country that judges a person by the content of their character, and not by the color of their skin. We want our laws to not only favor the interests of business but equally or more so favor our communities, our skies, our water, and our food. We want a representative democracy. We want “One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” – not all of one kind, but all. These are the ideals that a majority of Americans want in this great nation today.

Well, that’s what we wanted, and that’s kind of what we were getting, to some degree, until something really bad happened on January 21, 2010. A date of infamy! For that was the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the billionaire Koch brothers over the Federal Election Commission. In that ruling, the highest court in the land ruled that money equals free speech, and corporations equal people. That was the moment that whatever chance we had of righting the wrongs that have led to growing social inequalities in this country was lost. That was the moment that all but guarantees a continuation of the shrinking of the middle class. That was the moment that presented billionaires and the wealthiest corporations an opportunity to partner with the Christian Right, so that a new era of pro-business and anti-government policies could be enacted in this country.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/atheists-are-winning-wrong-war-against-christian-right?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

I don't know where to put this but I thought it was cool and I guess it's news.

http://www.alternet.org/video/could-invention-spark-global-revolution

?feature=player_detailpage&v=CMAhptqk-4Q

[Cin]

Who Is Chief Right Wing Wacko this Week? It Might Surprise You
The Wacko-in-Chief's ignorant banter — and 9 other wacky statements from right-wing nutjobs.

Rand Paul may have assumed the mantle of Wacko-in-Chief this week, but lots of lesser known right-wing nutjobs had banner weeks as well.

1. Christian historian: Abortions caused Typhoon Haiyan.

This might come as news to the grieving survivors of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines: the cause of the powerful storm was abortion. Not necessarily their abortions, but just the fact that anyone has abortions, especially legally, even though abortion is illegal in the Philippines. God is very, very pissed about that, and that’s why he sent a typhoon that killed all those Filipinos on its way to Vietnam. He’s vindictive like that. That is why he is causing all these very destructive and scary storms.

What is not causing any of this climatological havoc is global warming—not that it even exists. Burning fossil fuels is something God actually wants us to do more of. So goes the theory of Christian denialist, oops, we mean “historian” David Barton. The blanket explanation for all this “climate stuff that we can’t explain,” he said this week in a conversation with televangelist Kenneth Copeland, as well as murder and pedophilia, is legalized abortion. America voted for politicians who support abortion rights, and in doing so “opened the door to the curse.”

Here is the historical background. In the good old days, when America was first starting out, Barton explained that if there was really bad weather, leaders would “call for a national day of repentance, humiliation, fasting and prayer … and today we’re saying, ‘Oh no, it’s global warming.’”

That’s how we lost God’s protection. We chose to lose it. What did we expect?

2. Radio host Damon Bruce: Sports are set to the dial of men.

Sports are for men, and Richie Incognito is a man, acting manly in a man’s world. And if you don’t like it, ladies, you can lump it. That is the short version of a nine-minute tirade against women in sports this week by KNBR sports radio host Damon Bruce.

Bruce is mad at women because women are to blame for the suspension of Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito after his alleged (and apparently legendary) harassment, bullying and threats against teammate Jonathan Martin drove Martin from the team.

Here’s how the tirade starts:

“A lot of sports has lost its way and I’m gonna tell you, part of the reason is because we’ve got women giving us directions. For some of you, this is going to come across as very misogynistic. I don’t care, because I’m very right. I'm willing to share my sandbox, as long as you remember you're in my box. I didn’t slip into your box....”

Allowing women to “slip into the box” of professional sports has pretty much ruined sports, Bruce thinks. It has feminized men and made it hard for men to bond the way they like to bond—by being assholes. That’s what Jonathan Martin didn’t understand. Incognito was trying to bond with him when he called him racial slurs and threatened to rape his sister.

Here’s Bruce’s sage advice to women sports journalists who can’t hack it: “If sports get too gruesome for you, go write a restaurant column. Go write a housekeeping column.”

Sweet of him to be concerned.

3. Rand Paul overtakes Ted Cruz as chief Republican wacko bird.

This is a tightly contested race—neck and neck. Lately, Texas Tea Partier Cruz has been relatively subdued since his widely ridiculed Obamacare filibuster which led to the widely reviled government shutdown.

So, Kentucky libertarian Paul was good enough to step into the breach to fulfill the role of what Senator John McCain coined as “chief of the wacko birds.” Paul has distinguished himself in the last week or so with his passionate defense, or is it ignorance, of plagiarism, challenging Rachel Maddow to a duel for repeatedly pointing out that he lifts passages from Wikipedia wholesale for speeches, articles, books, whatever. She’s impugning his honor by doing so, “spreading hate” on him. Besides libertarians don’t attribute stuff; that’s for big government suckers.

A plagiarism scandal, or multiple plagiarism scandals, need not be devastating. Hey, mistakes happen. Admit them and move on, we say. But no, Paul started talking “duel” during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

“If, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”

Note to Paul: Toto, you’re not in 19th-century Kentucky anymore.

4. Antonin Scalia brings up the devil in case about prayer.

It’s almost as if there’s a little red guy with horns and a tail sitting on the shoulder of the Supreme Court’s most verbose right-winger, making him say really off-the-wall things. Justice Antonin Scalia just keeps seeing the devil and his worshippers everywhere, bringing them up during oral arguments in a case about the constitutionality of legislative prayer. This, just weeks after a somewhat embarrassing interview in New Yorkmagazine in which he gleefully affirmed his belief in the Antichrist. And what’s wrong with that?

During this week’s case, fellow conservative jurist Samuel Alito was asking questions about whether any kind of prayer would be permissible before a legislative session, one that would not offend Christians, Jews, Muslims, or Hindus.

"What about devil worshippers?" Scalia interjected. Laughter ensued. He’s such a card.

His larger point was that not letting people pray before legislative meetings deprives them of their religious freedom, and that it is impossible to design a prayer that satisfies all faiths—not to mention lack thereof.

"What is the equivalent of prayer for someone who is not religious?" Scalia asked. "There are many people who do not believe in God. ... If you had an atheist [town] board, you would not have any prayer. I guarantee you."

After all, who do you think makes people atheists? Guy with the horns, we’re talking to you.

5. Louie Gohmert: Shutdown was necessary to save people from Obamacare.

Two quick refreshers: 1) Obamacare is the “worst law known to man,” worse than slavery, Nuremberg laws, Indian removal act—you get the idea; and 2) Tea Partiers received a drubbing in this week’s election, but seem not to realize it.

Texas Tea Partier Louie Gohmert was out stumping this week, bizarrely bragging that the devastating shutdown was necessary because people would “suffer and potentially die” because of the Affordable Care Act. Yup, nothing kills people faster than health insurance. It is deadly stuff.

He made the statement at a nursing home in East Texas, where he hoped to scare the bejeezus out of seniors so they won’t sign up for the dreaded healthcare coverage. “Anybody that thinks the Affordable Care Act helps seniors doesn’t really understand what’s unaffordable to seniors,” Gohmert helpfully and misleadingly explained. “It makes most of the Medicare Advantage plans go up, but you’ve got to remember, Obamacare actually cut $716 billion from Medicare and seniors rely on Medicare.”

That, of course, is either a lie or make-believe, or both, but since when has that stopped the opponents of Obamacare?

6. Rep. Steve King knows personally—don’t ask him how—that Saddam Hussein purchased uranium from Niger.

Who can forget the fiction that fueled the invasion of Iraq in 2003? Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was building the bomb, and was ready to use all of it against us or Israel. He got his uranium from Niger, high-level intelligence said. President George Bush even said so in a speech.

Cut to a couple months after “Shock and Awe” and not even Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or President Bush was standing by that statement. They were misled by some bum intelligence. Sorry. Our bad.

But crazy Iowa Rep. Steve King still believes it because, as he said on Jan Mickelson’s radio show this week: “I have had hands-on evidence that what George Bush said in that State of the Union address was the truth.”

What Bush said was: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

When the claim unraveled, the Bush administration had to eat crow and admit the so-called intelligence was “bogus,” documents “forged.” Spokesman Ari Fleischer admitted the statement should never have found its way into the president’s speech. But nobody took the war back.

But King has “hands-on” knowledge. He just does.

7. Illinois Rep.: Marriage equality has nothing to do with rights; it’s about the Bible.

As the Illinois legislature began to debate whether to join the growing number of enlightened states that have legalized same-sex marriage, State Rep. Dwight Kay (R-Glen Carbon) pointed out that everyone has it bass-ackwards. Our nation was built on “the scriptures, then came the Constitution. Is that not right?”

It was, of course, a rhetorical question. “I think it is,” Kay continued. A brief course in American history could clear this up for the confused legislator, but never mind.

Kay is at a loss to understand why everyone keeps talking about human rights, and civil rights, and equal rights all the time when they talk about marriage equality. What do human rights have to do with a nation built on scripture? Who you gonna believe, that Constitution with its Bill of Rights written by men, or the word of God?

8. Larry Pratt: Trayvon Martin’s broken family is what killed him.

It’s never too late to pile more pain onto the grieving parents and loved ones of slain teenager Trayvon Martin. His killer is free, Trayvon has been blamed for his own death, and now, taking it one step further, Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America has suggested that Martin's dysfunctional family is responsible for the boy’s death.

That’s what he said in an interview with NewsMax’s Steve Malzberg this week: Trayvon Martin was killed because he had a “broken family.”

Who else can you blame? Triggerman, neighborhood-watch volunteer George Zimmerman was just lawfully “standing his ground” when he shot unarmed Martin. “Stand Your Ground” laws can’t be to blame because, as Sen. Ted Cruz explained to Martin's mother Sybrina Fulton in a Senate hearing on the controversial law, she’s just “mourning the loss of her son.” Stand-your-ground laws in fact “protect those in African-American communities,” he said.

Facts be damned, gun nuts and Tea Partiers agree. According to Right-Wing Watch, a recent “Tampa Bay Times analysis of stand-your-ground cases in Florida found substantial racial disparities in the application of the law, including that ‘people who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time, while those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time. A national studyfound a similar disparity.”

But, it’s Trayvon Martin's family’s fault he’s dead. Probably his mother’s.

9. White, anti-LGBT Texan wins office by pretending to be black.

Dave Wilson, a Houston electrician, has become pretty adept at creating literature for the causes he believes in. While not rewiring people’s homes, he long pursued his sideline of mailing homophobic fliers to thousands of Houston voters attacking the city’s lesbian mayor Annise Parker. His argument is pretty simple. Open homosexuality is bad. It leads to extinction. (Closeted homosexuality, not so much.)

Recently, Wilson expanded his literary efforts into fiction, when he got himself elected to the Houston Community College Board of Trustees by out-and-out pretending to be someone else. He pretended to be a black man, defeating longtime incumbent Bruce Austin, who actually is black, in an overwhelmingly African-American district.

According to Right-Wing Watch, “Wilson’s campaign fliers were filled with black faces that he admits to simply pulling off of websites, along with captions such as ‘Please vote for our friend and neighbor Dave Wilson.’ Another flier announces that he was ‘Endorsed by Ron Wilson,’ which is the name of an African-American former state representative. Only by reading the fine print will voters discover that the ‘Ron Wilson’ who actually endorsed Dave is his cousin. The cousin lives in Iowa.”

Wilson is fine with this whole deception thing. After all, lying is what politicians do, he points out.

10. Nutjob former classmate of Obama reminisces about his cocaine-snorting, gay-hustling high school days.

Scott Lively's "Defend The Family" website got a real scoop this week with an interview that nutjob preacher James David Manning conducted with Mia Marie Pope, who says—and why would we not believe her?—that she knew President Obama back in high school in Hawaii in the 1970s, when he was a foreigner (this is a birther website, after all) and a gay druggie.

"He very much was within sort of the gay community," Pope claimed. "And we knew Barry as just common knowledge that girls were never anything that he ever was interested in ... He would get with these older white gay men, and this is how we just pretty much had the impression that that's how he was procuring his cocaine. In other words, he was having sex with these older white guys and that's how he was getting this cocaine to be able to freebase."

That clears a lot up.

[Andrea]

New downtown light system capable of more than illumination

http://www.mynews3.com/mostpopular/story/New-downtown-light-system-capable-of-more-than/226vPp0cdkyVfwul9kos9g.cspx (http://www.mynews3.com/mostpopular/story/New-downtown-light-system-capable-of-more-than/226vPp0cdkyVfwul9kos9g.cspx)

"The lights are capable of all sorts of fancy features and they may save the city money, but there's a concern. These new street lights are also capable of recording video and audio.

The system is entirely adaptable. The lights are currently being tested in Las Vegas but they could soon be positioned on public streets throughout the city."

[Andrea]

Futuristic water-recycling shower cuts bills by over $1,000

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/11/tech/innovation/futuristic-water-recycling-shower-orbsys/index.html?hpt=hp_t3 (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/11/tech/innovation/futuristic-water-recycling-shower-orbsys/index.html?hpt=hp_t3)

"...... it saves more than 90% in water usage and 80% in energy every time you shower, while also producing water that is cleaner than your average tap."

[Kobi]

Chicken In Popular Products May Soon Be Made In China

BOSTON (CBS) — As soon as next summer, nuggets and other popular chicken products could be made with chicken processed in China, all because of a recent change in regulations.

China has a long history of serving up unsafe food, including the industrial chemical melamine that was deliberately put in pet food and infant formula. There were also cases of tainted rat meat passed off as lamb.

“To me it’s a big leap of faith for us to now have to accept that foods coming from china are going to be safe,” says Elizabeth Scott, a food safety expert at Simmons College.

But despite consumer concern, the USDA has cleared the way for Chinese poultry processors to ship meat to America. The poultry must be raised and slaughtered in approved countries like the US or Canada. And it has to come back to the US fully cooked. Bill Mattos, President of the California Poultry Foundation, says ” If its cooked, it should be perfectly safe.”

But how does it make economic sense to send raw chicken thousands of miles away to China only to have it sent back to the US cooked? Some say it’s about a much bigger plan.

“We think the USDA cut corners in this instance due to trade concerns,” says Tony Corbo a senior lobbyist for the food campaign at Food and Water Watch.

Corbo is critical of the new rule. The deal puts an end to a long trade war with China over poultry. And in return it could open more doors for American grown food to be sold in China. “This is really a big deal for trade. If China likes what we’re doing they’ll buy more products and China has a lot more people,” says Mattos.

American poultry producers say only a small amount of US chicken will actually be processed in China. But critics warn it could end up as an ingredient in pot pies, chicken noodle soup, and yes, nuggets, but you won’t even know it.

“China” won’t be on the label, thanks to a loophole in the law. Shipping in food from China is not new. Last year, China sent more than 4 billion pounds of food to the US including half the apple juice we drink, 30% of the garlic we use, and 85% of the tilapia we eat. Now processed chicken may be the next thing on the menu.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/11/11/chicken-in-popular-products-may-soon-be-made-in-china/

[Corkey]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10152022135673281&set=a.10150307206218281.358630.18813753280&type=1&theater

WoooHoooo! Aloha!

[Cin]

Why the Hate-Filled, Retrograde Politics of the Tea Party Are Here to Stay
The Tea Party is not a movement, it’s a geographical region: the Old South.

After last Tuesday’s creaming in the Virginia governor’s race, and with Tea Party negatives creeping toward 75 percent, the political punditry class has divided itself into one of two camps: those celebrating the demise of the Tea Party versus those forecasting its inevitable end. Who’s right? They're both wrong, because it’s not a movement. It’s a geographical region, and if history has taught us anything, southern folk are a pugnacious bunch.

Despite political feel-good rhetoric, there are two Americas. Not just ideologically, but geographically. That’s what still makes this country unique among other Western democracies. America is two distinct nations with a distinguishable border that runs the breadth of the country from the Mason-Dixon line across the southern border of Pennsylvania, finishing in some Baptist church somewhere in rural Texas.

The Tea Party is overwhelmingly Southern. Michael Lind, author of Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States, writes, “The facts show that the Tea Party in Congress is merely the familiar old neo-Confederate Southern right under a new label.” If you include Texas as a member of the Old South (banning tampons from the state house earns the Lone Star state that honor), nearly 80 percent of the Tea Party’s support comes from the former Confederate states. So, stop calling it a movement.

The Republican Party is not only the party of plutocrats and oligarchs; it’s also the party of the South. The party’s leaders are predominantly southern. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is from Kentucky. House Speaker John Boehner is from Cincinnati, Ohio, but Cincinnati is as close to the South as a northern city can be, given the city’s airport is actually in Kentucky. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is from Virginia. '

And then there are the likely 2016 presidential hopefuls. With the exception of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, and the pathologically homophobic Rick Santorum, the rest of them are as southern as Colonel Sanders. Rand Paul is from Kentucky. Bobby Jindal is from Louisiana. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio are from Florida.

While movements and ideas may die, a land mass does not, and while that southern land mass is occupied by a people who are willing to destroy the country in order to get their way, and while the GOP remains dependent on its "Southern strategy," the South’s fixation on everything related to controlling race, sex, religious practice, abortion laws, and dismantling the federal government will remain the revolutionary fervor of not only the Tea Party but also the GOP.

The trend lines in America are moving against the South thanks to increasing urbanization, the "browning of America," and the declining place for religion in American life. These are great challenges to the South’s way of life, and southerners don’t like it. So don’t expect one governor’s race in an off-year election to read as an obituary for the Tea Party. As much as the media and the GOP establishment would like you to believe Chris Christie, a moderate only by Tea Party standards, to be the presumptive nominee, the neo-Confederates are more likely to pick a gay atheist from San Francisco.

The GOP’s most agitated and mobilized voting bloc is its predominantly southern evangelical base. In their minds, they’ve experimented with non-Southern “moderates” in the form of John McCain and Mitt Romney, and they got trounced. The base gets its cues from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Glenn Beck, and Sean Hannity, all of whom are juicing the base for a “severely conservative” 2016 candidate. Thus a northern governor who supports climate change, evolution, immigration and gun control will likely be sacrificed on the altar of southern radicalism—a fate realized by one former northern mayor in 2008, Rudy Giuliani.

The South, and by association the GOP, sees America increasingly through the prism of race. It’s central to their worldview. In 2012, 92% of the Republican vote came from white people who, within the next three decades, will no longer be in the majority. Despite losing the gubernatorial race, Ken Cuccinelli received more than 70% of the white vote. White southern voters view entitlements and immigration reform as liberal programs to buy votes. They believe food stamps and healthcare are an effort to take money from hard-working white people, and in turn, redistribute it to lazy black people. When Reagan spoke about a “welfare queen,” he didn’t need to mention her race. White southern voters had already painted a picture in their own minds.

In his seminal Better Off Without ‘Em: A Northern Manifesto for Southern Secession, Chuck Thompson writes:
The unified southern resistance to every initiative from any "liberal" administration has deep historic roots. The persistent defiance of every Democratic attempt to deal intelligently with national problems—be they recession, debt, or childhood obesity—has nothing to with political ideology, taxes, healthcare, or acceptable degrees of federal authority. It has everything to do with nullification, disruption, zealotry, and division. It’s part of a time-sharpened effort to debilitate nearly every northern-led government by injecting it with the Seven Deadly Sins of Southern Politics: demagogic dishonesty, religious fanaticism, willful obstructionism, disregard for own self-interest, corporate supplication, disproportionate influence, and military adventurism.

The next Republican Party presidential nominee will need to speak to these white southern fears and attitudes. Given that Civil War hostilities ended more than 150 years ago, and given the GOP is now backed by unprecedented levels of campaign finance thanks to Citizens United, don’t fool yourself into thinking the Tea Party strain of Republicanism is going away anytime soon. It's more likely they've only just arrived.

http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/why-hateful-politics-tea-party-isnt-going-anywhere-hint-its-region-us?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Bill Maher Blasts Selfish Christian Hypocrites Who Don't Tip Waiters
New Rule: It's OK if you don't want to feed the hungry, or heal the sick, or house the homeless. Just don't say you're doing it for their own good.


?v=IN9FPKai3Ik&feature=player_embedded

[Cin]

Elizabeth Warren’s Populist Insurgency Enters Next Phase: Blow up the Finance Sector, Restore the Economy

If asked, Americans of all political persuasions will say overwhelmingly that they prefer “tougher rules” for Wall Street. But what does that actually mean?

You can frame this conventionally: supporting regulators, punishing rules violators, mopping up 2008-style disasters to limit the damage and attempting to prevent such chaos from happening again. But by “tougher rules,” maybe Americans are really signaling a vague but persistent dissatisfaction with an economy that has become dominated by the financial sector. And you can see within that how transforming banking back to its traditional purpose — as a conduit for putting capital in the hands of worthwhile business ventures and driving shared prosperity — would be one antidote to an unequal society full of financial titan gatekeepers, who confiscate a giant share of the money flowing through the system.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren — in many ways the avatar of a new populist insurgency within the Democratic Party that seeks to combine financial reform and economic restoration — will speak later today in Washington at the launch of a new report that marks a key new phase in this movement. Released by Americans for Financial Reform and the Roosevelt Institute – and called “An Unfinished Mission: Making Wall Street Work for Us” — the report is a revelation, because it finally invites fundamental discussions about these issues. Its 11 chapters from some of the leading thinkers on financial reform do look back at the successes and failures of the signal financial reform law of this generation, the Dodd-Frank Act. But the report also weaves in a story about how we can reorient finance as a complement to the real economy, rather than its overriding force. Mike Konczal, a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute and the co-editor of the report, tells Salon, “The financial sector is still eating up a lot of GDP [gross domestic product], and it’s not clear what we’re getting out of it. We want to get the conversation at that level.”

This report fills in the details, creating definable action items and goals that could serve as a marker for legislative and regulatory action, as well as primaries in the next several election cycles.

The roots of this conversation go back decades, if not hundreds of years. One of the report’s authors, John Parsons of MIT, notes that the debate over whether to force derivative trades — the bets on top of bets that helped accelerate and magnify the financial crisis — into central and transparent clearinghouses dates back to the Minneapolis Grain Exchange of 1896. The concept of a fiduciary standard, which states that anyone offering advice on investment strategies should act in the interests of their individual clients rather than trying to enrich themselves, was initially settled in the Investment Advisors Act of 1940. Even Ben Bernanke last week drew parallels between the 2008 crisis and the Panic of 1907, which led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.

In the past few decades, Wall Street has devised financial “innovations” with the primary purpose of outpacing regulatory reach, surmounting decades-old reforms. This frees non-bank financial firms from oversight by the watchdogs, and allows them to accumulate risk in search of greater profits. For example, Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform looks at shadow banking, the lending markets that “convert illiquid, risky, long-term assets into ‘safe,’ liquid short-term securities.” This creates an illusion of safety and puts massive amounts of money outside the New Deal-era regulatory apparatus, where the firms involved don’t have requirements to carry capital to guard against inevitable losses, for example. In 2008, the breakdown of parts of the shadow banking system made it impossible for large financial actors to access short-term funding, turning a downturn into a crisis.

While shadow banking does not have access to the public safety net (things like bank deposit insurance, or access to Federal Reserve liquidity programs), in reality it is hooked into mega-banks inside the safety net. AIG was bailed out because its counterparties were corporations like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, determined to be too big to fail. So you have the worst of all possible worlds; a giant alternative banking system not subject to any of the rules that limit risk, vulnerable to old-style bank runs, but able to get government relief if their gambles turn sour. You get privatized profits and socialized losses. You also create more fragility in the system, because shadow banking involves multiple links from borrower to lender, and as Stanley told Salon, “Each link in the chain is another opportunity to lie about what’s inside the loan.”

There are two ways to look at this problem. One is seen in the way Dodd-Frank tried, with varying success, to bring New Deal-era structures to the broader financial sector, pulling systemically important activities like insurance and hedge funds under a regulatory regime. Unfortunately, the maddening complexity of financial innovations generates uncertainty over what really falls under the rules, giving Wall Street and compliant regulators the opportunity to take advantage of loopholes. Orderly liquidation authority, the new measures for regulators to wind down large financial institutions, is so full of holes, argues Stephen Lubben of Seton Hall University, that it could quickly devolve into “a bailout in all but name.” Regulators have not even begun to reckon with large elements of the system, like money market funds or the overnight “repo” markets, which made significant contributions to the financial crisis. “Many of the conditions that helped cause the 2008 crisis persist,” writes Jennifer Taub of Vermont Law School in one of the report’s chapters.

The other way to deal with financial innovations is to simply eliminate those activities that only serve to pool risk without productive social purpose. For example, Wallace Turbeville of the think tank Demos, in a section on derivatives purchased by state and local governments, concludes that these municipalities would be better off hedging their risks by building a cash reserve, instead of paying the financial sector exorbitant fees for a product they don’t understand. “Inefficiencies that transfer earnings to the financial sector are like a tax that redistributes wealth upward,” Turbeville concludes.

Similarly, we can ban mega-banks from, as Saule Omarova of the University of North Carolina School of Law puts it, becoming “financial-industrial conglomerates,” pushing into commercial business like energy, transportation and physical commodities and distorting those industries for profit. We can give shareholders a greater say in executive compensation, tying it to actual performance. We can significantly boost capital requirements so financial institutions cover their own risk rather than allow taxpayer dollars to serve that purpose. We can restrict shadow banking, and reestablish the link between borrower and lender so that the lender has a stake in the borrower’s success. We can empower regulators with easy-to-implement, clear rules that place limits on banking activities and bank size. We can demand that law enforcement creates deterrents to fraud by legitimately punishing wrongdoing on Wall Street. All of these recommendations and more are in the comprehensive report.

There’s a real-world consequence to keeping unnecessary financial innovation in place, argues Brad Miller, former congressman now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “The yawning inequality of income and wealth is not because the middle class isn’t working hard enough or because the richest fraction of a percent is making an enormous contribution,” he told Salon. “Much of the reason is what economists call ‘rent seeking,’ or extracting money without doing anything useful, mostly in the financial sector. It’s a wonder the economy has the strength to get out of bed in the morning.”

This core debate – whether to build a new regulatory regime for 21st-century financial products, or to just bar “innovations” that merely allow financial interests to capture money that should cycle through the economy – has not been part of the Obama administration’s approach to Wall Street reform, Mike Konczal says. “Paul Volcker said there wasn’t a financial innovation with a useful purpose in the last 30 years except the ATM. But the administration didn’t engage in this debate.”

The administration has seemingly taken the position that any effort to build on financial reform would reflect a tacit admission that Dodd-Frank didn’t solve the problem, and therefore nothing else can be done.

But in three years, President Obama will leave office, and these core issues will not. The age of “boring” banking, without these innovations, coincides directly with the creation of the broad middle class and a time of unparalleled economic expansion. Kleptocracies aren’t known for their economic vitality, but that’s what we have with a Wall Street-dominated economy.

The issue of Wall Street reform isn’t just about which regulations are sufficient to the task. It’s about what kind of economy we want for all our citizens.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/elizabeth-warrens-populist-insurgency-enters-next-phase?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

15-year-old Girl Asks Apple to Remove MacBook's Offensive Dictionary Definition of ‘Gay’
Plucky teen takes a stand against the global corporation for defining gay as "stupid" and "foolish"

A Massachusetts teenager courageously took on giant conglomerate Apple in advocating for gay rights, after discovering an offensive definition of the term ‘gay’ on her Apple MacBook, Fox Boston reported.

Fifteen-year-old, Becca Gorman, was writing a history essay on gay rights when she typed the word, “gay” into her MacBook dictionary only to find two very derogatory informal definitions of the term: “foolish” and “stupid”, as well as the following offensive example - “making students wait for the light is kind of a gay rule”.

The teenager, who has lesbian parents, said that despite being accustomed to hearing the term ‘that’s so gay’ used in everyday conversation, she was highly offended that a global company like Apple which claims to be enlightened and has an openly gay CEO would legitimize such insulting definitions:

“At first, I was kind of in disbelief…I felt like they had to take care of it," she said,

After consulting with her mothers, Gorman decided to take action and wrote to Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, to express her utter disgust.

Within an hour, to her surprise, an Apple representative called her back and also expressed dismay.

"They said that Apple streams its dictionary from four separate sources so they'd have to figure out how to get it removed, but they were also really surprised," the teen said to WCB-TV.

But while Gordan says the representative said Apple would look into the problem, to date, the MacBook definition remained unchanged.

Still, Gordan is not about to give up:

“I feel like we’re going to have to make a bigger deal about it before they actually act on it,” she said in the interview.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/15-year-old-girl-asks-apple-remove-macbooks-offensive-dictionary-definition-gay

[Cin]

If Only Right-Wing Christians Knew Where Their Ideas Came From
Progressive evangelical Christianity is not merely a relic of the 19th century; it’s making a comeback.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/if-only-right-wing-christian-evangelicals-knew-where-their-ideas-came?page=0%2C0

[Cin]

Corporate America’s New Scam: Industry P.R. Firm Poses as Think Tank!
How the media fell hook, line and sinker for the propagandist, respectable-sounding "Employment Policies Institute"

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-americas-new-scam-industry-pr-firm-poses-think-tank

[Cin]

Mom as the New Face of Anarchy? Police Terrorize Americans Who Object to Right-Wing Lunacy by Using "Anarchist" Label

http://www.alternet.org/activism/anarchist-and-communist-labels

[*Anya*]

Gay son of slain San Francisco mayor Moscone marries at City Hall

Jonathan Moscone, son of San Francisco mayor George Moscone who was assassinated in 1978 alongside Harvey Milk, has married partner Darryl Carbonaro at the city hall where his father served and died

12 NOVEMBER 2013 | BY ANDREW POTTS

The openly gay son of the San Francisco mayor murdered alongside gay political pioneer Harvey Milk has been married at the City Hall where they were slain by another former mayor of the city - Willie Brown.

Brown is a family friend of Jonathan Moscone – the son of murdered San Francisco mayor George Moscone – and was married Friday to partner of one year Darryl Carbonaro.

Moscone, 49, is the artistic director of the California Shakespeare Theater in Berkeley and Carbonaro, 46, is the associate general counsel for Clean Power Finance.

Their wedding was conducted on the Mayoral Balcony of San Francisco's City Hall by Brown in front of 80 guests.

The couple reportedly met online in November last year. Two days after their first date at a bar they met again for dinner and they have been together ever since.

In 2011 Jonathan Moscone directed a play about his father’s assassination and its effect on his life called ‘Ghost Light’ which had been written by friend Tony Taccone.

He told the New York Times that directing the play had helped him reconcile some of his feelings about his father’s murder.

‘The play became about wishing him back,’ Moscone told the newspaper, ‘After living for years without even thinking about him. And I think the not thinking about someone is a way of not missing them.’

Moscone was killed by former San Francisco city supervisor Dan White on November 27, 1978, after he refused to allow him to rescind his resignation from the City Board of Supervisors.

White then went into the office of pioneering gay rights campaigner Harvey Milk and shot him too.

What appeared to be lenient treatment of the murders and White sparked San Francisco’s White Night Riots a year later. (**My note: Dan White and the "Twinkie Defense" at his trial).

- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gay-son-slain-san-francisco-mayor-moscone-marries-city-hall121113#sthash.GHza6s3w.dpuf

[Cin]

The Gospel of Selfishness in American Christianity
How the philosophers of selfishness came to use Christianity as their cover story.

http://www.alternet.org/belief/gospel-selfishness-american-christianity

Pope Francis Is ‘Too Liberal’ for Her Holiness, Sarah Palin
The former vice presidential candidate expressed concern over the Pope’s 'liberal agenda' and of course blamed mainstream media…

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/pope-francis-too-liberal-her-holiness-sarah-palin

[Cin]

America's Dumbest Idea: Creating a Multiple-Choice Test Generation
Standardized testing means more rote memorization and less time for creativity. Students aren't prepared for college and life.

A few years ago, I met with my former high school social studies teacher to catch up over drinks. "Miss F" was one of my favorite teachers and we hadn't seen each other in about 12 years. As we reminisced about our field trips, my other classmates, and my hilariously unfortunate fashion choices, she revealed to me that she and many of my former high school teachers refer to that time as "the golden era". I was shocked. How could it be that the school district had become worse since I graduated?

My high school, which is located in a working class Latino suburb bordering Chicago, was overpopulated, underfunded, and in my opinion, incredibly stifling. Needless to say, I resented going there. I felt we were disenfranchised and were not given the same opportunities that affluent schools provided their students.

I should have realized how lucky I really was when I was in college, however. Unlike many of my classmates, I cranked out papers with little difficulty because I knew how to synthesize information and formulate an argument. Writing a thesis statement was a freaking breeze. But at the time I had no idea that these skills were a luxury.

It wasn't until I reunited with my teacher that I realized I actually received a decent education compared to many students today. I had several talented and passionate teachers who had not been entirely bogged down by a bunch of inane educational requirements. No Child Left Behind hadn't completely ruined our already failing education system. My teachers taught me how to analyze and question texts and write thesis statements. I was taught the symbolism of the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn. I was taken on after school field trips to movies, poetry readings, and plays. Some of them even encouraged me to question authority. If it weren't for some of these teachers, I never would have become a writer.

But that has all changed now. According to my teacher, budget cuts have made field trips nearly impossible. Not only that, teachers are now so bogged down by administrative nonsense and standardized testing requirements, that it's very difficult to teach children anything but the rote memorization of information. I hear complaints like these all the time from my friends and family members who are teachers. While they are passionate about what they do, they are not given the agency or resources to flourish and engage their students in higher levels of discourse.

One of my family members is a teacher at our former high school and he is frequently exasperated by the efforts devoted to standardized testing. He says:

With so much riding on these exams, schools try to get kids enthused by even having test pep-rallies, assemblies, and programs to promote test-taking strategies and to underscore the tests' importance. This is how the love of learning is being cultivated? This is how we encourage intellectual curiosity?

No Child Left Behind, which was passed in 2001, mandated that states use test scores to determine whether schools were succeeding or failing. Unfortunately, this emphasis on testing had dire consequences. Even initial supporters, such as Diane Ravitch, an education historian and former assistant secretary of education in George Bush senior's administration, realized how detrimental these measures were. She wrote in a 2010 Wall Street Journal op-ed:

Accountability turned into a nightmare for American schools, producing graduates who were drilled regularly on the basic skills but were often ignorant about almost everything else … This was not my vision of good education.

And Ravitch doesn't believe that Common Core is the solution to this crisis in education either. Now all states must adopt Common Core or similar standards approved by state higher education officials if they want to receive federal waivers from No Child Left Behind. Ravitch feels that these new standards are being imposed on children with little evidence of how they will affect students, teachers, or schools.

"I only see it getting worse", says one of my friends, a fourth grade teacher in Chicago. "Common Core standards have been added to our Illinois testing now, which are much, much more challenging standards. This means learning a whole new test for the teachers and students." Not only are these requirements causing a lot of stress, she says that the materials for the tests are also very expensive. A report from Truthout has outlined Common Core's various corporate connections. Clearly the objective is profit, not a rigorous and nuanced education that will benefit students in the long run.

Why does our education system insist on these kinds of methods when they're clearly not working? Why not emulate Finland, a country with no standardized tests and whose teachers assign less homework and encourage creativity? Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the world in the last few years.

Whether it be No Child Left Behind or Common Core, the problem lies in manufactured learning. In teaching English at the university level, I have noticed that students are often ill prepared for the demands of higher education. Students who are used to multiple choice tests lack the skills and the confidence to formulate their own complex opinions and interpretations. It is irresponsible to have these students graduate without the proper skills to succeed.

Rigid curriculums that focus on right and wrong answers teach children to see the world in binaries. These methods don't encourage creativity or innovation. I fear that our deeply flawed education system will produce generations of people who lack critical thinking skills. How can students be expected to become highly skilled or passionate about anything when they're asked to simply regurgitate information? What kind of choices will they make in their adult lives when they have never been taught how to look at the nuances and complexities of situations? Who will have the tools to question authority? Who will question the status quo? How will we compete with other countries when our younger generations have not been encouraged to develop their inquisitiveness and engage with the world?

I fear that our system is failing children by encouraging them to be mindless consumers. High tests scores do not make someone well-educated or well-rounded and memorizing facts does not equal intelligence. Public education should not be a commodity, but a foundation for children to at least have the possibility of succeeding in the world.

http://www.alternet.org/education/americas-dumbest-idea-creating-multiple-choice-test-generation?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark


For anyone interested in exploring this further:
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections
Flow Chart Exposes Common Core's Myriad Corporate Connections

[Cin]

No, Obama Didn't Lie to You About Your Health Care Plans
The claim that President Obama lied in saying that people could keep their insurance looks like another Fox News special.

http://www.alternet.org/no-obama-didnt-lie-you-about-your-health-care-plans

Yet this cartoon is amusing:
http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/tmw2013-11-13colorlarge.jpg

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

standardized testing of public school children was carefully crafted by the "smaller government" crowd who wants to ultimately privatize EVERYTHING.

Their dream is public school failure in order to say "I told you so". The teachers are the bad guys now, anyone working in the public sector just feeds off the government teet. School teachers have a barely a squeak of a chance to be able to do their jobs. As was stated eloquently above, creative and critical thinking skills are being overshadowed by studying for tests.

These are challenging times for us who care deeply for progress. The religious right has snuck upon us by winning local elections decades ago and has now maneuvered themselves in positions of governmental decision-making and worse. Case in point Ted Cruz.

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote, please do so. Pay attention to your local elections and spend some time understanding their positions. They don't start out being born Senators and Governors, most started small and benign.

[Cin]

I urge everyone who is eligible to vote, please do so. Pay attention to your local elections and spend some time understanding their positions. They don't start out being born Senators and Governors, most started small and benign.

Voting is a great idea, of course it was a much greater idea before corporations bought the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate and the President. It hasn’t been the same since corporations achieved personhood and Citizens United put a price tag on freedom of speech. So money gets the last word and the rich can just buy everything.

I used to believe local politics were where you could possibly affect some change. I suppose that is still true but whether politicians start out small and benign or not there is no way in hell they will ever move up the political ladder without selling their souls to the corporate world. It was always a little bit like that, but you can thank the Supreme Court for making sure the rich have the means to control the government.

They don’t hear us anymore. It’s even more difficult to make any difference than it was when Bush stole the election from Gore and the Supreme Court backed him up. Now it isn’t necessary to steal elections. Corporations have everyone in their pocket. And because they need government for a safety net, they are somewhat at odds with tea party republicans and libertarians who want small government, therefore corporations cheerfully through money at Democrats as well, making them as deaf to our needs as the Republicans. Still what other option do we have than to vote.

And as happy_go_lucky already stated, it is important to stay informed. Information is currency and truth is for sale to the highest bidder. Sanity is just out the window. What more is there to say when the media can, with a straight face, tout the governor of New Jersey, a guy who makes Reagan look like a liberal, as a political moderate. We have to remember that the media is not objective they are owned and controlled by the rich and powerful and are busily at work twisting the facts in order to mold our opinions. Everybody has an agenda. Read a variety of news sources encompassing a variety of political and ideological opinions and then you at least have a shot at making an informed decision.

[Cin]

standardized testing of public school children was carefully crafted by the "smaller government" crowd who wants to ultimately privatize EVERYTHING.


I hope you don't mind my using parts of your post as jumping points.

Privatization removes the necessity of even giving lip service to the idea of equality of service or product. The bottom line is all that matters to private businesses. And that’s fine for most things. It’s a sad but unavoidable reality that we all can’t afford everything or the best of everything. That’s life. But in some instances privatization doesn’t work. Education for example. Privatizing education is a really bad idea. However, we are moving in that direction and along with mandatory standardized testing, there is "contracting out", school vouchers and charter schools which are parts of this same push. We already have a huge difference in what kind of education people can afford to give their children. More government control and funding is needed to even out education so that what is available to all citizens is comparable. Even now the level of knowledge and education available depends on money and geography. It will get so much worse with privatization. With money dictating how much your children can learn it’s not hard to imagine a country with an uneducated lower class stuck forever in low paying, dead end jobs (if they are lucky) where they do not earn enough money to support their families. Pretty much the direction we are heading now. Education should not be turned into a consumer product. It is a social and a public responsibility.

Privatized prisons are good business for their owners, but bad business for everyone else. It’s like putting McDonalds in charge of Weight Watchers. It’s not in McDonalds’ best interest for you to eat healthy. It’s not in the best interest of a privately owned prison for you to become rehabilitated or, if truth be told, for you not to commit a crime in the first place. So let’s keep that war on drugs going. We now have prison lobbyists to make sure crimes stay on the books and punishments are severe. It is in the best interest of private prisons for punishment to always be incarceration. The US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. America makes up 5% of the world's population and 25% of its jailed prisoners. It’s only logical, it’s not personal it’s just business. I mean what can you expect, what kind of business owner works at eliminating his clients.

Prison for profit is insane and immoral for a country to do it to its adult citizens, but to do it to its children is unforgivable. Yet privately owned prisons for children exist. As does privatized foster care and a variety of other privatized child welfare services.

The privatization of water is a chilling idea, but Nestle’s believes it is the way to go. Nestle’s Chairman and former CEO, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, believes that “access to water is not a public right.” Great. I think we should hurry and put him in charge of water.

To put it simply

Privatization bad, government good.

However we need to bring back that government that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Because as it stands now it is in deep doodoo. There is a good chance it shall perish from the Earth.

[Cin]

And speaking of prisons, this is truly disturbing.

Life in Prison for Stealing Candy? Thousands of Prisoners Sentenced to Die Behind Bars for Nonviolent Crimes
The number of prisoners serving life for nonviolent crimes is truly staggering.


http://www.alternet.org/life-prison-stealing-candy-thousands-prisoners-sentenced-die-behind-bars-nonviolent-crimes?page=0%2C3

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

It has been recently revealed that the private prison industry not only wishes to control more prisons, but are lobbying the states to maintain demand for their services. In 2012, CCA sent a letter to 48 states offering to buy up their prisons as a remedy to their “challenging corrections budgets,” in exchange for a 20-year contract and an assurance that the state will maintain at least a 90 percent occupancy at the prison. In the Public Interest, an advocacy group pushing for an end to prison privatization, reviewed 62 state and local private prison contracts.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/private-prisons-demand-states-fill-empty-beds/169600/


For-Profit prison is immoral.

For-Profit health care is immoral.

For-Profit education is immoral.

For-Profit local governmental services is immoral.

And on and on....

When profit is not a factor, the consumer citizen receives a better shake.

[Cin]

Chomsky’s right: The New York Times’ latest big lie
More misleading half-truths from a paper too cowed by power and myth to tell the truth about U.S. foreign policy

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/16/chomskys_right_the_new_york_times_latest_big_lie/

[Cin]

Elizabeth Warren: quiet revolutionary who could challenge Hillary Clinton in Democrats' 2016 race
Senator's tough stance against Wall Street is attracting voters on the left who are disenchanted with the party establishment
Not many political "rock stars" inspire audience members to knit, but, even by Washington's sedate standards, the darling of America's new left is a quiet revolutionary.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a former Harvard professor turned Wall Street scourge, is one of a clutch of unlikely radicals giving hope to those disenchanted with mainstream Democrats.

Hours before a rare public appearance last week, one of the largest rooms in Congress begins slowly filling up with an odd mix of groupies: policy wonks, finance geeks, Occupy activists, and, yes, the type of political conference attendee who brings their knitting in.

Warren proceeds to calmly recite numbers that could inspire even librarians to storm a few barricades. The Wall Street crash has cost the US economy $14tn, she says, but its top institutions are 30% larger than before, own half the country's bank assets and are in receipt of an implicit taxpayer subsidy of $83bn a year because they are deemed too big to fail.

"We have got to get back to running this country for American families, not for its largest financial institutions," concludes Warren, before noting how little President Barack Obama has done to achieve that.

When the same message was delivered to union leaders in September, she had them standing on their chairs. But for the first time since the banking crash, the argument is connecting at the ballot box too. Mayoral elections in Boston and New York two weeks ago saw leftwing candidates with similar messages about economic inequality win by surprising landslides.

Meanwhile, Terry McAuliffe, the former Clinton fundraiser who epitomises the business-friendly Democrat mainstream, saw his substantial poll lead in Virginia all but evaporate under attack from populists on the right.

Whereas the Tea Party has worked relentlessly since the financial crash to recast the Republican party as a perceived challenger to Wall Street, Democrats such as Obama and his potential successor Hillary Clinton rely heavily on financial donors and have veered away from confrontation. But the popularity of senators such as Warren in Massachusetts and Sherrod Brown in Ohio has combined with recent mayoral election wins by Bill de Blasio in New York and Marty Walsh in Boston to raise hopes that the left could yet exert the same pull on Democrats.

"The challenges the Democratic party has faced since 2009 have largely been a result of the public's perception that the party isn't clearly enough on their side," argues Damon Silvers, policy director for union umbrella group AFL-CIO. "Republicans have exploited that very skilfully, even though Republicans are totally owned by the financial class."

"What's happening now is the emergence of politicians – De Blasio and Walsh being recent examples – that are just not interested in that type of politics," adds Silvers. "And those people are being successful. They are stepping into a political vacuum that is all about authenticity in relationship to issues of inequality and the power of financial interests."

Though the similarity only goes so far, the shared interest of America's new left and Tea Party conservatives in challenging the economic status quo also shows how figures such as Warren might attract broader support beyond traditional Democrat voters.

One self-confessed Warren groupie is David Collum, a Cornell University chemistry professor and amateur investor, whose enthusiasm for free market economics previously led him to endorse libertarian Republican candidate Ron Paul. Collum has been exchanging regular emails with Warren since before the crash and says she captured his imagination because her brand of intelligent populism transcends traditional political boundaries.

"If you look at her and Ron Paul, it's the same thing: they appear to speak from the heart," he explains. "Here you have Warren saying the banks are thugs, she supports the consumer which has a natural leftwing sound to it, but I don't think it's putty-headed liberalism, I think she is just an advocate for the small person."

The buzz around Warren reached fever pitch last week with an article in New Republic magazine predicting she could challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination in the 2016 presidential election. Widely-read, if not endorsed, across Washington, the piece entitled "Hillary's nightmare" was followed by a similar analysis in Politico describing the prospect as "Wall Street's nightmare".

Like many eventual nominees, Warren is emphatic she does not want to run for the White House (a fact her supporters claim makes her ideal) and the notion resulted in scepticism from some Washington insiders.

But the question of whether it is Warren or one of the other emerging leftwingers who challenges the Clinton orthodoxy in 2016 may prove besides the point if even the talk of her running causes Team Hillary to reassess its rumoured dependence on Wall Street fundraising and helps pull the party away from big business.

Political pundits in the media have often been slow to capture public mood changes, ignoring the Occupy Wall Street movement for months, for example, and were also caught by surprise by de Blasio's win in New York.

The man who took America's biggest city back under Democratic party control for the first time in two decades was not even endorsed by the liberal New York Times, which opted for a more mainstream candidate, Christine Quinn.

Rupert Murdoch's New York Post was predictably blunter, calling de Blasio a pro-Cuban communist, while the Washington Post got into hot water with a column suggesting "people with conventional views" in other states would have to "repress a gag reflex" when considering him because he was married to an African-American who used to be lesbian.

In the end, de Blasio won the support of 73% of New York's voters with an unapologetically leftwing campaign: arguing for tax increases on the rich to pay for better schools and using his afro-haired son to promote a campaign against police harassment of young black men.

The skepticism among political elites that such policies will translate outside liberal bastions like New York may be warranted. Howard Dean, the last such candidate seen as a serious presidential candidate, crashed and burned when he was seen as too "shouty". Ralph Nader, who ran to the left of John Kerry as an independent candidate in 2004 arguably cost him the election that made way for George W Bush.

But what has changed is that mainstream Democrats and Republicans in Washington seem even less popular today than the perceived outsiders on the left and right.

Both Obama and the Republican party hit record lows in the polls recently after the government shutdown and botched launch of healthcare reforms exacerbated a national feeling that Washington is broken.

"I think the lesson that we have to draw from [these polls] is that the American people are not satisfied," said White House spokesman Jay Carney. "[Not satisfied] that we're, all of us, focused on the things that matter to them, and we're not getting the results that they want."

In this atmosphere, anyone who doesn't appear part of the Washington mainstream is by definition a populist.

But whereas rightwing challengers in the Tea Party can lump public dissatisfaction with Washington, Wall Street and the government into one big anti-establishment message, radicals on the left have a finer line to tread, especially after Obama's botched healthcare launch led to such mistrust of their preferred public sector solutions.

Warren does it by pointing out the need for more regulation, both to save capitalism from itself and re-engage the social mobility of the American dream.

Other rising stars such as Maryland governor Martin O'Malley – also tipped as a leftwing challenger to Hillary in 2016 – have done it by marrying liberal policies with managerial success at the state level.

The former mayor of Baltimore, said to be one of the inspirations for the Tommy Carcetti character in The Wire, has introduced gun control legislation, abolished the death penalty and legalised same-sex marriages, all while successfully increasing government spending on areas such as transport.

Nonetheless, compared with Hillary Clinton, both O'Malley and Warren remain virtual unknowns on the national stage and would face a huge challenge to win the Democratic primary let alone the White House.

Warren describes her battle with the banks as a "David and Goliath struggle". Whether David can take on the Goliaths of the Democratic party is a whole other matter.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/16/elizabeth-warren-2016-race-white-house

[Corkey]

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-arrested-again-195031198.html

Well would you believe it? Zimmerman charged with assault. Go figure.

[Cin]

Is it me or is this just like really messed up?


State Rep. Smashes Homeless Peoples' Stuff With a Sledgehammer
The Rep. roams the streets and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Much like Batkid, Hawaii has found its own superhero. Except that instead of protecting the powerless from harm, he roams the streets with a sledgehammer and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).

Noting that he’s “disgusted” with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of “justice”: “If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.” Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:

Uncontent to just destroy homeless people’s items, Brower is also on a mission to wake those he finds sleeping and tell them to sleep somewhere else. “If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

It’s no stretch to assume that if Brower were found roaming middle-class neighborhoods and smashing items in people’s homes, he would find himself both out of office and behind bars. But segments of society view homeless people as less important and undeserving of the dignity of having their possessions kept safe.

One homeless person in Honolulu, Edward Ferreira, witnessed Brower in action. “To see someone banging on stuff like that, it was very scary for me,” he told Hawaii News Now.

Without a home, homeless people often have nowhere to store their possessions. A shopping cart can be very useful in both its storage space and mobility. Some localities, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and others have tried to address this problem by offering free storage space to homeless people.

Hawaii, on the other hand, is garnering a reputation for a less-than-compassionate approach to its homeless population, and it’s not just because of Brower. It’s got the highest rate of homelessness in the country, but rather than build more shelters or offer more services for the poor, lawmakers approved $100,000 over the next two years to offer one-way flights off the islands to any of the state’s estimated 17,000 homeless persons.
http://www.alternet.org/state-rep-smashes-homeless-peoples-stuff-sledgehammer

[Jar]

http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-arrested-again-195031198.html

Well would you believe it? Zimmerman charged with assault. Go figure.

I can't believe this guy is still walking the streets! He's going to kill again one way or the other. I think a judge ordered him to turn in his guns today but duh, he'll find more

[Kobi]

Poll: Overweight people, gays slammed most online



By CONNIE CASS
The Associated Press
November 20, 2013

Most teens and young adults on Facebook, Twitter or other social networking sites see them at least sometimes: slurs, offensive images or mean-spirited video clips that stigmatize groups of people.

Who's targeted most often? Overweight people, according to a poll of Internet users ages 14 to 24.

When does it seem most hurtful? When aimed at transgender people.

What about potshots at blacks or women? Young people mostly take those as jokes.

In the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and MTV, young people take stock of the discriminatory words and images they see online:

___

Who gets slammed online?

—Those who are overweight (54 percent of young people see them
targeted sometimes or often)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (50 percent)

—African-Americans (46 percent)

—Women (44 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (42 percent)

—Immigrants (34 percent)

—Latinos (32 percent)

—Muslims (31 percent)

—Women who dress or carry themselves in a masculine way (31 percent)

—Transgender people (31 percent)

___

Young people are more likely to view slurs or discriminatory images as mean-spirited rather than as a joke when they target:

—Transgender people (63 percent say it's most often meant to be hurtful)

—Muslims (60 percent)

—Gay, lesbian or bisexual people (54 percent)

—Those who are overweight (53 percent)

—Men who dress or carry themselves in a feminine way (53 percent)

___

Racial insults are less likely to be considered intentionally hurtful. A majority of young people say racial groups are maligned mostly in a joking way:

—African-Americans (64 percent say it's most often meant as a joke)

—Latinos (67 percent)

—Asian-Americans (73 percent)

___

What about sexism?

A big majority — 7 in 10 — say demeaning comments, pictures and videos about women are mostly jokes, not meant to be hurtful. Women are about as likely to feel that way as men are.

About 60 percent of those polled see the word "bitch" used against people online or in text messages at least sometimes. Fewer than 30 percent are very offended by it when it's aimed at someone else.

___

Christianity, the nation's dominant religion, isn't high on the list of online targets.

But when slurs and images malign Christians, they are more likely to be seen as intentionally hurtful than those aimed at racial minorities.

About half said discriminatory stuff about Christians was mostly hurtful; half thought it was joking.

Another target group that got a split decision? Immigrants.

___

Overall, young people say this stuff is mostly an attempt at humor.

The poll ranked four possible reasons why people text or share discriminatory language:

—They're trying to be funny (53 percent think that's a major reason)

—They think it's "cool" to use that language (45 percent)

—They don't realize the language is offensive (32 percent)

—They really hold hateful feelings about the group (30 percent)

Although "hateful feelings" aren't rated as a prime motive, a big majority of young people — 7 in 10 — say hatred is at least a minor reason for posting or texting slurs about a group.

Young people seem jaded to a lot of the offensive stuff they see on the social network sites and online gaming communities. Fewer than half, for example, say they are very offended by online use of the N-word for African-Americans.

But that doesn't mean they think tweeting slurs or posting derogatory videos is all right.

A majority say it's never OK to use discriminatory language, even if you're just kidding.

___

Associated Press Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta and AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20131120/NEWS11/131129969/-1/NEWS

___

[Cin]

Fact Check: Social Security Does Not Increase the Deficit
Bought politicians and pundits continue to spread nonsense about America's best-loved program.

The American people love Social Security, and with good reason. It protects seniors and the disabled from poverty, and it is the most important life and disability safeguard available to the nation's 75 million children. The program is a bargain: Its administrative costs are lower than privately managed retirement plans. Social Security returns in benefits more than 99 cents of every dollar collected, whereas a typical 401(k) could easily eat up 20 cents of that dollar in fees. The program is fiscally sound and prudently managed — a policy triumph.

There are basically two categories of people who want to see Social Security cut: 1) financiers who wish to move us toward privatized retirement accounts so that they can charge us fees; and 2) rich people who do not like to pay taxes. Their main champions are conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, libertarians at the Cato Institute and Wall Street financier Pete Peterson.

Just about everybody else in America is against cutting Social Security, as poll after poll demonstrates. The people have continued to speak loudly and clearly, and yet Washington can’t seem to get the message. This is obviously because a lot of media people and politicians rely on money from the two groups mentioned above. So they have to come up with arguments to try to convince the public that up is down and red is blue. It’s a war of attrition: repeat lies and distortions often enough and maybe they’ll come to be taken as facts.

The latest volley is a shameful and distorted editorial in the Washington Post which attempts to downplay the retirement crisis faced by Americans and to stoke generational tensions by suggesting that Social Security is a burden on young people instead of a vital safeguard. The editorial actually mocked a sensible bill introduced by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) that would boost Social Security benefits by increasing taxes on the wealthy. The Washington Post's nonsense was blasted by Senator Elizabeth Warren, who spoke out strongly against cuts of any kind, including Obama's "chained CPI" cut which would prevent Social Security from keeping up with seniors' increasing costs.

A favorite tactic of Social Security's foes is to push the notion that the program somehow drives up the federal deficit, an argument that is completely without merit.

In the first place, the federal deficit is shrinking. That’s a highly inconvenient truth for people trying to stoke deficit hysteria, but they’re banking on the fact that a lot of Americans don’t know about the deficit going down. So they go on pretending that the federal deficit is a dire, pants-on-fire problem, even though most of them know that’s a bunch of hot air.

Even if the deficit were rising — which it’s not — the sensible way to deal with that would be to concentrate on putting people back to work and to invest in productive things like education and infrastructure. That gets the economy going and then, guess what? As tax revenues come back, the deficit goes down on its own, which is what’s happening right now.

Taking money out of people's pockets, which is what cutting Social Security would do, actually could have the rerverse effect of increasing the deficit because it means that people can’t buy the stuff they would normally buy with this money, like food and healthcare. When that happens, the businesses trying to sell those items have to scale back and lay off employees, which means less tax revenue for the government. And so on. Not exactly a recipe for a booming economy.

In the second place, it’s a plain economic fact that Social Security is not a driver of the deficit. Nevertheless, irresponsible people continue to confuse the public by using various tricks such as predictions of the future that have little basis in reality and accounting methods applied in devious ways.

We’re going to cut through all of that. By the end of this article, you will be able to confound all Republicans and centrist Democrats who offer up nonsense linking Social Security to the deficit and spread hyperbolic rhetoric.

1. Social Security is a self-financed program.

First, let’s talk about how Social Security works. If you are employed, you most likely pay a certain amount of your paycheck, generally 6.2 percent, to Social Security. Your employer kicks in the same amount. (The exception would be a few state and local workers who get public state pensions instead of Social Security).

The Social Security program has an independent budget that is separate from the rest of the federal government. Social Security is fundamentally a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today immediately go to pay benefits.

The finances of the Social Security program have been managed extremely well, and until the recent financial crisis and recession, more payments were collected than were needed for benefits and the surplus was placed into a trust fund. The Social Security program has loaned this extra money to the U.S. government, which used it for other things. In return, Social Security gets interest-bearing Treasury securities, or bonds.

The Wall Street-driven financial crisis and recession reduced the payroll collections, and in 2010, Social Security began to tap into its trust fund, which had been built up for just such an emergency.

You might hear some guy from the Cato Institute getting clever by pointing out that Social Security is using interest on the government bonds it holds to help pay for benefits, and therefore adding to the deficit because the government has to pay that interest. That’s a bit like saying that because I was smart and saved money and then loaned it to my profligate neighbor, I am somehow responsible for increasing his debt when I ask him to pay back what he borrowed. Would any reasonable person make such an upside-down claim?

No. Yet people calling themselves “fact checkers” are promoting this absurdity in the mainstream media.

As economist Dean Baker has explained, it’s a perfectly ordinary thing for bond holders to use interest collected on bonds. Grandmothers with pensions do it, and they aren’t generally accused of adding to the deficit. Just for fun, Baker uses the example of Pete Peterson as an illustration: “If Peter Peterson used $5 million in interest on government bonds he held to finance the startup of his Campaign to Fix the Debt, would it be accurate to say that he had contributed to the deficit? I suspect that most of the fact checkers would say that it is not.”

2. Social Security is not in danger of running out of money.

Another thing you hear is that Social Security is going to run out of money sometime in the future. Actually, by the forecasts made on the part of the Social Security Trustees, the program isn’t going to run out of money even if its trust funds — and that’s a big if — get depleted some decades down the road (2033 is the latest projected date).

The Trustees report is based on predictions that are deliberately conservative. Yet even with its worst-case scenario reasoning, the report says that the tax income would still be enough to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085. Does that sound like a crisis? No, because it isn’t. The real crisis is the growing number of Americans who will face retirement without traditional pensions and not enough money in their 401(k)s. Cutting Social Security would only add fuel to that fire.

3. There is no justification for tampering with Social Security’s financing right now.

Economists are not very good with crystal balls. If you don’t believe this, look at how few of them predicted the last financial crisis. Yet they are addicted to making prognostications.

Social Security’s finances are in perfectly good shape: the Social Security Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion surplus and will continue to grow until 2021. Perhaps there will be more trouble some decades down the road, but we will be better able to make those assessments when we actually see what the reality is. To cut benefits right now because of a problem that might occur years from now is ridiculous, unless of course your real concern is to cut taxes, which is naturally the desire of America’s Ebeneezer Scrooges.

If you insist on doing something right now, there is a very simple way to generate more revenue for the program, and it doesn’t involve cutting benefits in all the myriad ways the politicians and pundits have proposed: Raise the cap on earnings taxed to pay for Social Security from its current $113,000 to something like, say, $200,000. Presto! You now have loads more revenue and you did not keep grandma from buying medicine.

You don’t hear the greedy rich jumping on board with this idea, because they don’t like to pay taxes, even when doing so might benefit the economy where they make their millions. You don’t hear the financiers cheering this approach, because they really want to see the program destroyed so they can get their mitts on your retirement money. But it would certainly suit everybody else.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/fact-check-social-security-does-not-increase-deficit?paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

More Heartless Advice from McDonald's to Employees: Sell Your Christmas Gifts
The fast-food conglomerate would do just about anything to avoid paying a living wage.

As the giving season approaches, fast-food giant McDonald’s has found a new way to avoid helping its low-paid workers with a living wage: this time by urging employees to sell their Christmas presents for extra money. The helpful bit of corporate advice was posted on the company’s “McResource” employee webpage in an effort to help staff manage finances and stress as the holiday season approaches. Companies like McDonald's and Walmart are really outdoing themselves with the holidays approaching: Retail giant Wal-Mart's recently requested help with the company's food drive, with proceeds going to their own employees, because Wal-MArt does not pay them enough to afford food.

Of course, McDonald's also recently advised employees break food into little pieces in an effort to feel more full on less food. In yet more helpful tips from this very caring employer, McDonald’s also recommended singing away stress and taking two vacations a year to lower the risk of heart attack. And, of course, selling your possessions is not just good for Christmas presents, they advise “selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist” for “some quick cash.”

The company recommendations were publicized on Tuesday through Low Pay Is Not OK, an advocacy group for higher wages for fast food workers, arguing that the conglomerate asking its employees to make up for a lack of financial stability because of pitifully low wages was reprehensible. The organization quickly experienced blowback from McDonald’s, with the company flaming that the company-wide advice was taken out of context.

“This is an attempt by an outside organization to undermine a well-intended employee assistance resource website by taking isolated portions out of context,” the company said in a public statement.

The group was in the news earlier this month for releasing a recording of McDonald’s workers calling the company hotline asking for assistance, where the operators then urge the decade-long employee to apply for federal food stamps and Medicaid assistance. According to a recent study, 52% of families of major fast-food employees are enrolled in one or more public assistance programs, compared with the 25% of the whole workforce. The same employee in question was arrested that same month after confronting McDonald’s USA President Jeff Stratton during a speech in Chicago regarding the $8.25 hourly wage that left her unable to purchase clothing from her children, which has since been used as a major rallying cry for those asking for a major overhaul in fast food companies' obligation to their employees.

http://www.alternet.org/labor/more-heartless-advice-mcdonalds-employees-sell-your-christmas-gifts

McDonald’s Eating Tip: Break Your Food Into Pieces So You’ll Be Less Hungry

The more we hear about McDonald's HR resource center, appropriately titled McResources, the more we learn about the darkness of the human soul. Almost one month to the day after learning that their help center tells its employees to sign up for food stamps, Mickey D's has struck again. This time their website suggests its hungry, underpaid employees to break their food up into smaller bites so that it "results in eating less and still feeling full." The New York Times's Steve Greenhouse, a labor reporter, tweeted this screenshot of the McResources page that has many people aghast.

http://presstubes.com/mcdonalds-eating-tip-break-your-food-into-pieces-so-youll-be-less-hungry/

[Cin]

Noam Chomsky | Media Control and Indoctrination in the United States

http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/19815-media-control-and-indoctrination-in-the-united-states

[Cin]

End the 1 Percent’s Free Ride: Taxing Land Would Solve America’s Biggest Problems
Want a real overhaul of the tax code? Here's an elegant way to reduce inequality and mitigate poverty — in one tax.

Appealing to the overwhelming majority of Americans who believe the tax code is so complex that it needs “major changes or a complete overhaul,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., have adorably started a joint Twitter handle: @simplertaxes. The bipartisan love fest is no doubt a heartfelt effort, but not very convincing from men who acquired the fancy titles by opening and maintaining loopholes for the ownership class. Baucus’ hot-off-the-presses tax reform proposals predictably simplify the code very little.

At present, neither party advocates the tax code so elegant it can reduce inequality, mitigate poverty, stimulate productivity, prevent asset price bubbles, stem community-shredding gentrification and drain the distended Wall Street cabal of its ill-gotten gains – in just one tax.

Land value. If we want a real overhaul/simplification of the tax code, the way to do it is to tax land value. It might be the only tax we need. No sales tax. No income tax. No payroll tax to fill a Social Security trust fund. No corporate income tax that, as we can plainly see, offshores profits. No need to tax labor and industry at all. Just tax the stuff that humans had nothing to do with creating, and therefore have no basis to claim ownership over at all. You’ll find that almost all of it is “owned” by the fabled 1 percent.

And boy are they sucking a lot of money out of it. By far the most valuable asset form in the U.S. is real estate, and the majority of that is the value of the land, as distinct from the value of the human-made buildings. Economist Michael Hudson has assessed that the land value of New York City alone exceeds that of all of the plant and equipment in the entire country, combined. No one put any enterprise or cost into producing the land’s value – they simply bought it when it was cheap, sold it when it was dear, and waited for the check. “They” are the Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector, and they capture 40 percent of the United States’ profits, despite the complete passivity of their profit-accumulation method.

Not only would a land value tax (LVT) drastically shrink that Wall Street bloat, it would have prevented the housing bubble in the first place. Land, after all, was the speculative commodity at play, not the houses themselves, which, as “Arrested Development” incisively suggested, were a bunch of crap. With an LVT, the cookie-cutter McMansions in suburban housing developments would only be worth the cost of their cheap paneling, artificial marble and the rest of it. Without one, they were wrongly assessed as being worth the value of the land they stood upon, which speculators bid up and up and up.

An LVT would stimulate urban property development without incurring the socially catastrophic ethnic displacement pattern we call “gentrification.” As that noted far-left rag the Economist notes, “Property developers … would be less inclined to hoard undeveloped land if they had to pay an annual levy on it.” Despite this, the new developments wouldn’t push rents up throughout the rest of the neighborhood, because the increased land value would be taxed. The rest of the apartment buildings in the area didn’t get any nicer. So why should they cost more? Urban land, scarce by definition, is very valuable. There is no reason to let a small group of rich landlords extract its value, when what created the value are parks, subways, local restaurants and other things the landlords didn’t provide.

Nothing could simplify and demystify the taxation experience for Americans like making sure that the vast majority of us who don’t own the resources, who don’t collect rent and capital gains, who have to work to get our paychecks, wouldn’t ever have to mark April 15 on the calendar again.

In contrast to its tiny tax base, the amount of revenue that can be raised by taxing the land is huge. Enough, for example, to support truly liberatory social spending, like a universal basic income, without risking inflation. Or the money could be devoted to starting a sovereign wealth fund to collectivize ownership claims on capital (the dividends to provide a UBI). Or it could go to local public banks capable of investing in the needs of their communities and regions.

If this sounds like it’s a little too far outside the box, the solution is to collapse the box. Capitalism requires pretending that individuals’ private ownership of the land, minerals, gases and oils that nature provided is not a completely ludicrous idea. And as long as our political parties are both capitalist parties, there is little hope for a land value tax. But the day is coming, and soon, when it will no longer be so.

http://www.alternet.org/tax-land-end-1-percents-plutocracy?page=0%2C1&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Sarah Palin is really going to be upset this time. She's had to speak out about her concern over his liberal agenda already. This is going to push her over the edge. Citizens should be guaranteed dignified work, education and healthcare. What is wrong with this guy. Must be a socialist. And clearly he doesn't understand what god is really concerned about and what religion's role is supposed to be.

Pope Francis Attacks 'Idolatry of Money,' Says Inequality 'Kills'
Pope Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens.

Pope Francis launched a broadside against inequality and out-of-control capitalism in a 84-page document released Tuesday.

In what is known as an “apostolic exhortation,” which means communication from the Pope of the Catholic Church, Francis called on politicians to guarantee “dignified work, education and healthcare” to their citizens and also criticized the “idolatry of money,” according to Reuters. Francis “beg[ged] the Lord” to deliver politicians who were more concerned with the poor and inequality.

Francis blasted the current economic system as one that is profoundly unequal.

“Just as the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say 'thou shalt not' to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills,” the Pope wrote. “As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world's problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”

He also repeated his calls for reform in the Catholic Church, though still said that women could not become priests. He did say that women should have more influence in the church.

Francis himself has made it a point to practice what he preaches. He lives in a guest house at the Vatican rathan the usual, lavish Apostolic Palace. Last month, Reuters notes Pope Francis suspended a bishop who spent millions on his residence.

http://www.alternet.org/pope-francis-inequality-and-capitalism

[Cin]

How Wall Street Turned America Into Incarceration Nation
Transforming poorer neighborhoods into desirable real estate for the new elites often requires getting rid of the poor: jail becomes the new home for many.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/how-wall-st-turned-america-incarceration-nation

[Andrea]

Florida woman in warning-shot case released

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/28/justice/florida-stand-your-ground-release/index.html?hpt=hp_t2 (http://edition.cnn.com/2013/11/28/justice/florida-stand-your-ground-release/index.html?hpt=hp_t2)

"A Florida woman who was sentenced to 20 years for firing a gun to scare off her allegedly abusive husband has been released from prison as she awaits a new trial, her attorney said.

Marissa Alexander was released Wednesday night, attorney Bruce Zimet said."

[Cin]

16-Year-Old Jailed at Rikers for 3 Years Without Trial

A teen who spent three years in a notorious New York jail without ever having been convicted or put on trial is coming forward after filing a lawsuit against New York City. In June, charges against Kalief Browder were mysteriously dropped and he was released, as first reported by WABC-TV.

Browder was a 16-year-old sophomore in high school walking home from a party in the Bronx when he was arrested on a tip that he robbed someone three weeks earlier. He was hauled off to Rikers Island, a prison known for punishing conditions and overuse of force, and was held because he couldn’t pay the $10,000 bail. Browder went to court on several occasions, but he was never scheduled for trial. After 33 months in jail, Browder said a judge offered freedom in exchange for a guilty plea, threatening that he could face 15 years in jail if convicted. He refused. Then one day, he was released with no explanation.

“They just dismissed the case and they think it’s all right. No apology, no nothing,” he told WABC-TV. Now at age 20 with his teen years behind him, Browder is first faced with finishing his GED and trying to make up for three years of his teen years lost.

Browder says he spent more than 400 days in solitary confinement, was deprived of meals, and was assaulted and beaten both by officers and fellow inmates. Browder attempted suicide at least six times. Last month he filed a lawsuit last month against the city and several agencies. The Bronx District Attorney’s office has declined to comment.

Browder’s story lays out a laundry list of some of the most prevalent problems with the criminal justice system. Browder was stopped in the Bronx, where the New York Police Department came under particular fire for its over-aggressive use of stops and unsubstantiated charges of “trespassing.” He was purportedly jailed based solely on one report to police, reinforcing race disparities in the criminal justice system. He was held in jail pursuant to bail policies that routinely punish the impoverished. And he was held in solitary confinement as a juvenile, even though the draconian punishment has particularly detrimental long-term effects on youths.

An internal review recently obtained by the Associated Press finds a spike in use of both solitary confinement and force by staff at Rikers Island.

http://www.alternet.org/16-year-old-jailed-rikers-3-years-without-trial

[Cin]

Corporations Should Pay a Living Wage or Face the Death Penalty
Doing business is a privilege, not a right. Let's take our power back.

If businesses can't pay a living wage, they should get the corporate death penalty.

Doing business in America – and pretty much every other developed country in the world – is a privilege, not a right.

In order to do business, you, or you and a group of participants, must petition a Secretary of State for a business license.

If your petition is granted, you will be given to set of privileges ranging from the ability to deduct from your income taxes the costs of your meals (if you discuss business), to a whole variety of special tax breaks, incentives, and immunities from prosecution for things that, had you done them as an individual, you might otherwise go to prison for.

When we set up this country more than 200 years ago, we established some of these privileges, and associated with them some pretty heavy responsibilities.

Up until the 1890s, a corporation couldn’t last more than 40 years in any state – which prevented them from being used as a tool to accumulate massive and multigenerational wealth. A corporation had to behave in the public interest, and when they weren’t, thousands of them every year were given the corporate death penalty, their assets dissolved and their stockholders losing everything (but nothing more than) they had invested.

Over the years, as the Supreme Court has given more and more power to wealthy individuals and corporations, these responsibilities receded so far into the background that in one state, Delaware, your articles of incorporation can be a single sentence stating that you intend to “Do whatever is legal in the state of Delaware.” Which is probably why more than half of all the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange are Delaware corporations.

The reason we originally allowed businesses to do business in this country was that some benefit would come to society from it. But since the era of New Deal economics was replaced by Reaganomics, the principal rationalization we use to give limitations of liability and privileges to corporations and their masters has changed from, “What is best for society?” to, “How can somebody best get rich quick?”

This is a perversion of the entire concept of why nations allowed people and corporations to do business, and why we facilitate that activity by providing at public expense: stable currencies and a stable banking system; predictable and fair court systems; transportation, electrical, water, septic, and communications infrastructure; a criminal justice system to enforce the rules of the game of business; and a workforce educated at the public expense and protected with a public pension called Social Security. We do all these things so the business will provide some good to the public while, in the meantime, enriching its owners.

But a new business model has emerged in the United States. Companies still get the privileges, but they no longer have to conduct themselves in ways that inure a net positive to the public.

Companies are now free to demand not just huge welfare payments, tax breaks, and subsidies, but can actually play one state off against another in a competition for which state this most willing to transfer the most dollars from the taxpaying individual people to the corporations and their billionaire CEOs. Similarly, corporations routinely use “Right To Work For Less” laws empowered by the Taft-Hartley Act to pit workers in high-wage states against workers in low-wage states, producing a national race to the bottom.

Boeing, for example, is participating in both of these practices right now, having just taken billions from Washington State and now playing their workers against desperate workers in old Confederate states. Senator Bernie Sanders has recommended that when States participate in letting corporations play states off against each other, both states should lose federal highway funds.

That, or any other remedy, is pretty unlikely as America continues to race from being one of the world’s wealthiest nations pre-Reagan, to a post-Reagan dystopia; the first modern, fully developed, industrialized nation to actually de-industrialize and move in the direction from First World status toward Third World status as a result of 32 years of Reaganomics.

Finally, a particularly pernicious form of this new business model has emerged, in part out of the radical restructuring of welfare systems in the 1990s led by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.

Because welfare reform in the 1990s tied the ability to receive welfare to having to work, low-wage employers discovered that as long as they kept their employees’ pay below the poverty level, you and I, through our tax dollars, would pick up the rest of their employees cost-of-living through food stamps, Medicare, etc. The result is higher taxes for us, and billions in additional money for the CEOs and stockholders of America’s largest companies.

This is not how business should be done in America. If a company refuses to pay – or, their business model is so bad, that they can’t pay – at least a living wage, they should not receive the privilege of doing business in this country.

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/thom-hartmann-case-corporate-death-penalty?page=0%2C1&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Before I became a Canadian citizen, even before I received my permanent resident card, I was given medicare. I was told I was accepted for permanent residency in January of 2006 and although I could not work until I received my official acceptance and my permanent resident card, which would not happen until June of that year, I was eligible for healthcare immediately. I still remember my amazement. I pointed out the discrepancy to the woman who gave me the good news and she smiled and explained that in Canada health care was a right not a privilege and while I might have to wait for an official card to work, no one expected me to go without health care while I waited for the wheels of the bureaucracy to turn. When I saw this article I immediately thought of my first experience with my adopted country and how different the mindset is here. I don't understand why my native country still refuses to care for its citizens.


21 Ways Canada's Single-Payer System Beats Obamacare
Canadian style single-payer healthcare is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal—dream on, America.

Dear America:

Costly complexity is baked into Obamacare. No health insurance system is without problems but Canadian style single-payer full Medicare for all is simple, affordable, comprehensive and universal.

In the early 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson enrolled 20 million elderly Americans into Medicare in six months. There were no websites. They did it with index cards!

Below please find 21 Ways the Canadian Health Care System is Better than Obamacare.

Repeal Obamacare and replace it with the much more efficient single-payer, everybody in, nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital.

Love, Canada

Number 21:
In Canada, everyone is covered automatically at birth – everybody in, nobody out.

In the United States, under Obamacare, 31 million Americans will still be uninsured by 2023 and millions more will remain underinsured.

Number 20:
In Canada, the health system is designed to put people, not profits, first.

In the United States, Obamacare will do little to curb insurance industry profits and will actually enhance insurance industry profits.

Number 19:
In Canada, coverage is not tied to a job or dependent on your income – rich and poor are in the same system, the best guaranty of quality.

In the United States, under Obamacare, much still depends on your job or income. Lose your job or lose your income, and you might lose your existing health insurance or have to settle for lesser coverage.

Number 18:
In Canada, health care coverage stays with you for your entire life.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for tens of millions of Americans, health care coverage stays with you for as long as you can afford your share.

Number 17:
In Canada, you can freely choose your doctors and hospitals and keep them. There are no lists of “in-network” vendors and no extra hidden charges for going “out of network.”

In the United States, under Obamacare, the in-network list of places where you can get treated is shrinking – thus restricting freedom of choice – and if you want to go out of network, you pay for it.

Number 16:
In Canada, the health care system is funded by income, sales and corporate taxes that, combined, are much lower than what Americans pay in premiums.

In the United States, under Obamacare, for thousands of Americans, it’s pay or die – if you can’t pay, you die. That’s why many thousands will still die every year under Obamacare from lack of health insurance to get diagnosed and treated in time.

Number 15:
In Canada, there are no complex hospital or doctor bills. In fact, usually you don’t even see a bill.

In the United States, under Obamacare, hospital and doctor bills will still be terribly complex, making it impossible to discover the many costly overcharges.

Number 14:
In Canada, costs are controlled. Canada pays 10 percent of its GDP for its health care system, covering everyone.

In the United States, under Obamacare, costs continue to skyrocket. The U.S. currently pays 18 percent of its GDP and still doesn’t cover tens of millions of people.

Number 13:
In Canada, it is unheard of for anyone to go bankrupt due to health care costs.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care driven bankruptcy will continue to plague Americans.

Number 12:
In Canada, simplicity leads to major savings in administrative costs and overhead.

In the United States, under Obamacare, complexity will lead to ratcheting up administrative costs and overhead.

Number 11:
In Canada, when you go to a doctor or hospital the first thing they ask you is: “What’s wrong?”

In the United States, the first thing they ask you is: “What kind of insurance do you have?”

Number 10:
In Canada, the government negotiates drug prices so they are more affordable.

In the United States, under Obamacare, Congress made it specifically illegal for the government to negotiate drug prices for volume purchases, so they remain unaffordable.

Number 9:
In Canada, the government health care funds are not profitably diverted to the top one percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, health care funds will continue to flow to the top. In 2012, CEOs at six of the largest insurance companies in the U.S. received a total of $83.3 million in pay, plus benefits.

Number 8:
In Canada, there are no necessary co-pays or deductibles.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the deductibles and co-pays will continue to be unaffordable for many millions of Americans.

Number 7:
In Canada, the health care system contributes to social solidarity and national pride.

In the United States, Obamacare is divisive, with rich and poor in different systems and tens of millions left out or with sorely limited benefits.

Number 6:
In Canada, delays in health care are not due to the cost of insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, patients without health insurance or who are underinsured will continue to delay or forgo care and put their lives at risk.

Number 5:
In Canada, nobody dies due to lack of health insurance.

In the United States, under Obamacare, many thousands will continue to die every year due to lack of health insurance.

Number 4:
In Canada, an increasing majority supports their health care system, which costs half as much, per person, as in the United States. And in Canada, everyone is covered.

In the United States, a majority – many for different reasons – oppose Obamacare.

Number 3:
In Canada, the tax payments to fund the health care system are progressive – the lowest 20 percent pays 6 percent of income into the system while the highest 20 percent pays 8 percent.

In the United States, under Obamacare, the poor pay a larger share of their income for health care than the affluent.

Number 2:
In Canada, the administration of the system is simple. You get a health care card when you are born. And you swipe it when you go to a doctor or hospital. End of story.

In the United States, Obamacare’s 2,500 pages plus regulations (the Canadian Medicare Bill was 13 pages) is so complex that then Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said before passage “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Number 1:
In Canada, the majority of citizens love their health care system.

In the United States, the majority of citizens, physicians, and nurses prefer the Canadian type system – single-payer, free choice of doctor and hospital , everybody in, nobody out.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/21-ways-canadas-single-payer-system-beats-obamacare

[Cin]

I would love to see a woman president. I just prefer it be someone like Elizabeth Warren and not another corporate owned minion. The sex of the POTUS will make no difference if the heart beating in the chest and the brain functioning in the head has been bought and paid for by Wall Street.


The Dynastic Hillary Bandwagon – Bad for America

The Hillary Clinton for President in 2016 bandwagon has started very early and with a purpose. The idea is to get large numbers of endorsers, so that no Democratic Primary competitors dare make a move. These supporters include Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), financier George Soros and Ready for Hillary, a super PAC mobilizing with great specificity (already in Iowa).

Given this early bird launch, it is important to raise the pressing question:

Does the future of our country benefit from Hillary, another Clinton, another politician almost indistinguishable from Barack Obama’s militaristic, corporatist policies garnished by big money donors from Wall Street and other plutocratic canyons?

There is no doubt the Clintons are syrupy political charmers, beguiling many naïve Democrats who have long been vulnerable to a practiced set of comforting words or phrases camouflaging contrary deeds.

Everybody knows that Hillary is for women, children and education. She says so every day. But Democrats and others can’t get the Clintons even to support a $10.50 federal minimum wage that would almost equal the 1968 minimum wage, inflation-adjusted, and would raise the wages of 30 million workers mired in the gap between the present minimum wage of $7.25 and $10.50 an hour. It just so happens that almost two-thirds of these Americans are women, many of them single moms struggling to support their impoverished children. Nearly a million of these workers labor for Walmart, on whose Board of Directors Hillary Clinton once sat. Words hide the deeds.

As a Senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Hillary had to start proving that women, just like the macho men, can be belligerent and never see a weapons system and its use that they didn’t like. Never did she demonstrate any ongoing interest in debloating the massive, wasteful, duplicative military budget so as to free up big monies for domestic public works programs or other necessities.

As Senator she also admitted that she didn’t have time to read a critical National Intelligence Estimate Report, which had caveats that might have dissuaded her from voting with George W. Bush to invade Iraq in 2003. War-mongering and wars of Empire never bothered her then or now. Just a few weeks ago, she was photographed giving the recidivist war criminal, Republican Henry Kissinger, a big, smiling hug at a public event. It’s all part of the bi-partisan image she is cultivating under the opportunistic banner of “cooperation.” (For more information, read the New York Times’ Collateral Damage and Nixon and Kissinger’s Forgotten Shame, or Seymour Hersh’s The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon White House.)

As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton accelerated the Department’s militarization, belting far more war-like, threatening assertions toward governments of developing countries than did the Secretaries of Defense. She loved to give speeches on “force projection,” the latest synonym for “the Empire,” and “the pivot” toward East Asia and against the asserted looming threat of China. Taking due note, the Chinese generals demanded larger budgets.

The Secretary of State’s highest duty is diplomacy. Not for her. Despite her heavy travelling, she made little or no effort to get the government to sign onto the numerous international treaties which already had over a hundred nations as signatories. These include stronger climate change agreements and, as Human Rights Watch reports, unratified treaties “relating to children, women, persons with disabilities, torture, enforced disappearance and the use of anti-personal landmines and cluster munitions.” These tasks bore her.

Much more exciting was military action. Against the wishes of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, she pulled Barack Obama into the Libyan war. There were consequences. Libya is now in militia chaos, having spilled over into Mali, but without Gaddafi, its overthrown dictator who had disarmed and was making peace with western nations and oil companies.

As a Yale Law School graduate, she was not in the least bothered that the attack on Libya occurred without any Congressional declaration, authorization or appropriation of funds – a classic Madisonian definition of impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors.

Like Bill Clinton, she is an unabashed cheerleader for corporate globalization under NAFTA, the World Trade Organization and the proposed sovereignty-stripping, anti-worker Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement. Secretary of State Clinton, in the words of trade expert Jamie Love, “put the hammer to India when the government took steps to grant compulsory licenses on cancer drug patents” by not requiring life-saving compulsory license of expensive drugs so that low-income people and their children could have access to more affordable medication.

Even regarding the easy clampdown on waste and fraud, Hillary Clinton fired Peter Van Buren, a 24-year-Foreign Service Officer, who exposed such waste and mismanagement by corporate contractors in Iraq. (For more information, see http://wemeantwell.com/).

Foreshadowing this season’s headlines, former Secretary of State Clinton ordered U.S. officials to spy on top UN diplomats including Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-Moon, and those from the United Kingdom. She ordered her emissaries around the world to obtain DNA data, iris scans and fingerprints along with credit card and frequent flier numbers. Not only was this a clear violation of the 1946 UN convention, but after admitting what happened she didn’t even make a public apology to the affected parties.

Under her watch, the advice and status of the Department’s foreign service officers and aid workers were marginalized in favor of the militarists – and not only in Iraq.

Many Wall Streeters like Hillary Clinton. Expecting their ample contributions, and socializing with their business barons, it is not surprising that Hillary Clinton avoids going after the crooked casino capitalism that collapsed the economy, drained investors, pensions, jobs and taxpayer bailouts. Hillary Clinton is a far cry from the stalwart Senator Elizabeth Warren on this towering pattern of unaccountable corporate abuse.

The surreal world of Hillary Clinton is giving $200,000 speeches, collecting prestigious awards she does not deserve, including one from the American Bar Association, and basking in the glory of her admirers while appropriately blasting the Republicans for their “War on Women” – the safe refrain of her forthcoming campaign.

It is true that the Republican madheads make it easy for any Democratic candidate to judge themselves by the cruel, rabid, ravaging Republicans. But, is that the kind of choice our country deserves?

A Clinton Coronation two years or more before the 2016 elections will stifle any broader choice of competitive primary candidates and more important a more progressive agenda supported by a majority of the American people.

Full Medicare for all, cracking down on corporate abuses, a fairer tax system, a broad public works program, a living wage, access to justice and citizen empowerment, clean election practices, and pulling back on the expensive, boomeranging Empire to come home to America’s necessities and legitimate hopes are some examples of what the people want.

Maybe the sugarcoating is starting to wear. Columnist Frank Bruni, writing in the New York Times (Hillary in 2016? Not so Fast), reports her polls are starting to slump. Apparently, as Bruni suggests, she’s being seen as part of the old Washington crowd that voters are souring on.

As I wrote to Hillary Clinton in early summer 2008, when calls were made by Obama partisans for her to drop out, no one should be told not to run. That’s everyone’s First Amendment right. However, not voting for her is the prudent decision.

http://nader.org/2013/11/08/dynastic-hillary-bandwagon-bad-america/

[Okiebug61]

http://news.yahoo.com/metro-north-derailment-133919511.html

Hoping no from BFP or family and friends are on this train.

Sending positive thoughts.

[Kätzchen]

I couldn't agree with you more in that I would support a presidential bid by someone like Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), but I just read today that she's not going to run for president and carry out her term as an elected Senator for the DNP in Massachussetts.

I don't know about you or others, but when I read that brief news article this afternoon, the first thing that came to mind was .... 'Why is it that Senator Warren would rather finish out her term in Massachussetts vs elect to run for the seat of president in 2016?'

An idea that came to mind was one that centers on a much larger political agenda that the public does not really know about. I think it's great that Senator Warren feels compelled to carry out her term as Senator. If she were a senator in my homestate, I'd want her to be on board with making sure our state didn't lose its foothold in the ongoing struggle to represent a more progressive and liberal-minded agenda, rather than cede to seats of power that seemingly don't always cultivate an economy which allows autonomy for everyone.

I made a conscious decision recently to align myself with an independent political party; which I think is a wise decision, in light of broken economies across the country.

I'm going to strictly vote a Green Party ticket, next time around.

[Okiebug61]

95 Years old!

[Jet]

Miss Tick, you have put a lot in your posts. Kudos!

[Corkey]

http://politicalblindspot.com/arkansas-nuclear-plant-explosion-goes-unreported-by-national-media/

Nuclear plant explosion and fire in Arkansas, no media reports.

[Kobi]

NEW YORK - Time magazine selected Pope Francis as its Person of the Year on Wednesday, saying the Catholic Church's new leader has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.

The pope beat out NSA leaker Edward Snowden for the distinction, which the newsmagazine has been giving each year since 1927.

The former Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected in March as the first pope from Latin America and the first Jesuit. Since taking over at the Vatican, he has urged the Catholic Church not to be obsessed with "small-minded rules" and to emphasize compassion over condemnation in dealing with touchy topics like abortion, gays and contraception.

He has denounced the world's "idolatry of money" and the "global scandal" that nearly 1 billion people today go hungry, and has
charmed the masses with his simple style and wry sense of humor. His appearances draw tens of thousands of people at a clip and his @Pontifex Twitter account recently topped 10 million followers.

"He really stood out to us as someone who has changed the tone and the perception and the focus of one of the world's largest institutions in an extraordinary way," said Nancy Gibbs, the magazine's managing editor.

The Vatican said the honor wasn't surprising given the resonance in the general public that Francis has had, but it nevertheless said the choice was a "positive" recognition of spiritual values in the international media.

"The Holy Father is not looking to become famous or to receive honors," said the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi. "But if the choice of Person of Year helps spread the message of the Gospel — a message of God's love for everyone — he will certainly be happy about that."

It was the third time a Catholic pope had been Time's selection. John Paul II was selected in 1994 and John XXIII was chosen in 1962.

Besides Snowden, Time had narrowed its finalists down to gay rights activist Edith Windsor, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Time editors made the selection. The magazine polled readers for their choice, and the winner was Egyptian General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who didn't even make the top 10 of Time's final list.

-------------------------------


The editors at Time must be seeing a different Pope than I do.

[*Anya*]

On France News this AM on BBC:

The UN confirmed Syria used chemical weapons against its own people (protestors) 5 times, up through August, 2013.

During two of those attacks: they used Sarin.

Why is this not on network news in the USA?

Is it really important that people lined up for a week to buy cheap video games and it had to be shown on network news?

I guess that is what passes for "news".

:olive:

[Tommi]

I cared for my estranged Ex during her final 6 months, Alzheimer's and dementia, progressing daily. Now, my beloved's Mother is drifting away. Please take a moment. It hits home.

Contact Your Representative
Budget Deal Struck and the Countdown Begins


Please reach out to your Member of Congress. Feel free to use some of the talking points shown below:


While there has been substantial progress in the fight against Alzheimer's,the soaring global costs of Alzheimer's and dementia care, the escalating number of people living with the disease, and the challenges encountered by affected families demand a meaningful, aggressive and ambitious effort to solve this crisis.

Alzheimer's is the most expensive disease in America and is set to increase like no other.
Today, the more than 5 million American's living with Alzheimer's cost our nation an estimated $203 billion, including $142 billion to Medicare and Medicaid.
If we fail to make a difference right now in the fight against Alzheimer's, the number of Americans living with Alzheimer's could soar to as many as 16 million in 2050.
Costs from Alzheimer's on its current path between now and 2050 will total $20 trillion.
Congress must continue its bipartisan support for the National Alzheimer's Plan by providing an additional $100 million in resources for research, education, care and support activities.


On December 10th, the Bipartisan Budget Conference led by Senator Patty Murray and Representative Paul Ryan reached a deal on the federal budget for the current fiscal year. The House of Representatives passed the budget on December 12th and the Senate is likely to do the same today. Now the Appropriations Committees have begun working quickly to write the funding bills for FY2014. These weeks are critical for Alzheimer’s funding.

While the House did not increase funding for Alzheimer's disease research and support services, the Senate Appropriations bill passed out of Committee earlier this year included an additional $100 million in funding for these vital programs. Now we must urge all of Congress to follow the Senate in providing a much needed increase in Alzheimer's funding!

Please contact your member of the U.S. House of Representatives now.

Are you on Facebook or Twitter? Please reach out to your Representative with the following messages:

Please help #EndAlz by securing critical Alzheimer’s Resources
Urge members of Congress to follow the Senate and provide a much needed funding increase for Alzheimer’s!
I just asked (see link below for yours) to secure vital Alzheimer’s Resources. Will you?

http://act.alz.org/site/Advocacy?pagename=homepage&id=1171

For easy contact info, which just takes a moment of your time..>

https://act.alz.org/site/Advocacy;jsessionid=E0917BF1D1F7C09771DB7D6D2E43CA 87.app205a?pagename=homepage&page=UserAction&id=1171

As negotiations continue over the FY14 Budget, I urge you to ensure that Alzheimer's is a national priority by supporting an additional $100 million in resources for Alzheimer's disease research, education, care and support activities.

[CherylNYC]

From the NY Times:

Ugandan Parliament Approves Antigay Law
By ALAN COWELL
Published: December 20, 2013


LONDON — After years of argument that has drawn ferocious condemnation from outsiders like President Obama, the Ugandan Parliament approved legislation on Friday introducing harsher punishment — including life imprisonment —for what the law called “aggravated homosexuality,” news reports said.

The law was not as tough as an initial bill, first mooted in 2009 and later withdrawn, that would have imposed the death sentence in some cases and would have required citizens to report acts of homosexuality within 24 hours. Mr. Obama called that legislation “odious.” But it reflected a broader aversion to homosexuality across Africa that has brought persecution and intolerance in many countries.

Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda but David Bahati, a lawmaker who has promoted the antigay legislation, said existing laws needed to be strengthened to prevent Western homosexuals from promoting it among young Ugandans.

“I am officially illegal,” Agence France-Presse quoted a gay activist, Frank Mugisha, as saying when the legislation was approved on Friday. Like legislation in Russia against “gay propaganda,” the new law would criminalize the public promotion of homosexuality, including discussion of the issue by rights groups, news reports said.

Agence France-Presse quoted Mr. Bahati as saying the new law represented “victory for Uganda.”

“ I am glad the Parliament has voted against evil,” he said.

“Because we are a God-fearing nation, we value life in a holistic way,” he said. “It is because of those values that members of Parliament passed this bill regardless of what the outside world thinks.”

The legislation was promoted in part by the country’s influential evangelical pastors, some of them supported and partly financed by American churches.

When the bill was re-introduced last year, it deepened tensions in Uganda’s religious and traditional society between advocates and opponents of gay rights. At one point a government minister personally broke up a clandestine gay rights meeting in a hotel, saying homosexuals should face the firing squad.

In 2011 a newspaper published a list of gay people and urged readers and policy makers to “hang them.”

[MissItalianDiva]

Gay marriage is now legal in UTAH!! I couldnt believe it...awesome day

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57291925-78/ban-judge-sex-court.html.csp

[Lady Pamela]

I live in Utah and never thought I would be alive to actually see it happen.
I am freakin so excited!
I know they will apeal it and a struggle for it will happen. But atleast its happening.

I thought this would be last on the list honestly.

SUPER COOL!!!!!!

Gay marriage is now legal in UTAH!! I couldnt believe it...awesome day

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57291925-78/ban-judge-sex-court.html.csp

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/20/21989350-female-sailors-forced-to-march-with-buckets-of-human-waste-navy-says?lite

Poor young women, how much damage did this, one of many incidents, scar them for life?

If the effing economy would be more balanced, these young women would have more professional choices in their lives.

[CherylNYC]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/24/alan-turing-pardoned-uk-gay_n_4497427.html


Alan Turing Pardoned By UK Government, Finally
By RAPHAEL SATTER 12/24/13 06:45 AM ET EST AP

Alan Turing Pardoned
LONDON (AP) — His code breaking prowess helped the Allies outfox the Nazis, his theories laid the foundation for the computer age, and his work on artificial intelligence still informs the debate over whether machines can think.

But Alan Turing was gay, and 1950s Britain punished the mathematician's sexuality with a criminal conviction, intrusive surveillance and hormone treatment meant to extinguish his sex drive.

Now, nearly half a century after the war hero's suicide, Queen Elizabeth II has finally granted Turing a pardon.

"Turing was an exceptional man with a brilliant mind," Justice Secretary Chris Grayling said in a prepared statement released Tuesday. Describing Turing's treatment as unjust, Grayling said the code breaker "deserves to be remembered and recognized for his fantastic contribution to the war effort and his legacy to science."

The pardon has been a long time coming.

Turing's contributions to science spanned several disciplines, but he's perhaps best remembered as the architect of the effort to crack the Enigma code, the cypher used by Nazi Germany to secure its military communications. Turing's groundbreaking work — combined with the effort of cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park near Oxford and the capture of several Nazi code books — gave the Allies the edge across half the globe, helping them defeat the Italians in the Mediterranean, beat back the Germans in Africa and escape enemy submarines in the Atlantic.

"It could be argued and it has been argued that he shortened the war, and that possibly without him the Allies might not have won the war," said David Leavitt, the author of a book on Turing's life and work. "That's highly speculative, but I don't think his contribution can be underestimated. It was immense."

Even before the war, Turing was formulating ideas that would underpin modern computing, ideas which matured into a fascination with artificial intelligence and the notion that machines would someday challenge the minds of man. When the war ended, Turing went to work programing some of the world's first computers, drawing up — among other things — one of the earliest chess games.

Turing made no secret of his sexuality, and being gay could easily lead to prosecution in post-war Britain. In 1952, Turing was convicted of "gross indecency" over his relationship with another man, and he was stripped of his security clearance, subjected to monitoring by British authorities, and forced to take estrogen to neutralize his sex drive — a process described by some as chemical castration.


S. Barry Cooper, a University of Leeds mathematician who has written about Turing's work, said future generations would struggle to understand the code breaker's treatment.

"You take one of your greatest scientists, and you invade his body with hormones," he said in a telephone interview. "It was a national failure."

Depressed and angry, Turing committed suicide in 1954.

Turing's legacy was long obscured by secrecy — "Even his mother wasn't allowed to know what he'd done," Cooper said. But as his contribution to the war effort was gradually declassified, and personal computers began to deliver on Turing's promise of "universal machines," the injustice of his conviction became ever more glaring. Then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an apology for Turing's treatment in 2009, but campaigners kept pressing for a formal pardon.

One of them, British lawmaker Iain Stewart, told The Associated Press he was delighted with the news that one had finally been granted.

"He helped preserve our liberty," Steward said in a telephone interview. "We owed it to him in recognition of what he did for the country — and indeed the free world — that his name should be cleared."

[Lady Pamela]

Worth the read.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/obama-administration-secretly-extends-health-care-enrollment-deadline/2013/12/23/66470068-6bdf-11e3-aecc-85cb037b7236_story.html

[Kobi]

http://sharing.wishtv.com/sharewdpp/photo/2014/01/16/Afghanistan%20Female%20Police%20Chief_5249794_ver1 .0_640_480.JPEG


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — She wears a black headscarf instead of a cap. But otherwise Col. Jamila Bayaz looks like any other district police chief in Afghanistan as she reviews checkpoints in the center of Kabul.

Bayaz, 50, is the first woman to be promoted to run an entire district — the highest front-line appointment for an Afghan policewoman. With just two days on the job, she said she feels up to the challenge despite the threat as policewomen are among the Taliban's top targets.

"I work day and night," she said as she walked through a money exchange bazaar that lies at the heart of Kabul's District 1. "I am ready to serve, I am not scared nor am I afraid."

Women have made much progress since the days of Taliban rule, when they were forced to cover their heads and faces with burqas and banned from going to school or outdoors without a male relative as an escort. They have greater access to education, health care and the workplace but still face widespread discrimination, domestic abuse and militant attacks in this ultraconservative Islamic society.

Being a woman in the public eye poses particular difficulties.

In the past seven months, several prominent women have been attacked, including two Afghan police officers who were killed in the south, an Indian author living in eastern Afghanistan who was killed years after her memoir about life under Taliban rule became a Bollywood film, and an Afghan senator who was wounded in an ambush. Another female parliamentarian was kidnapped by the Taliban and later released in a prisoner exchange.

The assaults have added to growing fears that what few gains Afghan women have made since the U.S. toppled the Taliban government in 2001 could be erased once American-led foreign troops finish withdrawing at the end of the year.

Bayaz's district — one of 10 in the sprawling city of about 5 million people — houses the presidential palace, numerous ministries, the central bank and the main money exchange and gold markets.

She was appointed to oversee it on Monday, more than three decades after joining the police force. In her previous position, she was a plainclothes officer and wore the traditional robe as well as a headscarf. She draws more attention now wearing pants as part of her gray uniform, though she continues to cover her hair instead of wearing a cap.

During the Taliban's harsh five-year rule, Bayaz stayed at home taking care of her children.

"I was a housewife taking care of my family," she said. "Women are part of society and since they left, more and more are getting involved and they need to join the police."

In the two days following her appointment, she has been making the rounds checking on markets and other areas in her district accompanied by a large group of police bodyguards. Although she drives, her bodyguards now take Bayaz around the city and to the police station.

"When I got out of my car, I spoke to my police officers on duty and all eyes were on me. It was interesting for the people to see a woman in uniform," she said. "Carrying out my duties in uniform is a lesson for others. I hope it inspires other women to wear the uniform and I hope more women become officers."

Afghan policewomen are frequently threatened and targeted by the insurgents after and several have been killed in the past few years. In one high-profile example, Lt. Col. Malalai Kakar, who worked in southern Kandahar province, was shot dead by the Taliban in 2008.

Bayaz acknowledges the danger.

"I am the first woman district chief in Afghanistan. There are difficulties, but I will continue," she said.

According to a report released late last year by the international aid agency Oxfam, efforts to recruit more women into Afghanistan's police force have been met with limited success. In 2005, the national police force employed just 180 women out of 53,400 personnel, the report said. By July 2013, that had risen to 1,551 policewomen out of 157,000.

Female police officers are part of teams that search the women's sections of homes during raids, but also work in criminal investigations.

Despite the challenges, recruiting more women to serve as police could have major benefits for the Afghan population, especially women and girls who feel uncomfortable or even afraid reporting crimes to male police, Oxfam said.

Bayaz previously worked in the criminal investigation and counternarcotic departments.

She enjoys great support from her family, including her two daughters and three sons.

Her youngest son Tawhid agreed. The 12-year-old was visiting his mother at the police station after complaining he had not seen her for days and wanted to see what she did at work.

http://www.wishtv.com/news/international/afghanistans-first-female-police-chief-starts-job_70231432

-------------------------------


This is one of those mixed emotions things for me. One the one hand, it is good to see a woman in a traditionally male role in an Islamic society. On the other hand, given the males attitudes towards women do not seem to have changed much, part of me wonders if the thought behind this was more akin to better a woman as a sacrificial lamb for the Taliban than a man.

[Kobi]

Man's sex with 11-year-old not abusive, Italian court rules


An Italian high court has overturned the conviction of a 60-year-old man for having sex with an 11-year-old girl, because the verdict failed to take into account their "amorous relationship".

Pietro Lamberti, a social services worker in Catanzaro in southern Italy, was convicted in February 2011 and sentenced to five years in prison for sexual acts with a minor.

The verdict was later upheld by an appeals court.

But the Italian supreme court ruled that the verdict did not sufficiently consider "the 'consensus', the existence of an amorous relationship, the absence of physical force, the girl's feelings of love".

The court's October 15 decision to order a retrial was made public this month by Il Quotidiano della Calabria and slowly spread to social media networks, where it sparked heated reactions against the Italian justice system.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10542835/Mans-sex-with-11-year-old-not-abusive-Italian-court-rules.html

[*Anya*]

FBI warns shops on checkout thefts

Last updated Jan 24, 2014, 2:35 AM PST

Criminals using fake credit cards, made with data stolen from Target, are already being arrested.

The FBI has issued a warning to US shops telling them to beef up defences against cyber-thieves.

The agency included its warning in a confidential report to large retailers that was obtained by Reuters.

In particular, said the FBI, shops need to look for the type of malware used to steal millions of credit card details from shoppers at retailer Target.

The FBI said it had seen about 20 cases in the last year where data was stolen using the same type of malicious code.

That code has been inserted on to credit and debit card swiping-machines, cash registers and other point-of-sale (POS) equipment.

"We believe POS malware crime will continue to grow over the near term, despite law enforcement and security firms' actions to mitigate it," read the FBI report.

The low cost of the virus code, its wide availability on underground markets and the potential for profit if POS equipment was compromised made it very attractive to thieves, said the agency. One copy of the type of software used to grab data at tills was on sale for only $6,000 (£3,600), said the FBI report.

The report was sent out as more details emerge about the extent of the security breach at US retailing giant Target.

Reports suggest that the attackers who planted malware on Target tills were scooping up card data for 19 days during the busy Christmas season. The thieves are believed to have got away with complete details for 40 million cards and stolen personal data on about 70 million customers.

The attack is believed to have been one of the biggest retail cyber-attacks in history.

Recent arrests suggest the data stolen from Target is already being used to create counterfeit cards. In mid-January two people were arrested at the Texas-Mexico border with 96 fake cards later identified as being from the huge cache stolen from Target.

BBC © 2014

[Kobi]

By CHRISTOPHER S. RUGABER and JOSH BOAK
AP Economics Writers
January 27, 2014

WASHINGTON - From the White House to the Vatican to the business elite in Davos, Switzerland, one issue keeps seizing the agenda: the growing gap between the very wealthy and everyone else.

It's "the defining challenge of our time," says President Barack Obama, who will spotlight the issue in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. A Gallup poll finds two-thirds of Americans are unhappy with the nation's distribution of wealth. Experts say it may be slowing the economy.

Why has the issue suddenly galvanized attention? Here are questions and answers about the wealth gap - what it is and why it matters.

Q. Hasn't there always been a wide gulf between the richest people and the poorest?

A. Yes. What's new is the widening gap between the wealthiest and everyone else. Three decades ago, Americans' income tended to grow at roughly similar rates, no matter how much you made. But since roughly 1980, income has grown most for the top earners. For the poorest 20 percent of families, it's dropped. Incomes for the highest-earning 1 percent of Americans soared 31 percent from 2009 through 2012, after adjusting for inflation, according to data compiled by Emmanuel Saez, an economist at University of California, Berkeley. For the rest of us, it inched up an average of 0.4 percent. In 17 of 22 developed countries, income disparity widened in the past two decades, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Q. So who are the top 1 percent in income?

A. They're bankers, lawyers, hedge fund managers, founders of successful companies, entertainers, senior managers and others. One trend: Corporate executives, doctors, and farmers made up smaller shares of the top 1 percent in 2005 than in 1979. By contrast, the proportion of the wealthiest who work in the financial and real estate industries has doubled. The top 1 percent earned at least $394,000 in 2012. Through most of the post-World War II era, the top 1 percent earned about 10 percent of all income. By 2007, that figure had jumped to 23.5 percent, the most since 1928. As of 2012, it was 22.5 percent.

Q. How has the middle class fared?

A. Not well. Median household income peaked in 1999 at $56,080, adjusted for inflation. It fell to $51,017 by 2012. The percentage of American households with income within 50 percent of the median - one way of measuring the middle class - fell from 50 percent in 1970 to 42 percent in 2010.

Q. Does it matter if some people are much richer than others?

A. Most economists say some inequality is needed to reward hard work, talent and innovation. But a wealth gap that's too wide is usually unhealthy. It can slow economic growth, in part because richer Americans save more of their income than do others. Pay concentrated at the top is less likely to be spent.

It can also trigger reckless borrowing. Before the 2008 financial crisis, middle class households struggled to keep up their spending even as their pay stagnated. To do so, they piled up debt. Swelling debt helped inflate the housing bubble and ignite the financial crisis. Experts note that the Great Depression and the Great Recession were both preceded by surging income gaps and heedless borrowing by middle class Americans.

Q. Has it become harder for someone born poor to become rich?

A. The evidence is mixed. Countries that have more equal income distributions, such as Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, tend to enjoy more social mobility. But a study released last week found that the United States isn't any less mobile than it was in the 1970s. A child born in the poorest 20 percent of families in 1986 had a 9 percent chance of reaching the top 20 percent as an adult, the study found - roughly the same odds as in 1971.

Other research has shown that the United States isn't as socially mobile as once thought. In a study of 22 countries, economist Miles Corak of the University of Ottawa found that the United States ranked 15th in social mobility. Only Italy and the Britain among wealthy countries ranked lower. By some measures, children in the United States are as likely to inherit their parents' economic status as their height.

Q. So why has income inequality worsened?

A. There's no simple answer. Globalization has created "superstars" and concentrated pay among corporate executives, Wall Street traders, popular entertainers and other financial elite. At the same time, factory workers now compete with 3 billion people in China, India, eastern Europe and elsewhere who weren't working for multinational corporations 20 years ago. Many now make products for Apple, Intel, General Motors and others at low wages. This has depressed middle-class pay. And pay has risen much faster for college graduates than for high-school graduates. These trends have contributed to a "hollowed out" labor market, with more jobs at the higher and lower ends of the pay scale and fewer in the middle.

Social factors contribute, too. Single-parent families are more likely to be poor than other families and less likely to ascend the income ladder. Finally, men and women with college degrees and high pay are more likely to marry each other and amplify income gaps.

Q. Does wealth distribution follow a similar pattern?

A. It's even more pronounced. A Pew Research Center study found that the wealthiest 7 percent of households grew 28 percent richer from 2009 through 2011. For the bottom 93 percent, collective wealth fell 4 percent. That's largely because wealthy households own far more stocks and other financial assets than others. By contrast, whatever wealth middle-class Americans have is mainly in their home equity.

Since the Great Recession ended, stock-market averages have soared, setting records in 2013. Home values, though, remain far below their peaks reached in 2006. That divergence has benefited the richest and left others struggling.

Q. Where do the 1 percent live?

A. Investor Warren Buffett famously lives in Omaha, Neb. Les Wexner, whose fashion empire includes Victoria's Secret, is an Ohioan. But the wealthy mainly cluster around the largest cities. Of the 515 U.S. billionaires, 96 live around New York City, according to the intelligence firm Wealth-X. Los Angeles is home to 22, Chicago 21, San Francisco 20, Houston 14. Millionaires are more widely dispersed. Maryland has the highest concentration. Of all its households, 7.7 percent have $1 million or more in financial assets. New Jersey, Connecticut, Hawaii and Alaska have the next-highest concentrations, according to a report from Phoenix Marketing International.

Q. Has the Obama administration made progress in narrowing the wealth gap?

A. No. By most measures, it's worsened in the past seven years. President Barack Obama managed last year to restore higher tax rates on incomes above $398,350. And he's pushed other steps that might narrow the gap slightly, such as a higher minimum wage. But congressional Republicans have resisted most such measures.

Q. Is everyone concerned about the wealth gap?

A. Some conservative economists question much of the data. They note, for example, that Saez's figures don't include government benefits, such as Social Security or food stamps, or employer payments for health insurance, that benefit the less-than-rich. Yet the Congressional Budget Office did include government benefits and the effect of taxes in its own study and still found a sizable gap: For the top 1 percent, income jumped 275 percent, adjusted for inflation, from 1979 to 2007. For the middle 60 percent of Americans, it grew less than 40 percent.

Q. So what do experts say is the best way to shrink the wealth gap?

A. Most ideas break down along political lines. Liberal economists tend to support a higher minimum wage, greater access to pre-school and college education and more spending on roads, bridges and other infrastructure to help generate good-paying jobs. Most favor higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for such programs.

Conservatives tend to back tax cuts, government deregulation and other steps they say will accelerate hiring and growth and raise living standards for everyone. They tend to focus on the need to advance income mobility.

In a speech this month, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio acknowledged the enormous pay disparity between a fast food company's cashier and its CEO.

"The problem we face is not simply the gap in pay between them, but rather that too many of those cashiers are stuck in the same job for years on end," Rubio said.

---

[Andrea]

I have been informed that Morrie Turner, creator of Wee Pals comic strip, passed from ongoing illness.

In addition to his comic strip, Morrie was as generous and loving man, as well as a member of my church. He was so well loved, there was a line every Sunday morning to greet him with hugs and kisses.

He will be missed.

[Andrea]

I have been informed that Morrie Turner, creator of Wee Pals comic strip, passed from ongoing illness.

In addition to his comic strip, Morrie was as generous and loving man, as well as a member of my church. He was so well loved, there was a line every Sunday morning to greet him with hugs and kisses.

He will be missed.

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local-obituaries/morrie-turner-creator-wee-pals-dies/nc3sC/ (http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local-obituaries/morrie-turner-creator-wee-pals-dies/nc3sC/)

[Tommi]

Coke features first gay family to appear in a Super Bowl ad


Feb. 2, 2014 at 9:07 PM ET

Video: Coca-Cola's commercial showed different types of people that make up “America The Beautiful," including the first gay family featured in a Super Bowl ad.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/coke-features-first-gay-family-appear-super-bowl-ad-2D12044708

In the second quarter of the Super Bowl, Coke became the first advertiser to show a gay family in an ad for America's big game.

The snippet appeared as one of many vignettes in a sweeping ad that celebrated America's collection of diverse creeds, codes and individuals. In the five-second clip, two male partners and their daughter go roller-skating while a chorus of children sing "America the beautiful."

The hashtag #AmericaIsBeautiful went trending on Twitter shortly after the spot aired.

Gay rights organization GLAAD praised the ad, calling it "a step forward for the advertising industry."

Coke has been under fire for its marketing lately. A social marketing effort that allowed customers to give each other digital coke bottles with words written on them backfired after the site wouldn't allow users to put the word "gay" on them.

The beverage maker has also been criticized for sponsoring the 2014 Olympics because the host country, Russia, in 2013 passed a law banning "the distribution of "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" to minors

"Coca-Cola has demonstrated to corporate America that being LGBT-inclusive is good business, but as the world turns its attention to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics, it's time for sponsors of the Olympics like Coca-Cola to show the whole world how beautiful LGBT families are," said GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis in a statement after the ad aired.

[Tommi]

Maine Supreme Court sides with transgender student in bathroom case
Maine's Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the school district of Orono violated state law by prohibiting a transgender student from using the girls' bathroom at a public elementary school in 2009. The ruling is reportedly the first time an American court has deemed it unlawful to bar transgender students from using facilities that align with their gender identity. "This is a momentous decision that marks a huge breakthrough for transgender young people," Jennifer Levi, director of GLAAD Transgender Rights Project, said

http://bangordailynews.com/2014/01/30/news/bangor/maine-supreme-court-rules-in-favor-of-transgender-girl-in-orono-school-bathroom-case/

[Tommi]

Bill seeks honorable discharges for veterans expelled under DADT
A bill introduced in the Senate on Thursday would grant honorable discharges to gay and lesbian veterans who were expelled under the military’s “don't ask, don't tell" policy. About 114,000 service members were dishonorably discharged because of their sexual orientation prior to the reversal of DADT in 2011. "Many of these brave men and women that served our country are currently barred from benefits that they earned and are entitled to, and in the most egregious cases they are prevented from legally calling themselves a veteran," said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, who introduced the bill.

[Tommi]

Judge upholds constitutionality of Hawaii marriage law
A Hawaii judge on Wednesday upheld the constitutionality of a law that brought marriage equality to the state in 2013. The ruling was issued in a lawsuit brought by Republican state Rep. Bob McDermott. "This is a very good day for the people of Hawaii," state Attorney General David Louie said in a statement

[Tommi]

Link Suggested Between Experiences of Discrimination and Suicide Attempts Among Transgender People
New analysis of responses to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS) shows that transgender respondents who experienced rejection by family and friends, discrimination, victimization or violence have a higher risk of attempting suicide. 78 percent of survey respondents who suffered physical or sexual violence at school reported suicide attempts, as did 65 percent of respondents who experienced violence at work. Over half of those who experienced harassment or bullying in schools reported lifetime suicide attempts, as did 57 percent of those who reported that their family chose not to speak/spend time with them. High prevalence of suicide attempts was also found among those who had ever experienced homelessness (69%) and those who reported a doctor or healthcare provider refused to treat them (60%). The study utilized data collected through the National Transgender Discrimination Survey (NTDS), which was conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Click here to read the report.

[Tommi]

Obama nominates gay black man for federal bench
The Obama administration announced Wednesday its nomination of Judge Darrin Gayles for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. If confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first openly gay black male federal judge. "We commend the administration for nominating a qualified jurist who will also add diversity to the federal bench," Steven Thai, press secretary for the Gay & Lesbian Victory Institute, said. Gayles' nomination comes after Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., blocked another nominee, also an openly gay black man.

[Kobi]

NEW DELHI — India, the second-largest exporter of over-the-counter and prescription drugs to the United States, is coming under increased scrutiny by American regulators for safety lapses, falsified drug test results and selling fake medicines.

Dr. Margaret A. Hamburg, the commissioner of the United States Food and Drug Administration, arrived in India this week to express her growing unease with the safety of Indian medicines because of “recent lapses in quality at a handful of pharmaceutical firms.”

India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States, so the increased scrutiny could have profound implications for American consumers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-in-india-set-off-safety-worries.html?_r=0

[RockOn]

Columbus, Georgia News

Three suspects arrested for allegedly raping a woman and setting her on fire Posted: Feb 17, 2014 7:20 AM CST Updated: Feb 17, 2014 7:59 AM CST Posted by Samantha Perpignand - email

Three suspects are behind bars at the Muscogee County Jail for allegedly raping, shooting, and setting a woman on fire on New Year's Day. Ketorie Glover, Robert Johnson, and Joey Garron are the suspects. Police say the men forced a woman into a car at gunpoint and raped her. They then allegedly set the car on fire with the woman still inside. The woman was found screaming for help in a wooded area on Farr Rd. after the alleged attack. She was transported to Midtown Medical Center and has since had extensive medical treatment. The victim's cousin says the woman was attacked by the men due to a conflict that happened during a rap contest. Glover will appear in court Monday morning at 9 a.m. He is charged with aggravated assault, aggravated battery, aggravated sexual assault and sodomy, rape, first degree arson, hijacking a motor vehicle, kidnapping, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime. The other two suspects remain in police custody. RELATED: Woman shot, left in vacant lot on Farr Rd. Copyright 2014 WTVM. All rights reserved.

[C0LLETTE]

15 million Afghan women and girls could be legislated into slavery; 13 years of struggle for their rights abandoned...

“With this ban, the Sitara of Hirat, whose nose and lips were cut off by her husband and only her family were present, cannot seek justice.”
................
"Rights groups say a proposed law in Afghanistan will allow perpetrators of domestic violence to escape prosecution, and are calling for international pressure to prevent President Hamid Karzai from signing it into law.

Afghanistan's parliament, a two-chamber house dominated by conservative Muslim leaders and former warlords, passed a "criminal procedure law" last year, which experts say contains articles that deny women legal protections.

To go into force, it needs Karzai's signature.

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai should refuse to sign a new criminal procedure code that would effectively deny women protection from domestic violence and forced or child marriage," Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a statement published on its website on Wednesday.

The draft document contains an article that according to HRW states: "The following people can not be questioned as witnesses... relatives of the accused."

That language, according to HRW, would effectively protect women's abusers.

Most victims are abused by family members inside the home, meaning that only relatives would witness the crime in the majority of cases.

"A woman who is the victim of domestic violence won’t be able to testify against her husband, a girl who has been forced into a marriage against her will won’t be able to testify against her father," Heather Barr of Human Rights Watch, told Al Jazeera's Jane Ferguson.

"Laws that make domestic violence, make forced marriage, make child marriage illegal will become meaningless if this law is passed.”

Saeeq Shajjan, a lawyer with his own firm in Afghanistan, told Al Jazeera that the full bill had not been made public.

"The bill could be very problematic. The prosecution will have a difficult time to bring cases against offenders, particularly in cases of domestic abuse," he said.

"If this is passed it could ruin the good work we have been doing over the past 13 years for human rights, especially for women."

A spokesperson for Karzai said he could not comment on the president's intentions and was not aware if the draft of the new law had yet reached him.

The politics of women's rights

Debate about the new bill comes at the same time as Afghan leaders aspiring to be the nation's next president take the stage in televised presidential debates and the same year the United States withdraws from the country.

In a statement posted on the organisation's Facebook page, Parnian Nazary, Advocacy Manager for Women for Afghan Women (WAW) asked President Karzi not to sign the law.

"WAW urges the presidential candidates to take a position on the issue as an indication of their commitment to Afghan women’s rights. Above all, we ask people and governments in the developed world who value justice, and especially the US government, which has promised not to abandon the women of Afghanistan, to shout out loud and clear their refusal to accept this assault on women’s rights."

The proposed legislation would run counter to a groundbreaking law on Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW) passed in 2009.

In an email to Al Jazeera, Wazhma Frogh, Co-founder and Executive Director of the Research Institute for Women Peace and Security – Afghanistan said: “This article is a blow to Evaw law as well because the Evaw law cannot be implemented if a woman doesn't have any witness.

“In Afghanistan almost all cases of violence against women is inside homes and if relatives can't testify then no woman can seek legal protection from violence.

“With this ban, the Sitara of Hirat, whose nose and lips were cut off by her husband and only her family were present, cannot seek justice.”


Source:

Al Jazeera and agencies

[Lady Pamela]

URGENT NOTICE THAT NEEDS TO GO VIRAL

The president of Uganda signed the bill KILL THE GAYS
today!!! This means thousands of people are going to be
KILLED,IMPRISONED,RAPED AND TORTURED simply because
they are gay/lesbian or know someone who is!!!This needs
to be seen and heard by everyone so they might get some
help before geniside happens!This needs to go viral so those
in office and those who have avenues to help will all know.
IF THIS WAS YOUR FAMILY WOULDN'T YOU WANT THE SAME?
I have many friends who are in fear of being murdered this very
moment with no place to hide! They need media and people in high
places to take notice. Africans as well as U.S. citizens
alike are there in threat!
PLEASE RE-POST THIS TO YOUR PROFILES ON DIFFRENT SITES.
And energy of prayers that untill they recieve help, that
they will be protected and have a place to hide out.
Thank you very much!
Also please sign petition and share this link as well.
This petition claims life imprisonment only but speaking

to others I have found it to be much more than this.

https://www.allout.org/en/actions/kill-the-bill-taf

[Tommi]

The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) has announced an Open Enrollment Window for the DoD Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) for same sex couples.

Military Retirees who were married to a same-sex spouse on or before June 26, 2013, may now have spouse coverage in the SBP. Depending on the retiree?s circumstances, enrollment for their spouse may be automatic or the retiree may need to elect spouse coverage. Either way, retirees MUST ACT by June 25, 2014 to participate in the SBP Open Enrollment Window.

The DFAS announcement encourages Military Retirees with same-sex spouses to visit http://go.usa.gov/Ww6x<http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.usa.gov%2FWw6x&h=IAQE1kxwf&s=1> as soon as possible for more information to learn what steps are to be taken by June 25, 2014 to secure or decline the SBP benefit for their spouse. (NOTE: The above link takes you to the DFAS website that discusses the general topic of SBP and making the election. (See: http://www.dfas.mil/retiredmilitary/provide/sbp.html<http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dfas.mil%2Fretiredmilitar y%2Fprovide%2Fsbp.html&h=-AQE0Ou-E&s=1> ) There are other links to websites with information about who is eligible, costs, and the procedures.)

Although it is not discussed in the DFAS announcement, same-sex ?former spouses? would also be eligible for court awarded Former Spouse SBP coverage in the event of a divorce or dissolution of a same-sex marriage

[MsTinkerbelly]

A car just plowed into a crowd at the Austin Texas South by Southwest event, killing at least two people and injuring many more. :praying: for our austin people and the others effected.

[EnderD_503]

Lol! More sanctions from Obama against Russia are just plain ridiculous and had to laugh when Putin was just like "k we make sanctions against you too." Does he really think he can bully Russia... :p Especially with the majority of the EU and Britain dependent on Russia for oil, Obama is pretty much alone in his ridiculous sanction crusade.

I also have to laugh at Clinton comparing Russia to Nazi Germany when the US continues to support the state that is probably the closest to it in the modern era: Israel, who has gone so far as to segregate Palestinians in pretty much every possible way, continues to murder Palestinians with impunity and remains on annexed Palestinian land. But I suppose you have to be a "friend of the west" to be able to get away with a racist state. It's just pitiful...and all this supposedly for the "freedom of the Crimean people"...who just fucking voted in a referendum that they want to join Russia. As such, Russia has not truly "annexed" anyone because the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. But because the outcome isn't something the west likes it has to claim that Crimeans were "intimidated." Meanwhile Crimean football teams are already applying to switch from the Ukrainian to the Russian league next season. Or perhaps it frightens the nation states of the west that a region can successfully vote to determine which nation they'd prefer to be a part of, and since most Crimeans already identify as Russian it's a bit of a no-brainer.

Now some American Republicans want FIFA to bar Russia from hosting the 2018 World Cup, and for once Blatter does something smart and stood up against them.

http://www.bbc.com/sport/0/football/26691561


This article made me laugh my ass off even more though: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2585902/Now-impose-sanctions-Chelsea-boss-Abramovich-Putin-critic-tells-Cameron-Obama.html

[MsTinkerbelly]

Just in, landslide in Washington State has people buried in debrie calling out for help.

Pray for those poor people, and Washington folks check in when you can.

[Smiling]

Okay, this isn't exactly breaking news, but I am really angry about this (I just read it on MSN.com)....


PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon woman on trial for the murder of her 4-year-old son believed the boy was gay and that was a motive behind the deadly beatings, a prosecutor said.

Jessica Dutro's son Zachary died in August 2012, days after collapsing at the homeless shelter where his family was living southwest of Portland.

Washington County Judge Don Letourneau ruled Wednesday, after jurors were released for the day, that a Facebook message from Dutro to her boyfriend was admissible evidence, The Oregonian newspaper reported (http://is.gd/rfralf ).

In the message, Dutro told her boyfriend, Brian Canady, that Zachary was "facing the wall" because he had made her angry.

Her son was going to be gay, she wrote, using a slur. "He walks and talks like it. Ugh."

Canady would have to "work on" Zachary, she wrote.

The message established Dutro's motive for inflicting a pattern of abuse, prosecutor Megan Johnson said. Dutro assaulted three of her children, but Zachary received the harshest treatment, authorities said.

The judge ruled additional web searches done by Dutro were also admissible. On Aug. 16, 2012, the day her son's life support was terminated, Dutro searched terms such as anger management and parenting classes, prosecutors said. She also searched listings for free stuff and sex with strangers, they said.

Earlier this month, Canady pleaded guilty to manslaughter and assault for his role in the homicide.

The boy died of blunt-force trauma to his abdomen and a delay in medical treatment, prosecutors said.

Dutro, 25, is charged with murder, murder by abuse and second-degree assault.

Link: http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/prosecutor-mom-killed-son-she-perceived-to-be-gay

[TruTexan]

Today a gunman at Ft. Hood,TX , several people injured, 1 is known to be dead as of 540pm central time. The Gunman is still loose and on the run!!. People are asked to stay indoors, Ft. Hood is on Lockdown and told to shelter in place, meaning take shelter where ever they are at the time and not go about business on post.

This is Breaking news as of 540 pm. The news has not been told anything other than what I have posted. The closest hospital with a trauma center is Scott and White Hospital I believe which is in Temple, TX about 45 mins. to an hour from Killeen, TX.


I pray none of you have family in Killeen,TX or Ft. Hood that may be injured. Prayers going up for all.

[traumaqueen]

Today a gunman at Ft. Hood,TX , several people injured, 1 is known to be dead as of 540pm central time. The Gunman is still loose and on the run!!. People are asked to stay indoors, Ft. Hood is on Lockdown and told to shelter in place, meaning take shelter where ever they are at the time and not go about business on post.

This is Breaking news as of 540 pm. The news has not been told anything other than what I have posted. The closest hospital with a trauma center is Scott and White Hospital I believe which is in Temple, TX about 45 mins. to an hour from Killeen, TX.


I pray none of you have family in Killeen,TX or Ft. Hood that may be injured. Prayers going up for all.

Multiple friends at Ft. Hood and one that works at the hospital in Temple... too early to tell, but not a good situation.

[TruTexan]

Today a gunman at Ft. Hood,TX , several people injured, 1 is known to be dead as of 540pm central time. The Gunman is still loose and on the run!!. People are asked to stay indoors, Ft. Hood is on Lockdown and told to shelter in place, meaning take shelter where ever they are at the time and not go about business on post.

This is Breaking news as of 540 pm. The news has not been told anything other than what I have posted. The closest hospital with a trauma center is Scott and White Hospital I believe which is in Temple, TX about 45 mins. to an hour from Killeen, TX.


I pray none of you have family in Killeen,TX or Ft. Hood that may be injured. Prayers going up for all.

CORRECTION: MY local ABC News says the closest trauma hospital is in Killeen TX, named Scott and White Hospital.

I will keep posting updates as I hear them on the news. Or you can turn on ABC news or your local news stations .

Please say prayers for family members and friends to keep them safe and for others in this situation.

[TruTexan]

There have been reports of at least 14 shooting victims injured now, 4 critical and 1 known deceased. Nearest trauma center is Scott and White Hospital in Killeen TX, not very far from FT. HOOD.

Please pray they catch the gunman and any associates if any. And pray for the families there and here at the planet.

[TruTexan]

ONE FT. HOOD SHOOTER CONFIRMED DEAD BY U.S. OFFICIALS ON CNN NEWS. THEY WILL NOT CONFIRM IF THERE IS MORE THAN 1 SHOOTER AT THIS TIME.

[Rockinonahigh]

ONE FT. HOOD SHOOTER CONFIRMED DEAD BY U.S. OFFICIALS ON CNN NEWS. THEY WILL NOT CONFIRM IF THERE IS MORE THAN 1 SHOOTER AT THIS TIME.


Not again!

[TruTexan]

18 TOTAL VICTIMS, 4 CONFIRMED DEAD INCLUDING 1 SHOOTER........ ACCORDING TO CNN NEWS .

IT IS BELIEVED TO BE A FT. HOOD SOLDIER THAT DID THE SHOOTING.....A SOLDIER ON SOLDIER ATTACK AND NOT RELATED TO TERRORISM......THAT IS WHAT OFFICIALS ARE NOW SAYING.

[TruTexan]

CNN now reports there are multiple injured, multipled fatalities, and 3 sent to Scott and White Memorial Hospital and the shooter is dead.


waiting on report from officials news conference from Ft. Hood.

[TruTexan]

according to CNN news 4 shooting victims sent to Scott and White Hospital in TEMPLE TX not killeen, and 2 more in route of which one by land and 1 by air to hospital. The hospital spokesman said the injured vary from stable to severe critical.

Still waiting on Ft. Hood Spokesman to speak on news to give more information.

[TruTexan]

16 confirmed injured, 4 confirmed fatalities including the shooter according to Ft. Hood General during press conference. It is an ongoing investigation to find out anymore information as to why it happened and how.
It is confirmed that the shooter used a .45 caliber smith and wesson handgun that was purchased in the local area of Ft. Hood. They are investigating the shooter's psychiatric background,background history, searching twitter, facebook, etc, his home, computers, etc, and anything else they can search about him and why this happened. It is confirmed that the shooter shot himself in the head and died. The soldier was married and his family was in the local area, they are awaiting to notify his family members. He was undergoing evaluation for behavioral health and mental health, he was on medication for depression, he was not wounded in war.

[RockOn]

Michigan Hate Crime
Just saw and read this news article.
Here's the CNN link:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/05/us/michigan-hate-crime-attack/index.html?c=us

[C0LLETTE]

Nine-month-old charged with attempted murder in Pakistan. You read/hear this jaw-dropping stuff and words just fail you.

http://in.reuters.com/video/2014/04/05/toddler-on-attempted-murder-charge?videoId=303764248&view=303764248&sp=104&refresh=true

[Tommi]

Rams pick Michael Sam in draft, clearing way for him to become NFL's 1st openly gay player.
http://images.cox.com/media/apimages/ap-image-fa3b9301455e48cc829607a4988392f1.jpg

The NFL at last has its first openly gay player, and he'll play for the Saint Louis Rams.

The Rams drafted defensive end Michael Sam, who came out publicly in February, with the 249th pick Saturday, ending months of speculation to when – or if – Sam would hear his name called in the draft.


Sam becomes the first openly gay athlete drafted into one of America's major professional sports leagues. Veteran NBA player Jason Collins came out last summer and plays for the New Jersey Nets.

"For Michael, it's a little bit of relief that it's over, and you can finally say you're part of the NFL family. That is a dream come true for so many football players. That's a realization that all his hard work has paid off," gay former NFL player Wade Davis, the executive director of the You Can Play Project, told USA TODAY Sports. "Now he can really start to focus on his new journey."

[Tommi]

Arkansas Issues First Same-Sex Marriage License After Ban Struck Down

http://www.arktimes.com/imager/b/blog/3288235/fd27/marriage4.jpg?cb=1399743238
The couple drove up to Eureka Springs from Little Rock when they learned the Pulaski County courthouse wouldn’t be open today. The AP has more:

Seaton and Rambo slept in their Ford Focus after arriving at 2 a.m. Saturday, waking up every 30 minutes to make sure they were at the head of the line. The moment they saw another couple pull up, Seaton and Rambo bolted to the courthouse.

“I don’t think I ran that fast,” Rambo said.

The Carroll County Courthouse was the only one scheduled to open today for regular hours, and it’s due to close at 1:00 p.m. CDT. Here’s the scene when it opened:
http://ww2.hdnux.com/photos/27/76/47/6285817/3/628x471.jpg

Kristin Seaton and Jennifer Rambo Saturday, a day after a federal judge struck down the state's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage
Arkansas issued its first same-sex marriage license Saturday morning as couples lined up outside a local courthouse one day after a judge overturned the state’s gay marriage ban.

Kristin Seaton and Jennifer Rambo of Forth Smith were the first Arkansas couple to receive a marriage license Saturday after Pulaski County judge Chris Piazza ruled the ban unconstitutional Friday. The couple has been together for four years.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

NRA uses Nigerian girls’ abduction to promote itself and slam ‘Pajama Boy’ liberals

The National Rifle Association has seized upon the abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls as a means of promoting itself and slamming liberals as soft, weak people who watch MSNBC talk show host Chris Hayes.

Media Matters reported Saturday that NRA News host Cam Edwards went out of his way to attack liberals while discussing the abduction of the girls from their preparatory school.

In a talk with his guest Katie Pavlich of Fox News, Edwards said, “I would go one step further and say that, you know, when ask the U.S. for help, we don’t send Pajama Boy to do the job, Katie.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/10/nra-uses-nigerian-girls-abduction-to-promote-itself-and-slam-pajama-boy-liberals/

_________________
_________________
Pukes....*spit

[*Anya*]

BY: SUNNIVIE BRYDUM

It Continues to Get Worse in Uganda, as LGBT Couple Tried for First Time in Court

We've previously reported about the deteriorating climate for LGBT people (and women) in Uganda, and sadly, despite international outrage, that homophobic environment doesn't appear to be improving.

On Wednesday, for the first time in the East African nation's reported history, two LGBT Ugandans were brought to trial for engaging in "sex against the order of nature." That charge appears to be intentionally vague, allowing for basically any kind of "nonnormative" sexual activity to be subject to criticism, arrest, and, according to Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act, life imprisonment.

Kim Musika, a 24-year-old businessman, and Jackson Musaka, a 19-year-old transgender woman, are facing charges under Uganda's amended penal code, Section 145, which prohibits consensual sexual relationships between members of the same sex, reports blogger and activist Colin Stewart. According to numerous reports, the trial will be the first time that anyone has been brought to trial for allegedly violating Section 145, which was drafted during colonial rule and enacted in 1950.

Notably, the pair are not being charged under Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Act, which President Yoweri Museveni signed into law February 24 and which prescribes lifetime prison terms for "aggravated homosexuality" as well as lengthy jail sentences for any individual and severe penalties for organization found guilty of "aiding or abetting homosexuality."

Nevertheless, the two Ugandans could face lifetime prison sentences if they're found guilty of violating the colonial-era law that was reportedly rarely enforced before the escalation of violent antigay sentiment sparked by the Anti-Homosexuality Act's passage earlier this year.

The accused, who have been held in Luzira Prison since their January arrest, are being represented by the advocacy group Human Rights Awareness and Promotion Forum — Uganda. The group's executive director, Adrian Jjuuko, told Stewart at his blog, Erasing 76 Crimes, that the legal team tried unsuccessfully to secure bail for the incarcerated Ugandans.

Jjuuko confirmed that Musika and Musaka are facing charges of "'carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ and ‘permitting a male person to have carnal knowledge of oneself against the order of nature,’" and explained that Musika was being beaten by a mob in late January when Human Rights Awareness officials intervened.

Despite the increasingly hostile environment, several prominent activists have elected to stay in the country, though many have been forced to continue their work underground, lest they be targeted by politically emboldened police or townspeople. Although international outrage has been loud and swift — including the removal of some foreign aid upon which the Ugandan government heavily relies — a majority of Ugandan citizens report supporting the law. More than 1,000 Ugandans gathered at a rally near Kampala last month to celebrate and "give thanks" for the law's passage.

President Yoweri Museveni, who is up for reelection in 2016, led that march through the streets of Kampala, while demonstrators carried signs with messages like "Museveni, thank you for saving the future of Uganda," "Homosexuality + AIDS = 100%," and "Obama, we want trade not homosexuality."

http://www.shewired.com/outrageous/2014/05/07/3-things-pissed-us-week-hate-universal-language?page=0,1

[Tommi]

The White House

Wednesday, May 21, 2014


Watch Live: Harvey Milk Stamp Unveiling Ceremony

This Thursday, May 22, the White House Office of Public Engagement, the United States Postal Service and the Harvey Milk Foundation will host a first-day-of-issue dedication ceremony for the Harvey Milk Forever Stamp at the White House.

The event will feature remarks by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, Senator Tammy Baldwin, Representative John Lewis, Deputy Postmaster General Ronald A. Stroman, and other distinguished guests including the Co-Founders of the Harvey Milk Foundation, Stuart Milk and Anne Kronenberg.

Watch live starting at 3:00 p.m. EST at www.whitehouse.gov/live.<http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=1849eaeafaf5885478397f9d8421eea98b5256de7be9e3 6f81beb837bc9d738e170f02e1a105ce7e>

If you're following on social media, the hashtag is #HarveyMilkStamp.

[Harvey Milk Stamp]

(by United States Postal Service)

Harvey Milk was a visionary leader who became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the U.S. when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. Milk's achievements gave hope and confidence to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community in the United States and elsewhere at a time when the community was encountering widespread hostility and discrimination. Milk believed that government should represent all citizens, ensuring equality and providing needed services.

Tragically, his political career was cut short less than a year after he took office in California when he and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978.

In 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Harvey Milk with the Presidential Medal of Freedom<http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=1849eaeafaf588543776aabec0c166753c7e32cc28a333 7ea0f9191f91126c29310426ac758be360>. And in 2013, the White House Office of Public Engagement honored ten openly LGBT elected and appointed officials as "Harvey Milk Champions of Change."<http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=765f55d15e590ca4e33410f915b4237f933604e489e8b7 665bd406a6bcc5008df7adf1b91145ddc2>

See more information on the Harvey Milk Forever Stamp.<http://click.mail.whitehouse.gov/?qs=765f55d15e590ca4ce6fdd6f0dce7878a6d52ce5a3ea28 73667cb311068d56a58d78dc0c75550735>

The White House * 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW * Washington, DC 20500 * 202-456-1111

[Genesis]

LGBTI campaigners in Serbia cancelled IDAHO and Pride Week to volunteer for flood relief work
23 MAY 2014 | BY TRIS REID-SMITH

http://www.gaystarnews.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/Bosnia_Serbia_floods.jpg
Thousands have been left homeless by the floods in the Balkans, which have spread death and destruction.
LGBTI rights campaigners have ditched Pride Week to come to the rescue of the flooding victims in Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Europe’s Balkans region has been faced with its worst natural disaster in 120 years with floods killing people and animals and destroying homes, crops and businesses.

Now Gayten-LGBT, one of the region’s leading lesbian, gay, bi, trans and intersex organizations, has revealed how its members are trying to help.

On 16 May, they decided to cancel all their actions planned for Pride Week and for International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia (IDAHO) the next day.

Milan Djuric of Gayten-LGBT said: ‘Everybody here is trying to help out in the best way they can.

‘We have been volunteering in help centers, collecting food, clothes, hygiene and cosmetic products, helping out with the evacuees, providing psychological help, etc.

‘The spirit of the people and the ways they have been employing to help flood victims are remarkable – where government failed to protect its citizens before and after the flood, people themselves took actions of solidarity and mutual aid.

‘Together with our fellow partners here, we are taking action. We need any kind of help!’

Duric said ‘the best way is to send help in food, clothes, etc, directly to help centers anywhere in Serbia’ rather than to send money.

‘Gayten-LGBT calls out to their friends and allies in the world to support the people affected by the floods,’ he added.

‘Our heartfelt solidarity goes out to all the people who have lost their homes and people they love in this catastrophe. We hope that the floods ease down soon, the rivers recede and that the needed help reaches the people as soon as possible.’

Djuric made the appeal in a private letter to global LGBTI activists but asked Gay Star News to share his message to gain more international support.

But despite their efforts, church leaders in Bosnia are still using the floods to spread hate against LGBTIs.

They have claimed the floods were sent by God to punish them for Austrian drag artist Conchita’s victory in the Eurovision Song Contest.

Original article HERE (http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/gays-sacrifice-pride-come-rescue-balkan-flood-victims230514)

[Genesis]

TOKYO — Thousands gathered in Tokyo’s trendy Shibuya business and shopping district for LGBT Pride on Sunday.

http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/487035425-akie-abe-wife-of-japanese-prime-minister-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=X7WJLa88Cweo9HktRLaNXqe5SmCW%2bei1ML0ropKS5P58K7 oLttPw6EY4tcgSN5kp%2bbbhilSaDS%2fjhM31XoA1DQ%3d%3d


Japan’s first lady, Akie Abe, wife of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, joined the festivities, standing on a float (pictured, right, in white) amid a sea of 3,000 marching participants.

Akie Abe, 51, known for her liberal inclinations, wrote on her Facebook page later that she has been involved in the issue since joining a commission set up by UNAIDS and the Lancet medical journal last year, reports AFP.

“I want to help build a society where anyone can conduct happy, enriched lives without facing discrimination,” she wrote. “I had the pleasure of spending fun time filled with smiles. Thank you.”

Unlike traditional Japanese first ladies, Akie Abe has projected a cheerful confidence, freely speaking her mind and making remarks that often resonate with the modern public.

The Prime Minister did not join her at the event, and instead spent the day visiting victims of the 2011 tsunami.


Original article and Getty Images HERE (http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2014/04/japans-first-lady-joins-thousands-marching-in-tokyo-lgbt-pride-parade/)

[DapperButch]

This man is amzing. Great story.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/21/sir-nicholas-winton_n_5365539.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/czechrepublic/10844808/Sir-Nicholas-Winton-at-105-the-man-who-gave-669-Czech-children-the-greatest-gift.html

[RockOn]

Lost a truly good one ...

Maya Angelo dies at 86 in North Carolina

https://www.yahoo.com/news/author-maya-angelou-dies-86-north-carolina-151746880.html

[RockOn]

errrr ... that would be "Angelou"

[*Anya*]

By LISA LEFF
41 minutes ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Medicare can no longer automatically deny coverage requests for sex reassignment surgeries, a federal board ruled Friday in a groundbreaking decision that recognizes the procedures are medically necessary for some people who don't identify with their biological sex.

Ruling in favor of a 74-year-old transgender Army veteran whose request to have Medicare pay for her genital reconstruction was denied two years ago, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board said there was no justification for a three-decade-old agency rule excluding such surgeries from treatments covered by the national health program for the elderly and disabled.

"Sometimes I am asked aren't I too old to have surgery. My answer is how old is too old?" the veteran, Denee Mallon, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said in an email interview before the board issued its decision. "When people ask if I am too old, it feels like they are implying that it's a 'waste of money' to operate at my age. But I could have an active life ahead of me for another 20 years. And I want to spend those years in congruence and not distress."

Jennifer Levi, a lawyer who directs the Transgender Rights Project of Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston, said the ruling does not mean Medicare recipients are necessarily entitled to have sex reassignment surgery paid for by the government.

Instead, the lifting of the coverage ban means they now will be able to seek authorization by submitting documentation from a doctor and mental health professionals stating that surgery is recommended in their individual case, Levi said.

No statistics exist on how many people might be affected by the decision. Gary Gates, a demographer with The Williams Institute, a think tank on LGBT issues based at the University of California, Los Angeles, has estimated that people who self-identify as transgender make up 0.3 percent of the U.S. adult population. Over 49 million Americans are enrolled in Medicare.

The cost of gender reassignment surgery varies, but typically ranges from $7,000 to $50,000, according to the Transgender Law Center in Oakland, California.

In Friday's ruling, the appeals board said that HHS lacked sufficient evidence in 1981 when it made a "national coverage determination," or NCD, holding that Medicare recipients were ineligible for what it then called "transsexual surgery" because the procedure was too controversial, experimental and medically risky.

The panel went on to say that regardless of what the record showed then, studies and experts have since shown the efficacy of surgical interventions as a treatment for gender dysphoria, the diagnosis given to people who experience extreme distress due to the disconnect between their birth sex and their gender identity.

"We have no difficulty concluding that the new evidence, which includes medical studies published in the more than 32 years since issuance of the 1981 report underlying the NCD, outweighs the NCD record and demonstrates that transsexual surgery is safe and effective and not experimental. Thus, as we discuss below, the grounds for the ...exclusion of coverage are not reasonable," the civilian panel said.

The appeals board's decisions are binding on HHS unless they are appealed in federal court. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the agency within HHS that manages Medicare, opted not to defend the transgender surgery exclusion before the five-member board and had initiated the process for lifting it on its own before Mallon filed her complaint.

The ruling does not apply to Medicaid, which provides health coverage for individuals and families with low-incomes and is regulated by the states. Some states have exclusions on sex reassignment surgeries and the sex hormones transgender people often take during their transitions, while others evaluate claims on a case-by-case basis.

Transgender health advocates said that because private insurance companies and Medicaid programs often take their cues from the federal government on what is considered medically necessary, elective or experimental, the decision could pave the way for sex-reassignment surgeries to be a routinely covered benefit.

Mallon was born a man and has lived as a woman on and off since she was a teenager and full time since 2009. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services must eliminate its blanket exclusion on transition-related surgeries within 30 days and re-evaluate Mallon's medical claim in light of the change, the HHS board said.

"This decision means so much to me and to many other transgender people. I am relieved to know that my doctor and I can now address my medical needs, just as other patients and doctors do," Mallon said in a statement Friday.

http://news.yahoo.com/medicare-ban-sex-reassignment-surgery-lifted-184352761.html

[Kobi]

All the support the Baltimore Ravens gave Ray Rice this offseason as he dealt with his domestic violence incident evaporated after TMZ released video of the running back knocking out his wife.

The team cut him on Monday afternoon.

That's how powerful the video of the incident is. There was no way they could keep Rice around any longer.

Just a few months ago, members of the Ravens roster and front office were singing a different tune:

Haloti Ngata, defensive tackle, according to the Ravens website: “He’s a great guy.Always been a great guy. Jokes around, has fun. He’s the same guy.”

Ozzie Newsome, Ravens general manager: "We respect the efforts Ray has made to become the best partner and father he can be. That night was not typical of the Ray Rice we know and respect.

John Harbaugh, head coach, in March: "He will be part of our team. He's a person of character. The thing that's really important is to be able to support the person without condoning the action. He makes a mistake. There's no justifying what happened. When you drink too much in public, those kind of things happen."

Those are supportive comments from three different levels of the organization, and they're just a sampling. The Ravens went out of their way to support Rice this offseason, even after he was suspended two games by the NFL.

Maybe public pressure on Monday got to the team. The outrage over Rice was fierce on Monday after the video was released by TMZ. Maybe the Ravens didn't realize how ugly the incident was, although that's dubious considering everyone knew for many months that Rice knocked out his then-fiancee, and it's tough to think the team didn't realize that a NFL running back knocking out a woman was a disgusting act before seeing the video of it.

Whatever the reason for the 180-degree turn in support, the Ravens gave up on Rice on Monday. It's hard to imagine, after the video came out and current and former NFL players strongly spoke out against Rice, that any other team would welcome him in its locker room.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/after-domestic-violence-video-is-released--ravens-cut-running-back-ray-rice-183053516.html

------------------------------------------------------


The video was deliberately not included in this post. If you have the need to see it, follow the link. if you have a weak stomach or trigger issues, I strongly advise you do not watch it.

[Kobi]

In addition to being cut by the Ravens, Rice has also been suspended indefinitely by the NFL.

[JDeere]

In addition to being cut by the Ravens, Rice has also been suspended indefinitely by the NFL.



I am quite glad he was cut and suspended for good! I like the new NFL rules, though. I don't care if you are a celebrity aka football player and make tons of money, domestic violence and any other form of rule breaking, etc. you deserve to be banned/suspended or sit out games!

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Thank you Kobi for posting this today. RE: Ray Rice aka Wife beater supreme.

I will just expand to address many, many comments I read on the internet, as well as sports commentators making light of this attack, and more than enough blaming her.

FOX morning news blowhards thought it funny to say 'she should take the stairs' next time. *This assault was in an elevator.

The meme of "Why did she marry him?" "She gets paid enough to be with him." Blaming the victim is status quo and rather ordinary these days. "She started it!" I also read. "They both should be charged!"

"Why did she stay with him?" is the big one. Here are some reasons why:



Do not underestimate the effects of domestic violence on its victims. Abused women experience isolation, shame, embarrassment, and humiliation. Women may not immediately leave an abusive relationship because:
•They fear their abusers will become more violent—perhaps fatal—stalking them if they leave.
•Friends and family may not support their decision to leave.
•They fear being a single parent with little money.
•There are periods of calm, nurturing and love between incidents of violence (see The Cycle of Abuse).
•They may be unaware of sources of advocacy and support.
•They may be unaware of shelters and other resources that offer safety and support.

The reasons women stay in abusive relationships typically fall into three categories.

Lack of resources
•Most abused women have at least one minor child.
•Many abused women are not employed outside the home.
•Many abused women don't have property that is solely theirs.
•In many cases, abusers have cut off access to cash or bank accounts.
•Most abused women fear losing joint assets and custody of their children.
•Abused women fear a lower standard of living for themselves and their children.

Responses by services and authorities
(See How Professionals Can Respond)
•Often, clergy and social workers are trained to "save the family" rather than to stop violence.
•Police often treat incidents of domestic violence as mere "disputes" rather than as serious crimes in which one person is physically assaulting another.
•Police may try to discourage women from pressing criminal charges.
•Attorneys are often reluctant to prosecute cases. Justices rarely assign the maximum sentence or fine possible.
•Restraining orders and peace bonds (see Stalking) do little to prevent abusers from repeating their violent patterns of behavior. Sadly, there are too few shelters to keep women safe.

Traditional thinking
•Many women don't view divorce as a viable alternative.
•Many abused women don't accept the notion of single parenting. They believe a bad father (or in the case of a lesbian relationship, a bad partner) is better than none at all.
•Many women are conditioned to believe they are responsible for making their marriage or relationship work; that if the relationship fails, they have failed as women. Society has often taught these women that their worth is measured by their ability to get and keep a man.
•Many abused women feel isolated from their families and from society. Isolation is either the result of the abuser's possessiveness or jealousy, or it may be an attempt on the part of the victim to hide signs of abuse from the outside world. Either way, such isolation leads many victims to feel they have nowhere to turn.
•Many victims externalize or rationalize the reasons for their abuser's behavior, casting blame of circumstances such as stress, financial hardship, job stress, chemical dependency, etc.
•Between violent episodes, there are periods of calm during which the abuser is charming, nurturing, and caring. Those traits which initially attracted him/her to his/her victim resurface and the victim sees her abuser as a loving person, thereby reinforcing her decision to stay.

[Kobi]

Thank you Kobi for posting this today. RE: Ray Rice aka Wife beater supreme.


This entire scenario has been bugging me.

I wish I could say kudos to the Ravens and the NFL for taking decisive action, for recognizing the importance of dealing with domestic violence head on, for enforcing the player code conduct, for doing the right thing.

As more and more is revealed as to how this played out with the Ravens and the NFL, my gut says they both did what they did for damage control, not out of conviction.

My gut also says that doing the right thing for the wrong reason sends the wrong message.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

You are spot on.

NFL rarely in history or principle, stands by any alleged 'victim' of any of their football players.

Their change of heart with this case was from public outcry, as in social media, stockholders. (who loathe bad press)

In this case as others where the man is the abuser, I must ask, why would this football player marry a woman whom he hates so much he would knock unconscious? Why? Has THAT question been asked ad nauseam as the question to her is....... "Why did she stay?"

Answer is NO.

[JDeere]

As a victim of DV myself, in the past, I stayed because I had no other place to go.

However my feeling is that his wife, can get out and leave but I think she stays because of the money he had, since he has lost all his endorsements.

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

As a victim of DV myself, in the past, I stayed because I had no other place to go.

However my feeling is that his wife, can get out and leave but I think she stays because of the money he had, since he has lost all his endorsements.

My heart goes out to you JDeere. You and so many victims are dealt that hand. So many, many reasons a victim stays in an abusive relationship, yours is one of numerous.

Here is to hoping you are in a better and safer and peaceful place now.

(((hugs)))

[JDeere]

My heart goes out to you JDeere. You and so many victims are dealt that hand. So many, many reasons a victim stays in an abusive relationship, yours is one of numerous.

Here is to hoping you are in a better and safer and peaceful place now.

(((hugs)))


Thank you HGL, I am in a way better place and safe, very peaceful time in my life, for a change!

(((hugs )))

[Femmadian]

I'm finding this situation emotionally draining to keep on top of but I'm glad it's prompting larger conversations, at least for now. Time will tell what the long term effect(s) will be, if any.

I thought the segment they had on Democracy Now! this morning was really insightful and made some powerful points, which you can see here (http://www.democracynow.org/2014/9/9/its_not_just_ray_rice_dave#.VA8iFKDvPhk.twitter).
[TW: they DO show the video footage of the incident several times during the broadcast]

Maddow also had a good segment on it as well and mentioned the atrocious reactions by the Fox News hosts which Happy_Go_Lucky alluded to (atrocious even for Fox News). Video is available here. (http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/watch/abuse-video-brings-unprecedented-shame-to-nfl-326652995764)

I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the NFL did this as a mad dash to save face and to avoid bad PR (and potential loss of ad revenue and ticket sales) as opposed to any human moral convictions. They have a long, notorious history of covering up violence against women committed by their players and the whole reason it's getting attention now and didn't so much when it first came to light is because of this most recent video tape showing "objectively" what happened - because the victim's word is never good enough. :censor:

They knew for months what happened, knew he knocked her out cold, knew he was arrested, knew there was footage. If it was done out of personal conviction by the NFL, why wait until the video came out and was leaked to the public?

Furthermore, the Ravens' own official Twitter account posted that Janay Rice "deeply regrets the role she played the night of the incident." That tweet has since been deleted (only as of 24 hours ago), but hey, screencaps:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--IRol1jkS--/qf2nuloxmu8wrpzrhvx9.png

The Ravens also staged a press conference where Janay Rice was made to sit beside Ray Rice and apologized at Ray Rice's goading: "I think my wife has something to say. I don’t want to be the only one who [speaks]. We’re in this together." Cue the forced apology from the woman who was abused... by her abuser.

You can find the written transcript from their conference if you don't want to watch the video here. (http://www.baltimoresun.com/sports/ravens/ravens-insider/bal-full-transcript-from-ray-rice-news-conference-20140523,0,2238567.story)

One of the points worth mentioning that I've heard is how the NFL's resultant new policy for dealing with DV cases (resulting in suspensions and bans for the players, depending on the number of offenses) may actually discourage women from coming forward as it threatens their primary source of income in what is an already typically short-lived but lucrative career. I don't have a perfect alternative solution to this but I think it's something worth considering.

One silver lining I've found in this is the sort of conversations which are happening, especially on social media. On Twitter specifically, there are currently two main hashtags, #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft, which are full of women (and men) writing about their own experiences with DV. There's also a #WhenILeft hashtag which is talking about the things which happened after they left their abuser. I've been seeing it all over my Twitter timeline since this story gained momentum and have seen tweets with those hashtags retweeted by people I never would have expected to retweet them. I have also seen people I know personally opening up about their stories for the first time and engaging in hard conversations and putting their face to the issue for the people in their lives in a big way. So, I see that as one big positive to come out of an incredibly negative situation.

I'm very cynical when it comes to professional sports culture and women (and frankly, after Penn State, children) and I suspect this will not be the last public outcry from this kind of incident, but if nothing else I'm glad people are talking, even (especially) if the NFL won't.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BxHjBsmCQAErN1c.png

[Kobi]

RL]

I'm incredibly cynical when it comes to professional sports culture and women (and frankly, after Penn State, children) and I suspect this will not be the last public outcry from this kind of incident, but if nothing else I'm glad people are talking, even (especially) if the NFL won't.




Funny you should bring up Penn State and Sandusky.

Monday, the NCAA reduced the sanctions against Penn State, that were imposed as a result of the Sandusky cild sexual abuse scandal. Their scholarships are reinstated and they will be allowed to play in the post season this year. Story here. (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/11489258/ncaa-drops-postseason-ban-penn-state-nittany-lions)

[Femmadian]

Funny you should bring up Penn State and Sandusky.

Monday, the NCAA reduced the sanctions against Penn State, that were imposed as a result of the Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal. Their scholarships are reinstated and they will be allowed to play in the post season this year. Story here. (http://espn.go.com/college-football/story/_/id/11489258/ncaa-drops-postseason-ban-penn-state-nittany-lions)


Offfff course they are... :mad:

Thanks for bringing this up. I hadn't heard this bit of news yet.

I think that's what makes me the most angry, having it confirmed time and time again how truly systemic and institutionalized this all is. It's rarely a case of "oh, we fucked up, but now we've grown as people and an institution and are doing our best to move forward." It's more often than not "quick, let's give them some of what they want to shut them up for now then quietly revert back to the way things were and hope no one notices." It's one thing to not act or to act insufficiently when something like the Ray Rice case is placed in your lap. It's quite another to, after months and months of intense public scrutiny and abuse allegations and convictions and public national and international condemnation, quietly renege on your commitment to the victims.

Where there's money to be made by a bunch of young men throwing around a ball, by god, nothing gets in the way of profits. Not women. Not children. Not human rights abuses. Not lifetime imprisonment. Nothing.

They really do hate us.

:angry:

(I need a hug.)

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

If only Home-Depot handed out military grade flame retardant clothing for all their shoppers, and armed them with tanks. It's all the rage.

http://www.wrcbtv.com/story/26494760/home-depot-shoplifter-uses-flamethrower-in-escape


Home Depot shoplifter uses flamethrower in escape








SAN DIEGO (NBC) -- A shoplifter trying to smuggle high-end items out of a San Diego Home Depot used an improvised flamethrower to ward off employees while his wife and baby waited in a getaway car outside, San Diego County Sheriff's investigators told NBC 7.

Ignacio Lorenzo Brambila, 37, of Lakeside told NBC 7 in a jailhouse interview Monday that he does not remember a lot of what happened Saturday night around 10 p.m., when he allegedly went to the Home Depot in the 12000 block of Tech Center Drive in Poway.

"Things just kinda went, went a little the wrong way," said Brambila. "Things didn't happen right. I mean, everything that got put on me and [his wife]-- I think they try to put anything they can on you, everything they can on you."
Sheriff's department spokesperson Jan Caldwell said Brambila was pushing a stroller, and he put expensive tools from the store in it.

As Brambila neared the exit, workers noticed the suspect had equipment, not a baby, in the stroller and confronted him.

Poised with an aerosol can and lighter in hand, Brambila sprayed the flammable contents over the flame, creating a "street flamethrower" in a large fiery blast aimed at the workers, Caldwell said.

The employees backed off, and Brambila ran to the parking lot, authorities say. There, his wife of 17 years, Sarrah Brambila, 34, waited in a vehicle with their 18-month-old child in the backseat, according to Caldwell.

More at the link

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Not that I've been following this case with a fine toothed comb, followed it peripherally. There were some glowing discrepancies in his testimony and eye-brow raising actions from Oscar Pistorious during the death of his girlfriend. But hey! The judge ruled.




Judge in Oscar Pistiorius case says state has not proven premeditated murder.





PRETORIA, South Africa — After months of hearings, the judge in the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius said on Thursday that there were “not enough facts” for him to be found guilty of premeditated murder, the most serious charge facing the double amputee track star.

The judge, Thokozile Matilda Masipa, also found that Mr. Pistorius could not be found guilty of a lesser form of murder in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, when he shot and killed her in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013. Sitting in a woooden dock, Mr. Pistorius sobbed as the judge spoke.

In a lengthy recitation of the facts, Judge Masipa said that Mr. Pistorius had acted “unlawfully,” but did not immediately disclose her ruling on the lesser charge of culpable homicide which would bring a lower sentence than murder charges she dismissed.

The judge said that Mr. Pistorius had been a “very poor witness” who had delivered evasive and inconsistent testimony under harsh cross-examination.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-south-africa-verdict.html?_r=0

[Kobi]

While the NFL drowns in a flurry of speculation about who in the league office saw the Ray Rice tape and when, another domestic violence crisis grows ever more pressing.

Carolina Panthers defensive lineman Greg Hardy was declared guilty by a North Carolina judge of assaulting his former girlfriend, Nicole Holder, in an incident that allegedly involved hair-pulling, slamming a toilet seat on her arm, and putting his hands around her neck. While he awaits the next step in his legal process, a jury trial, Hardy played in the team's season-opening game last weekend, and is scheduled to play this Sunday.

Hardy had an excused absence from Panthers practice Wednesday, but is expected to be available for Sunday's game against the Detroit Lions, coach Ron Rivera told reporters in a conference call.

On Wednesday night, Panthers owner Jerry Richardson tearfully defended himself and his franchise at an awards dinner in his honor – an event that commissioner Roger Goodell reportedly cancelled out of.

"I stand firmly against domestic violence, plain and simple,” Richardson said. “To those who would suggest that we've been too slow to act, I ask that you consider not to be too quick to judge. Over the course of our 20 years, we have worked extremely hard to build an organization of integrity.”

Richardson was given an “award against indifference” on Wednesday, but indifference is what’s coming through. The league has frozen when confronted with red flags, rather than acting proactively in response to a clear warning. Doing nothing, as the Baltimore Ravens chose and as the Panthers are choosing, is not enough. Not anymore.

That's painfully clear in a letter Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti sent to season-ticket holders and sponsors on Tuesday. He began by saying the people of Baltimore "deserve an explanation," and yet he didn't provide one.

"Why didn't we act earlier?" is the right question, but it's never answered. Here is the key paragraph:

"In March, the prosecutor dropped the case against Janay [Palmer], but elevated the charge against Ray from simple assault to aggravated assault. At this point, we decided to defer action until completion of the court proceedings. We stopped seeking to view or obtain a copy of the video. We halted our fact-finding. That was a mistake on our part."

So why did the Ravens defer action until completion of the court proceedings? Why the paralysis?

The charge against Rice was elevated. It had been simple assault, which is often related to an altercation and charged as a misdemeanor. It turned into aggravated assault, which is classified in all states as a felony and often involves a deadly weapon or a serious injury.

Is it a guilty verdict? No. But it certainly is a tell that something terrible happened in the elevator at that casino. Goodell told CBS' Norah O'Donnell that that Rice's version of the events in the elevator was "ambiguous." This elevation of a charge is not ambiguous. It means something potentially felonious happened to Palmer. That should have been enough reason to take a precautionary step: keep the arrested player off the field without cutting him or his pay. In the post-Ray Rice world, that’s a step that teams like the Panthers should be taking.

Instead, nothing was done in Baltimore, and nothing has been done in Charlotte. It can seem prudent to those who want to respect due process. But it looks callous and calculating to victims, and to fans who are now watching these decisions more closely than ever.

We're two years removed from a woman being killed by an NFL player in an episode of domestic violence. In December of 2012, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher murdered his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, and then killed himself at the team facility. That was the alarm that should have led to the six-game suspension now instituted by Goodell for domestic violence.

It didn't. And even though the Rice incident has the nation talking, the inaction continues at both the league and team level. Domestic violence matters will be reviewed on a case by case basis, says the league. That leads to more paralysis. And more of the judging Richardson fears.

So we have Greg Hardy likely playing on Sunday. And we have Ray McDonald likely playing on Sunday, despite being arrested for allegedly assaulting his pregnant girlfriend.

It's one thing if there is exculpatory evidence. If the 49ers or Panthers have reason to believe violence did not occur at the hands of players on their teams, that's a valid reason to wait. But a player being a nice guy is not reason to wait. A player's role in the community is not a reason to wait. A player's value to his team on the field is not reason to wait.

There has been plenty of hand-wringing over Ray Rice that was presented to the public. Bisciotti called him "a model citizen in the community and terrific teammate for six seasons."

That is not evidence that should be used to keep a player on the field after an arrest for domestic violence. There's always a fear of punishing a player for one bad decision, but that gives offenders way too much credit. To say that an offender acted completely out of character is an easy answer. It's more likely they acted completely out of the character they portray to the public.

And the public has a major stake in this. As the Charlotte Observer points out, $87 million in taxpayer money went into the stadium where Hardy will be featured on Sunday. The newspaper's editorial board is calling for fans to turn their backs on Sunday if Hardy plays.

"The Panthers can say they are letting the legal process play out," the Observer states, "but it appears they just want to bulk up their pass rush."

The Panthers owner abhors that kind of thinking. But letting the legal process play out after a judge has ruled looks like a transparent effort to make it all go away. He can’t afford that perception any more than Roger Goodell can. This problem is not going away in society, and it is not going away in football. It might be showing up Sunday in Charlotte.

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl-s-next-ray-rice-crisis-is-already-here-with-greg-hardy--panthers-033425803.html

[Kobi]

In case you need a reminder, here is a little refresher course on ten celebrities who’ve admitted to partner abuse or faced serious charges of it, and gone right on working.

1. Mel Gibson

You might have noticed in the last few days that when a wealthy man is caught beating a woman he purportedly loves, a lot of people want to talk about her love of money.

Not about the fact that even your average, middle- and lower-class abusers routinely control household finances, to keep their partners dependent on them. And not about the fact that wealthy, famous men can, in most cases, use money to make charges of violence against women go away.

No, people want to talk about how women like Janay Palmer must be gold-digging ninnies to stay with men who beat them—even though there are endless reasons why victims stay, including that leaving is when they’re most likely to be killed. And even though actual gold-digging ninnies also do not deserve to be punched out, or beaten with baseball bats, or shot in their own homes.

If you’ve said or thought something along those lines recently—that she must see the money as a decent trade-off for the occasional broken bone or concussion—I want you to do me a favor. Go listen to the second audiotape Mel Gibson’s ex made of him screaming, growling, and panting at her like a rabid dog, from 6:30–6:50. Listen to her say, as calmly as possible, “I don’t give a damn if you don’t spend another penny on me. I’m just fearing for the life of my daughter.” And then listen to Gibson positively roar, “Cunt, bitch, golddigger, cunt, whore!” in response.

Keep hearing that voice in your head every time you’re tempted to diagnose an abuse victim with gold-lust. Every time you’re tempted to say she must love money more than she hates being beaten—or worse, that she’s lying about the abuse to extract money from her spouse. Remember Mel Gibson’s explosive rage, and know that you’re making the same argument he is. Cunt, bitch, golddigger, cunt, whore.

The Expendables 3, featuring Mel Gibson, is currently in theaters. The successful movie franchise has also starred Mickey Rourke, who was charged with spousal abuse in 1994; Wesley Snipes, who allegedly beat one of his girlfriends until she was mostly deaf in one ear; Sylvester Stallone, whose late half-sister accused him of abuse; Stone Cold Steve Austin, accused more than once of assaulting an intimate partner; Eric Roberts, ditto; Jean-Claude Van Damme, whose third wife charged him with spousal abuse; and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who, as governor of California, repeatedly blocked spending on domestic-violence programs and shelters. Just in case you were tempted to think of Gibson as some kind of anomaly.



2. Sean Penn

In 1987, the actor reportedly hit his then-wife, Madonna, with a baseball bat, sending her to the hospital. He was charged with felony domestic assault. In 2003 he won his first Academy Award for best actor. In 2008, he won another.

In 2014, he made the news for donating 65 guns he personally owned to artist Jeff Koons, who would melt them down and make a sculpture of them, at the behest of Penn’s new girlfriend, Charlize Theron. Theron’s father was shot to death by her mother one night after the father came home firing a gun and screaming that he would kill them both. (Although there have so far been no reports of violence in this relationship, it’s worth noting that girls who grow up in violent households often choose abusive partners.) Sean Penn is widely respected as an exceptionally talented actor and activist for various humanitarian causes.



3. Charlie Sheen

In 1990, his fiancée, Kelly Preston, found herself shot by Sheen’s gun, supposedly by accident, although she broke up with him immediately thereafter. (One of Mickey Rourke’s exes was shot by a gun belonging to him in a very similar manner.) Five women with whom Sheen had intimate relationships subsequently made formal complaints of abuse against him. His latest television show, Anger Management, broke a ratings record when it debuted.



4. Chris Brown

'Member when he beat the shit out of his girlfriend, Rihanna, in 2009, and pictures of her bruised, bloody face were all over the internet? 'Member when he won a Grammy, in 2012? 'Member when the news came out this week that he’ll soon be on Dancing With the Stars and Saturday Night Live, in support of his sixth studio album? He's 25.



5. Josh Brolin

Arrested for spousal battery in 2004. Widely lauded a few years later for his performances in No Country for Old Men, W., and Milk. Still working plenty.



6. Axl Rose

Accused of domestic violence enough times that his Wikipedia page has a whole section on it. Inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, along with two other apparent abusers from the original line-up of Guns N’ Roses, in 2012.



7. Michael Fassbender

Accused by an ex of breaking her nose and dragging her alongside a car, among other things. Widely perceived as the thinking woman’s sex symbol, owing to his European accent(s) and large, frequently filmed wang.



8. Nicolas Cage

Ruined his first chance at marrying wife number one, Patricia Arquette, by “throwing an almighty tantrum at the airport.” Eventually reconciled with her, but then divorced and moved on to an “explosive” marriage to his second wife, Lisa Marie Presley, featuring fights after which he’d call his wife and say, according to her, “he was sorry, wish he hadn't done it, things like that.“ Arrested for assaulting his third wife, Alice Kim, in 2011. Finally seems to have worn out his Hollywood welcome, but he’s still working. There’s probably a role for him in Expendables 4.



9. Terrence Howard

Accused of assaulting six different women between 2000 and 2013. Nominated for an Academy Award in 2005. Defended Chris Brown in 2009, then took it back when he realized people weren’t cool with that. Will soon be seen in the acclaimed St. Vincent.



10. John Lennon

The man composed tender love songs, opposed war, imagined peace, and wrote the lyric, "I used to be cruel to my woman/ I beat her and kept her apart from the things that she loved." He meant it. The late Beatle told Playboy in 1980, “I used to be cruel to my woman, and physically—any woman. I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace, you see. It is the most violent people who go for love and peace.”

- See more at: http://www.damemagazine.com/2014/09/09/we-all-have-domestic-violence-problem#sthash.Q75hRQmN.dpuf

[ksrainbow]

http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/09/11/op-ed-ray-rice-broken-nfl-culture-and-how-fix-it

[MrSunshine]

www.fortytonone.org

[Kobi]

Reuters) - Police were seeking on Friday to arrest Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson on a charge of child abuse, a Texas sheriff's office said, while Peterson's attorney said the incident resulted from him "using a switch to spank his son."

The National Football League's Vikings also said in a statement they will drop Peterson from the team's roster for Sunday's game against the New England Patriots as the team looks into the matter.

Peterson, a Texas native, was indicted by a grand jury in Montgomery County, north of Houston, on a charge of injury to a child, and an arrest warrant was issued on Friday afternoon, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

As of Friday evening, Peterson was not in custody, said Montgomery County Sheriff's Office spokesman Brady Fitzgerald. Also, a $15,000 bond was attached to the arrest warrant, he added.

The report comes on the heels of the NFL indefinitely suspending Baltimore Ravens three-time Pro Bowl running back Ray Rice for domestic violence.

"The charged conduct involves using a switch to spank his son," Peterson's attorney, Rusty Hardin, said in a statement, adding the running back testified before a grand jury for "several hours" and was fully cooperating with authorities.

"Adrian is a loving father who used his judgment as a parent to discipline his son," Hardin said. "Adrian never intended to harm his son and deeply regrets the unintentional injury."

Hardin added that the discipline mirrored the treatment Peterson experienced growing up in east Texas.

A local CBS broadcaster in Houston cited law enforcement sources in reporting that Peterson told police he used a tree branch in a "whooping" on his 4-year-old son in Spring, Texas, in May as punishment for pushing another one of the athlete's children.

The boy suffered cuts and bruises to areas including his back, buttocks, ankles and legs, the station reported.

Afterward, when the boy returned home to Minnesota, his mother took him to a doctor who determined the injuries were consistent with child abuse and that it appeared the child had injuries from one incident involving a “switch” and another incident, possibly involving a cord, the station reported.

"The Vikings are in the process of gathering information regarding the legal situation involving Adrian Peterson," the team said in a statement.

Peterson, 29, a six-time Pro Bowl running back and a former NFL Most Valuable Player, is in his eighth season in the league, all with the Vikings. He has rushed for 10,190 yards and scored 91 touchdowns, 86 on the ground, in his career.

In 2012, Peterson rushed for 2,097 yards, the second-most in a single season in NFL history, trailing only Eric Dickerson's 2,105 in 1984 with the Los Angeles Rams.

Peterson's 2-year-old son died in October 2013 after being allegedly assaulted by his mother's boyfriend in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The man, Joseph R. Patterson, was indicted on second-degree murder charges.

Peterson told reporters at that time that he had learned about the child only two months before and had been preparing to provide financial assistance to his son and the child's mother.

http://news.yahoo.com/nfls-adrian-peterson-charged-child-abuse-miss-sundays-002019477--nfl.html

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Let's just call it what it is....another example of male violence.....this time toward a child.

[MsTinkerbelly]

Reuters) - Police were seeking on Friday to arrest Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson on a charge of child abuse, a Texas sheriff's office said, while Peterson's attorney said the incident resulted from him "using a switch to spank his son."

The National Football League's Vikings also said in a statement they will drop Peterson from the team's roster for Sunday's game against the New England Patriots as the team looks into the matter.

Peterson, a Texas native, was indicted by a grand jury in Montgomery County, north of Houston, on a charge of injury to a child, and an arrest warrant was issued on Friday afternoon, the sheriff's office said in a statement.

As of Friday evening, Peterson was not in custody, said Montgomery County Sheriff's Office spokesman Brady Fitzgerald. Also, a $15,000 bond was


attached to the arrest warrant, he added.

The report comes on the heels of the NFL indefinitely suspending Baltimore Ravens three-time Pro Bowl running back Ray Rice for domestic violence.

"The charged conduct involves using a switch to spank his son," Peterson's attorney, Rusty Hardin, said in a statement, adding the running back testified before a grand jury for "several hours" and was fully cooperating with authorities.

"Adrian is a loving father who used his judgment as a parent to discipline his son," Hardin said. "Adrian never intended to harm his son and deeply regrets the unintentional injury."

Hardin added that the discipline mirrored the treatment Peterson experienced growing up in east Texas.

A local CBS broadcaster in Houston cited law enforcement sources in reporting that Peterson told police he used a tree branch in a "whooping" on his 4-year-old son in Spring, Texas, in May as punishment for pushing another one of the athlete's children.

The boy suffered cuts and bruises to areas including his back, buttocks, ankles and legs, the station reported.

Afterward, when the boy returned home to Minnesota, his mother took him to
a doctor who determined the injuries were consistent with child abuse and that it appeared the child had injuries from one incident involving a “switch” and another incident, possibly involving a cord, the station reported.

"The Vikings are in the process of gathering information regarding the legal situation involving Adrian Peterson," the team said in a statement.

Peterson, 29, a six-time Pro Bowl running back and a former NFL Most Valuable Player, is in his eighth season in the league, all with the Vikings. He has rushed for 10,190 yards and scored 91 touchdowns, 86 on the ground, in his career.

In 2012, Peterson rushed for 2,097 yards, the second-most in a single season in NFL history, trailing only Eric Dickerson's 2,105 in 1984 with the Los Angeles
Rams.

Peterson's 2-year-old son died in October 2013 after being allegedly assaulted by his mother's boyfriend in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The man, Joseph R. Patterson, was indicted on second-degree murder charges.

Peterson told reporters at that time that he had learned about the child only two months before and had been preparing to provide financial assistance to his son and the child's mother.

http://news.yahoo.com/nfls-adrian-peterson-charged-child-abuse-miss-sundays-002019477--nfl.html

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Let's just call it what it is....another example of male violence.....this time toward a child.


I was switched as a child because my Mom and her brothers were switched by their father. Switched, is a great deal different then winding up with cuts and bruises, and i have to say that there is not much a baby of 4 could even be switched for!

And before they give the excuse of "it was done to him", i never switched my child or even hit her for that matter.

These men need to be held accountable for the violence happening in their families, no excuses, treatment and/or jail and termination from a position that children and adults look up to. Although why sports figures are held in such esteem is beyond all reason! But, that's a discussion for another day.

[Kobi]

During a week filled with a hideous hodgepodge of racism, domestic violence and homicide, sports offered little escape and even less accountability.

Danny Ferry was still hanging onto his job, despite disparaging comments about an African player.

Ray Rice was out of a job, but only after we all saw the video of him actually delivering a knockout blow to the woman who is now his wife.

Oscar Pistorius was back home and buoyed by the prospect of not spending a lick of time behind bars, even after shooting his girlfriend to death.

No one has any real desire to clean up our games.

And we — the gullible masses — are willing to look the other way if someone pays a small price here and there.

Turns out, they're absolutely right.

"As long as we give athletes hero status and throw money their way to the point that they feel invincible, we will continue to shake our heads about their behavior when they get into trouble," said Eric A. Zillmer, the athletic director at Drexel University.

So far, a little head-shaking is about as far as anyone is willing to go — unless they have a video or audio tape.

The corporate sponsors might be in the best position to demand change, considering all the billions they stuff into the pockets of the owners and their employees. But the only time they get riled up is when it affects their bottom line. Even then, it's rarely very long before they're pulling out their checkbooks again.

Congress pipes up from time to time, threatening to take on the herculean task of cleaning up our games but never doing much more than grandstanding.

Finally, we come to the fans, who'll tell you over the water cooler that they're fed up with all the corruption and the cover-ups. Then, they'll paint their faces, put on their team jerseys, and plunk down hundreds of dollars to cheer on those guys they just griped about.

There was certainly plenty to complain about in the week that was:

— Ferry, the Atlanta Hawks' general manager, with his racially disparaging assessment that potential free-agent signee Luol Deng has "a little African in him," then going on the explain that meant the player was like a store owner whose business looks legit from the front window, but is selling counterfeit goods out back. Laughingly, Ferry claimed he was merely repeating what others had said about Deng, as if racism is OK as long as you didn't say it first.

— Rice, the Baltimore Ravens' star running back, hastily being released by the same team that had called him a good guy after he was shown on a video a few months ago dragging his unconscious then-fiancee out of an elevator. Most of us didn't need to see evidence of Rice having knocked her out, but that turned up, too, uncovered by the sleuths at TMZ, not the mighty NFL. And Rob Maaddi of The Associated Press delivered a further bombshell with his report that a law enforcement source had actually sent the really incriminating video to the league, but never heard anything more.

— Pistorius, the celebrated "Blade Runner," beating the most serious charges in the fatal shooting of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp after an O.J.-like trial in South Africa. The Olympic sprinter said he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder hiding behind a bathroom door, a rather far-fetched scenario at best. He was found guilty of negligent homicide, which makes him eligible for a suspended sentence.

"People think he got away with murder," said Veronica Nyathi, a Johannesburg resident reminding us that this sort of coddled behavior extends far beyond American shores. "Most people want to see him go to jail. If he was poor, he would definitely be in jail. But if you are rich, your life can go on as normal."

If there was any justice, Ferry would be fired immediately, Rice would never touch another football in the NFL, and Pistorius would receive the maximum sentence.

But that's not the reality.

Ferry took a leave of absence Friday, but made it clear he somehow hopes to hold on to his job. He'll go to diversity training and try to sort out why those vile words rolled off his lips with such ease. His enablers — Hawks CEO Steve Koonin and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver — have said Ferry deserves to keep his job. That's a particularly indefensible stance in Silver's case, given he just ran Donald Sterling out of the league for racist blather.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who initially just out an embarrassing two-game suspension to Rice, left the door open for the player's return from a now-indefinite suspension as long as, "We are fully confident that he is addressing this issue." What the commish left unsaid, of course, was, "Hey, this guy is really good at running the football, so we'd be foolish to banish him forever. And everyone will forget what he did soon enough."

Pistorius may never again compete at the Olympics, but he'll at least be able to go on with some semblance of his life. That's more than we can say for his girlfriend.

As if that wasn't enough, we got word late Friday that Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings' star running back, was indicted on a charge of child abuse for using a branch to spank his son. The team benched him for this weekend's game, though we know he'll be back on the field soon enough.

The games go on.

Nothing really changes.

http://news.yahoo.com/column-hideous-week-dont-expect-change-012938324--spt.html

[JDeere]

I have a feeling the Adrian Peterson case will take no time in finding the truth, but we may never really know. He has no clue what the boys down in Texas, will do to him, if he is found guilty and put in general population.

[JDeere]

https://www.yahoo.com/?err=404&err_url=http%3a%2f%2fnews.yahoo.com%2fvideo%2fnfl-star-adrian-peterson-turns-084808146.html

[homoe]

Thankfully Radisson Hotels have had the good sense to pull their ads/support from the Minnesota Viking, now if only others would follow their lead!!!!

[Kobi]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- After a day of public pressure from angry fans and concerned sponsors, the Minnesota Vikings have reversed course and placed star running back Adrian Peterson on the exempt-commissioner's permission list, a move that will require him to stay away from the team while he addresses child abuse charges in Texas.

The Vikings made the announcement early Wednesday morning, about a day and a half after initially deciding that Peterson could play with the team while the legal process played out. Peterson is charged with a felony for using a wooden switch to spank his 4-year-old son.

The Vikings came under heavy criticism for their initial stance. Several sponsors responded by either suspending their deals with the Vikings or severing ties with Peterson.

''While we were trying to make a balanced decision yesterday, after further reflection we have concluded that this resolution is best for the Vikings and for Adrian,'' owners Zygi and Mark Wilf said in a statement. ''We want to be clear: we have a strong stance regarding the protection and welfare of children, and we want to be sure we get this right. At the same time we want to express our support for Adrian and acknowledge his seven-plus years of outstanding commitment to this organization and this community.''

The stunning reversal comes after a harrowing day on Tuesday that included the Radisson hotel chains suspending its sponsorship with the Vikings.

Castrol Motor Oil, Special Olympics Minnesota and Mylan Inc. all severed ties with Peterson, and Twin Cities Nike stores pulled Peterson's jerseys from its shelves.

In addition, Anheuser-Busch issued a strongly worded statement that said it was disappointed in the way the NFL was handling all of the negative attention surrounding former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice's assault of his then-fiancee, and Peterson's arrest for child abuse.

Peterson has said he was disciplining his son and didn't intend to hurt him.

''This is the best possible outcome given the circumstances,'' Peterson's agent, Ben Dogra, told The Associated Press. ''Adrian understands the gravity of the situation and this enables him to take care of his personal situation. We fully support Adrian and he looks forward to watching his teammates and coaches being successful during his absence.''

The Vikings said they had deliberations with the NFL over the previous two days and informed the league they were revisiting the situation.

''After giving the situation additional thought, we have decided this is the appropriate course of action for the organization and for Adrian,'' the Wilfs said. ''We are always focused on trying to make the right decision as an organization.

''We embrace our role - and the responsibilities that go with it - as a leader in the community, as a business partner and as an organization that can build bridges with our fans and positively impact this great region. We appreciate and value the input we have received from our fans, our partners and the community.''

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/vikings-bring-back-peterson-despite-073001877--nfl.html

--------------------------------------


I look forward to the day when the NFL and team owners do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time.

I also look forward to other male athletes not feeling the need to support their troubled brothers cuz they are "good guys". Good guys dont knock out their girlfriends or beat their child or rape. Those behaviors are not the behaviors of "good guys".

Adrian Peterson needs some big time help in learning about the cycle of violence. He already had 1 child killed at the hands of another "good guy" when he was 2 years old. I'm sure that "good guy" didnt mean any harm either, even tho that child paid for that with his life. Now 2 more of his kids have been subjected to violent behavior, at his hands, simply for being kids who have a "good guy" for a father.

I look forward to the day when men understand, recognize, and take responsibility for their propensity of using violence against women and children.

[*Anya*]

17 September 2014 Last updated at 10:32 ET

By Leo Kelion
Technology desk editor

A listing for an iPhone 5S contained code that resulted in users being sent to a scam site

eBay faces investigation over breach

EBay has been compromised so that people who clicked on some of its links were automatically diverted to a site designed to steal their credentials.

The spoof site had been set up to look like the online marketplace's welcome page.

The US firm was alerted to the hack on Wednesday night but removed the listings only after a follow-up call from the BBC more than 12 hours later.

One security expert said he was surprised by the length of time taken.

"EBay is a large company and it should have a 24/7 response team to deal with this - and this case is unambiguously bad," said Dr Steven Murdoch from University College London's Information Security Research Group.

The security researcher was able to analyse the listing involved before eBay removed it.

He said that the technique used was known as a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack.

It involved the attackers placing malicious Javascript code within product listing pages. This code in turn automatically redirected affected users through a series of other websites, so that they ended up at the page asking for their eBay log-in and password.

Users only had to click the original listing to have their browser hijacked.

"The websites the user is being redirected to are almost certainly compromised by the attacker to hide his or her traces," Dr Murdoch explained.

Users who clicked on the affected listings were sent to a fake eBay welcome screen
He added that the fake page the users were ultimately delivered to contained code that had the potential to carry out further malicious actions.

"EBay is pretty competent, but obviously it has been caught out here," he said.

"Cross-site scripting is well within the top 10 vulnerabilities that website owners should be concerned about."

A spokesman for eBay played down the scope of the attack.

"This report relates only to a 'single item listing' on eBay.co.uk whereby the user has included a link which redirects users away from the listing page," he said.

"We take the safety of our marketplace very seriously and are removing the listing as it is in violation of our policy on third-party links."

However, the BBC identified that a total of three listings had been posted by the same account involved.

At least two of them produced the same redirect behaviour. The third was removed by eBay, along with the other two, before it could be checked.

Delayed reaction

The issue was originally identified by Paul Kerr, an IT worker from Alloa in Clackmannanshire who is also an "eBay PowerSeller".

He called the firm shortly after he had clicked on a listing for an iPhone and been redirected.

The eBay site has experienced several glitches over recent weeks
"The advert had been up for 35 minutes," he told the BBC.

"When I spoke to the lassie on the phone, she said: 'I'm going to report that to the highest level of security to get it looked into.' And she did emphasise that.

"They should have nailed that straight away, and they didn't."

Mr Kerr identified the problem because the web address of the page he was sent to was unusual. He screen-grabbed a video of the attack, which he uploaded to YouTube as evidence.

He added that other less tech-aware users might not have realised the danger they were in.

"It's guaranteed - you can bet your bottom dollar that somebody's going to click on that and be redirected to a third-party site and they're going to enter their details and be compromised," he said.

"You don't know how many of the hundreds of thousands of people who use eBay will have done that."

This is not the first technical setback eBay has suffered in recent months.

The site has experienced several periods when members have been unable to sign into their accounts and have received incorrect password alerts.

In May, the firm made users change their passwords after revealing that a database containing encrypted passwords and other non-financial data had been compromised.

In addition, it announced in July that 1,600 accounts on its StubHub ticket resale site had been broken into resulting in a scam that defrauded the service of about $1m (£600,000).

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29241563

[Kobi]

Aside from Ray Rice punching his wife, and Adrian Peterson swatching his kid, the list of domestic violence incidents by NFL players continues to find their way to the light of day.

Ray McDonald and Chris Cook of the San Francsico 49ers,

Tony McDaniel and Kevin Williams of the Seattle Seahawks,

Brandon Marshall and Santonio Holmes of the Chicago Bears,

Greg Hardy of the Carolina Panthers,

Dez Bryant of the Dallas Cowboys,

Erik Walden of the Indianapolis Colts,

Donte Whitner of the Cleveland Browns,

Randy Starks of the Miami Dolphins,

Frostee Rucker of the Arizona Cardinals;

have all been arrested for domestic violence or related charges since 2005, according to a USA Today database that tracks players' arrests since 2000.

Domestic violence and related incidents rank among the NFL’s biggest off-the-field problems, with 87 arrests involving 80 players over the last 14 years. The only other crime category with a larger number of arrests involving NFL players is DUI.

The team with the most arrests of players for domestic violence and related charges is the Denver Broncos, with 12. But it hasn't had one since 2010, when linebacker Kevin Alexander was cut a day after he was accused of hitting his girlfriend (the charges were later dropped).

Of the 12 active players with domestic violence-related arrests, the one with the most is Brandon Marshall, who has three. He’s never been convicted, but he served a three-game suspension in 2008 for personal conduct violations. But from there his story changes. He’s sought treatment, become an outspoken voice against domestic violence and is now considered a success, on and off the field.

Another player who has turned his career around is Bryant, a wide receiver for the Cowboys. In 2012, he was accused of hitting his mother, and agreed to anger counseling in exchange for having the charge dismissed.

Then there’s Walden, a linebacker who was suspended by the Green Bay Packers for one game in 2011 after being jailed for an alleged assault against his live-in girlfriend. In court, he submitted to a deferred judgment agreement that allowed him to avoid pleading guilty while receiving counseling. He’s since landed with the Colts.

Cook, a cornerback, was charged with assaulting his girlfriend in October 2011. He sat out most of the season for the Minnesota Vikings, but was later acquitted of all charges. The Vikings reinstated him, and he now is a teammate of McDonald’s in San Francisco.

McDaniel, a defensive tackle, was on the Miami Dolphins in 2010 when he was arrested for shoving his girlfriend, whose head hit the pavement. He pleaded no contest, was put on probation, and the league suspended him one game. He is now playing in Seattle.

Whitner, a safety then with the Buffalo Bills, was accused of harassment in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend in 2006. The charges were later dropped, and the NFL imposed no punishment. He’s now playing in his native Cleveland.

Cook, a cornerback, was charged with assaulting his girlfriend in October 2011. He sat out most of the season for the Minnesota Vikings, but was later acquitted of all charges. The Vikings reinstated him, and he now is a teammate of McDonald’s in San Francisco.

McDaniel, a defensive tackle, was on the Miami Dolphins in 2010 when he was arrested for shoving his girlfriend, whose head hit the pavement. He pleaded no contest, was put on probation, and the league suspended him one game. He is now playing in Seattle.

Whitner, a safety then with the Buffalo Bills, was accused of harassment in a domestic dispute with his girlfriend in 2006. The charges were later dropped, and the NFL imposed no punishment. He’s now playing in his native Cleveland.

Holmes, a wide receiver, has a long list of run-ins with the law. His domestic violence arrest came in 2006, when he was with the Pittsburgh Steelers and the mother of his children accused him of choking her and slamming her into a door. But she later was reluctant to testify, and the charges were dropped. Holmes’ lawyers promised he’d participate in counseling through the NFL. He now plays with Marshall in Chicago.

Williams, a defensive tackle with a lengthy history of legal troubles, was on the Vikings in 2005 when he was accused of domestic assault for a fight with his wife at home. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was put on probation, but the NFL didn’t suspended him. In 2011, however, Williams was suspended for using performance enhancing drugs. He now plays in Seattle.

Greg Hardy of the Panthers, today, asked for and was granted a leave of absence to deal with his domestic violence conviction and appeal.

Ray McDonald, the 49er defensive end who was arrested Aug. 31 for allegedly assaulting his pregnant fiancée at his 30th birthday party in San Jose. Free on bail, McDonald has not missed a game. Advocates for domestic abuse victims, along with public officials, including California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, have urged the 49ers to bench McDonald.

And just when you thought it might be settling down........

The Arizona Cardinals can apparently be added to the list of teams with problems with domestic violence. It is being reported by 3TV reporter Tyler Baldwin (in Phoenix) that Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer was arrested by Phoenix Police for domestic violence in connection with two domestic violence incidents that occurred over the summer. The Cardinals have deactivated Dwyer from all team activities.

Of course, if the Cardinals do cut Dwyer, the next man up on the roster would likely be practice squad running back Chris Rainey — who has had two separate domestic violence incidents, one in college that got him kicked off the team at Florida, and one in the NFL that got him cut by the Steelers.

Arizona has already had to deal with linebacker Daryl Washington. He is currently suspended, but under the league's substance abuse policy, but gave a guilty plea to aggravated assault on the mother of his child. He has yet to be punished by the league for the assault.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/nfl-controversy/still-playing-12-nfl-players-have-domestic-violence-arrests-n204831

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/jonathan-dwyer-reportedly-police-custody-214855457.html

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/09/17/reports-cardinals-jonathan-dwyer-in-domestic-violence-incident/?ocid=Yahoo&partner=ya5nbcs

[JDeere]

Dez Bryant had his day in court, I think there needs to be a separation between the law and football politics. I do not condone DV, as I was a victim of such, but as an avid football watching fan, I want to see more games played and less politics thrown into said game.

But it is hard to find a happy medium.

[JDeere]

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- After a day of public pressure from angry fans and concerned sponsors, the Minnesota Vikings have reversed course and placed star running back Adrian Peterson on the exempt-commissioner's permission list, a move that will require him to stay away from the team while he addresses child abuse charges in Texas.

The Vikings made the announcement early Wednesday morning, about a day and a half after initially deciding that Peterson could play with the team while the legal process played out. Peterson is charged with a felony for using a wooden switch to spank his 4-year-old son.

The Vikings came under heavy criticism for their initial stance. Several sponsors responded by either suspending their deals with the Vikings or severing ties with Peterson.

''While we were trying to make a balanced decision yesterday, after further reflection we have concluded that this resolution is best for the Vikings and for Adrian,'' owners Zygi and Mark Wilf said in a statement. ''We want to be clear: we have a strong stance regarding the protection and welfare of children, and we want to be sure we get this right. At the same time we want to express our support for Adrian and acknowledge his seven-plus years of outstanding commitment to this organization and this community.''

The stunning reversal comes after a harrowing day on Tuesday that included the Radisson hotel chains suspending its sponsorship with the Vikings.

Castrol Motor Oil, Special Olympics Minnesota and Mylan Inc. all severed ties with Peterson, and Twin Cities Nike stores pulled Peterson's jerseys from its shelves.

In addition, Anheuser-Busch issued a strongly worded statement that said it was disappointed in the way the NFL was handling all of the negative attention surrounding former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice's assault of his then-fiancee, and Peterson's arrest for child abuse.

Peterson has said he was disciplining his son and didn't intend to hurt him.

''This is the best possible outcome given the circumstances,'' Peterson's agent, Ben Dogra, told The Associated Press. ''Adrian understands the gravity of the situation and this enables him to take care of his personal situation. We fully support Adrian and he looks forward to watching his teammates and coaches being successful during his absence.''

The Vikings said they had deliberations with the NFL over the previous two days and informed the league they were revisiting the situation.

''After giving the situation additional thought, we have decided this is the appropriate course of action for the organization and for Adrian,'' the Wilfs said. ''We are always focused on trying to make the right decision as an organization.

''We embrace our role - and the responsibilities that go with it - as a leader in the community, as a business partner and as an organization that can build bridges with our fans and positively impact this great region. We appreciate and value the input we have received from our fans, our partners and the community.''

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/vikings-bring-back-peterson-despite-073001877--nfl.html

--------------------------------------


I look forward to the day when the NFL and team owners do the right thing for the right reasons at the right time.

I also look forward to other male athletes not feeling the need to support their troubled brothers cuz they are "good guys". Good guys dont knock out their girlfriends or beat their child or rape. Those behaviors are not the behaviors of "good guys".

Adrian Peterson needs some big time help in learning about the cycle of violence. He already had 1 child killed at the hands of another "good guy" when he was 2 years old. I'm sure that "good guy" didnt mean any harm either, even tho that child paid for that with his life. Now 2 more of his kids have been subjected to violent behavior, at his hands, simply for being kids who have a "good guy" for a father.

I look forward to the day when men understand, recognize, and take responsibility for their propensity of using violence against women and children.



How about adding that women need to learn to do the same and take responsibility as well for their part in violence. MY attacker was a female.

[Kobi]

How about adding that women need to learn to do the same and take responsibility as well for their part in violence. MY attacker was a female.


JD, I am sorry to hear you were a victim of domestic violence. No one should have to face violence in a relationship. And, everyone should be aware that the first incident of violence will lead to more. It is rarely an isolated thing.

Domestic violence is a complex issue. The vast majority of perpetrators of domestic violence are male. The vast majority of victims are females and children. More women and children are likely to be killed at the hands of a male perpetrator in domestic violence.

The NFL has a serious and growing problem of male players who use violence as a way dealing with family matters. It has been content to let these slide until negative publicity, loss of corporate sponsorship, and disgruntled fans weighed in.

It is very common for people to blame the victims in male violence against women and children, rape, sexual abuse, or any other type of assault. This means women (and children) are blamed for the violence they endure. It means instead of focusing on male violence, the focus gets shifted, diverted, derailed, diluted by things like:

- what did the woman (or child or parent) do to provoke the male behavior?
- why didnt the woman leave or why did she stay if it was so bad?
- why didnt the woman protect her children (apparently fathers do not have the same responsibility to do so)
- what was the woman (child) wearing when they were sexually assaulted?
- was the woman drunk or otherwise impaired, implying her judgement or lack thereof was at fault
- why didnt the victim stop it?

The focus needs to remain on the behavior of the perpetrator. It needs to be called what it is. It needs to be dealt with for what it is...a propensity toward violence. It is a learned behavior and it can be unlearned.

[Kobi]

I agree, that the behavior needs to be focused but I know the vast majority is males because some men, including transmen like myself, don't say they were abused by a female. However, in the prisons and jails here, in Oklahoma are starting to fill up with women who are violent as well. I think both genders need to take responsibility for their actions, then deal with the learned behavior.



JD, with all due respect, this thread is for breaking news events. Domestic violence perpetrated by male NFL players towards the women in their lives and their own children has been big in the news the past couple of weeks.

You appear to have a different issue which may be better discussed elsewhere.

And, the feminist in me is trying real hard not to characterize your words as misogynistic and sexist. Many a woman on this web site can attest to violent behavior from transmen.

And one of the biggest ways men derail, dismiss, make excuses for, and otherwise dilute the issue of male violence is to take the focus off of men and put it on women.

Very common tactic. Sad but very common.

Have a good evening.

[Allison W]

Dez Bryant had his day in court, I think there needs to be a separation between the law and football politics. I do not condone DV, as I was a victim of such, but as an avid football watching fan, I want to see more games played and less politics thrown into said game.

I'd like to see the law and football politics separated, too. Such that football players committing crimes are tried and sentenced appropriately rather than with the judge and jury thinking about how it's going to mess up their Sunday entertainment.

How about adding that women need to learn to do the same and take responsibility as well for their part in violence. MY attacker was a female.

In the specific cases where a woman is the perpetrator (like in your relationship), this might be an appropriate thing to say. However, even with rising numbers of female perpetrators it's still a minority of cases, and the high-profile cases that have come up recently aren't cases in which a woman was the perpetrator.

Granted, as Kobi said, this is a thread for breaking news events. I'd love to get into my crazy ideas about violence and the meaning of increasing incidences of female perpetrators and possibly also our national bad habit of putting our entertainment before everything else, but I should probably not derail the thread any further than it has already been derailed.

[starryeyes]

Yay San Diego! (And she's nice to look at too! Lol)

http://www.10news.com/sports/san-diego-high-school-hires-woman-to-coach-football-team

[MsTinkerbelly]

Scotland votes no on independance!

Wow

[*Anya*]

Pennsylvania woman blamed for her own rape in state response to lawsuit

By Sara Ganim, CNN
updated 10:51 AM EDT, Thu September 25, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Omar Best, a convicted rapist, was allowed close contact with typist at prison
Typist, 24, complained about unsupervised access
Best eventually raped typist and was convicted; the typist filed a federal suit
"It's an attempt to embarrass the victim," victim's lawyer says of state response to federal suit

(CNN) -- The Pennsylvania attorney general's office is blaming a former state prison clerk for her own rape, in response to a federal lawsuit the woman filed.

The 24-year-old typist was working at the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, when she was attacked in 2013. She was choked unconscious and raped for 27 minutes by inmate Omar Best, who had been convicted three times previously of sex-related crimes, and then been transferred from a different state prison for assaulting a female assistant there.

"Despite this knowledge, defendants ... still allowed Omar Best to have unsupervised access to the offices of female employees," according to the lawsuit, which also blames the state for the rape.

In fact, the lawsuit says that the prison superintendent actually moved the clerk offices from a secure floor where there was no inmate contact to a location that was on a cell block.

"There were no locked doors between the offices and cell blocks, including Block C where (the victim) worked, except for the copy room," the lawsuit states.

Even though Best was convicted of the rape in May and a review of the prison found multiple failings and led to the superintendent's removal, a senior deputy attorney general wrote that the woman "acted in a manner which in whole or in part contributed to the events" in his response to her lawsuit.

It's victim shaming at its worst, the woman's lawyer told CNN. "Worse than that, it's an attempt to embarrass the victim," said Clifford Rieders, a Williamsport, Pennsylvania, attorney.

The state attorney general's office at first declined to comment when the matter was reported by the Centre Daily Times, in State College, Pennsylvania. Wednesday, the office released a statement saying that it is required to present all possible defenses and "contributory negligence is one such defense."

In the statement provided to CNN, the attorney general's office said, "This initial filing should not necessarily be interpreted as meaning this defense will be pursued throughout the entire case," adding that elected Attorney General Kathleen Kane was not aware her senior deputy included that defense in his filing.

"Attorney General Kane is disappointed that she was not made aware of this matter prior to the filing, and was saddened to learn that the filing implied that the victim somehow contributed to this crime."

Best is serving a life sentence for the woman's rape. The Pennsylvania state victim advocate said it's hypocritical to use victim-blaming as a defense for the prison.

"I think it's absolutely deplorable to blame the victim in this case," Jennifer Storm told CNN.

"It's not common legalese in rape cases," Storm said of the AG's defense. "And it shows a significant lack of sensitivity to not understand the harm this has done to the young woman and the re-victimization she's going through today.

"In a rape case, this is plain victim-blaming."

Storm and Rieter both pointed out that the local district attorney, Stacy Parks Miller, who prosecuted Best, whole-heartedly believed the victim. And so did a jury.

"The DA went to bat 100% for this victim," Storm said. "To then backtrack ... it's despicable, I'm disgusted.".

"It's obviously completely inconsistent with the criminal trial," Rieter said. "I think it's bad lawyering. It's what some lawyers do. I don't think it's right, or just, and has no basis here ... There are some people in this day and age who will still do that even though there is no factual or legal basis for it."

According to the suit, Best had been convicted three times prior of sex-related offenses. In 2010, DNA testing linked him to the 1999 abduction and rape of an 18-year-old woman in Philadelphia, and he was sentenced to 7 to 15 years in prison for it. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to rape and robbery in another Philadelphia case and was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

In a 1996 case, he pleaded guilty to indecent assault, after being charged with attempted rape, the lawsuit says.

Then, while imprisoned at another facility called Graterford, Best assaulted a female assistant, according to the lawsuit, and was transferred to the state prison at Rockview in Bellefonte, where this victim worked.

The victim had complained twice to her boss -- about a week before the attack -- that she felt uncomfortable and unsafe with Best coming into her office. She was assured Best would no longer have access to her office, the lawsuit states.
But on July 25, around 8:30 a.m., Best went to her office under the guise of taking out her trash, and grabbed the woman from behind, choking her until she passed out. She tried to blow a distress whistle she carried, but no one heard it. Her lawsuit also claims the prison was understaffed.

A prison investigation led to the firing of the superintendent, Marirosa Lamas, the hiring of 70 new corrections officers, and the moving of those offices where she had worked to a more secure space, away from inmates.
In the state's response, it denied that the internal investigation was the reason for Lamas leaving.

The victim is suing the state Department of Corrections, her former supervisor, the block manager, and the former superintendent, Lamas.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/24/justice/woman-blamed-for-her-rape/index.html?iref=allsearch

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Blood Moon Total Eclipse

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/10/141006-blood-moon-lunar-eclipse-october-science/


Viewing Guide: Watch Blood Moon During Total Lunar Eclipse on Wednesday

The second in a rare set of four lunar eclipses will be visible across most of North America.
.




http://www.pachamama.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/blood_moon_rising_by_myjavier007-d6qttxx.jpg

[*Anya*]

OCT 12, 2014, 7:36 AM

by DR. RICHARD BESSER; GEETIKA RUDRA; BEN CANDEA
@bencandea

A health care worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States who later died, has preliminarily tested positive for the deadly virus, Texas officials said today.

The health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital has been isolated since reporting a low-grade fever Friday, the Texas Department of State Health Services said in a statement. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will conduct further testing to confirm the diagnosis.

If test results hold, it would be the first case of Ebola contracted in the U.S.

"We knew a second case could be a reality, and we've been preparing for this possibility," Dr. David Lakey, commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services, said in a statement. "We are broadening our team in Dallas and working with extreme diligence to prevent further spread."

Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins said the health care worker's family asked that the patient's identity not be released, calling the worker a "heroic person."

The health care worker, who's in stable condition, had been taking his temperature twice daily under the CDC's self-monitoring regimen since treating Duncan, said Dr. Daniel Varga with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital.

The health care worker's apartment complex was being decontaminated Sunday, said Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. Officials also went door-to-door in the neighborhood and distributed leaflets about the virus.

A pet found inside the health care worker's apartment is also being monitored, Rawlings said. A hazmat crew will clean the interior of the apartment later today.

Anyone who had contact with the health care worker after the person began showing symptoms, including other hospital staff members involved in Duncan's care, will be monitored.

"We are confident that the precautions we have put in place will protect our health care workers," Varga said.

But on CBS' "Face the Nation," Dr. Tom Friedan, head of the CDC, said that the second Ebola diagnosis indicates a clear breach of safety protocol, The Associated Press reported. He said the health care worker had treated Duncan several times after his diagnosis.

ABC News chief health and medical editor Dr. Richard Besser called the health care worker's case concerning, adding that public health officials will need to investigate how the exposure occurred.

While the CDC has said that any hospital is capable of safely treating Ebola, Besser said health care workers need training and practice using protective equipment to do so successfully.

"I would never have gone into an Ebola ward in Africa without being dressed and decontaminated by experts," he said. "Health care workers here should expect no less."

The CDC has not said if the second Ebola patient will be transferred to a specialized isolation facility, like the one at Emory University in Atlanta where two American missionaries who contracted Ebola in Liberia were treated.

"I would hope they are considering that," Besser said.

Varga didn't say whether the health care worker was among 48 people who may have had contact with Duncan after he began showing symptoms. Varga said the worker was considered "low-risk" to contract the virus.

Duncan died Wednesday at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been isolated during his treatment. His medical records show he had a 103-degree fever when he initially went to the hospital, but was sent home with antibiotics and Tylenol.

He returned to the hospital two days later when his symptoms worsened.

Duncan, who hails from Liberia, had arrived in the U.S. on Sept. 20 to visit family members in Dallas.

His neighbors in Monrovia told ABC News that he had helped carry a vomiting pregnant woman to get help, but his records revealed that he told the hospital he hadn't been in contact with anyone who was sick, according to The Associated Press.

Doctors and nurses at the hospital were aware Duncan had recently been in Africa.

While the health care worker undergoes treatment at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital, the hospital will divert its emergency care services to surrounding hospitals, Varga said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/texas-health-care-worker-tests-positive-ebola/story?id=26135108

[TruTexan]

They are now saying on a Dallas News station this Sunday morning, that the nurse is a woman that is the one that treated Duncan while he was in isolation at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
They also mentioned a report of a healthcare worker that contracted Ebola in another country had a dog and that dogs can be carriers for the Ebola virus but it is NOT known if they can infect humans by transmission, so that dog was euthanized as a precaution.
It is not known the fate of this current healthcare worker's animal or if that animal is a dog or cat.

[*Anya*]

They are now saying on a Dallas News station this Sunday morning, that the nurse is a woman that is the one that treated Duncan while he was in isolation at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
They also mentioned a report of a healthcare worker that contracted Ebola in another country had a dog and that dogs can be carriers for the Ebola virus but it is NOT known if they can infect humans by transmission, so that dog was euthanized as a precaution.
It is not known the fate of this current healthcare worker's animal or if that animal is a dog or cat.

It was a dog and most experts state that dogs and cats are not carriers but Ebola originally is said to come from fruit bats, which are carriers and it is considered a delicacy in some African regions. Folks in those areas originally contracted the disease by eating/handling diseased bats.

I think that there is much speculation at this point and a great deal of unknown.

* My perspective* from what I read. None of it reassures me.

[cricket26]

They are now saying on a Dallas News station this Sunday morning, that the nurse is a woman that is the one that treated Duncan while he was in isolation at Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.
They also mentioned a report of a healthcare worker that contracted Ebola in another country had a dog and that dogs can be carriers for the Ebola virus but it is NOT known if they can infect humans by transmission, so that dog was euthanized as a precaution.
It is not known the fate of this current healthcare worker's animal or if that animal is a dog or cat.

as someone who lives in very close proximity to greenville avenue (where this nurse lives and where the hospital is located) i can say that i am watching this story very closely....reverse 911 calls went out to those who live in the same apartment complex as the nurse lives....and anyone needing information can call 311....lets pray everyone involved in this process remains calm and compassionate...

[mythy]

Our chief government health official was on the news last night saying England would see Ebola over here in the next few months, bloody scary stuff.

[*Anya*]

20 October 2014 Last updated at 12:47 ET

Suspect Jakob Denzinger is still receiving benefits in Croatia, AP reports

The US government has paid dozens of suspected Nazi war criminals millions of dollars in Social Security benefits after forcing them to leave the US.

The payments, funded by taxpayers, were made through a legal loophole, an Associated Press investigation has uncovered. Some are still being paid.

Former guards at Nazi labour camps, where millions died, are among them.

The US justice department says benefits are paid to individuals who renounce US citizenship and leave voluntarily.

But there is anger that public money is being used in this way.

"It's absolutely outrageous that Nazi war criminals are continuing to receive Social Security benefits when they have been outlawed from our country for many, many, many years," said Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.

Getting paid:

Jakob Denzinger began serving in a Death's Head Unit in 1942, later settled in Ohio and became a plastic industry executive

Martin Hartmann volunteered for the SS in 1943, was stripped of his US citizenship and admitted to his Nazi past

Martin Bartesch was a guard at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, was working as a janitor when US authorities discovered past

Arthur Rudolph is accused of using slave labour at a Nazi rocket factory, brought to US after war due to technical prowess

John Avdzej was a Nazi-installed regional mayor in occupied Belorussia, claimed to have been a farmer when he immigrated to US

Wasyl Lytwyn served in a Nazi SS unit in the Warsaw Ghetto, worked as a shipping clerk in Chicago and later admitted concealing his SS service

Peter Mueller was a Nazi SS guard who came to the US in 1956 and resided in Illinois before voluntarily leaving for Germany

She said she plans to introduce legislation to close the legal loophole.

In a statement, justice department spokesman Peter Carr said that in 1979, the US Congress ordered the removal of Nazi criminals "as expeditiously as possible" to countries where they would face the possibility of criminal prosecution.

"Under existing US law, all retirement benefits - Social Security and Medicare - are terminated if someone is ordered by the court to be removed from the US," he added.

"However, if an individual renounces their US citizenship and voluntarily leaves the US, they might continue to receive Social Security benefits."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29694228

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Let us see how much time he REALLY serves.




Pistorius Sentenced to 5-Year Jail Term for kKlling Girlfriend





Source: Reuters

@Reuters: RT @LukeReuters: #OscarPistorius sentenced to 5 years in prison for shooting dead his girlfriend - @Reuters

Pistorius sentenced to five-year jail term for killing girlfriend

Tue Oct 21, 2014 4:42am EDT

PRETORIA (Reuters) - A South African court on Tuesday sentenced Olympic track star Oscar Pistorius to five years in prison for the killing of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year.

(Reporting by Joe Brock; Writing by David Dolan; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0IA0L720141021

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Police: 2 dead, including gunman at high school near Seattle.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/24/us/washington-school-shooting/index.html

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/92c402e97ac42aef6870c0b56652c39a3002715d/c=20-0-779-569&r=x404&c=534x401/local/-/media/DetroitFreePress/2014/08/30/thompson8-31-14.jpg

http://banter.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/24ggdarcyjpg-4b628e531254fc14-590x400.jpg

[JDeere]

Los Angeles (AFP) - A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.


http://news.yahoo.com/terminally-ill-us-woman-kills-herself-025658072.html

[Kobi]

Los Angeles (AFP) - A young American woman with terminal cancer has committed suicide, following promises to do so that had triggered shock and controversy over the right to die.


http://news.yahoo.com/terminally-ill-us-woman-kills-herself-025658072.html


This woman was amazing in her quest for "death with dignity" after being diagnosed with a glioma. I admire her tenacity and clarity and planning to enjoy and live as much of her life as possible, for as long as possible.

Death from a glioma is not pleasant. I'm glad she was the one who made the decision as to what was right for her and when; and that she had the support of her family throughout the process.

[Kobi]

Top 4 Scariest Things That Could Happen if Women Don’t Vote on Tuesday

Ballot initiatives in several key states are giving citizens the opportunity to vote on issues ranging from abortion access to the minimum wage, and it’s critical that women make informed choices. If you live in one of the affected states, make sure your voice is heard on Nov. 4th and that you know what is required to vote in your state.

Some of the initiatives on the ballot are truly the stuff of horror movies:

Women could lose the right to a safe and legal abortion.

In Tennessee, Amendment 1 would change the state’s constitution to allow politicians to pass laws that ban abortion even in cases of rape, incest or to save the health or life of a woman. It would also allow laws that deny life-saving treatments to pregnant women with critical illnesses such as cancer. The proposed amendment would even give politicians the power to restrict or ban access to common forms of birth control, such as the Pill, IUDs and emergency contraception. In short, it’s all kinds of spooky.

Also in North Dakota, Measure 1 would amend the state constitution to provide an “inalienable right to life” at “any stage of development.” If voters don’t stand against this, the measure would not only ban all abortion in the state without exception for rape or incest, but could make many forms of birth control, fertility treatments and stem-cell research illegal. A similar measure being considered in Colorado, Amendment 67, would change the state constitution to include “unborn human beings” in its definition of a person. If passed, this “personhood” amendment would have the same effects as the North Dakota measure as well as opening the possibility of criminal investigations into miscarriages. If that doesn’t want to make you scream this Halloween, we don’t know what will.

Women could lose the opportunity to earn a livable wage.

With minimum-wage legislation being stonewalled at the federal level, some states and localities have taken it upon themselves to treat low-wage workers with fairness and dignity. Seattle and Hawaii have already increased their minimum wage, and this November Alaska and South Dakota have ballot measures that would increase minimum wages to $9.75 and $8.50 an hour, respectively. Since women make up the majority of low-wage workers, and many are the family breadwinners, a pay increase could provide economic security and mitigate the gender pay gap in one fell swoop. The wages some workers are expected to raise children on are meager enough to send chills down your spine.

Women could lose the right to affordable birth control.

Legislators in Illinois posed this question to voters: “Shall any health insurance plan in Illinois that provides prescription drug coverage be required to include prescription birth control as part of that coverage?” Since this an advisory referendum, the outcome will not be binding, but a resounding “yes” vote would send a strong message to legislators that citizens support the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act. If it doesn’t pass, it would probably be the part of the scary movie where you want to put your hands over your eyes.

Women could lose constitutional equality.

If you’re an Oregonian, vote “yes” on Measure 89 (the Oregon ERA) to codify gender equality into the state’s constitution. If it passes, Oregon will join 20 other states in having their own ERAs. That means the full weight of the state constitution–like a friendly ghost we all know–would stand behind women in Oregon fighting wage, employment, housing or educational discrimination.

Unlike anything you’ll bump into in a haunted mansion this Halloween, these threats are very real. Don’t be the voter equivalent of the person who blithely wanders into the abandoned house with the ominous music playing. Be vigilant about what’s happening in your state, your city and your community by getting yourself to the polls on Tuesday.

http://msmagazine.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/10574365_10152727026003540_1150997444838390161_n.p ng

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/10/31/top-4-scariest-things-that-could-happen-if-women-dont-vote-on-tuesday/

[*Anya*]

By Eliott C. McLaughlin and Javier de Diego, CNN
updated 3:22 PM EST, Wed November 12, 2014

1,111 sex-crime calls, no investigation?

NEW: Inspector general says he's not sure how many sex assault victims denied justice
In one case, a 2-year-old was found to have a sexually transmitted disease, report says
Yet, the report alleges, detective said toddler gave no information warranting investigation
In 1,290 sex crime-related calls, only 13.9% showed evidence of investigation after initial report

New Orleans (CNN) -- The report is full of harrowing details alleging that five New Orleans Police Department detectives in the special victims unit may have failed to investigate sex crimes over a three-year period.

But one case stands out.
According to the seven-page document released Wednesday by the city's Office of Inspector General, a 2-year-old was brought to a hospital emergency room after an alleged sexual assault. Tests would show the toddler had a sexually transmitted disease, the report said. The detective in the case wrote in his report that the 2-year-old "did not disclose any information that would warrant a criminal investigation and closed the case," the inspector general's report said.

The detective -- identified only as "Detective A" -- is one of five officers whose reports were examined in the investigation. Only nine detectives worked in the special victims unit during the period that was investigated. The detectives are not being identified because of the ongoing investigation, but their names have been provided to the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau, the inspector general's report says. Though the detectives weren't identified, Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said they were not rookies. Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said the detectives were "seasoned," and some had been with the NOPD for more than a decade.

"These people should have known... the right way to do things," Quatrevaux said. 'Not a word, even a single word'.

The inspector general's findings indicate "there was no effective supervision of these five detectives over a three-year period. Nor could there have been any effective supervision of the supervisors, or any review of the outcome of the cases assigned to these five detectives." The Public Integrity Bureau identified 1,290 sex crime-related calls assigned to the five detectives and determined that in only 179 instances -- 13.9% -- did the detectives file "supplemental reports documenting any additional investigative efforts beyond the initial report; these 179 supplemental reports were the total written investigative product of the five detectives for sex crime-related calls for service for three years."

When officers file an initial report, it's intentionally short and vague so as not to identify the victim, Quatrevaux told CNN. The report mentions the assault and the location and notes that a supplemental report will follow, he said. "But in 60 percent of the cases, there was no supplemental report," he said. "There were a total of 1290 cases; 840, there's not a word, even a single word. Nothing. Nothing. There's nothing to note." Because of the void of information in those 840 cases, the inspector general's report said, investigators "could not analyze 65% of the sex crime-related calls for service assigned to the five detectives."

Of the remaining 450 calls that were designated as rape, simple rape or indecent behavior with a juvenile, documentation suggests the five detectives followed through in less than 40%, or 179, of the cases, the report said.

How many victims denied justice?
The findings leave Quatrevaux wondering "how many potential sexual assault victims are out there without justice." He further called on the Public Integrity Bureau to launch investigations into police misconduct. I'm committed to making sure that these crimes are investigated. ... We want to make this right.

Police Superintendent Michael Harrison
He couldn't speak to the motivation, he said, but his office's findings point to an "organization whose culture has evolved to where this level of work is not that unacceptable." Harrison, who took the department's reins from Ronal Serpas in August, months after the incidents in question, said he was disappointed by the report, which makes him realize there's more work to do within the department than he originally thought.

Serpas was superintendent for the entire period under investigation. He was named chief in 2010, about two years before the Justice Department announced an overhaul of the NOPD because of its history of corruption, excessive use of force, illegal searches and widespread racial discrimination. Last year, a court approved a settlement resolving the Justice Department investigation. "I'm committed to making sure that these crimes are investigated and that any allegations brought against our officers are investigated," Harrison said. "We want to make this right."

The department has transferred the five detectives to "patrol-related duties" and has instituted policies to ensure cases are being thoroughly investigated, he said. "Yes, they are getting paid," the superintendent said of the detectives, "and now there's an internal investigation to find out if there are departmental infractions or criminal laws that were violated."

In another alleged sex assault cited in the report, a juvenile went to an emergency room and spoke to a specialist who reported that the child gave "specific information" about sexual and physical abuse perpetrated by "a named individual who was living in the same house with the juvenile." That person was a registered sex offender, according to the report.

Detective D told at least three different individuals that Detective D did not believe that simple rape should be a crime.

Inspector General report
Detective A wrote that the child disclosed no information about a sexual assault and closed the case "due to a lack of evidence," the report said.

Ignoring medical reports?
Quatrevaux said these sorts of allegations are concerning because "if we're not going to pay attention to what's in the medical reports, then I don't know how we could even get to these sorts of crimes."
In another similar case more than two years ago, Detective E was assigned two cases in which the victims underwent sexual assault exams yielding documentation of physical injuries and other potential physical evidence.

The Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory contacted the NOPD to say one of the specimens matched DNA from another crime scene, but the NOPD still has yet to submit "a reference sample to confirm the match," the report said. In the other case, the DNA lab told NOPD it had submitted an incorrect kit, but "the NOPD has not responded," according to the report.

A review of the DNA Laboratory's records shows that as of October 13, 2014, the NOPD has failed to respond to 53 state lab requests for "reference samples" to confirm that DNA obtained in an investigation matches DNA in an FBI database, the report said. The requests date back to July 2010.

Another portion of the report homes in on Detective D, who, according to the investigation, was given 11 simple rape cases over the three-year period. Simple rape is defined as an assault in which the perpetrator rapes a victim that the perpetrator knows is incapable of resisting or understanding what's happening because the victim is in a stupor, intoxicated or "through unsoundness of mind" is temporarily or permanently incapable of understanding the nature of the act.

Of those 11, five had no supplemental reports, one had no file at all and one was taken to prosecutors, the inspector general's report said. Graham suspect faces charges in rape case
"Detective D told at least three different individuals that Detective D did not believe that simple rape should be a crime," it said.

Phone records, rape kits & back-dated reports

Among the other allegations in the report:
-- A victim told Detective B she was sexually assaulted and robbed of her iPhone, but there is no documentation indicating police tracked the phone;
-- A victim told a nurse before a sexual assault exam that she was receiving threatening text messages from her assailant, but there is no documentation showing Detective D tried to obtain phone records. Detective D also never submitted the rape kit to the Louisiana State Police DNA Laboratory because, the detective wrote, "the sex was consensual";

-- Detective A was assigned two cases in which infants were taken to the emergency room with skull fractures. In one case, a nurse suspected "non-accidental trauma," but Detective A did not investigate. In the other case, a doctor found a previous skull fracture, and the infant's mother gave conflicting accounts of what happened, but Detective A determined there was "no cause for criminal action."

-- Detective A was given 13 total cases, including the aforementioned, in which potential juvenile victims of sexual or physical abuse were still in the home where the abuse occurred. Eleven of those cases had no documents showing "any investigative effort beyond the initial report."

-- Detective B was given three cases in which the state laboratory identified DNA evidence, but there are no documents indicating a follow-up investigation.

-- In 2013, the inspector general requested supplemental reports missing from case files belonging to Detective C -- three from 2011 and one from 2010 -- but after the reports were submitted, investigators learned all four reports "were created on the same day in 2013, shortly after NOPD received the OIG request for the missing reports." Investigators determined the same thing happened with a 2010 and 2011 reporting missing from Detective E's files;

That last example was "perhaps the most egregious," Quatrevaux said.
"The auditors point out that they didn't have certain case files and asked the NOPD to send it to them," he said. "We got the cases a few days later, but when we checked with the (NOPD information technology) department we found that those records were post-dated two and three years. ... They were created when we made the request."
It began with a few dozen reports

The probe began when the Office of Inspector General's investigations division reviewed 90 sex crime-related reports acquired by the audit division. There's so many cases where the documentation suggests nothing was done. Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux said.

A May audit report cited a litany of violations of NOPD practices and policies, including mis-classifying crimes, failure to investigate, incomplete incident reports, failure to remit items to Central Evidence and Property, failure to maintain documents and backdating supplemental reports. Investigators then identified detectives who either failed to provide documents showing they investigated the cases or "provided questionable documentation," the report said.

Of those 90 cases, six reports had been created later than the date stated on the report, seven had no supplemental reports detailing investigative efforts and four contained information that didn't match medical documents, according to the inspector general's report. The curious documentation led the investigations division to review every case assigned to those five detectives from January 2011 to December 2013. They listened to audio tapes, interviewed nurses, visited the property room, examined the record on rape kits and talked to state police to put together the "full picture," Quatrevaux said.

The inspector general told CNN he'd never seen anything like this, "not in terms of the volume, the wholesale nature of it." "There's so many cases where the documentation suggests nothing was done," Quatrevaux said. "We don't know that for a fact, but we're missing the documentation. That's what we need to have because the documentation is the evidence of investigative effort, and if it's not there, then obviously we're going to think it doesn't exist."

The NOPD's special victims section is composed of the sex crimes, child abuse and domestic violence units and "has the responsibility to handle the investigation of all rapes and attempted rapes, sexual batteries, and carnal knowledge cases (except in child abuse cases)," the department's website says.

CNN's Eliott C. McLaughlin wrote and reported from Atlanta, with Javier de Diego reporting from New Orleans. CNN's Alina Machado also contributed to this report.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/12/us/new-orleans-sex-crimes-investigations/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[Kobi]

The Social Security Administration, which announced in April that it would stop trying to collect debts from the children of people who were allegedly overpaid benefits decades ago, has continued to demand such payments and now defends that practice in court documents.

After The Washington Post reported in April that the Treasury Department had confiscated $75 million in tax refunds due to about 400,000 Americans whose ancestors owed money to Social Security, the agency’s acting commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said efforts to collect on those old debts would cease immediately.

But although some people whose refunds were seized were reimbursed in recent months, some of those same taxpayers have since received new demands from Social Security, asserting that the debts remain and seeking repayment.

In March, the U.S. government intercepted Mary Grice’s tax refunds from both the IRS and the state of Maryland. It turned out that after Grice’s father died in 1960, when she was 4, her mother got survivor benefits to help feed and clothe her five children. Social Security says it overpaid someone in the Grice family — it’s not sure who — in 1977. With Grice’s mother long since dead, the government came after Mary to pay the debt.

The Takoma Park woman, now 58, filed suit against Social Security, challenging the government’s right to take her money without notice to satisfy her mother’s debt. After The Post wrote about her case, the government returned Grice’s tax refunds to her. But in August, she received a new bill from Social Security, seeking the same $2,997 that the agency had refunded to her four months earlier.

“DID YOU FORGET?” the letter said, demanding that Grice “send us the full payment right away.”

The four other plaintiffs who have joined Grice in her federal lawsuit have also received letters explaining that although the government returned their confiscated tax refunds after Colvin said such collections would cease, “this refund does not eliminate your overpayment.”

Asked to explain the about-face, Social Security officials said they would respond only to written questions. Late Friday, four days after The Post provided questions, the agency issued this statement from spokesman Mark Hinkle: “We are finalizing our review of the Treasury offset program, but cannot discuss specifics due to the pending litigation.” The offset program is Treasury’s effort to collect on debts to Social Security and other agencies by confiscating Americans’ tax refunds.

The lawsuit, now pending in federal court in Greenbelt, argues that since 2011, the government has been illegally confiscating tax refunds from tens of thousands of people “to satisfy dubious claims of debts based on alleged overpayments made decades ago.” The suit says the children involved never received any payment from the government; in addition, Social Security collected the debts without having notified taxpayers that they owed anything.

In court papers, the agency says the government has a right to collect from children if their parents received benefits meant for the well-being of those children.

The government’s brief argues that “the issue is whether [the law] bars Social Security from recovering overpayments from individuals who received benefits through another individual on their behalf when they were children. The answer to that question is ‘no.’ ”

“Deep down, they believe it’s the right thing to go after children,” said Robert Vogel, the attorney for the taxpayers whose refunds were seized.

The agency’s announcement last spring that it would stop such collection efforts “was a smoke screen,” he said. “Their intention was to get the press off their backs and then go back to collecting their money. It’s just shocking that they believe that when someone turns 18, they automatically assume a crushing debt that was incurred by someone else.”

In Social Security’s briefs in the federal case, the agency argues that Congress gave the agency “broad rulemaking authority” to collect debts “as it sees fit,” without regard to how old a child was when benefits were given to a parent. The agency argues that collecting on such debts “is a significant component of ensuring the solvency of the Social Security trust fund.”

The notion that there is a difference between someone receiving benefits directly and receiving the benefit of government support through a parent is a “baseless distinction,” Social Security says in court papers.

“They are going after kids, and their briefs prove it,” Vogel said. “They’re asking the court to be the first court in the United States to force a child to pay a debt incurred by the parents. It’s really quite disgusting.”

Even after Daniel Asmus of Fillmore, Calif., sent letters reminding Social Security of Colvin’s announced freeze, the agency pushed ahead with its effort to collect a $2,094 debt that it says stems from overpayments of survivor’s benefits to Asmus’s long-deceased mother in the 1970s. Asmus’s father died when Asmus was 9.

In June, more than two months after the announced halt to collection efforts, Social Security ordered the state of California, which employs Asmus as a highway construction worker, to garnish $615 a month from his wages — about a quarter of his pay.

“If there were an overpayment when I was a child, I assure you my mother had no knowledge of it or would have gone without shoes herself in order to make sure it was given back,” Asmus wrote to Social Security. “Since the overpayment was not my fault, especially if it was made when I was a child and had no control over how the money was spent, and it was around 40 or more years ago, it would be unfair to collect from me now.”

The only response he got was a form letter demanding repayment and making no reference to the change in policy.

“We cannot make our house payment with them taking 25 percent of his income,” said Mary Asmus, Daniel’s wife. “That statement about not going back beyond 10 years was just a hoax to get the public off their back. I guess Social Security can do whatever they want to and no one can stop them.”

Despite the announced freeze, Social Security has continued to press Jessica Vela of San Diego for $16,888 that the government claims she owes for overpayments made to her mother in child support benefits when Vela was 1. Vela’s mother is still alive, and Social Security first tried to collect from her, but the mother fought the government in court and won. That’s when Social Security turned to the daughter.

Now 24 and a Navy veteran whose husband remains on active duty, Vela was a month away from delivering her second child in April when her income tax refund of $5,996.87 was seized by the Treasury Department this spring.

“They took our entire refund without prior notification by mail, carrier pigeon, smoke signal, anything,” she said. “We were hoping to buy a crib and everything else we needed for the baby with that money.”

Vela has repeatedly contacted Social Security to appeal the seizure, and she said that some Social Security employees at the offices she has visited told her that she was in the right, but in October she received a letter telling her that the agency would not review her case again.

Social Security officials told Vela to hire an attorney, but she said she has been unable to find one willing to invest the time necessary to press a case involving a relatively small amount.

“The government says they have no records they can show me about the debt, and obviously, I have no paperwork because I was in diapers when this occurred,” she said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/social-security-continuing-to-pursue-claims-against-family-members-for-old-debts/2014/12/13/4fbdc1f4-7fc7-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?wprss=rss_homepage

[MsTinkerbelly]

The Taliban has slaughtered 145 people, and wounded over 100 others (mostly children) in a school shooting.

I am so sick and sad for those poor babies. :rrose:

[Kobi]

****TRIGGER WARNING****



BUTTE, Montana (AP) — At least 786 children died of abuse or neglect in the U.S. in a six-year span in plain view of child protection authorities — many of them beaten, starved or left alone to drown while agencies had good reason to know they were in danger, The Associated Press has found.

To determine that number, the AP canvassed the 50 states, the District of Columbia and all branches of the military — circumventing a system that does a terrible job of accounting for child deaths. Many states struggled to provide numbers. Secrecy often prevailed.

Most of the 786 children whose cases were compiled by the AP were under the age of 4. They lost their lives even as authorities were investigating their families or providing some form of protective services because of previous instances of neglect, violence or other troubles in the home.

Take Mattisyn Blaz, a 2-month-old from Montana who died when her father spiked her "like a football," in the words of a prosecutor.

Matthew Blaz was well-known to child services personnel and police. Just two weeks after Mattisyn was born on June 25, 2013, he came home drunk, grabbed his wife by her hair and threw her to the kitchen floor while she clung to the newborn. He snatched the baby from her arms, giving her back only when Jennifer Blaz called police.

Jennifer Blaz said a child protective services worker visited the day after her husband's attack, spoke with her briefly and left. Her husband pleaded guilty to assault and was ordered by a judge to take anger management classes and stay away from his wife.

She said the next official contact between the family and Montana child services came more than six weeks later — the day of Mattisyn's funeral.

The system also failed Ethan Henderson, who was only 10 weeks old but already had been treated for a broken arm when his father hurled him into a recliner so hard that it caused a fatal brain injury.

Maine hotline workers had received at least 13 calls warning that Ethan or his siblings were suffering abuse — including assertions that an older sister had been found covered in bruises, was possibly being sexually abused and had been burned by a stove because she was left unsupervised.

Ethan himself had arrived at daycare with deep red bruises dappling his arm.

Still, the caseworker who inspected the family's cramped trailer six days before Ethan died on May 8, 2012, wrote that the baby appeared "well cared for and safe in the care of his parents."

LACK OF GOVERNMENT DATA

Because no single, complete set of data exists for the deaths of children who already were being overseen by child protective services workers, the information compiled over the course of AP's eight-month investigation represents the most comprehensive statistics publicly available.

The AP reviewed thousands of pages of official reports, child fatality records and police documents for the period in question, which ran from fiscal year 2008 through 2013.

And, even then, the number of abuse and neglect fatalities where a prior open case existed at the time of death is undoubtedly much higher than the tally of 760.

Seven states reported a total of 230 open-case child deaths over the six-year period, but those were not included in the AP count because the states could not make a distinction between investigations started due to the incident that ultimately led to a child's death and cases that already were open when the child received the fatal injury.

Some states did not provide data for all six years, not all branches of the military provided complete information, and no count of open-case deaths of any type was obtained from the Bureau of Indian Affairs or FBI, which investigate allegations of abuse on reservations.

The lack of comprehensive data makes it difficult to measure how well those responsible for keeping children safe are protecting their most vulnerable charges.

The data collection system on child deaths is so flawed that no one can even say with accuracy how many children overall die from abuse or neglect every year. The federal government estimates an average of about 1,650 deaths annually in recent years; many believe the actual number is twice as high.

Even more lacking is comprehensive, publicly available data about the number of children dying while the subject of an open case or while receiving assistance from the agencies that exist to keep them safe — the focus of AP's reporting.

When asked to explain why so many children with open cases have died at the hands of their caretakers, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the nation's major child abuse prevention programs, said the agency had no immediate response.

States submit information on child abuse deaths to the federal government on a voluntary basis — some of it comprehensive, some of it inaccurate.

For instance, a significant number of deaths were not reported to the South Carolina team reviewing child deaths in the state, said Perry Simpson, director of the South Carolina Legislative Audit Council. That meant the data the review team provided the federal government was wrong.

And a judge in Kentucky issued a scathing order last year against the state's Cabinet for Health and Family Services for willfully circumventing open records laws and failing to release full records on child abuse deaths, fining the agency $765,000.

In some cases, states withhold information about child deaths in violation of the terms of federal grants they receive.

HHS says all states receiving grants under a prevention and treatment program must "allow the public to access information when child abuse or neglect results in a child fatality," unless those details would put children, their families or those who report child abuse at risk, or jeopardize an investigation.

In addition, grants issued under a section of the Social Security Act are tied to a requirement that states describe how they calculate data on child maltreatment deaths submitted to the federal government.

Still, no state has ever been found to be in violation of disclosure requirements and federal grants have never been withheld, according to Catherine Nolan, who directs the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect, a sub-agency of HHS.

"Obviously, the overarching goal is always keeping the children safe from harm. It's a matter of how the states have decided they want to do it," Nolan said.

The information that states provide to the federal government through the voluntary system also is severely lacking. A 2013 report showed that 17 states did not provide the federal government with a key measure of performance: how many children had died of child abuse after being removed from their homes and then reunited with their families within a five- year period.

Withholding information about such fatalities allows child protective agencies to shroud their activities — and their failures. It also leaves a major void for researchers and policy makers looking for ways to identify and protect the children in risky situations.

"We all agree that we cannot solve a problem this complex until we agree it exists," said David Sanders, chairman of the federal Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities, whose members have been traveling the country studying child deaths under a congressional mandate.

The child welfare system is fragmented, with hundreds of different agencies — from state governments to county offices, tribes and the military — operating by their own set of standards.

Some states, like New York and Ohio, have county-administered systems, with data collection and retention scattered. In others, a state agency provides child welfare services. And still others, such as Florida, have privatized some child welfare operations.

And because there is no single definition of what constitutes abuse or neglect, what is counted as maltreatment in one locality may not be in another.

the rest of the story (http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-abused-kids-die-authorities-fail-protect-053956800.html)

[Kätzchen]

Thanks for posting that article Kobi.

Over the past week, our local newspaper published a 4-part series on how state and federal level agencies have failed people needing help in the mental health and child/adult abuse sectors...agencies collecting fees on the backs of the very people who desperately need protection services and not getting the priority deserved to help them escape such harrowing situations or even get the desired treatment to help them overcome situations that are life threatening.

Sometimes I wonder what it will take to bring agencies into compliance with state and federal laws, laws which are supposed to hold agencies accountable -- as well as making sure that remedies are accessible to those who need relief, to those who should be relieved from hurting themselves and others.

It appears that agencies are failing those who are in dire need of help.

[*Anya*]

President Signs Federal Spending Bill Protecting State Sanctioned Medical Marijuana Programs

by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director
December 16, 2014

President Barack Obama signed spending legislation into law on Tuesday that includes provisions limiting the Justice Department’s ability to take criminal action against state-licensed individuals or operations that are acting are in full compliance with the medical marijuana laws of their states.

Specifically, an amendment sponsored by California Reps. Dana Rohrbacher and Sam Farr to the $1.1 trillion spending bill states, “None of the funds made available in this act to the Department of Justice may be used … to prevent … states … from implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.”

Said Farr following Congress’ passage of the legislation: “The federal government will finally respect the decisions made by the majority of states that passed medical marijuana laws. This is great day for common sense because now our federal dollars will be spent more wisely on prosecuting criminals and not sick patients.”

Similar language prohibiting the Justice Department from undermining state-sanctioned hemp cultivation programs was also included in the bill.

Also contained in the appropriations measure is a rider sponsored by Maryland Republican Andy Harris that seeks to limit DC officials’ ability to fully implement a November 2014 municipal initiative depenalizing the personal adult possession and cultivation of cannabis. At this time however, it remains unclear whether the enacted language is written in a manner that can actually do so. On Saturday, The Washington Post reported that DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson “plans to ignore the provision” and that he will “send a bill implementing Initiative 71 to Congress in January for a 30-day review, during which federal lawmakers can veto it or let it stand.” Such a review is necessary before any DC initiative can become law.

Washington DC’s Initiative 71, which was approved by 70 percent of District voters, removes criminal and civil penalties regarding the adult possession of up to two ounces of cannabis and/or the cultivation of up to six plants.

- See more at: http://blog.norml.org/2014/12/16/president-to-sign-federal-spending-bill-protecting-state-sanctioned-medical-marijuana-programs/#.dpuf

[Kobi]

VATICAN CITY (AP) — To the Catholic Church's "seven deadly sins," Pope Francis has added the "15 ailments of the Curia."

Francis issued a blistering indictment of the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, accusing the cardinals, bishops and priests who serve him of using their Vatican careers to grab power and wealth, of living "hypocritical" double lives and forgetting that they're supposed to be joyful men of God.

Francis turned the traditional, genteel exchange of Christmas greetings into a public dressing down of the Curia, the central administration of the Holy See which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. He made clear that his plans for a radical reform of the structures of church power must be accompanied by an even more radical spiritual reform of the men involved.

Ticking off 15 "ailments of the Curia" one by one, Francis urged the prelates sitting stone-faced before him in the marbled Sala Clementina to use the Christmas season to repent and atone and make the church a healthier, holier place in 2015.

Vatican watchers said they had never heard such a powerful, violent speech from a pope and suggested that it was informed by the results of a secret investigation ordered up by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in the aftermath of the 2012 leaks of his papers.

Benedict tasked three trusted cardinals to probe deep into the Vatican's back-stabbing culture to root out what would have prompted a papal butler to steal incriminating documents and leak them to a journalist. Their report is known only to the two popes.

Francis had some zingers: How the "terrorism of gossip" can "kill the reputation of our colleagues and brothers in cold blood." How cliques can "enslave their members and become a cancer that threatens the harmony of the body" and eventually kill it off by "friendly fire." How some suffer from "spiritual Alzheimer's," forgetting what drew them to the priesthood in the first place.

"The Curia is called on to always improve itself and grow in communion, holiness and knowledge to fulfill its mission," Francis said. "But even it, as any human body, can suffer from ailments, dysfunctions, illnesses."

Francis, who is the first Latin American pope and never worked in the Italian-dominated Curia before he was elected, has not shied from complaining about the gossiping, careerism and bureaucratic power intrigues that afflict the Holy See. His 2013 Christmas address cast a spotlight on such sins.

But a year into his reform agenda, Francis seemed even more emboldened to make clear to the prelates themselves that superficial displays of change aren't what he is looking for.

"This is a speech without historic precedent," church historian Alberto Melloni, a contributor to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, said in a telephone interview. "If the pope uses this tone, it's because he knows it's necessary."

Melloni noted that until Francis was elected, the Vatican bureaucracy largely answered to no one, saying "an entire generation of the Curia ran it as if they were pope." St. John Paul II was too busy travelling the world, and later too sick, to pay attention to awindministrative details, and Benedict left the minutiae of running a government to his deputy, later determined to have been part of the problem.

The Rev. Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University, said Francis was essentially asking the Curia to undergo an examination of conscience, asking them to reflect on how they had sinned before God before going to confession.

"Perhaps he believes that only a severe rebuke can help turn things around," he said.

The cardinals were not amused. Few smiled as Francis spoke, and at the end they offered only tepid applause to a speech that was so carefully prepared it had footnotes and Bibilical references. Francis greeted each one, but there was little Christmas cheer in the room.

It is, to be fair, a difficult time for the Curia. Francis and his nine key cardinal advisers are drawing up plans to revamp the whole bureaucratic structure, merging offices to make them more efficient and responsive.

Francis has said though that while this structural reform is moving ahead, what is taking much longer is the "spiritual reform" of the people involved.

The Vatican's finances are also in the midst of an overhaul, with Francis' finance czar, Cardinal George Pell, imposing new accounting and budget measures on traditionally independent congregations not used to having their books inspected.

Francis started off his list with the "ailment of feeling immortal, immune or even indispensable."

Then one by one he went on: Being rivals and boasting. Wanting to accumulate things. Having a "hardened heart." Wooing superiors for personal gain. Having a "funereal face" and being too "rigid, tough and arrogant," especially toward underlings — a possible reference to the recently relieved Swiss Guard commander said to have been too tough on his recruits for Francis' tastes.

Some critiques could have been seen as worthy of praise: working too hard and planning too much ahead. But even those traits came in for criticism as Francis noted that people who don't take time off to be with family are overly stressed, and those who plan everything to a "T'' don't allow themselves to be surprised by the "freshness, fantasy and novelty" of the Holy Spirit.

At the end of the speech, Francis asked the prelates to pray that the "wounds of the sins that each one of us carries are healed" and that the Church and Curia itself are made healthy.

http://news.yahoo.com/pope-issues-blistering-critique-vatican-bureaucracy-111617961.html;_ylt=AwrBT74Vm5hU7hkAO3dXNyoA
--------------------

[LeftWriteFemme]

Supreme Court Will Consider Taking Up Gay Marriage in January


http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2014-12-23/us-high-court-will-consider-taking-up-gay-marriage-in-january

[*Anya*]

CDC lab technician possibly exposed to Ebola, agency says

Published December 24, 2014FoxNews.com

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lab technician may have been exposed to the Ebola virus earlier this week following a mishap at an Atlanta facility, the agency said Wednesday afternoon.

>>>>> The accident, which occurred on Tuesday, happened when two sets of vials in the laboratory -- one containing an active sample of the deadly virus, one containing an inactive sample -- got mixed up, officials said. The experiment material was on a sealed plate, but it wasn't supposed to be moved into the lab the technician was working in.

The technician who processed "a small amount of material" from the experiment has been assessed and will be monitored for 21 days, although he was not showing any symptoms of the illness as of Wednesday.

The CDC said there was "no possible exposure" outside the laboratory and "no exposure or risk" to the public.

The possible exposure is under internal investigation and has been reported to Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Burwell, a CDC spokeswoman said. Additional employees have been notified, but none has required monitoring.

"I am troubled by this incident in our Ebola research laboratory in Atlanta," CDC Director Tom Frieden said. "We are monitoring the health of one technician who could possibly have been exposed and I have directed that there be a full review of every aspect of the incident and that CDC take all necessary measures."

Earlier Wednesday afternoon, The Washington Post reported that as many as a dozen scientists at the Atlanta facility may have been exposed, though FoxNews.com was unable to immediately corroborate the report. A spokeswoman for the agency told FoxNews.com that she had no information immediately available.

In June, at least 52 workers at the CDC took antibiotics as a precaution because a lab safety problem was thought to have exposed them to anthrax.

Fox News' John Roberts, FoxNews.com's Karl de Vries and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/12/24/cdc-technician-possibly-exposed-to-ebola-agency-says/

[MsTinkerbelly]

There is an AIR Asia flight 8501 with 155 passangers missing over indonesia.

They are talking about it on CNN. Saying a prayer for those lost souls.

[*Anya*]

Rush Limbaugh and his 'black Bond' outrage

By Anthony Zurcher, Editor, Echo Chambers
29 December 2014

Could Idris Elba be the next James Bond, despite Rush Limbaugh's misgivings?

The prospect of Idris Elba eventually replacing Daniel Craig as the next James Bond went from hypothetical internet speculation to something more substantial last week, when the Daily Beast uncovered an interesting nugget in the piles of hacked Sony emails.

"Idris should be the next Bond," Sony Pictures chair Amy Pascal wrote, reportedly to a fellow studio executive.

That was enough to set conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh into a tizzy. Bond, he said on his radio programme last week, has a distinct ethnic profile that Mr Elba, who is black, doesn't fit.

"But the franchise needs to get with it, right?" he continued. "The franchise needs to get hip. The franchise needs to get with the 21st Century. That's right. We had 50 years of white Bonds because Bond is white. Bond was never black."
Limbaugh said that casting Mr Elba as Bond would be equivalent to having George Clooney play Barack Obama or Kelsey Grammar in the role of Nelson Mandela (although he acknowledged the difference between actual people and fictional characters).

Elba responded with humour - "Isn't 007 supposed to [be] handsome?" he tweeted, including a photograph of him looking rather goofy in a knit cap - but some commentators reacted with flashes of anger that would make 007 proud.
"Is there no end to the injustices faced by professional reverse-racism victim Rush Limbaugh?" asks Gawker's Hudson Hongo.

The Daily Beast's Dean Obeidallah saysLimbaugh's comments were "definitely" racist. "How else do you describe the notion that certain roles should be labelled as 'whites only'?" he asks.

He writes that fictitious characters should be able to change with the times - including having black Bonds, black Santa Clauses, black orphan Annies, black Captain Americas and similar re-imagining of beloved icons.
"However, to the right, if the character they love was originally white, then they should stay white forever," he says. "They view any updating of a character's skin colour to reflect our nation's changing demographics - and to open up primo roles to non-white actors, who've spent plenty enough decades playing servants and sharecroppers and so on - as a sacrilege."

Others wondered just how important Bond's back story really is to the iconic character.

The Daily Mail's Hanna Flint notes that author Ian Fleming didn't create Bond's Scottish heritage until after the first film, Dr No, was released with Scottish actor Sean Connery in the lead role.

"When writing You Only Live Twice, the spy's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, to fit with Connery's interpretation of the role," she says.

Rush Limbaugh says Idris Elba as James Bond is as absurd as George Clooney playing Barack Obama.

In fact, the Guardian's Ben Child points out, Connery has been the only Scot to play the role in the franchise's 50-year history.
http://m.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-30594460

[MsTinkerbelly]

Is there a thread here on gun violence? I wanted to start a discussion but if there is an existing thread I would like to check that out first. Thanks

Yes there is, but my linking skills are crap! Someone will help you out soon!:rrose:

[*Anya*]

Russia says drivers must not have 'sex disorders'

Russia has listed transsexual and transgender people among those who will no longer qualify for driving licences.

Fetishism, exhibitionism and voyeurism are also included as "mental disorders" now barring people from driving.

The government says it is tightening medical controls for drivers because Russia has too many road accidents.

"Pathological" gambling and compulsive stealing are also on the list. Russian psychiatrists and human rights lawyers have condemned the move.

The announcement follows international complaints about Russian harassment of gay-rights activists.

In 2013 Russia made "promoting non-traditional lifestyles" illegal.

Valery Evtushenko at the Russian Psychiatric Association voiced concern about the driving restrictions, speaking to the BBC Russian Service. He said some people would avoid seeking psychiatric help, fearing a driving ban.

The Association of Russian Lawyers for Human Rights called the new law "discriminatory". It said it would demand clarifications from the Russian Constitutional Court and seek support from international human rights organisations.

But the Professional Drivers Union supported the move. "We have too many deaths on the road, and I believe toughening medical requirements for applicants is fully justified," said the union's head Alexander Kotov.

However, he said the requirements should not be so strict for non-professional drivers.

Mikhail Strakhov, a Russian psychiatric expert, told BBC Russian that the definition of "personality disorders" was too vague and some disorders would not affect a person's ability to drive a car safely.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30735673

[Cin]

Russia says drivers must not have 'sex disorders'

Russia has listed transsexual and transgender people among those who will no longer qualify for driving licences.

Fetishism, exhibitionism and voyeurism are also included as "mental disorders" now barring people from driving.

The government says it is tightening medical controls for drivers because Russia has too many road accidents.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30735673

I suppose it's ridiculous to suggest that in order to cut down on road accidents the government should enforce existing laws. I read how driving in Russia would require "major survival skills in order to combat the lawlessness regarding traffic and road regulations. For example, a painted line down the middle of the road divides on coming and going traffic. However, you will find that most people cross the line without so much as a thought. Therefore you must be extremely careful while driving and try to avoid rush hour."

Also if they are really serious about cutting down on deaths by traffic accident then I would think that raising the speed limit by 20km on both regular roads and highways in 2013 is a strange way to go about it. So on the highway you can now drive 130km and, since there is no fine as long as you don't exceed the speed limit by 20 km, in theory you can drive up to 150 km and not get a ticket. So the plan to cut down on road accidents is to drive faster, just don't be transsexual or transgender about it. Apparently people can't drive fast or even well, when they are not the sex or gender assigned at birth. And don't even get me started on those exhibitionists' driving skills, not to mention the voyeurs who love them.

[Ravenouss]

If they really want to cut down on the number of traffic accidents they should not allow people to drink and drive. I've never lived in a country where so many people drunk and drove, drunk and operated machinery, etc. Saturday night was throw up night, everywhere: subway, buses, sidewalks, tunnels, while driving out of car windows, in freaking restaurants!

Their anti-LGBT laws are really going the way of Muslim countries.

[*Anya*]

The Huffington Post | By Curtis M Wong

GOP presidential hopeful Ben Carson reportedly slammed lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates at a Jan. 24 press conference following his speech at Congressman Steve King's Iowa Freedom Summit.

Carson, a Fox News commentator and former Johns Hopkins University pediatric neurosurgeon, seemed to hint at a series of disputes that have erupted between same-sex couples hoping to tie the knot and bakeries and other wedding-related venues operated by opponents of same-sex marriage.

"What I have a problem with is when people try to force people to act against their beliefs because they say, 'They’re discriminating against me,’" he told reporters, according to The Hill. "So they can go right down the street and buy a cake, but no, let’s bring a suit against this person because I want them to make my cake even though they don’t believe in it."

He then added, "[That] is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake.”

Carson has been outspoken in regard to his opposition to same-sex marriage rights.

"Marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn't matter what they are," he told Sean Hannity in 2012, as cited by Slate. "They don't get to change the definition."

He shared similar sentiments in his 2012 book, America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great, noting that attempts to "redefine marriage" would bring about a "disastrous ending" for the U.S. that would mirror "the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire," according to Media Matters.

Interestingly, Carson may have been in the minority when it came to discussing same-sex marriage at the Iowa Freedom Summit this year. As The Huffington Post's Igor Bobic reported, the subject "remained conspicuously absent from the lips of many speakers who took the stage, demonstrating how dramatically politics around the issue has shifted in just a few years."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/26/ben-carson-gay-cakes-poison-_n_6547226.html

[Allison W]

[Ben Carson] then added, "[That] is really not all that smart because they might put poison in that cake.”

He's a shitty person and pretty dumb to boot, but this is the stopped clock phenomenon in action. I don't think I'd want to trust someone who hates my guts with something I'm going to eat. Actual poisoning is unlikely, given the threat of criminal prosecution for that kind of thing, but I wouldn't put it past them to contaminate it in less obviously actionable ways.

[LeftWriteFemme]

.lgbt — Internet’s first top-level domain for the LGBT community launches

http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/hk/dFfiDTRfbQCMGdKOF4Q9BkYD3r/www.lgbtqnation.com/assets/2015/02/xdot-lgbt-450x304.jpg.pagespeed.ic.xxr2CvSvX26uYndAEUoU.webp

http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2015/02/lgbt-internets-first-top-level-domain-for-the-lgbt-community-launches/

[LeftWriteFemme]

DJhmAdT-mb8


http://www.towleroad.com/2015/02/pflag-china-film.html

[*Anya*]

Homan Square

#Gitmo2Chicago: protests target police 'Black Ops Site'

Homan Square abuse allegations encircle mayor Rahm Emanuel as Anonymous, Occupy and Black Lives Matter take to social media and streets beyond Chicag

Zach Stafford in Chicago
Saturday 28 February 2015 09.17 EST

The Chicago police facility Homan Square was becoming the focus of an organized protest movement this weekend, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous and organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement seized on allegations of unconstitutional abuse at the secretive warehouse.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top adviser to Barack Obama suddenly facing a runoff for re-election, remained at the political fulcrum of a mounting campaign both on social media and the streets of Chicago, where demonstrations were planned for Saturday outside what coordinated campaigners described as mirroring a CIA “black site”.

Organizer Travis McDermott said Saturday’s “Shut Down Homan Square” protest was one of several being planned as far away as Los Angeles.

“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,’” he said.

On Friday night, campaigners associated with the Occupy and Anonymous collectives took to Twitter, Instagram and other social-media platforms with the hashtag #Gitmo2Chicago to decry allegations of what users alternatively labeled as a “secret prison” and “torture soon coming to a city near you”.

Six people and multiple Chicago attorneys came forward to the Guardian this week with detailed accounts of police holding suspects and witnesses for sustained periods of detention inside Homan Square, without public records, access to attorneys or being read their most basic rights – involving what they said included shackling, physical abuse and being “disappeared” from legal counsel and family.

The Guardian’s recent investigation into Chicago police brutality began the week before, with a two-part account of the tactics of Detective Richard Zuley, who went from Chicago homicide investigator to Guantánamo Bay torturer.

The Chicago police department, in its only official statement on the swirling allegations, denied the Guardian’s reporting on Tuesday, without giving specifics. In a report on the Guardian’s reportingpublished on Friday night, the Chicago Tribune characterized local attorneys’ perception of the statement as “laughable”.

Local and national organizers, meanwhile, have zeroed in on Emanuel, who on Thursday night – two days after being forced into an extended campaign in which policing has been a major issue – made his first statements about the Homan Square row.

“That’s not true,” Emanuel said of the Guardian’s reporting, on the local public television program Chicago Tonight. “We follow the rules.”

Emanuel has not responded to detailed questions from the Guardian, sent on Wednesday. Another set of questions sent on Friday, requesting comment on human-rights group requests for access to the site and an elaboration of Emanuel’s comments on Homan Square, did not receive a response despite repeated requests.

Emanuel’s press office has been directing queries on Homan Square to the mayor’s deputy director of communications, Adam Collins.

A representative for Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Emanuel’s challenger in the runoff election, said his campaign was planning to address the Homan Square allegations.

The activist group Progress Illinois said several more people were expected to tell their stories of being detained at the west-side holding and interrogation compound at Saturday’s protest.

“This rally is being organized to remind the mayor and every politician who has a stake in this runoff that they are answerable to the people,” the group wrote in a statement.

Representatives from the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter, the movement closely associated with the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri, said they were backing the Homan Square demonstrations as part of a pattern of long-time Chicago police violence.

“In order to uproot the systemic embedded abuse that has allowed for the creation of such ‘black sites’ like that of Homan Square as well as police torturers like that of Jon Burge, transparent and persistent investigation is the first step of many,” a statement attributed to the group read.

Local civil-rights groups have long sought reparations relating to the notorious practices of Burge, the former Chicago police commander who was released from home custody this month and is estimated to have cost the city upwards of $100m stemming from settlements and judgments in civil-rights cases.

The Chicago police facility Homan Square was becoming the focus of an organized protest movement this weekend, as the hacktivist collective Anonymous and organizers associated with the Black Lives Matter movement seized on allegations of unconstitutional abuse at the secretive warehouse.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former top adviser to Barack Obama suddenly facing a runoff for re-election, remained at the political fulcrum of a mounting campaign both on social media and the streets of Chicago, where demonstrations were planned for Saturday outside what coordinated campaigners described as mirroring a CIA “black site”.

Organizer Travis McDermott said Saturday’s “Shut Down Homan Square” protest was one of several being planned as far away as Los Angeles.

“Hopefully with the presence we expect to have, that will put a little bit of pressure to say, ‘Hey, look – this isn’t going to go away,’” he said.

On Friday night, campaigners associated with the Occupy and Anonymous collectives took to Twitter, Instagram and other social-media platforms with the hashtag #Gitmo2Chicago to decry allegations of what users alternatively labeled as a “secret prison” and “torture soon coming to a city near you"

Local and national organizers, meanwhile, have zeroed in on Emanuel, who on Thursday night – two days after being forced into an extended campaign in which policing has been a major issue – made his first statements about the Homan Square row.

“That’s not true,” Emanuel said of the Guardian’s reporting, on the local public television program Chicago Tonight. “We follow the rules.”

Emanuel has not responded to detailed questions from the Guardian, sent on Wednesday. Another set of questions sent on Friday, requesting comment on human-rights group requests for access to the site and an elaboration of Emanuel’s comments on Homan Square, did not receive a response despite repeated requests.

Emanuel’s press office has been directing queries on Homan Square to the mayor’s deputy director of communications, Adam Collins.

A representative for Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, Emanuel’s challenger in the runoff election, said his campaign was planning to address the Homan Square allegations soon.

Protesters on the ground and online weren’t wasting any time.

The activist group Progress Illinois said several more people were expected to tell their stories of being detained at the west-side holding and interrogation compound at Saturday’s protest.

“This rally is being organized to remind the mayor and every politician who has a stake in this runoff that they are answerable to the people,” the group wrote in a statement.

Representatives from the Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter, the movement closely associated with the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri, said they were backing the Homan Square demonstrations as part of a pattern of long-time Chicago police violence.

“In order to uproot the systemic embedded abuse that has allowed for the creation of such ‘black sites’ like that of Homan Square as well as police torturers like that of Jon Burge, transparent and persistent investigation is the first step of many,” a statement attributed to the group read.

Local civil-rights groups have long sought reparations relating to the notorious practices of Burge, the former Chicago police commander who was released from home custody this month and is estimated to have cost the city upwards of $100m stemming from settlements and judgments in civil-rights cases.

FacebookTwitterPinterest
A second demonstration – promoted on Facebook with the title “Reparations Not Black Sites” – was set for Monday evening near Emanuel’s office and endorsed by Black Lives Matter Chicago, which was seeking “unrestricted access” to Homan Square.

Another event, in Los Angeles on Sunday, cited the Guardian’s reporting as a spark for further action.

“Some fear this may be a ripple effect,” the event’s Facebook page read, “caused by the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows local police departments as well as the US military to detain Americans indefinitely should the state label you a ‘homegrown terrorist’.”

Politicians from Washington to Chicago called for inquiries by the US justice department and Emanuel’s office into the allegations at Homan Square after the Guardian’s investigation surfaced earlier this week.

The local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) told the Guardian on Friday that it was still “vetting” allegations as more people came forward to both the Guardian and the Intercept late this week.

“Right now what we are looking to do is establish credibility by getting others who have been affected, and the protest will allow for others to come forward,” said Chicago attorney Billy Mills, who said he found the Chicago police statement on Homan Square to be “vague” and “missing specific details”.

“This will not stand,” Anonymous said in a video message.

Oliver Laughland and Spencer Ackerman contributed reporting from New York

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/28/chicago-protests-police-black-site-homan-square

[LeftWriteFemme]

Mexico’s Quiet Marriage Equality Revolution


http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/2015-02/25/17/enhanced/webdr10/longform-28598-1424904773-23.jpg



http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/mexicos-quiet-marriage-equality-revolution#.vd8zraRGv

[*Anya*]

CIA hacked iPhone, iPad and Mac security – Snowden documents reveal extent of privacy invasion

By David Gilbert
March 10, 2015 09:28 GM

The CIA has spent almost a decade attempting to breach the security of Apple's iPhone, iPad and Mac computers to allow them secretly plant malware on the devices. Apple announced on Monday, 9 March, that it had sold over 700 million iPhones since the first version was announced in 2007, giving some idea of the scope of the CIA tactics.

Revealed in documents released to The Intercept by Edward Snowden, the CIA's efforts at undermining Apple's encryption has been announced at an secret annual gathering known as the "Jamboree" which has been taking place since 2006, a year before the first iPhone was released.

According to the documents, the spies have been looking at physical and non-invasive methods of cracking iPhone and iPad security, targeting the essential security keys used to encrypt data store on the Apple devices. The ultimate goal was to decrypt Apple's firmware which would allow them to penetrate the devices and surreptitiously plant malware on the phones and tablets without the user's knowledge.

While the report details the efforts the CIA undertook to crack Apple's security measures, it or the documents don't say how successful the efforts were at undermining the security of iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Poisoned Xcode

As well as targeting the iPhone and iPad directly, the CIA also claims to have developed a poisoned version of Xcode, the software development tool used by app developers to create the apps sold through Apple's hugely successful App Store. It is unclear how the CIA managed to get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode, but it would have allowed the CIA install backdoors into any apps created using their version.

"The modified version of Xcode, the researchers claimed, could enable spies to steal passwords and grab messages on infected devices. Researchers also claimed the modified Xcode could 'force all iOS applications to send embedded data to a listening post,'" the Intercept report said.

The CIA also looked to breach the security of Apple's desktop platform, claiming they had successfully modified the OS X updater. If this is true it would allow the CIA to intercept the update mechanism on Apple's Mac laptops and desktops to install a version of the updated Mac OS X with a keylogger installed.

The CIA has spent almost a decade attempting to breach the security of Apple's iPhone, iPad and Mac computers to allow them secretly plant malware on the devices. Apple announced on Monday, 9 March, that it had sold over 700 million iPhones since the first version was announced in 2007, giving some idea of the scope of the CIA tactics.

Revealed in documents released to The Intercept by Edward Snowden, the CIA's efforts at undermining Apple's encryption has been announced at an secret annual gathering known as the "Jamboree" which has been taking place since 2006, a year before the first iPhone was released.

According to the documents, the spies have been looking at physical and non-invasive methods of cracking iPhone and iPad security, targeting the essential security keys used to encrypt data store on the Apple devices. The ultimate goal was to decrypt Apple's firmware which would allow them to penetrate the devices and surreptitiously plant malware on the phones and tablets without the user's knowledge.

While the report details the efforts the CIA undertook to crack Apple's security measures, it or the documents don't say how successful the efforts were at undermining the security of iPhones, iPads and Macs.

Poisoned Xcode

As well as targeting the iPhone and iPad directly, the CIA also claims to have developed a poisoned version of Xcode, the software development tool used by app developers to create the apps sold through Apple's hugely successful App Store. It is unclear how the CIA managed to get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode, but it would have allowed the CIA install backdoors into any apps created using their version.

"The modified version of Xcode, the researchers claimed, could enable spies to steal passwords and grab messages on infected devices. Researchers also claimed the modified Xcode could 'force all iOS applications to send embedded data to a listening post,'" the Intercept report said.

The CIA also looked to breach the security of Apple's desktop platform, claiming they had successfully modified the OS X updater. If this is true it would allow the CIA to intercept the update mechanism on Apple's Mac laptops and desktops to install a version of the updated Mac OS X with a keylogger installed.

The research into Apple's products was presented to CIA agents by researchers from Sandia National Laboratories which is owned by Lockheed Martin, seen as a privatised wing of the US national security state, earning over 80% of its revenue from the US government.

The presentations provided "important information to developers trying to circumvent or exploit new security capabilities," as well as to "exploit new avenues of attack" the leaked documents claimed

Apple critical of US government

Apple and Tim Cook have not commented on this specific story, but in the past have been critical of the level of surveillance carried out by government organisations: "Security and privacy are fundamental to the design of all our hardware, software, and services," Tim Cook said in an open letter last year.

Apple is part of the Reform Government Surveillance coalition which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter and Microsoft and which last year called on the US government to curb the surveillance powers of the NSA and called for more transparency on government data requests.

Matthew Green, an expert on cryptography told The Intercept: "If US products are OK to target, that's news to me. Tearing apart the products of US manufacturers and potentially putting backdoors in software distributed by unknowing developers all seems to be going a bit beyond 'targeting bad guys.' It may be a means to an end, but it's a hell of a means."

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/cia-hacked-iphone-ipad-mac-security-snowden-documents-reveal-extent-privacy-invasion-1491258

[Cin]

This article cracked me up.

Ted Cruz9h&dfxqqqqqqq
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
By William Rivers Pitt

Life, I have been repeatedly told, is not fair. I accept this, and do not resent it most of the time, because it is axiomatic, and so any effort spent resenting it is a waste of calories. One may as well resent gravity, or thunderstorms, or giant potholes on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. They happen, they hit, you move on ... and if you should have a limp on the far side of the encounter, well, that's what the good folks of Wisconsin would call "tough cheese."

Most of the time, I said. Every once in a while, though, there is an event so bombastically preposterous that you are left staring at the sky with fearful eyes waiting for the locusts and the rain of frogs. Ever yell at a tree? I did, just this morning. I had to yell at something, because five minutes before I shouted at the utterly indifferent birch bark, I'd found out that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had announced his run for the presidency, which means I'm going to be required to write about him for at least another year.

In a just and decent world, all that would be required of me in such an effort would be to slam my face into the keyboard, resulting in a work-product that read:

" ... 9h&dfxqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq ... "

...because that is all this utter, blithering, obnoxious waste of my time deserves. But it is not a just and decent world, evidenced vividly by the fact that a greasy huckster fraud cretin Batman-villain-looking human clown car is not only running for President of the United States, but is actually being taken seriously by the "news" media. That does not mean I have to take him seriously - with every fiber of my being, I do not - but now that he is officially on the board, I am no longer able to enjoy the comfortable fiction of pretending he doesn't exist.

In the aforementioned non-existent just and decent world, one would think that some essential bedrock personal flaws would disqualify a person from attempting to reach the Oval Office ... say, for example, galloping publicly displayed ignorance of a depth and breadth seldom seen on the North American continent. Once again, however, this is not a just and decent world, evidenced vividly by a presidential candidate unable to grasp the basic theme of a children's story.

Back in September of 2013, as part of the GOP's endlessly fruitless quest to submarine the Affordable Care Act, Cruz spent more than twenty-one hours yipping and yapping like a poorly-trained seal on the Senate floor. In the midst of this mind-numbing aria, he read "Green Eggs And Ham" by Dr. Seuss, and drove home the point as he understood it to all and sundry: this story means "Don't try new things" like the ACA.

My daughter will be all of two years old in a couple of weeks. She can't read, she can't write, she falls down for no particular reason at least a couple of times a day, her vocabulary is measured in minutes, and she poops in her pants without thinking twice about it. This is all fine - she's a toddler, and that's what toddlers do - but my illiterate, clumsy, incomprehensible poop-factory of a child has a better grasp of the moral behind "Green Eggs And Ham" - Try new things, duh! - than the Senator from Texas who would presume to sit in the most important chair in the land.

And he voted against the Violence Against Women Act, and denies the established science behind climate change, and opposes the minimum wage, and wants to privatize Social Security, and opposes not only marriage equality but the very existence of gay pride parades, and supports incredibly racist and restrictive voter ID laws, and wants to drill for oil and frack in Native American reservations along with basically everywhere else, and was an original supporter of the Keystone XL pipeline, and opposes all campaign finance regulations, and opposes net neutrality because capitalism is so awesome you guys, and oh, yeah, he does not believe in the separation of church and state.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Ted Cruz is - to all intents and purposes - the true demon spawn of Joe McCarthy, Phyllis Schlafly, several small rocks and an under-watered cactus that nobody ever really loved... and now he is going to be in my kitchen for at least a year. Life is not fair, and this is not a just and decent world, and if I ever needed affirmative, irrefutable proof of this, now I have it.

The 2016 Republican presidential race is officially underway.

9h&dfxqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqqq
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29826-ted-cruz9h-dfxqqqqqqq

[Oiler41]

Just remember, they took Rick Perry serious for a minute too. Cruz doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell. He will fade, just like Perry did.

[Cin]

One can only hope.

But the article is still hilarious.

[*Anya*]

Texas has the third highest rate of HIV infections in the country, but that didn’t stop lawmakers from passing an amendment that defunds HIV/STD prevention programs Tuesday. The amendment to the House budget proposal—offered by Rep. Stuart Spitzer (R-Kaufman)—diverts $3 million over the next biennium to abstinence-only sexual education programs.

House Democrats fought against the amendment in a debate that rapidly devolved into awkward farce, with Rep. Spitzer revealing details of his own sexual history as proof of the effectiveness of abstinence. For those keeping tabs at home, he was a virgin until marrying his wife at age 29, although he declined to answer a question from Rep. Harold Dutton (D-Houston) on whether she was the first person he propositioned. “Decorum,” shouted state Rep. Jason Isaac (R-Dripping Springs).

Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-Houston) asked Spitzer just how much money is needed for abstinence education in Texas, which receives more federal funding than any other state. Spitzer responded that additional funds are needed as long as people are still having sex before marriage. His goal, he said, was for everyone to know that “abstinence is the best way to prevent HIV.”

“My goal is for everyone to be HIV/AIDS free,” Turner said.

Turner said that while he thinks abstinence programs are valid, HIV and STD prevention programs are too.

“Does it make sense if you have two children to take food from one to feed the other?” Turner said. “You’re taking from one valid program in order to go to the other and I think that is wrong.”

Spitzer is a doctor, but some legislators suggested he needed a refresher course in the basis of STD-transmission. When some Democrats pointed out that STDs could be spread without having sex, Spitzer replied: “You can, but it’s awful hard through your clothes.”

Spitzer’s amendment was adopted 97 aye votes and 47 nays on a largely party-line vote.

https://www.texasobserver.org/house-defunds-hiv-prevetion-abstinence-education/

[Cin]

In one month (March 2015) the US police :police: have killed more people than police in the entire United Kingdom in 115 years! :shocking:
http://www.alternet.org/american-police-killed-more-people-march-111-entire-uk-police-have-killed-1900

My goodness that does seem excessive. Or perhaps it's just that people in the US have been very bad over the past month. Which makes sense since in raw numbers and by percentage of the population, the United States has the most prisoners of any developed country — and it has the largest total prison population of any nation in the world. United States citizens are clearly a lawless bunch. They would have to be to justify murdering them in the streets in such large numbers and at such an alarming rate.

I wouldn't be concerned though I'm sure those 111 people killed in one month by the police deserved it. It would never happen to law abiding people like you or me.

[LeftWriteFemme]

The National Center for Transgender Equality just won April Fools' Day

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7FxmLLgOKNnh9d_NcT2HAJYW4F0=/0x0:4245x2830/755x504/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46025558/88614922.0.0.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_0nBU9UcAARWry.jpg:large

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/1/8327503/the-national-center-for-transgender-equality-just-won-april-fools-day

[Gemme]

Anti-Gay Pizzeria Gets Massive Donations for Discriminating Against LGBT3Q2I Community (http://www.aol.com/article/2015/04/04/indiana-pizzeria-s-donations-reach-842-387-in-wake-of-anti-gay/21161373/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cmain5%7Cdl17%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D638819)

Memories Pizza, the Indiana establishment, which sparked national outrage over its owner's anti-LGBT comments made Wednesday during a local news broadcast, has raised a whopping $842,387 in donations from supporters.

Following Indiana's contentious Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Walkerton, Indiana restaurant became the subject of harsh criticism after co-owner Crystal O'Connor said she would refuse to cater gay marriages.

"If a gay couple came in and wanted us to provide pizzas for their wedding, we would have to say no," she told a local ABC affiliate. "We are a Christian establishment."

Following the backlash over the remarks, supporters of Memories started a GoFundMe campaign, and the owners of the pizzeria were flooded with donations from more than 29,000 people.

[Rockinonahigh]

The National Center for Transgender Equality just won April Fools' Day

https://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/7FxmLLgOKNnh9d_NcT2HAJYW4F0=/0x0:4245x2830/755x504/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/46025558/88614922.0.0.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_0nBU9UcAARWry.jpg:large

http://www.vox.com/2015/4/1/8327503/the-national-center-for-transgender-equality-just-won-april-fools-day


Every time I go into a public bathroom I have this feeling like I need to be very careful I don't get hauled out by the store security and it has happened a few times. When it dose I go thru the showing of my dl or who ever I am with will back me up, once I ask them if they wanted me to take off my shirt then was told "no, go ahead and do what you need to do, then leave. Over the years it has become a bit less of an issue but I still get some hard looks and a comment or two. I still keep my guard up cause you never know when some A-hole will start something or go running to their red neck boy friend or there homophobic daddy.. then all hell will break loose cause I don't have much faith that the police will do much cause by time they get there it will all be over but the crying.

[Kobi]

The House-passed rider to the Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriation Bill is nothing less than a reckless sneak attack on America’s birds. By barring enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, migratory birds would be vulnerable to almost unlimited harm from industrial activity, poorly sited energy projects, and even deliberate killing.

In fact this rider is so sweeping, if it had been in effect when the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred, BP would not have been subject to prosecution for the killing of millions of birds.

For nearly 100 years the Migratory Bird Treaty Act has been a pillar of Americans’ collective resolve to make a place in our world for birds and their habitats. We call on the US Senate to reject this dangerous rider and to uphold the timeless bipartisan commitment to conserving our nation’s wildlife for future generations.

---------------------



Protect our feathery friends. Write your Senators today.

Bird Act explained. (https://www.audubon.org/news/the-migratory-bird-treaty-act-explained)

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/1b/5e/5c/1b5e5cdf567335722d1895715379c461.jpg

[*Anya*]

Man shot near San Francisco gay pride event, suspects detained

By Ed Payne, CNN

Updated 2:15 AM ET, Sun June 28, 2015

(CNN) A bystander outside a San Francisco gay pride weekend event was wounded early Saturday evening when a group of men got into an argument and shots were fired, police said.

A 64-year-old man was taken to San Francisco General Hospital and is in stable condition, according to San Francisco police.

The incident is believed to be unrelated to the gay pride event.

[LeftWriteFemme]

Congress introduces legislation to convert military discharges based on sexual orientation to honorable

http://www.watermarkonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GayVeteransAbstr.jpg

http://www.watermarkonline.com/2015/07/15/congress-introduces-legislation-to-convert-military-discharges-based-on-sexual-orientation-to-honorable/

[Bèsame*]

A police officer refueling his squad car was gunned down tonight. The shooter drove up and shot the officer from behind multiple times. As the officer went down, the shooter then shot more multiple rounds, went back to his truck and drove off. The officer never saw this coming.

The shooter is at large and his description is unclear at this time.

This happened outside of Houston, Texas.

My heart hurts for his family and for the witnesses that were there. To be shot point blank out in the open. It's not safe to be anywhere.

[JDeere]

A police officer refueling his squad car was gunned down tonight. The shooter drove up and shot the officer from behind multiple times. As the officer went down, the shooter then shot more multiple rounds, went back to his truck and drove off. The officer never saw this coming.

The shooter is at large and his description is unclear at this time.

This happened outside of Houston, Texas.

My heart hurts for his family and for the witnesses that were there. To be shot point blank out in the open. It's not safe to be anywhere.

This happened right down the road from my folks house. I was coming home from the store and heard sirens. They still have the streets blocked off and helicopters are out searching for the suspect and his truck. I have gone into that Chevron many times and my hair salon is in the same small complex just 5 store fronts over. It is going to be a very very very long night for all the surrounding neighborhoods, everyone is on edge right now.

You are right when you say it is not safe to be anywhere. My heart goes out to everyone involved.

[Kobi]

Pope Francis met a Kentucky county clerk, who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, during his visit to the United States last week, the Vatican said on Wednesday.

"I do not deny that the meeting took place, but I have no comment to add," Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement.

Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis and her husband met the pope during the Washington leg of his U.S. visit, she and her lawyer told American media.

The Davis couple traveled to Washington and met the pope at the Vatican embassy last Thursday, ABC News and CBS News reported.

"It was really very humbling to even think that he would want to, you know, meet me or know me," Davis told ABC. "I put my hand out, and he grabbed it, and I hugged him, and he hugged me and he said, 'Thank you for your courage'."

"He told me before he left, he said, 'Stay strong.' That was a great encouragement," Davis said.

Davis said knowing that the pope agreed with what she was doing "kind of validates everything."

ABC said the pope gave Davis a rosary, which she plans to give to her Catholic parents.

The pope, speaking to reporters as he returned home from his 10-day trip to the United States and Cuba on Monday, said government officials had a "human right" to refuse to discharge a duty if they felt it violated their conscience.

Davis was jailed for five days in September for refusing to comply with a judge's order to issue the licenses in line with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

Davis has said her beliefs as an Apostolic Christian prevent her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Her church belongs to a Protestant movement known as Apostolic Pentecostalism.

To keep a low profile, Davis went to the Vatican embassy in a sports utility vehicle with her hair in a different style than her normal look, her lawyer, Mat Staver told CBS.

Conservative Christians, including some Republican presidential candidates, have said Davis is standing up for religious freedom.

But the American Civil Liberties Union, which went to court to ensure same-sex couples can obtain marriage licenses in Rowan County, has argued she has a responsibility as an official to issue the licenses, regardless of her views.

The ACLU, in papers filed on Sept. 21 with the judge hearing the case, asked the court to require Davis to stop making alterations to the licenses, such as removing any reference to the Rowan County clerk's office.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/30/us-usa-pope-kentuckyclerk-idUSKCN0RU0Q820150930?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

[Kätzchen]

Down in Roseburg today, something terrible happened on Umpqua Community College campus. Maybe your local news station talked about it tonight. I was at work when I learned about it via agency services. It's becoming common day experience, it seems lately, but my heart goes out to family friends who were among first responders and people who lost loved ones. You never think that tragedies of this scale and magnitude will ever happen close to home, but it did today, and many of us are deeply affected by today's tragedy.



http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/10/mass_shooting_on_roseburg_coll.html

[Rockinonahigh]

Down in Roseburg today, something terrible happened on Umpqua Community College campus. Maybe your local news station talked about it tonight. I was at work when I learned about it via agency services. It's becoming common day experience, it seems lately, but my heart goes out to family friends who were among first responders and people who lost loved ones. You never think that tragedies of this scale and magnitude will ever happen close to home, but it did today, and many of us are deeply affected by today's tragedy.



http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2015/10/mass_shooting_on_roseburg_coll.html



And people wonder why want to live on a mountain top then fence off the bottom, this world is crazy.

[Orema]

www.c-span.org

[Cin]

The narrative is always the same. Financial institutions, corporations, and the 1% need to keep all their money because they are the job creators, the innovators, the reason the 99% have anything at all. They work hard for the money. They deserve to acquire obscene amounts and keep it all. They need not put anything back into the economy, the hell with infrastructure and everything else for that matter. The rich do not have a social contract. Instead they have an obligation to keep society's hands off their money. The money they earn with all their hard work is theirs and theirs alone. Taxes are for losers and charity is for schmucks. When you donate money you need to be sure it returns to you ten fold. Charity belongs to those who don't need it. The rest of us apparently do not work hard for our money. Most of us are useless eaters and the rest sail through the work day living large on the backs of the rich. We don't understand what it means to work hard. Therefore logic dictates that we need to carry the weight of the economy on our shoulders. We need to bear the brunt of the tax burden. Hell, that's only fair. Right? We need to tighten our belts; austerity is what we have earned.

The reality is quite different from the illusion. While they play endless games of keep away with their money and reckless games of chance with ours, we are left holding up the very fabric of society. There are so many ways that we as citizens and taxpayers are being screwed it boggles the mind.

Here is an interesting interview with the author of "The Entrepreneurial State: debunking public vs. private sector myths" that explains one way we are having our tax dollars used by the wealthy with nothing coming back to the public.

http://ineteconomics.org/ideas-papers/blog/what-the-steve-jobs-movie-wont-tell-you-about-apples-success

[Cin]

In Arbitration, a ‘Privatization
of the Justice System’
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/02/business/dealbook/in-arbitration-a-privatization-of-the-justice-system.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-0&action=click&contentCollection=DealBook&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article

Over the last 10 years, thousands of businesses across the country — from big corporations to storefront shops — have used arbitration to create an alternate system of justice. There, rules tend to favor businesses, and judges and juries have been replaced by arbitrators who commonly consider the companies their clients,...

The change has been swift and virtually unnoticed, even though it has meant that tens of millions of Americans have lost a fundamental right: their day in court.

“This amounts to the whole-scale privatization of the justice system,” said Myriam Gilles, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. “Americans are actively being deprived of their rights.”

All it took was adding simple arbitration clauses to contracts that most employees and consumers do not even read. Yet at stake are claims of medical malpractice, sexual harassment, hate crimes, discrimination, theft, fraud, elder abuse and wrongful death...

The family of a 94-year-old woman at a nursing home in Murrysville, Pa., who died from a head wound that had been left to fester, was ordered to go to arbitration. So was a woman in Jefferson, Ala., who sued Honda over injuries she said she sustained when the brakes on her car failed. When an infant was born in Tampa, Fla., with serious deformities, a lawsuit her parents brought against the obstetrician for negligence was dismissed from court because of an arbitration clause.Even a cruise ship employee who said she had been drugged, raped and left unconscious in her cabin by two crew members could not take her employer to civil court over negligence and an unsafe workplace.

Little is known about arbitration because the proceedings are confidential and the federal government does not require cases to be reported. The secretive nature of the process makes it difficult to ascertain how fairly the proceedings are conducted...
“What rules of evidence apply?” one arbitration firm asks in the question and answer section of its website. “The short answer is none.”...
Unfettered by strict judicial rules against conflicts of interest, companies can steer cases to friendly arbitrators. In turn, interviews and records show, some arbitrators cultivate close ties with companies to get business.

Some of the chumminess is subtler, as in the case of the arbitrator who went to a basketball game with the company’s lawyers the night before the proceedings began. (The company won.) Or that of the man overseeing an insurance case brought by Stephen R. Syson in Santa Barbara, Calif. During a break in proceedings, a dismayed Mr. Syson said he watched the arbitrator and defense lawyer return in matching silver sports cars after going to lunch together. (He lost.)

“Private judging is an oxymoron,” Anthony Kline, a California appeals court judge, said in an interview. “This is a business and arbitrators have an economic reason to decide in favor of the repeat players.”

With so much latitude, some organizations are requiring their employees and customers to take their disputes to Christian arbitration. There, the proceedings can incorporate prayer, and arbitrators from firms like the Colorado-based Peacemaker Ministries can consider biblical scripture in determining their rulings

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/01/business/dealbook/arbitration-everywhere-stacking-the-deck-of-justice.html?_r=0

On Page 5 of a credit card contract used by American Express, beneath an explainer on interest rates and late fees, past the details about annual membership, is a clause that most customers probably miss. If cardholders have a problem with their account, American Express explains, the company “may elect to resolve any claim by individual arbitration."

Those nine words are at the center of a far-reaching power play orchestrated by American corporations, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

By inserting individual arbitration clauses into a soaring number of consumer and employment contracts, companies like American Express devised a way to circumvent the courts and bar people from joining together in class-action lawsuits, realistically the only tool citizens have to fight illegal or deceitful business practices.

[*Anya*]

The unemployment rate doubled under Bush. It's fallen by more than one-third under Obama

The national unemployment rate in October fell to 5 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday — the lowest mark of the Obama presidency.

Politicians might battle over the "real" unemployment rate, but don't be fooled: The BLS data is trusted by economists, and Friday's new number is a key milestone for economic policy. Namely, 5 percent unemployment means we're on the edge of the 4.9 percent level that the Federal Reserve considers as necessary for "full employment," Sho Chandra writes for Bloomberg.

The timing couldn't be more important; Fed economists are meeting next month, and Friday's strong jobs report and low unemployment rate could encourage them to hike US interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade.

And 5 percent unemployment is an incredible symbol, too. Six years ago this week, BLS reported that unemployment had passed 10 percent, the first time in decades that the US unemployment rate had hit double digits, and a visible sign of how bad the Great Recession really had become.

Obama can now argue that under his watch, unemployment has been cut in half. It's a striking improvement — especially when measured against Obama's predecessor.

President George W. Bush inherited 4.2 percent unemployment in January 2001. That rate had grown to 7.8 percent when he left office eight years later and hit 8.3 percent in the first full month of Obama's presidency.

November 7, 2015 by Dan Diamond

http://www.vox.com/2015/11/7/9684780/unemployment-rate-obama

[Kätzchen]

I am definitely not an Republican, but I mostly find Labor politics interesting because I spent 12 months on a research study which looked at how employment has been defined and what constitutes as legitimate data when capturing accurate snap shots of those who are employed, underemployed or simply not employed (due to many driving economic factors).

I think the article by the think-tank, The Pew, weighs in on some interesting issues which is not not always a part of the entire unemployment picture.

It's not easy to find work, in the post-apocalyptic recession in the US. I was unemployed (and underemployed) for two years out of grad school. Although I have been employed full time the past two years in work that I cannot tolerate anymore, I am investigating new employment leads via trades invested in hiring women. Hopefully soon, I will have an entirely better reason for getting up for my work day.

Here's the link to the article by The Pew (see below):

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/11/07/employment-vs-unemployment-different-stories-from-the-jobs-numbers/

[Cin]

How the TPP Could Blow Up the Free Internet as We Know It

The agreement poses a grave threat to our basic right to access information and express ourselves on the web.

After years of secrecy, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement has finally been released to the public. The shadowy process and overreaching scope of the deal have sparked an international outcry; it’s been roundly condemned as an attack on worker’s rights, the environment, public health, small businesses and startups.

But perhaps the biggest concern is over the impact that it will have on the internet.

TPP is a legally binding pact negotiated between 12 countries, including the United States. Industry lobbyists and government bureaucrats huddled for months in closed-door meetings to draft and debate the deal while journalists, human rights advocates and tech experts were locked out. It can’t accurately be called a “trade deal”. Its 30 chapters and 6,194 pages cover a dizzying range of policy questions that have nothing to do with tariffs, imports or exports.

The final version of TPP confirms advocates’ worst fears. Thanks to, among other things, its dramatic expansion of copyright enforcement, the agreement poses a grave threat to our basic right to access information and express ourselves on the web, and could easily be abused to criminalize common online activities and enforce widespread internet censorship.

To fully grasp the impending trainwreck here, it’s important to understand that copyright laws have a profound effect on what internet users can see and do online. The US regime of copyright enforcement has been repeatedly co-opted by special interests to censor legitimate content from the web. Copyright laws have been used to attack LGBTQ websites, censor investigative journalism and scrub homemade videos from the net just because of the music in the background.

Many of the scariest scenes in the TPP script take place in the intellectual property chapter. This section exports the most draconian aspects of the United States’ broken copyright system and forces them onto the rest of the world, without requiring “fair use” provisions that are necessary to protect free speech.

One provision demands that TPP member countries enforce copyright terms 70years after the death of the creator. This will keep an immeasurable amount of information, art and creativity locked away from the public domain for decades longer than necessary, and allow for governments and corporations to abuse copyright laws and censor content at will, since so much of what’s online will be subject to copyright for decades.

TPP even prescribes a mechanism for that censorship to occur. A section that can best be described as “Zombie-Sopa”, due to its similarity to the failed Stop Online Piracy Act, would require internet service providers (ISPs) to play “copyright cops” and create systems for hastily taking down internet content upon a copyright holder’s request, even without a court order.
It then entices ISPs to comply by rewarding them with legal immunity in the event that they “inadvertently” take down something they shouldn’t have. To put the nail in the coffin, the deal requires countries to enforce heavy-handed criminal sanctions and fines for copyright infringement that are wildly disproportionate to the actual damages done to copyright holders.

The TPP affects website owners too, and threatens online privacy by requiring countries to publish databases of real names and addresses associated with certain web domains. This is particularly dangerous for dissenting voices in repressive countries, but it will also leave many average website owners exposed to scammers, online harassers and trolls.

The corporate wish-list continues. A dangerously broad “trade secrets” section endangers whistleblowers and journalists by prescribing harsh penalties for anyone accessing or exposing corporate secrets (or wrongdoing) “through a computer network”. Another article vaguely criminalizes tinkering with, unlocking or modifying your phone or other devices you own.

The most shocking revelation in the finalized text isn’t in the intellectual property chapter itself, but in a provision that includes intellectual property enforcement in the troubling Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) scheme. ISDS allows corporations to sue governments in secretive international tribunals if they feel that a nation’s local laws are “unfairly” limiting their ability to make money hand over fist.

In the shadow of a well-documented media blackout, so much of the discussion, criticism and organizing around TPP has happened over the web. It’s terrifying to think that this agreement, if ratified, will not only trample our rights, but could also fundamentally break the most powerful tool we have to raise awareness about the urgent issues of our time, expose the secrets of the corrupt and powerful, and amplify the voices of the millions struggling for a better world.

Fortunately, TPP is not yet a done deal. Before it becomes law it has to be ratified by each country’s lawmakers, including the US Congress. If you’re concerned about how TPP might affect the future of the internet, now might be a good time to use the internet to contact your representatives, while its still a free and open place.
http://www.alternet.org/economy/how-tpp-could-blow-free-internet-we-know-it

[Cin]

Our terrorism double standard: After Paris, let’s stop blaming Muslims and take a hard look at ourselves
We must mourn all victims. But until we look honestly at the violence we export, nothing will ever change

Any time there is an attack on civilians in the post-9/11 West, demagogues immediately blame it on Muslims. They frequently lack evidence, but depend on the blunt force of anti-Muslim bigotry to bolster their accusations.

Actual evidence, on the other hand, shows that less than two percent of terrorist attacks from 2009 to 2013 in the E.U. were religiously motivated. In 2013, just one percent of the 152 terrorist attacks were religious in nature; in 2012, less than three percent of the 219 terrorist attacks were inspired by religion.

The vast majority of terrorist attacks in these years were motivated by ethno-nationalism or separatism. In 2013, 55 percent of terrorist attacks were ethno-nationalist or separatist in nature; in 2012, more than three-quarters (76 percent) of terrorist attacks were inspired by ethno-nationalism or separatism.

These facts, nonetheless, have never stopped the prejudiced pundits from insisting otherwise.

On Friday the 13th of November, militants massacred at least 127 people in Paris in a series of heinous attacks.

There are many layers of hypocrisy in the public reaction to the tragedy that must be sorted through in order to understand the larger context in which these horrific attacks are situated — and, ultimately, to prevent such attacks from happening in the future.

Right-wing exploitation

As soon as the news of the attacks broke, even though there was no evidence and practically nothing was known about the attackers, a Who’s Who of right-wing pundits immediately latched on to the violence as an opportunity to demonize Muslims and refugees from Muslim-majority countries.

In a disgrace to the victims, a shout chorus of reactionary demagogues exploited the horrific attacks to distract from and even deny domestic problems. They flatly told Black Lives Matter activists fighting for basic civil and human rights, fast-food workers seeking liveable wages and union rights, and students challenging crippling debts that their problems are insignificant because they are not being held hostage at gunpoint.

More insidiously, when evidence began to suggest that extremists were responsible for the attacks, and when ISIS eventually claimed responsibility, the demagogues implied or even downright insisted that Islam — the religion of 1.6 billion people — was to blame, and that the predominately (although not entirely) Muslim refugees entering the West are only going to carry out more of such attacks.

Clampdown on Muslims and refugees

Every time Islamic extremists carry out an attack, the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims are expected to collectively apologize; it has become a cold cliché at this point.

Who benefits from such clampdown on Muslims and refugees?

Two primary groups: One, Islamic extremist groups themselves, who use the clampdown as “evidence” that there is supposedly no room for Muslims in the secular West that has declared war on Islam; and two, Europe’s growing far-right, who will use the attacks as “evidence” that there is supposedly no room for Muslims in the secular West that should declare war on Islam.

Although enemies, both groups share a congruence of interests. The far-right wants Muslims and refugees from Muslim-majority countries (even if they are not Muslim) to leave because it sees them as innately violent terrorists. Islamic extremists want Muslim refugees to leave so they can be radicalized and join their caliphate.

More specifically, to name names, ISIS and al-Qaeda will benefit from the clampdown on Muslims and refugees, and Europe’s growing far-right movement will continue to recruit new members with anti-Muslim and anti-refugee propaganda.

ISIS has explicitly stated that its goal is to make extinct what it calls the “grayzone” — that is to say, Western acceptance of Muslims. The “endangerment” of the grayzone “began with the blessed operations of September 11th, as those operations manifested two camps before the world for mankind to choose between, a camp of Islam … and a camp of kufr — the crusader coalition,” wrote ISIS in its own publication.

Demonstrating how right-wing and Islamic extremist logic intersect, ISIS actually favorably cited the black-and-white worldview shared ironically by both former President George W. Bush and his intractable foe, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. ISIS wrote: “As Shaykh Usamah Ibn Ladin said, ‘The world today is divided into two camps. Bush spoke the truth when he said, “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.” Meaning, either you are with the crusade or you are with Islam.'”

By making ISIS go viral, we are only helping them accomplish their sadistic goals.

In the meantime, France’s extreme right-wing National Front party stands to gain in particular. The party — which was founded by a neo-Nazi and is now led by his estranged daughter Marine Le Pen — constantly rails against Muslims, whom it hypocritically characterizes as Nazi occupiers. In 2014, a Paris court ruled it was fair to call the National Front “fascist.”

Before the Paris attacks, Le Pen’s extreme-right movement was France’s second-largest party. Now it may become the first.

The massacres that are ignored

There are hundreds of terrorist attacks in Europe every year. The ones that immediately fill the headlines of every news outlet, however, are the ones carried out by Muslims — not the ones carried out by ethno-nationalists or far-right extremists, which happen to be much more frequent.

Yet it is not just right-wing pundits and the media that give much more attention to attacks like those in Paris; heads of state frequently do so as well. Minutes after the Paris attacks, Presidents Hollande and Obama addressed the world, publicly lamenting the tragedy. Secretary John Kerry condemned them as “heinous, evil, vile acts.”

Notable was the official silence surrounding another horrific terrorist attack that took place only the day before. Two ISIS suicide bombers killed at least 43 people and wounded more than 230 in attacks on a heavily Shia Muslim community in Beirut on November 12. President Obama did not address the world and condemn the bombings, which comprised the worst attack in Beirut in years.

In fact, the opposite happened; the victims of the ISIS attacks were characterized in the U.S. media as Hezbollah human shields and blamed for their own deaths based on the unfortunate coincidence of their geographical location. Some right-wing pundits even went so far as to justify the ISIS attacks because they were assumed to be aimed at Hezbollah.

Nor did the White House interrupt every news broadcast to publicly condemn the ISIS massacre in Turkey in October that left approximately 128 people dead and 500 injured at a peaceful rally for a pro-Kurdish political party.

More strikingly, where were the heads of state when the Western-backed, Saudi-led coalition bombed a Yemeni wedding on September 28, killing 131 civilians, including 80 women? That massacre didn’t go viral, and Obama and Hollande did not apologize, yet alone barely even acknowledge the tragedy.

Do French lives matter more than Lebanese, Turkish, Kurdish, and Yemeni ones? Were these not, too, “heinous, evil, vile acts”?

Oddly familiar

We have seen this all before; it should be oddly familiar. The reaction to the horrific January 2015 Paris attacks was equally predictable; the knee-jerk Islamophobia ignored the crucial context for the tragic attack — namely the fact that it was was the catastrophic U.S.-led war on Iraq and torture at Abu Ghraib, not Charlie Hebdo cartoons, that radicalized the shooters. Also ignored was the fact that the extremist attackers were sons of émigrés from Algeria, a country that for decades bled profusely under barbarous French colonialism, which only ended after an even bloodier war of independence in 1962 that left hundreds of thousands of Algerians dead.

After the January Paris attacks, leaders from around the world — including officials from Western-backed extremist theocratic tyrannies like Saudi Arabia — gathered in Paris to supposedly participate in a march that turned out to actually be a carefully orchestrated and cynical photo op.

And not only are Muslims collectively blamed for such attacks; they, too, collectively bear the brunt of the backlash.

In just six days after the January attacks, the National Observatory Against Islamophobia documented 60 incidents of Islamophobic attacks and threats in France. TellMAMA, a U.K.-based organization that monitors racist anti-Muslim attacks, also reported 50-60 threats.

Once again, mere days before the January Paris attacks, the global community largely glossed over another horrific tragedy: The slaughter of more than 2,000Nigerians by Boko Haram. The African victims didn’t get a march; only the Western victims of Islamic extremism did.

Western culpability

A little-discussed yet crucial fact is that the vast, vast majority of the victims of Islamic extremism are themselves Muslim, and live in Muslim-majority countries. A 2012 U.S. National Counterterrorism Center report found that between 82 and 97 percent of the victims of religiously motivated terrorist attacks over the previous five years were Muslims.

The West frequently acts as though it is the principal victim, but the exact contrary is true.

Never interrogated is why exactly are so many refugees fleeing the Middle East and North Africa. It is not like millions of people want to leave their homes and families; they are fleeing violence and chaos — violence and chaos that happens to almost always be the result of Western military intervention.

Western countries, particularly the U.S., are directly responsible for the violence and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Yemen, from which millions of refugees are fleeing:

•The illegal U.S.-led invasion of Iraq led to the deaths of at least one million people, destabilized the entire region, and created extreme conditions in which militant groups like al-Qaeda spread like wildfire, eventually leading to the emergence of ISIS.

•In Afghanistan, the ongoing U.S.-led war and occupation — which the Obama administration just prolonged for a second time — has led to approximately a quarter of a million deaths and has displaced millions of Afghans.

•The disastrous U.S.-led NATO intervention in Libya destroyed the government, turning the country into a hotbed for extremism and allowing militant groups like ISIS to spread west into North Africa. Thousands of Libyans have been killed, and hundreds of thousands made refugees.

•In Yemen, the U.S. and other Western nations are arming and backing the Saudi-led coalition that is raining down bombs, including banned cluster munitions, on civilian areas, pulverizing the poorest country in the Middle East. And, once again — the story should now be familiar — thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been displaced.

Syria is a bit more complicated. Many refugees in the country, which has been torn apart by almost five years of bitter war, are fleeing the brutal repression of the Assad government. Western countries and their allies, however, share some of the blame. Allies such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey have greatly inflamed the conflict by supporting extremist groups like al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra.

And it should go without saying that millions of Syrian refugees are fleeing the very same terror at the hands of ISIS that the group allegedly unleashed upon Paris. By suppressing Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing the ruthlessly violent extremist group, France and other Western countries will only be further adding to the already shocking number of its victims.

Dislocating the blame

When the U.S. and its allies bomb weddings and hospitals in Yemen and Afghanistan, killing hundreds of civilians, “Americans” doesn’t trend globally on Twitter. Yet when Parisians are allegedly killed by Islamic extremists, “Muslims” does.

The imperialist West always try to dislocate the blame. It’s always the foreigner’s, the non-Westerner’s, the Other’s fault; it’s never the fault of the enlightened West.

Islam is the new scapegoat. Western imperial policies of ravaging entire nations, propping up repressive dictators, and supporting extremist groups are conveniently forgotten.

The West is incapable of addressing its own imperial violence. Instead, it points its blood-stained finger accusingly at the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims and tells them they are the inherently violent ones.

Unfortunately, tragedies like the one we see in Paris are daily events in much of the Middle East, no thanks to the policies of the governments of France, the U.S., the U.K., and more. The horrific and unjustifiable yet rare terrorist attacks we in the West experience are the quotidian reality endured by those living in the region our governments brutalize.

This does not mean we should not mourn the Paris attacks; they are abominable, and the victims should and must be mourned. But we should likewise ensure that the victims of our governments’ crimes are mourned as well.

If we truly believe that all lives are equally valuable, if we truly believe that French lives matter no more than any others, we must mourn all deaths equally.

The dangers of habit

We know the responses to attacks like these. Great danger lies in them continuing on the same way.

Governments are going to call for more Western military intervention in the Middle East, more bombs, and more guns. Hard-line right-wing Senator Ted Cruz immediately demanded airstrikes with more “tolerance for civilian casualties.” Naturally, the proposed “solution” to individual acts of terror is to ramp up campaigns of state terror.

At home, they will call for more fences, more police, and more surveillance. Immediately after the Paris attacks, France closed its borders. In the U.S., as soon as the attacks were reported, the NYPD began militarizing parts of New York City.

The hegemonic “solution” is always more militarization, both abroad and here at home. Yet it is in fact militarization that is the cause of the problem in the first place.

At the time of the atrocious 9/11 attacks, al-Qaeda was a relatively small and isolated group. It was the U.S.-led war in and occupation of Iraq that created the conditions of extreme violence, desperation, and sectarianism in which al-Qaeda metastasized, spreading worldwide. The West, in its addiction to militarism, played into the hands of the extremists, and today we see the rotten fruit borne of that rotten addiction: ISIS is the Frankenstein’s monster of Western imperialism.

Moreover, Western countries’ propping up of their oil-rich allies in the Gulf, extremist theocratic monarchies like Saudi Arabia, is a principal factor in the spread of Sunni extremism.

If these are the strategies our governments continue to pursue, attacks like those in Paris will only be more frequent.

The far-right will continue to grow. Neo-fascism, the most dangerous development in the world today, will gain traction. People will radicalize.

The incidence of attacks inspired by ethno-nationalism or far-right extremism, already the leading cause of European and American terror, will increase even further.

The pundits will boost anti-Muslim bigotry and feed the anti-refugee fervor. In doing so, they will only make matters worse.

The Paris attacks, as horrific as they are, could be a moment to think critically about what our governments are doing both abroad and here at home. If we do not think critically, if we act capriciously, and violently, the wounds will only continue to fester. The bloodletting will ultimately accelerate.

In short, those who promote militarist policies and anti-Muslim and anti-refugee bigotries in response to the Paris attacks are only going to further propagate violence and hatred.

If the political cycle is not changed, the cycle of violence will continue.

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/14/our_terrorism_double_standard_after_paris_lets_sto p_blaming_muslims_and_take_a_hard_look_at_ourselve s/

[C0LLETTE]

In a hundred years, if there is still some small space surviving where a historian can sit and write the history of these last years, I hope she wonders why we never prosecuted and hung GW Bush, Cheney, et al, for sending this planet onto a disastrous, catastrophic course...why we allowed these craven, lying, truly stupid men to lead us like catatonic lemmings over a cliff of self destruction while they exported their warped political philosophy of American Exceptionalism, while sucking pride of culture and resource out of every inch in their wake.

[Cin]

I don't understand the US's ties with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi's fund terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaida, Sunni-Wahhabism has it's roots in Saudi Arabia and it is said the road to the Caliphate runs through there. Saudi Arabia exported the main source of global terrorism and seems to seek to destabilize the Middle East further. I don't get what the US connection to this is.

Despite Atrocities, US Approves $1.29 Billion Deal to Re-Arm Saudi Arabia
'It is illegal under US and international law to transfer weapons to human rights abusers, or to forces that will likely use it to commit gross violations of human rights.'

The Pentagon announced on Monday that the U.S. has approved a $1.29 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, despite mounting evidence of the country's mass atrocities and possible war crimes in neighboring Yemen.

The U.S. State Department on Friday approved the sale of over 10,000 bombs, munitions, and weapons parts produced by Boeing and Raytheon. This includes 5,200 Paveway II "laser guided" and 12,000 "general purpose" bombs. "Bunker Busters," also included in the deal, are designed to destroy concrete structures.

"The proposed sale augments Saudi Arabia's capability to meet current and future threats from potential adversaries during combat operations," the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part of the U.S. Department of Defense, said in an announcement of the deal released Monday.

But Raed Jarrar, government relations manager for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), told Common Dreams: "Sending additional weapons to the Middle East will not stabilize the region or put an end to violence and extremism. Supporting proxy wars, interventions, and military occupations will only add fuel to the fire."

"It's also illegal under US and international law to transfer weapons to human rights abusers, or to forces that will likely use it to commit gross violations of human rights," Jarrar continued. "There is documented evidence that such abuses have been committed by almost all of U.S. allies in the region."

The U.S. statement indicates that the deal will, in part, be used to replenish arms for Saudi Arabia's seven-month-long military assault on Yemen, which has killed at least 2,355 civilians and wounded 4,862, according to United Nations statistics.

With the backing of the U.S. and U.K., the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for the vast majority of these killings. The office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights reported in September that "almost two-thirds of reported civilian deaths had allegedly been caused by coalition airstrikes, which were also responsible for almost two-thirds of damaged or destroyed civilian public buildings."

The approval came just a month after the U.S. approved an $11.25 billion sale of combat ships to Saudi Arabia, defying the international call for an arms embargo over war crimes concerns. What's more, it continues a long-standing trend in which the U.S. is a major weapons supplier to the gulf state. The IHS Jane's 360 report, released in March, found that Saudi Arabia was the primary "defense" trading partner with the United States in 2014.

In announcing this latest weapons deal, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said: "Providing these defense articles supports Saudi Arabian defense missions and promotes stability in the region... and enables Saudi Arabia to safeguard the world's largest oil reserves."

But experts warn that such sales, in fact, are driving instability and atrocities across the Middle East—far beyond Yemen.

In a statement released on Monday, Paul Shannon of the AFSC called on "the U.S., France and the west to cut off its support and vast weapons supplies to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies whose royal families have been responsible for the spread of the jihadist extremist ideology throughout the region."

The arms deal will proceed unless Congress moves to block it in the next 30 days.
http://commondreams.org/news/2015/11/17/despite-atrocities-us-approves-129-billion-deal-re-arm-saudi-arabia

[Cin]

This is why they hate us: The real American history neither Ted Cruz nor the New York Times will tell you

We talk democracy, then overthrow elected governments and prop up awful regimes. Let's discuss the actual history

Ben Norton

The soi-disant Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has a long and iniquitous history of overthrowing democratically elected leftist governments and propping up right-wing dictators in their place.

U.S. politicians rarely acknowledge this odious past — let alone acknowledge that such policies continue well into the present day.

In the second Democratic presidential debate, however, candidate Bernie Sanders condemned a long-standing government policy his peers rarely admit exists.

“I think we have a disagreement,” Sanders said of fellow presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. “And the disagreement is that not only did I vote against the war in Iraq. If you look at history, you will find that regime change — whether it was in the early ’50s in Iran, whether it was toppling Salvador Allende in Chile, or whether it was overthrowing the government of Guatemala way back when — these invasions, these toppling of governments, regime changes have unintended consequences. I would say that on this issue I’m a little bit more conservative than the secretary.”

“I am not a great fan of regime changes,” Sanders added.

“Regime change” is not a phrase you hear discussed honestly much in Washington, yet it is a common practice in and defining feature of U.S. foreign policy for well over a century. For many decades, leaders from both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats, have pursued a bipartisan strategy of violently overthrowing democratically elected foreign governments that do not kowtow to U.S. orders.

In the debate, Sanders addressed three examples of U.S. regime change. There are scores of examples of American regime change, yet these are perhaps the most infamous instances.

Iran, 1953

Iran was once a secular democracy. You would not know this from contemporary discussions of the much demonized country in U.S. politics and media.

What happen to Iran’s democracy? The U.S. overthrew it in 1953, with the help of the U.K. Why? For oil.

Mohammad Mosaddegh may be the most popular leader in Iran’s long history. He was also Iran’s only democratically elected head of state.

In 1951, Mosaddegh was elected prime minister of Iran. He was not a socialist, and certainly not a communist — on the contrary, he repressed Iranian communists — but he pursued many progressive, social democratic policies. Mosaddegh pushed for land reform, established rent control, and created a social security system, while working to separate powers in the democratic government.

In the Cold War, however, a leader who deviated in any way from free-market orthodoxy and the Washington Consensus was deemed a threat. When Mossaddegh nationalized Iran’s large oil reserves, he crossed a line that Western capitalist nations would not tolerate.

The New York Times ran an article in 1951 titled “British Warn Iran of Serious Result if She Seizes Oil.” The piece, which is full of orientalist language, refers to Iranian oil as “British oil properties,” failing to acknowledge that Britain, which had previously occupied Iran, had seized that oil and claimed it as its own, administering it under the auspices of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, which later became the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and eventually British Petroleum and modern BP.

The Times article noted that the U.S. “shares with Britain the gravest concern about the possibility that Iranian oil, the biggest supply now available in the Near East, might be lost to the Western powers.” The British government is quoted making a thinly veiled threat.

This threat came into fruition in August 1953. In Operation Ajax, the CIA, working with its British equivalent MI6, carried out a coup, overthrowing the elected government of Iran and reinstalling the monarchy. The shah would remain a faithful Western ally until 1979, when the monarchy was abolished in the Iranian Revolution.

Guatemala, 1954

Less than a year after overthrowing Iran’s first democratically elected prime minister, the U.S. pursued a similar regime change policy in Guatemala, toppling the elected leader Jacobo Árbenz.

In 1944, Guatemalans waged a revolution, toppling the U.S.-backed right-wing dictator Jorge Ubico, who had ruled the country with an iron fist since 1931. Ubico, who fancied himself the 20th-century Napoleon, gave rich landowners and the U.S. corporation the United Fruit Company (which would later become Chiquita) free reign over Guatemala’s natural resources, and used the military to violently crush labor organizers.

Juan José Arévalo was elected into office in 1944. A liberal, he pursued very moderate policies, but the U.S. wanted a right-wing puppet regime that would allow U.S. corporations the same privileges granted to them by Ubico. In 1949, the U.S. backed an attempted coup, yet it failed.

In 1951, Árbenz was elected into office. Slightly to the left of Arévalo, Árbenz was still decidedly moderate. The U.S. claimed Árbenz was close to Guatemala’s communists, and warned he could ally with the Soviet Union. In reality, the opposite was true; Árbenz actually persecuted Guatemalan communists. At most, Árbenz was a social democrat, not even a socialist.

Yet Árbenz, like Mosaddegh, firmly believed that Guatemalans themselves, and not multinational corporations, should benefit from their country’s resources. He pursued land reform policies that would break up the control rich families and the United Fruit Company exercised over the country — and, for that reason, he was overthrown.

President Truman originally authorized a first coup attempt, Operation PBFORTUNE, in 1952. Yet details about the operation were leaked to the public, and the plan was abandoned. In 1954, in Operation PBSUCCESS, the CIA and U.S. State Department, under the Dulles Brothers, bombed Guatemala City and carried out a coup that violently toppled Guatemala’s democratic government.

The U.S. put into power right-wing tyrant Carlos Castillo Armas. For the next more than 50 years, until the end of the Guatemalan Civil War in 1996, Guatemala was ruled by a serious of authoritarian right-wing leaders who brutally repressed left-wing dissidents and carried out a campaign of genocide against the indigenous people of the country.

Chile, 1973

September 11 has permanently seared itself into the memory of Americans. The date has also been indelibly imprinted in the public consciousness of Chileans, because it was on this same day in 1973 that the U.S. backed a coup that violently overthrew Chile’s democracy.

In 1970, Marxist leader Salvador Allende was democratically elected president of Chile. Immediately after he was elected, the U.S. government poured resources into right-wing opposition groups and gave millions of dollars to Chile’s conservative media outlets.

The CIA deputy director of plans wrote in a 1970 memo, “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup… It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [U.S. government] and American hand be well hidden.” President Nixon subsequently ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile, to “prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.”

Allende’s democratic government was violently overthrown in Operation Ajax, on September 11, 1973. He died in the coup, just after making an emotional speech, in which he declared he would give his life to defend Chilean democracy and sovereignty.

Far-right dictator Augusto Pinochet, who combined fascistic police state repression with hyper-capitalist free-market economic policies, was put into power. Under Pinochet’s far-right dictatorship, tens of thousands of Chilean leftists, labor organizers, and journalists were killed, disappeared, and tortured. Hundreds of thousands more people were forced into exile.

One of the most prevailing myths of the Cold War is that socialism was an unpopular system imposed on populations with brute force. Chile serves as a prime historical example of how the exact opposite was true. The masses of impoverished and oppressed people elected many socialist governments, yet these governments were often violently overthrown by the U.S. and other Western allies.

The overthrow of Allende was a turning point for many socialists in the Global South. Before he was overthrown, some leftists thought popular Marxist movements could gain state power through democratic elections, as was the case in Chile. Yet when they saw how the U.S. violently toppled Allende’s elected government, they became suspicious of the prospects of electoral politics and turned to guerrilla warfare and other tactics.

Modern example: Egypt, 2013

These are just a small sample of the great many regime changes the U.S. government has been involved in. More recent examples, which were supported by Hillary Clinton, as Sanders implied, include the U.S. government’s overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. In these cases, the U.S. was overthrowing dictators, not democratically elected leaders — but, as Sanders pointed out, the results of these regime changes have been nothing short of catastrophic.

The U.S. is also still engaging in regime change when it comes to democratically elected governments.

In the January 2011 revolution, Egyptians toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak, a close U.S. ally who ruled Egypt with an iron fist for almost 30 years.

In July 2013, Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohammed Morsi, was overthrown in a military coup. We now know that the U.S. supported and bankrolled the opposition forces that overthrew the democratically elected president.

Today, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, a brutal despot who is widely recognized as even worse than Mubarak, reigns over Egypt. In August 2013, Sisi oversaw a slaughter of more than 800 peaceful Egyptian activists at Raba’a Square. His regime continues to shoot peaceful protesters in the street. An estimated 40,000 political prisoners languish in Sisi’s jails, including journalists.

In spite of his obscene human rights abuses, Sisi remains a close ally of the U.S. and Israel — much, much closer than was the democratically elected President Morsi.

In the second Democratic presidential debate, when Sanders called Clinton out on her hawkish, pro-regime change policies, she tried to blame the disasters in the aftermath in countries like Iraq and Libya on the “complexity” of the Middle East. As an example of this putative complexity, Clinton cited Egypt. “We saw a dictator overthrown, we saw Muslim Brotherhood president installed, and then we saw him ousted and the army back,” she said.

Clinton failed to mention two crucial factors: One, that the U.S. backed Mubarak until the last moment; and two, that the U.S. also supported the coup that overthrew Egypt’s first and only democratically elected head of state.

Other examples

There are scores of other examples of U.S.-led regime change.

•In 1964 the U.S. backed a coup in Brazil, toppling left-wing President João Goulart.

•In 1976, the U.S. supported a military coup in Argentina that replaced President Isabel Perón with General Jorge Rafael Videla.

•In 2002, the U.S. backed a coup that overthrew democratically elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. Chávez was so popular, however, that Venezuelans filled the street and demanded him back.

•In 2004, the U.S. overthrew Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

•In 2009, U.S.-trained far-right forces overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras, with tacit support from Washington.

The list goes on.

Latin America, given its proximity to the U.S. and the strength of left-wing movements in the region, tends to endure the largest number of U.S. regime changes, yet the Middle East and many parts of Africa have seen their democratic governments overthrown as well.

From 1898 to 1994, Harvard University historian John Coatsworth documented at least 41 U.S. interventions in Latin America — an an average of one every 28 months for an entire century.

Numerous Latin American military dictators were trained at the School of the Americas, a U.S. Department of Defense Institute in Fort Benning, Georgia. The School of the Americas Watch, an activist organization that pushes for the closing of the SOA, has documented many of these regime changes, which have been carried out by both Republicans and Democrats.

Diplomatic cables released by whistleblowing journalism outlet WikiLeaks show the U.S. still maintains a systematic campaign of trying to overthrow Latin America’s left-wing governments.

By not just acknowledging the bloody and ignominious history of U.S. regime change, but also condemning it, Sen. Sanders was intrepidly trekking into controversial political territory into which few of his peers would dare to tread. Others would do well to learn from Bernie’s example.

http://www.salon.com/2015/11/18/this_is_why_they_hate_us_the_real_american_history _neither_ted_cruz_nor_the_new_york_times_will_tell _you/

[Cin]

School of Americas - harder to kill than Jason Voorhees



'School of Assassins': Protests Demand Closure of Notorious Training Camp

"We have to take an honest look at the violence the United States is exporting all over the world. If we don’t do that, nothing is going to change."

Thousands of activists and dozens of peace groups converged this weekend in Georgia to call for the closure of the School of Americas (SOA or WHINSEC), a controversial training facility for Latin American soldiers, and the nearby Stewart Immigrant Detention Center.

Hundreds protested outside SOA's gates in Fort Benning, calling it the "School of Assassins," while others marched through the town of Lumpkin to hold a vigil outside of Stewart's facilities. A handful of protesters were arrested and later released after they crossed onto the grounds of the detention center, where organizers say approximately 1,800 migrants are being held in inhumane conditions as officials prepare to deport them en masse.

The weekend of action also included testimonies from victims of torture, who held up images of civilians murdered by death squads trained at SOA. Others spoke out about their experiences as families of disappeared persons.

Annual actions organized by the grassroots movement SOA Watch are being held throughout the weekend to speak out against militarization and demand accountability and reform of the U.S.'s foreign policies toward Latin America.

"Despite a shocking human rights abuse record, the School of the Americas continues to operate with US taxpayer money. Closing the SOA would send a strong human rights message to Latin America and the world," said SOA Watch founder Father Roy Bourgeois.

Ahead of the actions on Friday, SOA Watch national organizer Hendrik Voss told local media, "We have to take an honest look at the violence the United States is exporting all over the world. If we don’t do that, nothing is going to change."

"We say we are standing in solidarity with people of Latin America," Voss told the Columbus Ledger-Inquirer on Saturday. "When those people are forced from their home country because of SOA violence, they are being mistreated. We extend our solidarity with them."

The weekend of action expanded its focus to include Stewart Immigrant Detention Center about nine years ago. "We have to address the root causes of migration, which to a major part lie in the deplorable economic and military policies, which the United States has imposed on Latin America," Borgeois said.

For many activists, SOA has become a notorious symbol of U.S.-backed human rights abuses in Latin America. The taxpayer-funded school now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation educated several dictators from the region, as well as their military officials, and included torture, extortion, and execution in its curriculum. Yet as SOA Watch points out, despite evidence of human rights abuses connected to the school's graduates, "no independent investigation into the facility has ever taken place."

http://commondreams.org/news/2015/11/22/school-assassins-protests-demand-closure-notorious-training-camp

[Cin]

That racist Trump tweet about blacks killing whites isn’t just false — it’s neo-Nazi propaganda

Donald Trump capped a week that found him flirting with fascism by sharing a blatantly false, racist graphic that apparently originated with a Hitler-admiring neo-Nazi.

The Republican presidential frontrunner tweeted an image Sunday afternoon that claimed 81 percent of white homicide victims are killed by blacks and 97 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other blacks.

The graphic cited the Crime Statistics Bureau in San Francisco as its source — although that does not exist and the statistics are, quite simply, made up.

In reality, the FBI shows that 82 percent of white homicide victims were killed by other white people and 15 percent of white homicide victims were killed by black people, and 91 percent of black homicide victims were killed by other black people.

So where did the image and the bogus statistics come from?

Blogger Charles Johnson, of Little Green Footballs, was unable to determine its source through a Google Image search or tineye.com — but he was able to find the earliest tweet using the graphic.

The account’s avatar is a modified swastika used as the symbol of the neo-Nazi German Faith Movement, and the account profile expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler: “A detester of any kind of sick perverted dildo waving marxism and liberalism,we Should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little moustache.”

The image was posted on the conservative Sexy Patriot account shortly before Trump shared it.

There’s no indication Trump was aware the graphic seems to have originated with a neo-Nazi, but a quick Google search should have revealed the statistics as inaccurate — and its racist suggestions are plainly obvious.

Trump supporters beat up a Black Lives Matter protester Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama, and the GOP candidate said afterward that the man was “so obnoxious and so loud” that “maybe he should have been roughed up.”

The Republican repeated his call to closely monitor or even close down U.S. mosques to fight terrorism, and he refused to rule out creating a database of American Muslims and expressed openness to the possibility of requiring them to carry special ID.

This isn’t the first time Trump has tweeted Nazi propaganda on his official social media account.

Trump shared a campaign graphic, which he later deleted, that included an image of Nazi soldiers taken from a World War II re-enactment.

http://www.rawstory.com/2015/11/that-racist-trump-tweet-about-blacks-killing-whites-isnt-just-false-its-neo-nazi-propaganda/

[Cin]

Hitting Saudi Arabia Where It Hurts

Though faced with a global terrorism crisis, Official Washington can’t get beyond its neocon-led “tough-guy-gal” rhetoric. But another option – financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia – might help finally shut down the covert supply of money and arms to Al Qaeda and the Islamic State

As the Islamic State and Al Qaeda enter a grim competition to see who can kill more civilians around the world, the fate of Western Civilization as we’ve known it arguably hangs in the balance. It will not take much more terror for the European Union to begin cracking up and for the United States to transform itself into a full-scale surveillance state.

Yet, in the face of this crisis, many of the same people who set us on this road to destruction continue to dominate – and indeed frame – the public debate. For instance, Official Washington’s neocons still insist on their recipe for “regime change” in countries that they targeted 20 years ago. They also demand a new Cold War with Russia in defense of a corrupt right-wing regime in Ukraine, further destabilizing Europe and disrupting U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria.

Given the stakes, you might think that someone in a position of power – or one of the many candidates for U.S. president – would offer some pragmatic and realistic ideas for addressing this extraordinary threat. But most Republicans – from Marco Rubio to Carly Fiorina to Ted Cruz – only offer more of “more of the same,” i.e. neocon belligerence on steroids. Arguably, Donald Trump and Rand Paul are exceptions to this particular hysteria, but neither has offered a coherent and comprehensive counter-analysis.

On the Democratic side, frontrunner Hillary Clinton wins praise from the neocon editors of The Washington Post for breaking with President Barack Obama’s hesitancy to fully invade Syria. Former Secretary of State Clinton wants an invasion to occupy parts of Syria as a “safe area” and to destroy Syrian (and presumably Russian planes) if they violate her “no-fly zone.”

Much like the disastrous U.S. invasions of Iraq and Libya, Clinton and her neocon allies are pitching the invasion of Syria as a humanitarian venture to remove a “brutal dictator” – in this case, President Bashar al-Assad – as well as to “destroy” the Islamic State, which Assad’s army and its Iranian-Russian allies have also been fighting. Assad’s military, Iranian troops and Russian planes have hit other jihadist groups, too, such as Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, which receives U.S. weapons as it fights side-by-side with Nusra in the Army of Conquest.

Clinton’s strategy likely would protect jihadists except for the Islamic State — and thus keep hope alive for “regime change” — explaining why the Post’s neocon editors, who were enthusiastic boosters of the Iraq War in 2003, hailed her hawkish approach toward Syria as “laudable.”

To Clinton’s left, Sen. Bernie Sanders has punted on the issue of what to do in either Syria or the Middle East, failing to offer any thoughtful ideas about what can be done to stabilize the region. He opted instead for a clever but vacuous talking point, arguing that the Saudis and other rich oil sheiks of the Persian Gulf should use their wealth and militaries to bring order to the region, to “get their hands dirty.”

The problem is that the Saudis, the Qataris and the Kuwaitis – along with the Turks – are a big part of the problem. They have used their considerable wealth to finance and arm Al Qaeda and its various allies and spinoffs, including the Islamic State. Their hands are already very dirty.

Saudi ‘Hard Power’

What we have seen in the Middle East since the 1980s is Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states creating “hard power” for their regional ambitions by assembling paramilitary forces that are willing and even eager to lash out at “enemies,” whether against Shiite rivals or Western powers.

While the wealthy Saudis, Qataris and other pampered princes don’t want to become soldiers themselves, they’re more than happy to exploit disaffected young Sunnis, turn them into jihadists and unleash them. Al Qaeda (dating back to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s) and the Islamic State (emerging in resistance to the U.S.-installed Shiite regime in Iraq after 2003) are Saudi Arabia’s foot soldiers.

This reality is similar to how the Reagan administration supported right-wing paramilitary forces in Central America during the 1980s, including “death squads” in El Salvador and Guatemala and the drug-tainted “Contras” in Nicaragua. These extremists were willing to do the “dirty work” that Reagan’s CIA considered necessary to reverse the tide of leftist revolution in the region, but with “deniability” built in so Official Washington couldn’t be directly blamed for the slaughters.

Also, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration’s hardliners, including CIA Director William J. Casey, saw the value of using Islamic extremism to undermine the Soviet Union, with its official position of atheism. The CIA and the Saudis worked hand in hand in building the Afghan mujahedeen – an Islamic fundamentalist movement – to overthrow the Soviet-backed secular government in Kabul.

The “success” of that strategy included severe harm dealt to the struggling Soviet economy and the eventual ouster (and murder) of the Moscow-backed president, Najibullah. But the strategy also gave rise to the Taliban, which took power and installed a medieval regime, and Al Qaeda, which evolved from the Saudi and other foreign fighters (including Saudi Osama bin Laden) who had flocked to the Afghan jihad.

In effect, the Afghan experience created the modern jihadist movement – and the Saudis, in particular, understood the value of this paramilitary force to punish governments and political groups that the Saudis and their oil-rich friends considered threats. Officially, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Sunni oil states could claim that they weren’t behind the terrorists while letting money and arms slip through.

Though Al Qaeda and the other jihadists had their own agendas – and could take independent action – the Saudis and other sheiks could direct these paramilitary forces against the so-called “Shiite crescent,” from Iran through Syria to Lebanon (and after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, against Iraq’s Shiite government as well).

At times, the jihadists also proved useful for the United States and Israel, striking at Hezbollah in Lebanon, fighting for “regime change” in Syria, collaborating in the 2011 ouster (and murder) of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, even joining forces with the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government to kill ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

Israeli Role

Since these Sunni jihadists were most adept at killing Shiites, they endeared themselves not only to their Saudi, Qatari and Kuwaiti benefactors, but also to Israel, which has identified Shiite-ruled Iran as its greatest strategic threat. Thus, the American neocons, who collaborate closely with Israel’s right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had mixed attitudes toward the Sunni jihadists, too.

Plus, high-profile terrorism, including the 9/11 attacks, enabled the tough-talking neocons to consolidate their control over U.S. foreign policy, diverting American fury over Al Qaeda’s killing nearly 3,000 people in New York and Washington to implement the neocons’ “regime change” agenda, first in Iraq though it had nothing to do with 9/11, with plans to move on to Syria and Iran.

As the Military-Industrial Complex made out like bandits with billions upon billions of dollars thrown at the “War on Terror,” grateful military contractors kicked back some profits to major think tanks where neocon thinkers were employed to develop more militaristic plans. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “A Family Business of Perpetual War.”]

But the downside of this coziness with the Sunni jihadists has been that Al Qaeda and its spinoff, the Islamic State, perceive the West as their ultimate enemy, drawing from both historic and current injustices inflicted on the Islamic world by Europe and the United States. The terrorist leaders cite this mistreatment to recruit young people from impoverished areas of the Middle East and the urban slums of Europe – and get them to strap on suicide-belts.

Thus, Al Qaeda and now the Islamic State not only advance the neocon/Israeli/Saudi agenda by launching terror attacks in Syria against Assad’s government and in Lebanon against Hezbollah, but they strike out on their own against U.S. and European targets, even in Africa where Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for last week’s murderous assault on an upscale Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, Mali.

It also appears that Al Qaeda and the Islamic State have entered into a competition over who can stage the bloodiest attacks against Westerners as a way to bolster recruitment. The Bamako attack was an attempt by Al Qaeda to regain the spotlight from the Islamic State which boasted of a vicious string of attacks on Paris, Beirut and a Russian tourist flight in the Sinai.

The consequence of these murderous rampages has been to threaten the political and economic cohesion of Europe and to increase pressures for a strengthened surveillance state inside the United States. In other words, some of the most treasured features of Western civilization – personal liberty and relative affluence – are being endangered.

Yet, rather than explain the real reasons for this crisis – and what the possible solutions might be – no one in the U.S. mainstream political world or the major media seems able or willing to talk straight to the American people about how we got here.

Sanders’s Lost Opportunity

While you might have expected as much from most Republicans (who have surround themselves with neocon advisers) and from Hillary Clinton (who has cultivated her own ties to the neocons and their liberal interventionist sidekicks), you might have hoped that Sanders would have adopted a thoughtful critique of Official Washington’s neocon-dominated “group think.”

But instead he offers a simplistic and nonsensical prescription of demanding the Saudis do more – when that would only inflict more death and destruction on the region and beyond. Arguably, the opposite would make much more sense – impose tough financial sanctions against Saudi Arabia as punishment for its continued support for Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.

Freezing or confiscating Saudi bank accounts around the world might finally impress the spoiled princes of the Persian Gulf oil states that there is a real price to pay for dabbling in terrorism. Such an action against Saudi Arabia also would send a message to smaller Sunni sheikdoms that they could be next. Other pressures, including possible expulsion from NATO, could be brought to bear on Turkey.

If the West finally got serious about stopping this financial and military support for Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and their jihadist allies in Syria, the violence might finally abate. And, if the United States and Europe put pressure on the “moderate” Syrian opposition – whatever there is of it – to compromise, a political solution might be possible, too.

Right now, the biggest obstacle to a political agreement appears to be the U.S. insistence that President Assad be barred from elections once Syria achieves some stability. Yet, if President Obama is so certain that the Syrian people hate Assad, it seems crazy to let Assad’s presumed defeat at the polls obstruct such a crucial deal.

The only explanation for this U.S. stubbornness is that the neocons and the liberal hawks have made “regime change” in Syria such a key part of their agenda that they would lose face if Assad’s departure was not mandated. However, with the future of Western civilization in the balance, such obstinate behavior seems not only feckless but reckless.

From understanding how this mess was made, some U.S. politician could fashion an appeal that might have broad popular support across the political spectrum. If Sanders took up this torch for a rational plan for bringing relative peace to the Middle East, he also might shift the dynamics of the Democratic race.

Of course, to challenge Official Washington’s “group think” is always dangerous. If compromise and cooperation suddenly replaced “regime change” as the U.S. goal, the neocons and liberal hawks would flip out. But the stakes are extremely high for the planet’s future. Maybe saving Western civilization is worth the risk of facing down a neocon/liberal-hawk temper tantrum.