another old woman

Isn't ANYONE tired of "The Most Holy Roman Catholic Church"?

2012-02-13T11:40:00.000-06:00

O.K. this might be an "old story", but we must never forget what these MEN, who are supposed to be representing GOD, men who are supposed to be above mere carnal desire (how I don't know) have done to many THOUSANDS of children, while claiming some "moral high ground".

These PRIESTS are the only representatives of The Most Holy Roman Catholic Church that have contact with "the masses", the "general public" -- and many too many have a long history of ABUSING CHILDREN.

This is the same church that tells women it's a SIN to use birth control.

Why?

Do they need a constant supply of nubile young children to "indoctrinate"? Is it to further their basically misogynistic goals?

How can these men stand there with a straight face and tell ANYONE what is "moral" -- especially after so many in the hierarchy spent years covering up the misdeeds of so many parish priests?

This from "Raw Story" -- please don't vomit when you read this. (follow link to original)
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Priest allegedly told rape victim: ‘This is what God’s love feels like’

NBC Los Angeles ♦ Ray Boucher

A Los Angeles attorney is accusing 200 Catholic priests of sexual abuse across California.

According to NBC affiliate in Los Angeles, attorney Ray Boucher has mapped out at least sixty locations of where suspected priests reside in California.

“Many if not all these priests have admitted to sexual abuse,” Boucher told NBC Los Angeles. “They live within a mile of 1,500 playgrounds, schools and daycare centers.”

One of the alleged victims, Dan Smith, graphically detailed his incident with a local priest when he was a child.

“He would rape me and then say this is what God’s love feels like,” Smith told Los Angeles NBC.

Boucher represents over 500 suspected victims suing the Los Angeles Archdiocese for sexual molestation. The LA Archdiocese reached a $660 million settlement with most of the victims in 2007.

But the archdiocese is being accused of a cover up by letting priests leave the country or hide in rehab until the legal deadline for prosecution runs out.

Europe’s black cygnets

2012-02-12T16:48:00.000-06:00

This from "Naked Capitalism" -- I truly hope it's wrong. I hope Europe, the Euro, and the EU survive. A breakdown might well lead to a worldwide depression, with severe political ramifications.

Please follow link to original - and bookmark the site, if you have not already done that.
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Europe’s black cygnets -- Posted by Lambert Strether

By Delusional Economics, who is horrified at the state of economic commentary in Australia and is determined to cleanse the daily flow of vested interests propaganda to produce a balanced counterpoint. Cross posted from MacroBusiness.

Although the Greece default is the very obvious European black swan at the moment I thought it would be prudent to point out two other things happenning in Europe over the next 12 months that certainly have the potential for evolving from a cygnet into something bigger.

Elections

There a number of elections occurring across Europe over the next 12 months that have the potential to de-rail the current European status quo.

Greece itself is supposed to be having a national election in April which is adding to the current debacle. Greek party leaders have more than one eye on their electorates at the moment which means the bailout negotiations have politicking on top of all the other issues. The consensus appears to be that Greek politicians are playing to their electorates, but will fold at the last minute. The idea being that they will be able to say to their voters that they put up a strong fight, but will ultimately do what is demand by the rest of Europe. This is obviously a bet on a politician’s behaviour, so there is obvious downside risk.

Greece elections, however, are not the greatest concern in my mind. Greece will be defaulting in some form or another this year, the elections influence is simply a question of how ‘messy’ that default becomes.

Germany also has two state elections this year which are a chance for Merkel’s Christian Democrats to regain the national majority they lost last year. It is believed that the worry about these election result was the source of the recent hamstringing of Angela Merkel by Volker Kauder, the floor leader of her party.

Latest polls have Merkel’s popularity at a two year high, however the results of the next state election in Saarland , to be held on March 25, are anything but predictable given recent history.

Talks to form a grand coalition between the major parties in the German state of Saarland have broken down, with early regional elections due to be held instead. The poll would also have an impact at the national level.

Talks on a transitional government in the south-western German state of Saarland broke down on Thursday, almost two weeks after the regional coalition collapsed.

An early election will now be called after Christian Democrat (CDU) Saarland state premier Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and her center-left Social Democrat (SPD) counterpart failed to reach agreement on a new temporary administration.

The election means that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition now faces a second potentially damaging political test this year.

Following the Saarland election is another election on May 6 in the state of Schleswig-Holstein leading onto national elections in Autumn 2013. If Merkel’s party is unsuccessful in the Saarland election then their will be significant pressure on her to re-assess her approach to European policy.

Although both the Greek and German elections do add to the already unpredictable outcomes in the EuroZone they are not the major political risk. That place is left to France with presidential elections to be held on April 22 (first round) and May 6 (second round). These elections are very quickly becoming Franco-German.

President Nicolas Sarkozy is not yet officially a candidate in the forthcoming French presidential election, but that hasn’t stopped German Chancellor Angela Merkel from backing him.

….

Hannelore Kraft, the SPD premier of North Rhine Westphalia, said that the SPD would in any case be backing Sarkozy’s likely rival for the post, the center-left Socialist Party’s Hollande. In the “family of European social democracy this has always been a matter of course,” she told the Rheinische Post newspaper

The cross-border campaigning has already begun with a number of German politicians claiming political interference and one going as far as to call a recent Merkozy interview a “rather embarrassing” affair. Given that, at this point, European nations are still supposed to be political separate one has to wonder exactly what is going on. But that answer is easy to find as soon as you hear the man who is currently Mr Sarkozy’s presidential front runner speak.

François Hollande has said that although he is supportive of reducing the French budget deficit, he opposes constitutional limited on government budgets. He also wants to lower the rate at which fiscal cutbacks are made and he wants additional commitments from the EU around promoting economic growth and jobs. As you can see from the video Mr Hollande has been actively attacking Merkozy on the handling of the crisis and given that Angela Merkel has been returning fire during interviews it is very difficult to see how a win by Mr Hollande isn’t going to lead to some serious complications for the current Franco-German centric Europe.

Something to watch.

Spain

Although a default in Greece is likely to be disruptive, with direct contagion into Cyprus and market contagion in Portugal, the event is well known. Portugal itself is also a problem, but again this event it known and bond yields are reflective of the situation. In the scheme of things Portugal and Greece are relatively small and, although I think the market is underestimating the fallout, Europe is working on mechanisms that could potentially deal with the two countries along with Ireland. Italy is also a problem, but as I have explained previously Italy’s issue is growth more than debt so the country already has the potential to right itself.

That leaves Spain which I consider to be the major unrecognised problem. The country has seen its yields tumble since December on the back of the ECB’s 3-year LTRO but there hasn’t been anything in the economic metrics of the country to support such action. Spain has 23% unemployment and still rising, the banking system is under-capitalised and still has unknown exposure to the country’s housing market collapse. On top of that the rising unemployment rates is pushing up bad loans in the banking system to 7.4%, a 17-year high, and is still rising.

The country is also showing the same well known signs of what happens when you attempt government austerity when the private sector is attempting to deleverage without surplus in the external sector.

Unemployment has sky-rocketed since 2007

Industrial production is falling

Internal demand is falling as unemployment and a private sector credit demand collapses

which ultimately leads to falling government revenues even as they are attempting austerity budgeting.

The Spanish government has already injected 30 billion euros into the banking system, but more is required and the government has suggested the banks need additional provisions of 50 billion Euros. As the data shows, this is is not a country that is on a sustainable path to recovery as the economy appears to be rapidly deflating. However, as I noted back in November, the new government of Mariano Rajoy doesn’t seem to have any plans outside of continuing austerity based policy.

There is no back-up mechanism in Europe big enough to save Spain which is why it is a concern to me that the financial markets don’t appear to have fully recognised the risk associated with the country.

Even Critics of Safety Net Depend on It Increasingly

2012-02-12T16:15:00.000-06:00

This from "The New York Times" describes the dilemma many people find themselves in -- their Ideology does not match their reality. Instead of looking at that reality, many have voted for people who support policies that would destroy them.

I'm just posting an excerpt -- please follow link to read the rest of the article.
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Even Critics of Safety Net Depend on It Increasingly

LINDSTROM, Minn. — Ki Gulbranson owns a logo apparel shop, deals in jewelry on the side and referees youth soccer games. He makes about $39,000 a year and wants you to know that he does not need any help from the federal government.

He says that too many Americans lean on taxpayers rather than living within their means. He supports politicians who promise to cut government spending. In 2010, he printed T-shirts for the Tea Party campaign of a neighbor, Chip Cravaack, who ousted this region’s long-serving Democratic congressman.

Yet this year, as in each of the past three years, Mr. Gulbranson, 57, is counting on a payment of several thousand dollars from the federal government, a subsidy for working families called the earned-income tax credit. He has signed up his three school-age children to eat free breakfast and lunch at federal expense. And Medicare paid for his mother, 88, to have hip surgery twice.

There is little poverty here in Chisago County, northeast of Minneapolis, where cheap housing for commuters is gradually replacing farmland. But Mr. Gulbranson and many other residents who describe themselves as self-sufficient members of the American middle class and as opponents of government largess are drawing more deeply on that government with each passing year.

Dozens of benefits programs provided an average of $6,583 for each man, woman and child in the county in 2009, a 69 percent increase from 2000 after adjusting for inflation. In Chisago, and across the nation, the government now provides almost $1 in benefits for every $4 in other income.

Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children.

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

The expansion of government benefits has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Rick Santorum, who won 57 percent of the vote in Chisago County in the Republican presidential caucuses last week, has warned of “the narcotic of government dependency.” Newt Gingrich has compared the safety net to a spider web. Mitt Romney has said the nation must choose between an “entitlement society” and an “opportunity society.” All the candidates, including Ron Paul, have promised to cut spending and further reduce taxes.

The problem by now is familiar to most. Politicians have expanded the safety net without a commensurate increase in revenues, a primary reason for the government’s annual deficits and mushrooming debt. In 2000, federal and state governments spent about 37 cents on the safety net from every dollar they collected in revenue, according to a New York Times analysis. A decade later, after one Medicare expansion, two recessions and three rounds of tax cuts, spending on the safety net consumed nearly 66 cents of every dollar of revenue.

The recent recession increased dependence on government, and stronger economic growth would reduce demand for programs like unemployment benefits. But the long-term trend is clear. Over the next 25 years, as the population ages and medical costs climb, the budget office projects that benefits programs will grow faster than any other part of government, driving the federal debt to dangerous heights.

Americans are divided about the way forward. Seventy percent of respondents to a recent New York Times poll said the government should raise taxes. Fifty-six percent supported cuts in Medicare and Social Security. Forty-four percent favored both. ............................................

Central Athens burns as lawmakers weigh austerity

2012-02-12T16:06:00.000-06:00

Could it be that the "Powers That Be" (tm applied for) miscalculated? Perhaps the people are just so damned pissed off that things will have to change (eventually).

This from "Yahoo News" - please follow link to original.
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Central Athens burns as lawmakers weigh austerity

ATHENS (Reuters) - Historic cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens on Sunday as black-masked protesters fought Greek police outside parliament, while inside lawmakers looked set to defy the rage by endorsing a new EU/IMF austerity deal.

State television reported violence spread to the islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were being looted in the capital in the worst breakdown of order since 2008 when violence gripped Greece for weeks after police shot a 15-year-old schoolboy.

As parliament prepared to vote on a new 130 billion euro bailout to save Greece from a messy bankruptcy, a Reuters photographer saw buildings in Athens engulfed in flames and huge plumes of smoke rose in the night sky.

"We are facing destruction. Our country, our home, has become ripe for burning, the centre of Athens is in flames. We cannot allow populism to burn our country down," conservative lawmaker Costis Hatzidakis told parliament.

The air in Syntagma Square outside parliament was thick with tear gas as riot police fought running battles with youths who smashed marble balustrades and hurled stones and petrol bombs.

Terrified Greeks and tourists fled the rock-strewn streets and the clouds of stinging gas, cramming into hotel lobbies for shelter as lines of riot police struggled to contain the mayhem.

State NET television reported that trouble had also broken out in Heraklion, capital of the tourist island of Crete, as well as the towns of Volos and Agrinio in central Greece.

Despite the chaos, Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos warned that Greeks faced "unimaginably harsher" sacrifices if parliament rejected the package, which demands deep pay, pension and job cuts, when it votes later in the evening.

On the streets many businesses were ablaze, including the neo-classical home to the Attikon cinema dating from 1870 and a building housing the Asty, an underground cinema used by the Gestapo during World War Two as a torture chamber.

As fighting raged for hours, protesters threw homemade bombs made from gas canisters as riot police advanced across the square on the crowds, firing tear gas and stun grenades. Loud booms from the protests could be heard inside parliament.

After days of dire warnings and threats of rebellion, parliament began debating a bill setting out 3.3 billion euros ($4.4 billion) in wage, pension and job cuts this year alone, to secure funds Greece needs to avoid bankruptcy next month.

Venizelos told parliament that the alternative to the international bailout - bankruptcy and a departure from the euro zone - would be far worse for Greeks.

"The choice is not between sacrifice and no sacrifices at all, but between sacrifices and unimaginably harsher ones," he told a stormy debate expected to run well into the night.

One small party has already pulled out of the coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos in protest against the terms of the rescue package from the European Union and International Monetary Fund - Greece's second since 2010.

A number of lawmakers from the two biggest government parties, socialist PASOK and conservative New Democracy, have also threatened to rebel but their numbers did not appear to be enough to sink the bill.

Greece needs the international funds before March 20 to meet debt repayments of 14.5 billion euros, or suffer a chaotic default which could shake the entire euro zone.

"GREEKS HAVE RISEN!"

Many Greeks believe their living standards are collapsing already and the new measures, which include a 22 percent cut in the minimum wage, will only deepen their misery.

"Enough is enough!" said 89-year-old Manolis Glezos, one of Greece's most famous leftists. "They have no idea what an uprising by the Greek people means. And the Greek people, regardless of ideology, have risen."

Glezos is a national hero for sneaking up the Acropolis at night in 1941 and tearing down a Nazi flag from under the noses of the German occupiers, raising the morale of Athens residents.

"These measures of annihilation will not pass," Glezos said on Syntagma Square, visibly overcome by teargas and holding a mask over his mouth.

As is usual in Greek protests, only a small fraction of the crowd fought the police but one group started a fire right in front of a tent where first aid workers were preparing to care for the injured. "Cops, pigs, murderers!" chanted the crowd.

The Health Ministry said 54 people were taken to hospital, including one who was hit in the stomach by a flare. At least eight police were also injured.

Inside parliament, Venizelos said: "Anyone who wants to remain in the euro zone must abide by some rules.

"The law must be passed by midnight because come Monday morning, the banking and financial markets must have got the message that Greece can and wants to survive."

SHRINKING REBELLION?

According to lawmakers from both the Socialist and the conservative party, some deputies who had threatened over the past two days to reject the law have changed their stance.

"The number of dissenters looks to be shrinking rather than growing," one deputy told Reuters. Another said: "The situation is too delicate - nobody can really be sure until the beans are counted."

A deputy minister who declined to be named said he expected more than 200 lawmakers in the 300-seat parliament to approve the law.

The bill has riven the ruling coalition and deepened a social crisis among Greeks already hit by cuts and tax hikes to ease the country's huge debt burden.

During the debate a Communist Party deputy hurled the pages of the bill on the floor of the chamber and in fiery exchanges Venizelos warned lawmakers: "If the law is not passed, the country will go bankrupt."

A BOTTOMLESS PIT

The EU and IMF say they have had enough of broken promises and that the funds will be released only with the clear commitment of Greek political leaders that they will implement the reforms whoever wins an election potentially in April.

Euro zone paymaster Germany ratcheted up the pressure on Sunday. "The promises from Greece aren't enough for us anymore," German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in an interview published on Sunday in Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

German opinion polls show a majority of Germans are willing to help, Schaeuble said, "but it's important to say that it cannot be a bottomless pit.

"Greece needs to do its own homework to become competitive, whether that happens in conjunction with a new rescue program or by another route that we actually don't want to take."

When asked if that other route meant Greece quitting the euro zone, Schaeuble said: "That is all in the hands of the Greeks themselves. But even in the event (Greece leaves the euro zone), which almost no one assumes will happen, they will still remain part of Europe."

The austerity measures include cutting the minimum wage from about 750 euros a month and aim to cut Greece's bloated state sector workforce by about 150,000 people by 2015.

It also provides for a bond swap to ease Greece's debt burden by cutting the real value of private-sector investors' bond holdings by some 70 percent. Greece will miss a February 17 deadline to offer a debt "haircut" to private bondholders if the vote is not passed on Sunday.

SUPPORT OCCUPY!

2012-02-11T20:14:00.002-06:00

Not dead, not gone -- regrouping for the next phase. SUPPORT OCCUPY!

Protest Catholic Church AND Obama's capitulation FORCED MOTHERHOOD = FEMALE ENSLAVEMENT

2012-02-11T20:07:00.002-06:00

Have a happy weekend!

2012-02-11T17:37:00.000-06:00

Saturday -- a good day to look at "Some Assembly Required" -- it's just a bunch of laughs -- right?

NO!

Please follow link to original
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Catchachism: Over 8,000 instances of child sex abuse have allegedly occurred in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee. You know – Catholic Preists – old white men who know what's best for women... and little kids. Why would anyone ever send their child to a Catholic Church?

Tidy: A floating mass of trash the size of California, carried out to sea by the tsunami in Japan, has begun washing up on beaches in Washington. No hurry, it'll be washing up for years, if not decades. The Japanese disavowed paternity, "No one knows if it's from Japan.” Well it's not from Dayton, bubba.

Value Judgment: Facebook is valued higher than Citi or Pepsi. Valued. Not worth more, just 'valued'. At $102.6 billion, how many ads do they have to sell for how many years to make enough profit so the mania is anything but a Bigger Fool investment?

Is There An Echo In Here? Ireland beat Portugal to be the first of the beggars to step up and ask for equality with the Greeks in writing off debts and handing out haircuts.

Cave Dwellers: Around the world youth are leading the social unrest as they are the hardest hit by the global deleveraging. The US is not insulated from this – youth unemployment is above 20% and 1 out of 3 in the 25-29 age-range are back living with the parents. Don't be surprised when Yankee-Spring comes along.

Definition: A terrorist is now officially defined as anyone who disagrees with the government on anything: Protesters who think we shouldn't bomb the crap out of Iran. Those who think killing random civilians via drones is wrong. Those who buy coffee for cash at Internet cafes. Those, like Ron Paul, who think that we are overtaxed and over-regulated. And those who think Nixon was wrong to dump the dollars last tie to gold are going to be in a whole lot of trouble, along with the rest of us.

Greece is not unique, it is just first.

Waylon Jennings & Willie Nelson If I Can Find A Clean Shirt

2012-02-11T13:38:00.002-06:00

Steve Earle - Copperhead Road

2012-02-11T00:56:00.002-06:00

David Allan Coe Willie,Waylon, and Me

2012-02-11T00:52:00.003-06:00

This was early David Alan Coe -- later he became MUCH less respectable.

We Can't Make It Here Anymore - by James Mcmurtry

2012-02-11T00:49:00.000-06:00

Stan Getz and Chet Baker "Just Friends" 1983

2012-02-10T19:58:00.002-06:00

Insanity in The USA

2012-02-10T19:54:00.000-06:00

What is there to post? Birth Control is something to question. Santorum is a "serious candidate". Romney is a poster boy for "Richey Rich Frat Boy" -- as opposed to G.W.Bush who was "frat boy asshole".

These guys are a caricature of THEMSELVES, tieing themselves into to knots to show how "pure" their "conservatism" is.

They have all forgotten how "conservatives" want "The Man" (government) "off their backs" -- yet, their hatred, and fear, of women is so great they HAVE to control women's actions, women's bodies. These "small government" types want to increase control over WOMEN while giving corporations free reign to do damn well as they please.

How is this "morality" different from radical Muslims?

Heck, "abortion politics" was an issue supported by some parts of the Roman Catholic establishment -- until some fundamentalists saw it as another way to "rally the troops" AND RAISE MONEY.

Initially even THE BAPTISTS supported, or were neutral about abortion rights.

Now that the crazies have taken over, now that the overt woman haters are in the ascendency, even long established rights are in question.

There is nothing I can post to point out the utter stupidity of both parties when the mainstream media outlets read like "The Onion"

Cop allegedly pulled gun on pregnant woman over too many grocery items

2012-02-10T17:49:00.000-06:00

O.K. -- When is someone from the left, or the right admit THE POLICE in this US of A are OUT OF CONTROL!!

We have militarized these cops, leading them to think they are judge, jury, and beyond the law, beyond the bounds of common decency.

It really is time for a change.

This from "Raw Story" - please follow link to original
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Cop allegedly pulled gun on pregnant woman over too many grocery items

Police in Kendall County, Illinois said Friday that they were investigating whether an off-duty officer drew his firearm and pointed it at a pregnant woman because she had more items than Walmart recommends for self-checkout lanes.

Nicole Thurmond and husband Jason were reportedly checking out recently at a Walmart store in Oswego, Illinois when a man confronted them wearing civilian clothing, not identifying himself as an officer. The couple said it was only after his gun was drawn that the man told onlookers he was a police officer.

Nicole Thurmond told NBC Chicago that officer Craig French just walked up to her and said, “Don’t you know how to count? You are holding up the whole store.”

When her husband returned from getting an item they forgot, he described the situation he encountered as “a guy in her face, yelling at her.”

Jason Thurmond, an African-American man, reportedly pushed the man away from his wife. That’s when the gun was allegedly drawn. In the ensuing moments, Thurmond claimed that the officer asked if he was on welfare.

At that point, Nicole said she turned around “because I was afraid if it did go off, at least it hits my backside and not in the front where my baby is.”

Jason Thurmond was subsequently arrested and charged with misdemeanor battery. The couple has filed a formal complaint, which sparked the inquiry

#9, #9, #9,

2012-02-10T17:42:00.000-06:00

First Merchants Bank, National Association, Muncie, Indiana, Assumes All of the Deposits of SCB Bank, Shelbyville, Indiana

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 10, 2012
Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984
Cell: (202) 340-4922
Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

SCB Bank, Shelbyville, Indiana, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with First Merchants Bank, National Association, Muncie, Indiana, to assume all of the deposits of SCB Bank.

The four branches of SCB Bank will reopen on Saturday as branches of First Merchants Bank, National Association. Depositors of SCB Bank will automatically become depositors of First Merchants Bank, National Association. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of SCB Bank should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from First Merchants Bank, National Association that it has completed systems changes to allow other First Merchants Bank, National Association branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of SCB Bank can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of December 31, 2011, SCB Bank had approximately $182.6 million in total assets and $171.6 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, First Merchants Bank National Association agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-517-8236. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time (EST); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., EST; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., EST; on Monday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., EST; and thereafter from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., EST. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/scbbank.html.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $33.9 million. Compared to other alternatives, First Merchants Bank, National Association's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. SCB Bank is the ninth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Indiana. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was Integra Bank, National Association, Evansville, on July 29, 2011.

#8

2012-02-10T17:40:00.002-06:00

Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association, Barrington, Illinois, Assumes All of the Deposits of Charter National Bank and Trust, Hoffman Estates, Illinois

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
February 10, 2012
Media Contact:
Greg Hernandez (202) 898-6984
Cell: (202) 340-4922
Email: ghernandez@fdic.gov

Charter National Bank and Trust, Hoffman Estates, Illinois, was closed today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect the depositors, the FDIC entered into a purchase and assumption agreement with Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association, Barrington, Illinois, to assume all of the deposits of Charter National Bank and Trust.

The two branches of Charter National Bank and Trust will reopen on Saturday as Hoffman Estates Community Bank, a branch of Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association. Depositors of Charter National Bank and Trust will automatically become depositors of Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association. Deposits will continue to be insured by the FDIC, so there is no need for customers to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage up to applicable limits. Customers of Charter National Bank and Trust should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association that it has completed systems changes to allow other Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association branches to process their accounts as well.

This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Charter National Bank and Trust can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.

As of December 31, 2011, Charter National Bank and Trust had approximately $93.9 million in total assets and $89.5 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits of the failed bank, Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association agreed to purchase essentially all of the assets.

The FDIC and Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association entered into a loss-share transaction on $72.1 million of Charter National Bank and Trust's assets. Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association will share in the losses on the asset pools covered under the loss-share agreement. The loss-share transaction is projected to maximize returns on the assets covered by keeping them in the private sector. The transaction also is expected to minimize disruptions for loan customers. For more information on loss share, please visit: http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/lossshare/index.html.

Customers with questions about today's transaction should call the FDIC toll-free at 1-800-517-1843. The phone number will be operational this evening until 9:00 p.m., Central Standard Time (CST); on Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., CST; on Sunday from noon to 6:00 p.m., CST; on Monday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., CST; and thereafter from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., CST. Interested parties also can visit the FDIC's Web site at http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/cnbt.html.

As part of this transaction, the FDIC will acquire a value appreciation instrument. This instrument serves as additional consideration for the transaction.

The FDIC estimates that the cost to the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) will be $17.4 million. Compared to other alternatives, Barrington Bank & Trust Company, National Association's acquisition was the least costly resolution for the FDIC's DIF. Charter National Bank and Trust is the eighth FDIC-insured institution to fail in the nation this year, and the first in Illinois. The last FDIC-insured institution closed in the state was All American Bank, Des Plaines, on October 28, 2011.

Insight: The dark side of Germany's jobs miracle

2012-02-10T15:35:00.000-06:00

This from Reuters -- follow link to original.

It seems capitalism follows the rule of EXPLOIT THE WORKER wherever it is. So much for "The German Miracle".
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Insight: The dark side of Germany's jobs miracle

(Reuters) - Anja has been scrubbing floors and washing dishes for two euros an hour over the past six years. She is bewildered when she sees newspapers hailing Germany's "job miracle."

"My company exploited me," says the 50-year-old, sitting in the kitchen of her small flat in the eastern German town of Stralsund. "If I could find something else, I'd be long gone."

Stralsund is an attractive seaside town but Anja, who preferred not to use her full name for fear of being fired, cannot afford the quaint cafes.

Wage restraint and labor market reforms have pushed the jobless rate down to a 20-year low, and the German model is often cited as an example for European nations seeking to cut unemployment and become more competitive.

But critics say the reforms that helped create jobs also broadened and entrenched the low-paid and temporary work sector, boosting wage inequality.

Labor office data show the low wage sector grew three times as fast as other employment in the five years to 2010, explaining why the "job miracle" has not prompted Germans to spend much more than they have in the past.

Pay in Germany, which has no nationwide minimum wage, can go well below one euro an hour, especially in the former communist east German states.

"I've had some people earning as little as 55 cents per hour," said Peter Huefken, the head of Stralsund's job agency, the first of its kind to sue employers for paying too little. He is encouraging other agencies to follow suit.

Data from the European Statistics Office suggests people in work in Germany are slightly less prone to poverty than their peers in the euro zone, but the risk has risen: 7.2 percent of workers were earning so little they were likely to experience poverty in 2010, versus 4.8 percent in 2005.

It is still lower than the euro zone average of 8.2 percent. But the number of so-called "working poor" has grown faster in Germany than in the currency bloc as a whole.

In response, as other European countries rush to deregulate, Germany is re-regulating.

Angela Merkel's conservative government is trying to water down the effects of some labor reforms brought in by her Social Democrat (SPD) predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, a year-and-a-half before the next federal election, when she is expected to seek a third term.

PRECOCIOUS REFORMER

The contrast between Germany's record levels of employment and the dire jobs situation elsewhere in Europe is stark.

Last year, the number of people in employment in Germany rose above the 41 million mark for the first time. The jobless rate has been falling steadily since 2005 and now stands at just 6.7 percent, compared to 23 percent in Spain and 18 percent in Greece.

It has been a tough battle since German unemployment peaked after reunification in 1990. Many east German businesses floundered in a free market once the Berlin Wall fell, sending joblessness there soaring over 20 percent.

Globalization put Germany's export-reliant economy under competitive pressure, forcing it to adjust quickly.

By 2003, Germany was embarking on reforms hailed as the biggest change to the social welfare system since World War Two, even as many of its peers were moving in the opposite direction.

While the French Socialists were introducing the 35-hour week and cranking up minimum wages, Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) were deregulating the labor market and raising pressure on the jobless to find work.

Unions and employers agreed wage restraint in return for job security and growth. Flexible working practices and government-subsidized reduced working hours enabled employers to adjust to the economic cycle without hiring and firing.

From 2005, joblessness started to fall and is nearing pre-reunification levels. Elsewhere in Europe, governments tackling high unemployment are playing catch-up, making labor reforms the number one priority.

France's conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy has repeatedly cited Schroeder's "Agenda 2010" reforms as an example for his country over the past few months. Labor reforms being introduced in Spain and Portugal have also borrowed heavily from Germany.

"BEST LOW WAGE SECTOR IN EUROPE"

Job growth in Germany has been especially strong for low wage and temporary agency employment because of deregulation and the promotion of flexible, low-income, state-subsidised so-called "mini-jobs."

The number of full-time workers on low wages - sometimes defined as less than two thirds of middle income - rose by 13.5 percent to 4.3 million between 2005 and 2010, three times faster than other employment, according to the Labour Office.

Jobs at temporary work agencies reached a record high in 2011 of 910,000 -- triple the number from 2002 when Berlin started deregulating the temp sector.

Economists say it was Schroeder's intention to bring about a rapid expansion of these sectors in order to get the poorly-qualified and long-term unemployed back into the workforce.

In 2005, Schroeder's last year as chancellor, he boasted at the World Economic Forum in Davos: "We have built up one of the best low wage sectors in Europe."

Seven years later, employers praise the reforms that led to the growth of mini-jobs and temping.

"The unions' argument that (mini) jobs lead to working conditions becoming precarious in Germany is not valid," said Mario Ohoven, head of the main association of "Mittelstand" small and medium-sized firms.

Ohoven said they were particularly popular with women and students trying to earn some extra cash, while Juergen Wuttke of the BDA employers' group said the reforms gave companies more flexibility and the ability to hire more people for low-skilled jobs with low productivity.

Fritz Engelhardt, who runs a small three-star hotel in the south-western town of Pfullingen, says he employs two "mini-jobbers" to help out at the weekend and run small errands.

"Many people in catering try to deal with peaks in work at the weekend or when they have special events by hiring mini-jobbers," Engelhardt said. "With big chains, hotels can use workers from a sister company, but for small and medium-sized companies mini-jobs are crucial to their very existence."

Even German corporate giants rely on these new forms of employment for greater flexibility. Adidas, the world's second largest maker of sports apparel, and supermarket chain Kaufland, part of the same group as discount chain Lidl, both use mini-jobs to fill in staffing gaps when business picks up.

Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows low-wage employment accounts for 20 percent of full-time jobs in Germany compared to 8.0 percent in Italy and 13.5 percent in Greece.

ROAD TO NOWHERE

Critics say Germany's reforms came at a high price as they firmly entrenched the low-wage sector and depressed wages, leading to a two-tier labor market.

New categories of low-income, government-subsidized jobs - a concept being considered in Spain - have proven especially problematic. Some economists say they have backfired.

They were created to help those with bad job prospects eventually become reintegrated into the regular labor market, but surveys show that for most people, they lead nowhere.

Employers have little incentive to create regular full-time jobs if they know they can hire workers on flexible contracts.

One out of five jobs is a now a "mini-job," earning workers a maximum 400 euros a month tax-free. For nearly 5 million, this is their main job, requiring steep publicly-funded top-ups.

"Regular full-time jobs are being split up into mini-jobs," said Holger Bonin of the Mannheim-based ZEW think tank.

And there is little to stop employers paying "mini-jobbers" low hourly wages given they know the government will top them up and there is no legal minimum wage.

Trade unions and employers in Germany traditionally opt for collective wage agreements, arguing that a legal minimum wage could kill jobs, but these agreements only cover slightly more than half the population and can be circumvented.

"A lot of my friends work as carpenters, but companies describe them as janitors in their contracts to avoid paying the salary negotiated in the collective wage agreement," said one 33-year-old unemployed man in Stralsund who declined to give his name.

The deregulation of temporary agency work has also given employers less incentive to hire workers on staff contracts with job protection and decent pay. Temporary workers are often paid less than staff in Germany.

Low wages for mini-jobbers and increased pressure on the unemployed to get a job have had a deflationary impact on salaries across the board, some economists say.

RE-REGULATING

While wage inequality used to be as low in Germany as in the Nordic countries, it has risen sharply over the past decade.

Low wage workers earn less relative to the median in Germany than in all other OECD states except South Korea and the United States.

"The poor have clearly lost out to the middle class, more so in Germany than in other countries," said OECD economist Isabell Koske.

Depressed wages and job insecurity have also kept a lid on domestic demand, the Achilles heel of the export-dependent German economy, much to the exasperation of its neighbors.

"Import demand is low, even though Germany is one of the top performers in the euro area and could contribute more to a stronger performance of its partner countries," said Ekkehard Ernst of the International Labour Organization (ILO).

With the 2013 elections looming and European neighbors complaining of trade imbalances, Germany's leaders have brought the issue of low wages back onto the agenda.

Chancellor Merkel plans to introduce a minimum wage for the sectors which do not already have one and Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen is campaigning for temp workers to get paid as much as staff.

"The fact that we have a conservative government that is discussing the establishment of a minimum wage - that says something," said Enzo Weber of Germany's Institute for Employment Research (IAB).

"Whatever government comes next, measures to make the workforce more flexible will not pick up at the same pace. We've reached a critical mass and I think it won't go much further."

ILO's Ernst says Germany can only hope that other European countries do not emulate its own wage deflationary policies too closely, as demand will dry up: "If everyone is doing same thing, there won't be anyone left to export to."

Hedges' Hypocrisies

2012-02-10T15:00:00.000-06:00

This from "CounterPunch" by Peter Gelderloos about Chris Hedges takedown of "violent anarchy". Please read, then follow link to original
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Hedges' Hypocrisies
The Surgeons of Occupy
by PETER GELDERLOOS

In his February 6 article entitled, “The Cancer of Occupy,”Chris Hedges attempts to analyze the political beliefs and practices of the black bloc, a group he characterizes as the scourge of the Occupy movement. Although Mr. Hedges evidently conducted at least a little to research his article, he does not quote a single proponent or participant of a black bloc, neither within the Occupy movement nor from any of the many other black blocs that have been organized in the United States. Such research would not have been difficult. There are a plethora of anarchist blogs, websites, newspapers, and magazines that discuss Occupy, the black bloc, and even the use of the black bloc within Occupy protests.

Despite this major failing, I cannot accuse Mr. Hedges of laziness. He does, after all, dig up an anarchist magazine published in Oregon ten years earlier and he quotes one particular article extensively. The magazine, Green Anarchy, is tied in to Hedge’s tirade on the basis of the unsupported and inaccurate assertion that anarcho-primitivist John Zerzan, one of the magazine’s former editors, is “one of the principal ideologues of the Black Bloc movement”. In fact, the black bloc evolved–as a tactic, not a movement–in Europe and came to the United States without any input from Zerzan. Zerzan’s only link to the bloc is as one of the few public figures to have endorsed it.

So why does he appear at all in Hedges’ article? Presumably to provide the link to Green Anarchy. And why Green Anarchy? Of all the anarchists and others who have participated in black blocs in the last decades, green anarchists or anarcho-primitivists have only been one small part. Labor union anarchists, anarcha-feminists, social anarchists, indigenous anarchists, Christian anarchists, as well as plain old, unaffiliated street youth, students, immigrants, parents, and others have participated in black blocs.

However, for a mainstream audience susceptible to fear-mongering, the anarcho-primitivists can easily be portrayed as the most extreme, the most irrational, and this kind of crass emotional manipulation is clearly Mr. Hedges’ goal.

Despite the tenuous to null connection between Green Anarchy and the use of the black bloc within the Occupy movement, he uses a skewed presentation of that magazine to frighten his readers away from a reasoned consideration of the political arguments on which the black bloc is based. For the more intrepid readers, he finishes off the job with inaccurate and unreferenced generalizations such as, “Black Bloc anarchists oppose all organized movements [...] They can only be obstructionist.”

Hedges introduces the widely read Zerzan merely as an apologist for the ideas of Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber). Referred to by one NBC reporter as “probably one of the smartest individuals I have encountered” and “very low key, reasoned, and non-threatening,” Zerzan is a far more complex figure, but such details fall outside of Hedges’ plan of attack. His characterization of Green Anarchy, and by extension, of all black bloc anarchists, is based on a single article that only appeared in GA as a reprint some ten years ago. Neither does Hedges admit that the article itself, “The EZLN are Not Anarchist,” generated considerable controversy and debate among anarchists, nor that GA itself published a response by several Zapatistas, which criticized the article for “a colonialist attitude of arrogant ignorance”.

The openness to debate and criticism present in GA, is totally absent from Hedges’ latest work of journalism. The manipulation, cherry picking, and dishonesty that underlie his arguments show that for this award-winning journalist, fairness is only a courtesy one extends to those rich or powerful enough to press libel charges. This conception certainly abounds in the pages of the New York Times, Hedges’ longtime employer.

The medical language of Hedges’ title, referring to the anarchists as a “cancer,” should immediately ring alarm bells. Portraying one’s opponents as a disease has long been a tactic of the state and the media to justify the repression. This language was used against the Native Americans, against the Jews, against communists, and many others. Recently the police and the right wing used this same language of hygiene to talk about the occupations around the country as health threats so as to justify their eviction and generate disgust and repulsion.

In sum, Chris Hedges deals with the “Black Bloc anarchists” with fear-mongering manipulation and without the slightest glimmer of solidarity. But beneath the black masks, anarchists have been an integral part of the debates, the organizing, the cooking and cleaning in dozens of cities. Anarchists also participated in preparing the original call-out for Occupy Wall Street, and they played a key role in organizing and carrying out the historic Oakland general strike and the subsequent West Coast port blockades–probably the strongest actions taken by the Occupy movement to date.

The very fact that Occupy Oakland got out 2,000 people to fight the police for hours in an attempt to occupy a building, at a time when Occupy in other cities is dwindling or dead, contradicts the parallel claims that anarchists are trying to “hijack” Occupy and that their tactics turn people away. On the contrary, anarchists are part and parcel of the Occupy movement and their methods of struggle resonate with many people more than the staid, hand-wringing pacifism and middle-class reformism of careerists like Chris Hedges.

It would be useful to debate the appropriateness of aggressive tactics in demonstrations, and anarchists themselves have often encouraged this debate, but Hedges has passed over the critique and gone straight for the smear. He calls the black bloc anarchists “a gift from heaven for the surveillance and security state,” choosing conspiracy theory paranoia to distract from the public record, filled with cases of government officials and the media alternately serenading and threatening the Occupy movement into an acceptance of nonviolence.

Its proponents in the Occupy movement have generally protected nonviolence from an open debate, instead imposing it through manipulation, fear-mongering, and, when all else fails, turning their opponents over to the police. Hedges himself implies that illegal or aggressive tactics cannot exist in a space where “mothers and fathers [feel] safe”, ignoring the many militant movements built around the needs of mothers and fathers, such as his own favorite example, the Zapatistas. He also dismisses the concept of a diversity of tactics as a “thought-terminating cliché”, demonstrating a willful ignorance of–to name just one example–the many weeks of thoughtful debate that went into the “St. Paul principles“ that allowed hundreds of thousands of people with a huge diversity of political practices to come together in 2008 and protest the Republican National Convention.

Predictably, Chris Hedges uses the name of Martin Luther King, Jr., to gain legitimacy for his stance, again contradicting his argument that the “corporate state” wants protestors to fight police and destroy property, given that this same corporate state venerates King (or at least a well managed version of King) while demonizing or silencing the equally important Malcolm X or Black Panthers. Just as predictably, Chris Hedges does not mention that King vocally sympathized with the urban youths who rioted, youths whose contemporary equivalent Hedges calls “stupid” and a “cancer.” Ironically, Hedges refers to the famous Birmingham campaign attributed with achieving the end of segregation. What Hedges and pacifist ideologues like him fail to mention is that Birmingham was a repeat of King’s Albany campaign, which ended a total failure, all its participants locked up, and no one slightly moved by the supposed dignity of victimhood. The difference? In Birmingham, the local youths got fed up, rioted and kicked police out of large parts of the city for several days. The authorities chose to negotiate with King and replace de jure segregation with de facto segregation in order to avoid losing control entirely.

It’s also hypocritical that on the one hand Chris Hedges utilizes King and parades the dignity of nonviolent suffering while on the other hand he uses the fear of getting injured by police or spending a few nights in jail to mobilize his comfortable, middle class readership to reject the black bloc and the dangers it might bring down on them. “The arrests last weekend in Oakland of more than 400 protesters [...] are an indication of the scale of escalating repression and a failure to remain a unified, nonviolent opposition.” He goes on to detail the horrible ways police attacked demonstrators, and the conditions in jail.

It’s election year. Those who still have faith in the system, or those whose paychecks are signed by the major unions, the Democratic Party, progressive NGOs, or the left wing of the corporate media, know it’s their job to forcibly convert any popular movement into a pathetic plea to be made at the ballot box. The unmediated, experimental politics of the Occupy movement must give way to symbolic protest and dialogue with the existing “structures of power” whose members must be brought “to our side”. For the Occupy movement to be sanitized and converted into a recruiting tool for the Democratic Party, it will have to be neutralized as a space for real debate, experimentation, and conflict with authority. Its more revolutionary elements will have to be surgically removed. It is an operation the police, the media, and some careerist progressives have been engaged in for months, and Hedges’ contribution is just the latest drop in the bucket.

This form of co-optation and manipulation is nothing new for a movement that cynically harvested a few images from Tahrir Square–an unfinished popular uprising in which hundreds of thousands of people defended themselves forcefully from the cops, ultimately torching dozens of police stations–to declare a victory for nonviolence.

Around the world, people are fighting for their freedom and resisting the depredations of the rich and powerful. In the United States, there is plenty of cause to join this fight, but as long as people continue enact a fear-driven, Not-In-My-Backyard pacifism, and to pander to the corporate media as though they would ever show us in a positive light, the rich and the powerful will have nothing to worry about.

Archdiocese Of Milwaukee Accused Of 8000 Incidents Of Child Molestation

2012-02-10T14:46:00.000-06:00

This from "Joe.My.God". Please follow link to original.
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Archdiocese Of Milwaukee Accused Of 8000 Incidents Of Child Molestation

Court documents filed in the bankruptcy case for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee appear to have revealed over 8000 incidents of child molestation not previously reported. New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who is about to be elevated to Cardinal, is the former Archbishop Of Milwaukee. Some suspect Dolan of having hidden over $130M in church funds in order to avoid massive court-ordered child molestation settlements.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Julie Wolf said she did not have enough information to respond to the assertion, made by attorney Jeffrey Anderson during a pivotal hearing before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Susan V. Kelley. Anderson represents about 350 of the 570 victim-survivors who have filed claims in the case. But Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests speculated that some are likely members of religious orders, such as Capuchins or Franciscans. Order officials do not typically make public the names of their accused members, and the archdiocese claims it is not responsible for them, though they have historically helped to staff its parishes and schools. "This is a public safety crisis, a child safety crisis that needs to be investigated," Isely said at a news conference on the federal courthouse steps, surrounded by fellow survivors and reporters. "We need to know who they are and where they are. How can there be 8,000 crimes committed by over 100 offenders and there be no accountability?" he said.

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee has vigorously sought the dismissal of molestation charges against several priests, arguing that the statute of limitations on their crimes has expired

THE SHEIKH played & composed by Jessica Williams, pianist, composer

2012-02-10T00:52:00.000-06:00

Jessica Williams, pianist and composer, plays her tune "The Sheikh" which she composed for Leroy Vinnegar, the great bassist. More at www.jessicawilliams.com

Jessica Williams, jazz pianist, plays Body and Soul

2012-02-10T00:49:00.000-06:00

Oscar Peterson: The Shadow of Your Smile

2012-02-10T00:46:00.000-06:00

From the 1966 Album "Blues Etude." Oscar Peterson, piano; Sam Jones, double bass; Louis Hayes, drums. Recorded December 3, 1965, and May 4, 1966 at Chicago Sound Studios.

Boz Scaggs - Lowdown

2012-02-10T00:39:00.000-06:00

I'm going to hate myself in the morning -- but, I'm putting this up. In truth, I always liked this song.

Gato Barbieri - I Want You

2012-02-10T00:35:00.002-06:00

Chuck Mangione - Feels So Good

2012-02-10T00:31:00.003-06:00

Roy Hargrove I remember Clifford

2012-02-10T00:29:00.002-06:00

Oscar Peterson -The Quartet Live feat.Joe Pass-Soft Winds

2012-02-10T00:26:00.000-06:00

More On The Madness Of Muslim–Teenage Shenanigans VERBOTEN!

2012-02-09T18:51:00.000-06:00

This from "Atheist Oasis" -- please follow link to original.

I bet this is what our "fundamentalist" purity police want -- except, they might well try to kill both boys and girls
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Emirati teen gets 3-year sentence for kissing two sisters

A teenage boy in the United Arab Emirates has been sentenced to up to three years in juvenile detention for kissing two girls, The National newspaper reports.

The 15-year-old boy, identified only as “M.A.,” was initially charged with breaking into a house and sexually assaulting two 13-year-old sisters after their father found him there and called the police.

But, says the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper, an investigation found that the two sisters — who were dating him at the time — had let him into the house.

In an earlier hearing, the boy told the court that it was not the first time the girls had invited him inside and willingly kissed him.

That, in turn, prompted authorities to level similar charges at the two girls.

At Sunday’s hearing, the sisters refused to answer the judge’s questions, neither denying nor confessing to the charges.

The court ruled that the boy could be detained until he is 18, but said the sentence could be eased based upon the boy’s “readiness” and whether he is disciplined enough.

The newspaper says the girls “were to be delivered to their parents for discipline.”

I applaud the kids for their spunk, but it’s a dangerous game. It’s a culture where sexuality is covered three deep in blankets, women are routinely executed or mutilated over the slightest misperception of lewdity, and childish hijinks are rewarded with prison sentences.

It’s not just pathetic, it’s fucking barbaric.

Islam. It’s gotta go.

Till the next post, then.

Shit Native New Yorkers Say

2012-02-08T15:00:00.000-06:00

This is NSFW. Also not safe for kids - but it rings really true.

This is UNBELIEVABLE! National Organization for Marriage quotes a fan of horse-porn

2012-02-08T12:30:00.000-06:00

This will possibly be my only post today.

Why?

Because nothing can possibly top this. NOTHING!!

NOM (the anti-"gay" marriage group that wants to "protect" "traditional marriage" from "teh gay") has a new "champion" in New York State -- HORSE PORN LOVER, Carl Paladino.

Every time any of these bigots say, "it's about the children", or any other cover story -- just remember this. (It's from "Daily Kos" - please follow link to original)
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National Organization for Marriage quotes a fan of horse-porn

Classic.

National Organization for Marriage, after praising serial-adulterer, thrice wed Newt Gingrich for his commitment to "traditional marriage," has once again proved their mission is not so much about "protecting families" as just about plain old hating on gays. This morning they tweeted they have found a new champion in their efforts to make-over the New York Senate with "traditional values candidates, Carl Paladino:

Now for those of you not in New York, Carl Paladino was the Republican Party's nominee for the Governor office in 2010. It is not clear that Carl Paladino shares NOM's alleged concerns about "what's best for the children." It is clear that Paladino shares NOM's penchant for inflammatory and vitriolic language against gay and lesbian people.

The Democratic nominee Andrew Cuomo, who ran on the promise of delivering marriage equality for LGBT New Yorkers, destroyed Paladino, who opposed marriage equality, 62.6% to 33.3%. The Governor of course, went on to defy all odds by delivering that promise out of a Republican-controlled state Senate.

Paladino ran a very colorful campaign, which is not to say it was diverse. There's this, from the Huffington Post, May 2011: "Carl Paladino's Emails: Tea Party-Backed Gov Candidate's Emails Feature Racism, Bestiality, Porn."

Here's a brief rundown of some the emails obtained by the news outlet (WARNING: OFFENSIVE MATERIAL BELOW):

Ahead of Obama's swearing-in ceremony, Paladino sent around a video entitled "Obama Inauguration Rehearsal." The video shows an African tribesman dancing, and is apparently popular among white supremacists.
An email with the subject line "Proof the Irish discovered Africa" containing a video of monkeys that appear to be doing a Riverdance-style jig.
A video of a naked woman sent from a government email account.
A bestiality video involving a horse and a woman.

It's kind of surprising the good Christians at NOM would be so eager to climb into bed, er, join forces with the racist, sexist, homophobic Paladino.

We must fight back. Clearly, if National Organization and Carl Paladino succeed in their efforts to makeover the New York Senate, they will force your children to watch horse-porn in the New York public schools!

Will woman-on-horse marriage soon follow?

A Puritan's 'war against religion'

2012-02-07T15:48:00.000-06:00

A little American History from The L.A. Times. Please follow link to original.
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A Puritan's 'war against religion'
Roger Williams, the Puritan who founded Rhode Island, insisted on the state refraining from intervening in the relationship between humans and God.

By John M. Barry

In January, while conservative Christians and GOP presidential candidates were charging that "elites" have launched "a war against religion," a federal court in Rhode Island ordered a public school to remove a prayer mounted on a wall because it imposed a belief on 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist. The ruling seems particularly fitting because it was consistent not only with the 1st Amendment but with the intent of Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island expressly to provide religious liberty and who called such forced exposure to prayer "spiritual rape."

As Williams' nearly 400-year-old comment demonstrates, the conflict over the proper relationship between church and state is the oldest in American history. The 1st Amendment now defines this relationship, but understanding the full meaning of the amendment requires understanding its history, for the amendment was a specific response to specific historical events and was written with the recognition that freedom of religion was inextricably linked to freedom itself.

The church-state conflict began when Puritans, envisioning a Christian nation, founded what John Winthrop called "a citty upon a hill" in Massachusetts, and Williams rejected that vision for another: freedom. He insisted that the state refrain from intervening in the relationship between humans and God, stating that even people advocating "the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or Antichristian consciences and worships" be allowed to pray — or not pray — freely, and that "forced worship stinks in God's nostrils."

Yet Williams was no atheist. He was a devout Puritan minister who, like other Massachusetts Puritans, fled religious persecution in England. Upon his arrival in 1631 he was considered so godly that Boston Puritans had asked him to lead their church. He declined — because he considered their church insufficiently pure.

Reverence for both Scripture and freedom led Williams to his position. His mentor was Edward Coke, the great English jurist who ruled, "The house of every one is as his castle," extending the liberties of great lords — and an inviolate refuge where one was free — to the lowest English commoners. Coke pioneered the use of habeas corpus to prevent arbitrary imprisonment. And when Chancellor of England Thomas Egerton said, "Rex est lex loquens; the king is the law speaking," and agreed that the monarch could "suspend any particular law" for "reason of state," Coke decreed instead that the law bound the king. Coke was imprisoned — without charge — for his view of liberty, but that same view ran in Williams' veins.

Equally important to Williams was Scripture. Going beyond the "render unto Caesar" verse in the New Testament, he recognized the difficulty in reconciling contradictory scriptural passages as well as different Bible translations. He even had before him an example of a new translation that served a political purpose. King James had disliked the existing English Bible because in his view it insufficiently taught obedience to authority; the King James Bible would correct that.

Given these complexities, Williams judged it impossible for any human to interpret all Scripture without error. Therefore he considered it "monstrous" for one person to impose any religious belief on another. He also realized that any government-sponsored prayer required a public official to pass judgment on something to do with God, a sacrilegious presumption. He also knew that when one mixes religion and politics, one gets politics. So to protect the purity of the church, he demanded — 150 years before Jefferson — a "wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world."

Massachusetts had no such wall, compelled religious conformity and banished Williams for opposing it. Seeking "soul liberty," he founded Providence Plantations and established an entirely secular government that granted absolute freedom of religion. The governing compact of every other colony in the Americas, whether English, French, Spanish or Portuguese, claimed the colony was being founded to advance Christianity. Providence's governing compact did not mention God. It did not even ask God's blessing.

Williams next linked religious and political freedom. It was then universally believed that governments derived their authority from God. Even Winthrop, after being elected governor in Massachusetts, told voters, "Though chosen by you, our authority comes from God."

Williams disputed this. Considering the state secular, he declared governments mere "agents" deriving their authority from citizens and having "no more power, nor for longer time, than the people … shall betrust them with." This statement sounds self-evident now. It was revolutionary then.

The U.S. Constitution, like Providence's compact, does not mention God. It does request a blessing, but not from God; it sought "the blessings of liberty," Williams' "soul liberty." As Justice Robert Jackson wrote, "This freedom was first in the Bill of Rights because it was first in the forefathers' minds; it was set forth in absolute terms, and its strength is its rigidity."

Eight years after the Constitution's adoption, the Senate confirmed this view in unanimously approving a treaty. It stated: "[T]he government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion."

Yet the argument continues. Presidential candidates and evangelicals ignore American history and insist on injecting religion into politics. They proclaim their belief in freedom — even while they violate it.

The Downward Mobility of the American Middle Class, and Why Mitt Romney Doesn’t Know

2012-02-06T20:38:00.000-06:00

This from Robert Reich. Please follow link to original.
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The Downward Mobility of the American Middle Class, and Why Mitt Romney Doesn’t Know

Monday, February 6, 2012

January’s increase in hiring is good news, but it masks a bigger and more disturbing story – the continuing downward mobility of the American middle class.

Most of the new jobs being created are in the lower-wage sectors of the economy – hospital orderlies and nursing aides, secretaries and temporary workers, retail and restaurant. Meanwhile, millions of Americans remain working only because they’ve agreed to cuts in wages and benefits. Others are settling for jobs that pay less than the jobs they’ve lost. Entry-level manufacturing jobs are paying half what entry-level manufacturing jobs paid six years ago.

Other people are falling out of the middle class because they’ve lost their jobs, and many have also lost their homes. Almost one in three families with a mortgage is now underwater, holding their breath against imminent foreclosure.

The percent of Americans in poverty is its highest in two decades, and more of us are impoverished than at any time in the last fifty years. A recent analysis of federal data by the New York Times showed the number of children receiving subsidized lunches rose to 21 million in the last school year, up from 18 million in 2006-2007. Nearly a dozen states experienced increases of 25 percent or more. Under federal rules, children from famlies with incomes up to 130 percent of the poverty line, $29,055 for a family of four, are eligible.

Experts say the bad economy is the main factor driving the increase. According to an analysis of census data by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, 37 percent of young families with children were in poverty in 2010. It’s likely that rate has worsened.

Mitt Romney says he’s not concerned about the very poor because they have safety nets to protect them. He says he’s concerned about the middle class. Romney doesn’t seem to realize how much of the middle class is becoming poor.

But Romney doesn’t like safety nets to begin with. He been accusing President Obama of inviting a culture of dependency. “Over the past three years Barack Obama has been replacing our merit-based society with an entitlement society,” he says over and over, arguing that our economic problems stem from a sharp rise in dependency. Get rid of these benefits and people will work harder.

He and other Republicans point to government data showing that direct payments to individuals have shot up by almost $600 billion since 2009, a 32 percent increase. And 49 percent of Americans now live in homes where at least one person is collecting a federal benefit such as food stamps or unemployment insurance, up from 44 percent in 2008.

But Romney and other Republicans have cause and effect backwards. The reason for the rise in benefits is Americans got clobbered in 2008 and many are still sinking. They and their families need whatever help they can get.

The real scandal, as I’ve said before, is America’s safety nets are too small and shot through with holes. Only 40 percent of the unemployed qualify for unemployment benefits, for example, because they weren’t working full time or long enough on a single job before they were let go. The unemployment system doesn’t recognize how many Americans work part time on several jobs, and move from job to job.

Romney’s budget proposals would shred safety nets even more. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, his plan would throw 10 million low-income people off the benefit rolls for food stamps or cut benefits by thousands of dollars a year, or some combination. “These cuts would primarily affect very low-income families with children, seniors and people with disabilities,” the Center concludes.

At the same time, Romney’s tax plan would boost the incomes of America’s most wealthy citizens, who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of that nation’s total income. Romney wants to permanently extend George W. Bush’s tax cuts, reduce corporate income tax rates, and eliminate the estate tax. These tax cuts would increase the incomes of people earning more than a million dollars a year by an average of $295,874 annually, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

By reducing government revenues, Romney’s tax cuts would squeeze programs for the poor even further. Extending the Bush tax cuts will add $1.2 trillion to the nation’s budget deficit in just two years. That’s the same as the amount that’s supposed to be saved by automatic spending cuts scheduled to start next year – which, by the way, will hit the poor especially hard.

Oh, I almost forgot. Romney and other Republicans also want to repeal of Obama’s health care law, thereby leaving 30 million Americans without health insurance.

The downward mobility of America’s middle class is the big news, but the GOP apparently hasn’t heard about it. Maybe it’s too hard to hear about from that far away – and Mitt Romney is certainly far away. His unearned income last year was more than $20 million. That’s about as much as the combined earnings of a thousand American families at or just above the poverty line.

NYPD Officer to Plead Guilty to Gun Running

2012-02-06T13:02:00.000-06:00

Now that Mayor Bloomberg of N.Y.C. is "reloading" his anti-gum campaign (gee, as one of the 1% do you think he might be frightened?) we get this news: "NYPD Officer to Plead Guilty to Gun Running". I guess the financial rewards of dealing in what should NOT be "illegal" weapons are just too high.

The old saw, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns" seems to be truer than ever.

If you support the U.S. Constitution -- support ALL of it.

Please follow link to original
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NYPD Officer to Plead Guilty to Gun Running

By Jonathan Dienst and Shimon Prokupecz

A veteran NYPD officer is set to plead guilty Monday to charges he helped run a gun-smuggling operation with fellow police officers that trafficked more than $1 million in illegal weapons and stolen goods.

William Masso, of the 68th police precinct in Brooklyn, was arrested in October on charges of conspiring to sell M-16 rifles and guns in exchange for cash payments.

Twelve people were charged in the ring, including eight current and former NYPD officers. The FBI said the ring also sought to transport stolen goods like slot machines in exchange for payments.

Sources familiar with the case said Masso is expected to plead guilty to all the counts against him. Under the plea deal, prosecutors and defense lawyers will recommend to Judge John Koeltl in U.S. District court in lower Manhattan that he get up to six years in prison.

The cases of the others arrested are still pending.

“An officer who betrays his badge betrays every honorable officer as well as every member of the public,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said at the time of Masso’s arrest.

The FBI said Masso was caught on tape offering to transport stolen cigarettes and what he thought were stolen slot machines from Atlantic City.

Masso said he and his fellow officers should carry their badges and claim to be working off-duty for a client who purchased the goods at auction, prosecutors said.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Masso’s actions were “a betrayal of the highest order of an officer’s oath.”

A spokesman for Bharara declined to comment. Masso’s attorney Ron Fischetti also declined comment on the expected plea.

How the Sexual Revolution Changed America Forever

2012-02-06T12:21:00.001-06:00

This article is from "Alternet" -- "The following is an excerpt from "Delirium: How the Sexual Counterrevolution is Polarizing America" by Nancy L. Cohen."

I'm just posting a bit of the entire article. Please follow the link to read the rest.

I think it important we all read this. Oh, by the way - if you can -- GET THE BOOK.
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How the Sexual Revolution Changed America Forever
With a little pharmaceutical ingenuity, the double standard relaxed its clawing grip on female humanity.

Perhaps if the pill had not been invented, American politics would be very different today.

Enovid, the first birth control pill, went on the market in 1960. Unlike any other previously available form of contraception, the Pill was both reliable and controlled by a woman herself, requiring neither the consent nor the knowledge of her sexual partner. “I don’t confess that I take the Pill,” said one Catholic mother after the Vatican reaffirmed its doctrine against the use of birth control, “because I don’t believe it is a sin.” Within five years, 6 million American women were on the Pill. With one quick visit to a doctor, a woman immediately gained sole and exclusive power over her fertility, a power that had eluded her sex since . . . well, since forever.

The Pill made possible the sexual revolution of the 1960s. The true warriors in that revolution were young, single women, who, with the help of this new contraception, took their sexuality into their own hands. If not for women’s self-determined sexual liberation, the sexual revolution might have been another unremarkable episode in the long and varied sexual history of humankind. Instead, with the impetus the sexual revolution gave to a new feminism and a movement for gay liberation, it became one of the major catalysts of America’s ongoing political delirium.

Men certainly benefited from the new sexual freedom, but for them, it was hardly an innovation. Although religious doctrine and public mores told them chastity and marital fidelity applied equally to men and women, the practical moral code included an important loophole: the double standard. Single men had always been able to avail themselves of sexual relations outside of marriage, even at the pinnacle of American sexual puritanism in the waning days of the nineteenth century. For men, the sexual revolution changed things by making sex relatively cost-free. Women were now liberated, and the Pill steeply lowered the risks of accidental fatherhood and unwanted marriage.

For women, likewise, the sexual revolution concerned the rules of engagement, rather than the act of sex itself. Premarital virginity had been going out of fashion for decades before the declaration of sexual liberation. It started in the 1920s, as middle-class Americans converted from Victorianism to Freudianism and began to accept that a desirous woman was perhaps not so depraved after all. There- after doctors and psychologists counseled America’s women that a happy marriage was sustained by mutual sexual satisfaction. Experts encouraged women to explore their natural desires, but to start the journey in the marital bed. Women accepted the prescription and ignored the fine print. At the high noon of fifties traditionalism, 40 percent of women had sex before they married—compared to just 10 percent who did in the reputedly Roaring Twenties.

Yet sex before marriage, like any act of civil disobedience, entailed risk. Each and every time an unmarried woman had intercourse, she risked pregnancy, and with it a limited number of unsavory life- changing options: an illegal abortion of doubtful safety, a shotgun wedding, forced adoption, or single motherhood of a child whose birth certificate would be stamped for posterity with the word “illegitimate.” With rare exceptions, all known human cultures have policed the sexual behavior of girls and women, and America, circa 1959, was no different. Before women obtained the power to control their fertility, they had compelling reasons to comply with whatever arbitrary double standard their society imposed. The Pill permanently changed women’s age-old pragmatic calculus. With a little pharmaceutical ingenuity, the double standard relaxed its clawing grip on female humanity. ........................... Follow link to original, read the rest.

Creedence Clearwater Revival-Suzie Q

2012-02-05T02:40:00.002-06:00

Otis Redding Try A Little Tenderness

2012-02-05T02:29:00.002-06:00

Otis Redding-Sitting on the dock of the bay

2012-02-05T02:26:00.002-06:00

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (Original Single Version)

2012-02-05T02:24:00.000-06:00

Marvin Gaye - Lets get it on

2012-02-05T02:20:00.002-06:00

Marvin Gaye - I Heard It Through The Grapevine

2012-02-05T02:18:00.002-06:00

Barry White - My First My Last My Everything

2012-02-05T02:15:00.002-06:00

Fly me to the moon

2012-02-05T02:12:00.002-06:00

Indiana election chief found guilty of voter fraud

2012-02-04T12:53:00.000-06:00

By Golly, there really is voter fraud -- it's just that the REPUBLICANS are committing it! -- please follow link to original.
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Indiana election chief found guilty of voter fraud

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Indiana's top elections official could lose his job and his freedom after jurors convicted him of multiple voter fraud-related charges on Saturday, leaving in flux the fate of one of the state's most powerful positions.

Republican Secretary of State Charlie White has held on to his office for more than a year despite being accused of lying about his address on voter registration forms.

A Hamilton County jury found White guilty of six of seven felony charges, including false registration, voting in another precinct, submitting a false ballot, theft and two counts of perjury. He was acquitted on one fraud charge.

White expressed no outward emotion as the verdict was read, and later said outside the courtroom: "'I'm disappointed for my family and the people who supported me."

It wasn't immediately clear what would happen to White's elected office. He has resisted calls to resign from Democrats and Republicans, including Gov. Mitch Daniels, but state law bars anyone convicted of a felony from remaining in office.

White's attorney, Carl Brizzi, said he will ask the judge to reduce the charges to misdemeanors because his client has no criminal background and has a long record of public service.

Daniels announced Saturday he had appointed White's chief deputy, Jerry Bonnet, as interim secretary of state.

"I have chosen not to make a permanent appointment today out of respect for the judge's authority to lessen the verdict to a misdemeanor and reinstate the elected office holder," Daniels said in a statement. "If the felony convictions are not altered, I anticipate making a permanent appointment quickly."

Bonnet has worked for the secretary of state's office since 2005, the statement said.

The jury verdict came after a weeklong trial in which White, who had vigorously protested the charges in hearings before a state elections panel, presented no defense.

Prosecutors said he used his ex-wife's address instead of a condo he had with his fiancée because he didn't want to give up his $1,000-per-month Fishers Town Council salary after moving out of that district. He faced seven felony charges, including voter fraud, perjury and theft.

White, 42, has said the charges ignored a complicated personal life in which he was trying to raise his 10-year-old son, plan his second marriage and campaign for the statewide office he won that November. He said he stayed at his ex-wife's house when he wasn't on the road campaigning and did not live in the condo until after he remarried.

Brizzi told the jury during his closing arguments Friday that White's name was on the condo's bills and documents because he was paying for his fiancee and her children to live there, not because he was living at that address.

No sentencing date was set.

Republican special prosecutor John Dowd expressed satisfaction about the verdict.

"We believe it was about someone who violated the law and cheated the system — and gamed the system," Dowd said. "And, obviously, the jury thought the same way."

A Marion County judge has ruled that White should be replaced by Democrat Vop Osili, the man he defeated by about 300,000 votes in the November 2010 election, but that ruling is on hold pending an appeal.

Attorney Karen Celestino-Horseman, who watched the trial and spoke on behalf of Indiana Democrats following the verdict, said the party believes White's conviction further affirms that Osili should be secretary of state.

"(White) has been convicted, but the judge has left it open for misdemeanor sentencing. That's something that's going to have to be examined," she said.

During his closing arguments, assistant special prosecutor Dan Sigler Jr. argued that White knew that he was committing voter fraud but did it anyway for political power.

"If we aren't going to enforce election law against the secretary of state of Indiana, who are we going to enforce it against?" Sigler said.
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I'm happy to see some Republicans are actually willing to go after REAL voter fraud -- not just that by actually LIVING "dead people", or people who are black, brown, or poor.

Hi-Lo's - Long Ago And Far Away

2012-02-03T21:30:00.000-06:00

All about Ronny - Chris Connor

2012-02-03T21:21:00.002-06:00

June Christy　-　WRAP YOUR TROUBLES IN DREAMS

2012-02-03T21:18:00.002-06:00

Woody Herman - FOUR BROTHERS

2012-02-03T21:17:00.000-06:00

"FOUR BROTHERS"
Woody Herman and His Orchestra

Ernie Royal, Bernie Glow, Stan Fishelson, Shorty Rogers, Marky Markowitz (trumpet)
Earl Swope, Ollie Wilson, Bob Swift (trombone)
Woody Herman (clarinet,alto sax)
Sam Marowitz (alto sax)
Herbie Steward, Stan Getz, Zoot Sims (tenor sax)
Serge Chaloff (baritone sax)
Fred Otis (piano)
Gene Sargent (guitar)
Walter Yoder (bass)
Don Lamond (drums)

Recorded in December 27, 1947

Anita O'Day - Four Brothers

2012-02-03T21:10:00.002-06:00

Billy Butterfield & Margaret Whiting - Moonlight in Vermont

2012-02-03T21:05:00.002-06:00

Artie Shaw's Begin The Beguine

2012-02-03T21:00:00.000-06:00

"Green Eyes" - Bob Eberle and Helen O'Connell - 1953

2012-02-03T20:58:00.002-06:00

LAURA ~ Woody Herman & his Orchestra 1945

2012-02-03T20:55:00.002-06:00

Johnny Mercer, Jo Stafford, & Pied Pipers - Candy (Original Remastered)

2012-02-03T20:54:00.000-06:00

Dave Brubeck - Take The 'A' Train - 1966

2012-02-03T20:51:00.000-06:00

Dave Brubeck - piano
Paul Desmond - alto sax
Eugene Wright - bass
Joe Morello - drums

Frank Sinatra - Embraceable You

2012-02-03T20:48:00.002-06:00

Cop Kills Unarmed 18-Year-Old In His Bathroom

2012-02-03T17:34:00.000-06:00

This from "The Gothamist" -- please follow link to original.

We have to end the war on Drugs. We have to end this "Nazi mentality" so many cops seem to have. This is all INSANE.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cop Kills Unarmed 18-Year-Old In His Bathroom

For the third time in a week, an NYPD officer has shot and killed a suspect. Yesterday an unidentified officer killed 18-year-old Ramarley Graham with a single bullet to the chest. The officer, a member of the narcotics unit, had chased Graham into his home, seen him flush something down a toilet and reportedly saw him make "furtive" movements, apparently prompting the cop to fire. Graham—who lived with his mother, grandmother and 6-year-old brother—was immediately mourned by family and neighbors. "Nobody deserves to get shot like that, in your own house," his bereaved mother, Constance Malcolm, cried to reporters.

The shooting occurred after 3 p.m. at East 229th street in the Wakefield section of the Bronx, when police approached Graham after arresting two alleged drug dealers. According to one law-enforcement source Graham had "eight prior arrests, including burglary, robbery, dealing marijuana and other offenses." Reportedly a small amount of marijuana (the NYPD's favorite drug) was found in Graham's toilet. "Everybody’s kids get into trouble. He smoked a little weed, but you know, like all the little, young kids does," his mother explained last night. "And that’s what he had on him when they were chasing him."

After being shot, Graham was rushed to Montefiore Hospital and pronounced dead. According to police spokesman Paul Browne, the 30-year-old officer who shot the young man joined the force in July 2008 and has not been involved in any prior shootings. Browne said investigators were interviewing potential witnesses and the shooting remained under investigation. Not that that will bring Constance Malcolm's son back. "In the bathroom they shot him. My 6-year-old son was there and saw everything," Malcolm told reporters. "I’m going to get justice."

It has been a bloody week for the NYPD. In the last week police officers have been involved in two other fatal shootings.

Better

2012-02-03T17:25:00.000-06:00

This from Dr. Krugman -- please follow link to original
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Better

No, not me — nothing like a 13-hour flight from Moscow to Houston to treat a cold. But the jobs report was definitely the best news we’ve had in a while.

The usual caveats apply: it could be a blip, it might be an artifact of seasonal adjustment, etc.. Also, the gap remains huge. Suppose that we need 100,000 jobs a month to keep up with population growth, and that we’re 10 million jobs in the hole — both conservative estimates. Then we need about 7 years of growth at this rate to restore full employment.

Alternatively, note that this month’s job gain roughly equals the average job gain during the Clinton years — all 8 of them. And unemployment at the start of that run was higher than it is now.

Still, genuinely good news. And I’m surprised that there wasn’t more action on Intrade; I’d say that Obama’s chances are looking significantly better.

Komen sucks, Part 47

2012-02-03T11:42:00.000-06:00

This from "I Blame The Patriarchy". Read it. Follow link to original. Bookmark it. Refer to often. Rinse, repeat.
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Komen sucks, Part 47

Nothing could heartwarm the spinster aunt–cum–plucky breast cancer survivor more than to see the vile Komen Foundation getting raked over the coals and scrutinized and vilified in the mainstream. It’s about fucking time.

So it is fair to ask: Just what are the scientific and medical standards to which the Susan G. Komen Foundation adheres, if any? Why would a breast cancer organization hire staff and elect board members that misrepresent science and facts? Can you trust them to give you sound information about breast cancer? And can you trust them with investing your money in the best possible efforts to end breast cancer? — Jodi Jackson, RH Reality Check.

The answer:

No. Duh.

If you missed it, the story so far:

1. Komen withdraws $600,000 in funding from Planned Parenthood, citing a policy that prohibits Komen’s support of any organization that is the subject of an investigation (Planned Parenthood is currently being harassed by House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.), who has launched a politically-motivated, trumped-up “inquiry” into whether PP has used federal funds for abortion services).

2. Komen’s Senior Vice President for Policy turns out to be ultraconservative antifeminist Georgia gubernatorial washout Karen Handel, who thinks shocked Planned Parenthood supporters should “cry me a river” (click the thumbnail for a screencap of the offending retweet via @JessicaValenti). Handel is an anti-choice right-winger of the first water. In her gubernatorial campaign she pledged to “eliminate” grants to Planned Parenthood.

3. Outcry is substantial. I just wish it went a little deeper.

Deeper than what, you ask? Well, right now the principle criticism of Komen is that Planned Parenthood used the Komen cash to administer breast cancer screenings, about 170,000 in all, to mostly low-income and marginalized women. Now, nobody is against breast cancer screenings for the poor. But once an indigent or uninsured woman gets the free mammogram, and it comes up positive, what then? Who is going to pay for her treatment? Cute teddy bears? Volunterrorists in pink baseball caps? Consumer philanthropists eating “Crunch for the Cure” junk food? “Early detection” doesn’t mean shit if the early detectee is just left flapping in the breeze.

Listen everyone, Komen doesn’t prevent cancer, and Komen doesn’t pay for breast cancer treatment. It “raises awareness” through “early detection” and funds “research” focused on pharmaceutical cures for cancers that many of Komen’s corporate sponsors might likely have a hand in causing in the first place. Of the 11 Austin-area Komen grant recipients, for example, only one, WINGS, lists “comprehensive no-cost breast cancer treatment” in its list of services. The other 10 focus almost exclusively on diagnostics, “education,” and “patient navigation” (“patient navigation”? What the heck is that, they throw indigent patients in a boat and make’m row for the cure?).

I hasten to point out that WINGS received only $218,000 from Komen-Austin in 2011. That might sound like a lot, and it is, but in terms of cancer treatment it’s a drop in the bucket (for example, my own little foray into the cutthroat world of breast cancer patienthood has cost well over $100,000 so far. Although I have insurance, about $50,000 of that amount was out-of-pocket for designer drugs and genetic testing that insurance wouldn’t cover). So, out of all the women in the Austin area who have breast cancer — a lot, since 1 out of 7 women get it at some point — there’s only enough Komen loot to pay for the treatment of — I’ll be generous — 2.5 of them. And that’s if WINGS doesn’t spend any money on anything else, and that’s if the women go to San Antonio for their free treatment, because WINGS has no affiliation with any health care providers in Austin.

In other words, Komen doesn’t give a shit about poor women, so the hell with those who look to Planned Parenthood for a free breast exam.* With politics clearly a greater priority than women’s health, it’s no surprise that Komen is, quoth Jackson, “allied with those who misrepresent medical and public health evidence, including about causes of breast cancer.”

Nefarious Komen VP Karen Handel is not alone in her misogynist agenda. Board member Jane Abraham is also affiliated with some very nasty groups. You know those crisis pregnancy centers where lying liar godbags lie to pregnant ladies about abortions causing breast cancer and other spurious shit? Jane Abraham is, like, the queen of those things. Meanwhile, says Jackson,

you don’t see too many folks working with the Komen Foundation who are out there pounding the pavement on, say, the possible links between environmental toxins and breast cancer, causal links between which make the corporate partners of Komen very, very nervous.

Komen is the most visible brand in the whole cancer industrial complex. It disguises itself as some big altruistic community effort for women’s health, but it’s really just another conservative, honky organization with a misogynist political agenda. A marketing juggernaut instrumental in raking in piles of cash for and cleansing the tarnished images of its evil corporate sponsors, Komen has successfully brainwashed millions to believe that the “problem” of women’s health can be solved by licking yogurt lids.

RE: Komen

2012-02-03T11:09:00.000-06:00

Supposedly the Susan G. Komen Foundation has backtracked and will continue funding Planned Parenthood.

I don't think it really matters. They have always been a right facing group. Never supporting Progressive causes -- and, according to current experience, ready to defund whatever group is currently a target of our rabid-right-wing-misogynist-Patriarchal-Republican Party.

Why give a group like that ANYTHING? -- unless you agree that some women just don't count.

Let's DEFUND Susan G. Komen Foundation!

This Is What I Know

2012-02-03T00:17:00.000-06:00

Here's a MUST READ from William Rivers Pitt. It's from "Truthout" -- please follow link to original.
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This Is What I Know
Thursday 2 February 2012
by: William Rivers Pitt, Truthout | Op-Ed

"A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."

- Mark Twain

A bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.

I'm not going to lie and say this particular combination hasn't come together before on my desk, but it has been rare enough to be considered special, and here we are. You see, something struck me out of the clear blue a while ago: the very first article of mine Truthout ever published happened somewhere in early 2002, so I did a little digging with the help of my Facebook friends, and hot damn, there it was: "Hell to Pay," published on January 17, 2002.

I missed marking my ten-year anniversary with this extraordinary organization by two weeks and two days. I suppose, by normal standards, the fun of it is ruined to a degree: you celebrate your birthday on your birthday, your anniversary on your anniversary, so running this up the flagpole as a special day two weeks late is kind of a bummer, but I really don't care all that much.

I was busy.

Ten years, a bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.

God a'mighty, how the days go by. For the record, and I don't give a wet damn if you agree or not, but it is my opinion that Stephen King is the best storyteller of the latter half of the 20th century. In "'Salem's Lot," he wrote, "Ah God and sonny Jesus, Time is a river," and he was both right and beautiful in the telling. Time is a river; you can never put your foot in it in the same place twice.

Ten years, folks.

Back then, on that day ten years ago, I wrote this:

Whichever part of the nation that never heard of the energy giant Enron Corporation has recently been introduced to the company in odious context. The story thus far is nothing less than astounding: Enron, a company valued in the billions on Wall Street, suddenly filed for the largest bankruptcy claim in the history of the known universe. 4,000 employees were abruptly shown the door after having been barred from dumping the company stock, meant to fund their retirement, while it was worth something. Meanwhile, Enron executives in the know were able to dump the stock, back when it was the gold standard on the Street, for a cool $1 billion.

All this could simply be chalked up as yet another story of corporate greed run amok, until the umbilical political and financial connections between Bush and Enron are illuminated. Enron's capo, Kenneth Lay, was perhaps the best financial friend George W. Bush has ever known. Lay and a number of Enron employees essentially bankrolled Bush's 2000 Presidential campaign, going so far as to lend Bush an Enron corporate jet for trips between whistle stops. Before Bush got White House stars in his eyes, he worked very closely with Enron on energy policy in Texas.

Bush's own dealings within the energy industry carry a disturbingly familiar echo to the Enron situation: once upon a time, he was a high-ranking officer of a petroleum interest called Harken Oil. On June 22, 1990, Bush sold his Harken stock and made $848,560, earning him a 200% profit. One week later, Harken announced a $23.2 million loss in quarterly earnings and its stock dropped sharply, losing 60 percent of its value over the next six months. Bush made a bundle while the other investors lost millions. Harken was Enron in miniature, and might have served as a warning to the American people if the press had chosen to pay any attention to it during the 2000 Presidential campaign.

The connections between Bush and the Taliban became so close that the Taliban went so far as to hire an expert on U.S. public relations named Laila Helms, so as to smooth the way between the two regimes. Meetings between the two nations continued at a high level, the last of which occurred in August, scant weeks before the September 11th attacks. All of these actions were taken to exploit the vast energy reserves in Turkmenistan for the benefit of American energy corporations.

The cozy relationship between Bush and the Taliban frustrated the investigative efforts of former Deputy Director of the FBI John O'Neill. O'Neill was the FBI's chief bin Laden hunter, in charge of the investigations into the bin Laden-connected bombings of the World Trade Center in 1993, the destruction of an American troop barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996, the African embassy bombings in 1998, and the attack upon the U.S.S. Cole in 2000.

O'Neill quit the FBI in protest two weeks before the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. He did so because his investigation was hindered by the Bush administration's connections to the Taliban, and by the interests of American petroleum companies. O'Neill was quoted as stating, "The main obstacles to investigating Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests, and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it." After leaving the FBI, O'Neill took a position as head of security for the World Trade Center. He died on September 11th, 2001, trying to save people trapped by the attack, when the towers came down on top of him. The irony in this, simply, is horrifying.

It is one thing to coddle and court a corrupt energy company for political and financial gain. It is quite another to coddle and court a murderous terrorist-supporting regime, hindering anti-terrorism investigations in the process, for the purpose of exploiting valuable natural resources. The former cost a number of people their retirement funds. The latter has cost thousands of people their lives. One is criminal. The other is abominable. George W. Bush is deeply implicated in both. There will be hell to pay.

Ten years. A bottle of whiskey. A shot glass. An article to write.

Same as it ever was.

I started writing about these things during the Clinton impeachment, on websites I created with my own two bare hands and a passing comprehension of HTML: the first one was called The Rotten Core, the second was called WillPitt.com, both of which have been lost to the intervening years. Truthout asked for my services ten years ago nearly to the day, and I oh-so wisely responded in the affirmative.

Since then? A bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.

And Enron, stupid budget-shattering tax cuts, September 11 and the nonsense behind "No one could have imagined," anthrax as assassination attempts against Democrats, Mr. Bush standing up at the State of the Union to claim Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons (which is one million pounds) of sarin and mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 munitions to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, aerial drones to spray the aforementioned stuff, uranium from Niger for use in Iraq's robust "nukular" program...and let's not forget the outing of deep-cover CIA agent Valerie Plame, who was exposed because her husband dared to tell the truth about the Bush administration in the public prints.

And the idea that Hussein was allied with bin Laden was laughable because Osama wanted Saddam's head on his battle standard for decades, and that the true source of world terrorism is Sunni Wahabbist extremism out of Saudi Arabia, but this all goes completely unaddressed because the Houses of Bush and Saud have been partnered for decades. Oh, and never mind that the people our Iraq war empowered are responsible for killing more than 200 Marines at the Beirut airport in 1983...yes, Iran. We gave them the nation of Iraq on a platter, on your dime, and now apparently the powers-that-be want to bomb them, too. And Katrina. And Haditha. And the NSA tapping everyone's phones. And the new guy, Obama, ducking the health care fight and screwing us by degrees, doubling down on Afghanistan, and, oh yeah, declaring that he has the power to kill Americans "suspected" of terrorism. You might want to duck, because, well, you never know.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

A bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.

These things happened, these things matter, and by God, it has been my job to chronicle these events. It has cost me dearly, in ways I will assume you understand, because you've been here with me every step of the way. My hair is bright white now, and I don't sleep much. It is what it is.

Ten years.

There are days when I take on my keyboard and wonder if that old rage is still there, the rage that drove me to blaze out 15,000 words a week, like I did back when Truthout had a blog I was in charge of, and I was expected to write two articles a week at least on top of that.

And then I read about Mitt Romney saying he doesn't worry (read: care) about poor people. I read about the Komen Foundation abandoning Planned Parenthood to prove their bona fides on the anti-abortion front. Thanks, you despicable frauds, for cutting off cancer-screening programs to prove you are pro-life.

Yeah, we have plenty of work to do yet.

The rage is still there.

I said this a long time ago, many times over, but it is worth repeating: I do not expect to see the things I fight for happen in my lifetime. Matters have gone far beyond that. I expect to fail, to die in defeat. That does not matter to me. The fight is worth waging because these things matter, and I intend to give the years I have left to that fight, no matter the outcome. Sooner or later, we will prevail. Write it down; I just did. I probably won't be here to see it, but victory is its own reward, because a better world is possible, and that is all that matters.

A bottle of whiskey, a shot glass, and an article to write.

Here's to you, to us, to this.

Here's to getting it done.

Here's to the next ten years. May they be better than the last.

Romney Isn’t Concerned

2012-02-02T21:23:00.000-06:00

The latest column from Dr. Paul Krugman - please follow link to original
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Romney Isn’t Concerned

If you’re an American down on your luck, Mitt Romney has a message for you: He doesn’t feel your pain. Earlier this week, Mr. Romney told a startled CNN interviewer, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there.”

Faced with criticism, the candidate has claimed that he didn’t mean what he seemed to mean, and that his words were taken out of context. But he quite clearly did mean what he said. And the more context you give to his statement, the worse it gets.

First of all, just a few days ago, Mr. Romney was denying that the very programs he now says take care of the poor actually provide any significant help. On Jan. 22, he asserted that safety-net programs — yes, he specifically used that term — have “massive overhead,” and that because of the cost of a huge bureaucracy “very little of the money that’s actually needed by those that really need help, those that can’t care for themselves, actually reaches them.”

This claim, like much of what Mr. Romney says, was completely false: U.S. poverty programs have nothing like as much bureaucracy and overhead as, say, private health insurance companies. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has documented, between 90 percent and 99 percent of the dollars allocated to safety-net programs do, in fact, reach the beneficiaries. But the dishonesty of his initial claim aside, how could a candidate declare that safety-net programs do no good and declare only 10 days later that those programs take such good care of the poor that he feels no concern for their welfare?

Also, given this whopper about how safety-net programs actually work, how credible was Mr. Romney’s assertion, after expressing his lack of concern about the poor, that if the safety net needs a repair, “I’ll fix it”?

Now, the truth is that the safety net does need repair. It provides a lot of help to the poor, but not enough. Medicaid, for example, provides essential health care to millions of unlucky citizens, children especially, but many people still fall through the cracks: among Americans with annual incomes under $25,000, more than a quarter — 28.7 percent — don’t have any kind of health insurance. And, no, they can’t make up for that lack of coverage by going to emergency rooms.

Similarly, food aid programs help a lot, but one in six Americans living below the poverty line suffers from “low food security.” This is officially defined as involving situations in which “food intake was reduced at times during the year because [households] had insufficient money or other resources for food” — in other words, hunger.

So we do need to strengthen our safety net. Mr. Romney, however, wants to make the safety net weaker instead.

Specifically, the candidate has endorsed Representative Paul Ryan’s plan for drastic cuts in federal spending — with almost two-thirds of the proposed spending cuts coming at the expense of low-income Americans. To the extent that Mr. Romney has differentiated his position from the Ryan plan, it is in the direction of even harsher cuts for the poor; his Medicaid proposal appears to involve a 40 percent reduction in financing compared with current law.

So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.

Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?

And we’re talking about a lot of money. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, Mr. Romney’s tax plan would actually raise taxes on many lower-income Americans, while sharply cutting taxes at the top end. More than 80 percent of the tax cuts would go to people making more than $200,000 a year, almost half to those making more than $1 million a year, with the average member of the million-plus club getting a $145,000 tax break.

And these big tax breaks would create a big budget hole, increasing the deficit by $180 billion a year — and making those draconian cuts in safety-net programs necessary.

Which brings us back to Mr. Romney’s lack of concern. You can say this for the former Massachusetts governor and Bain Capital executive: He is opening up new frontiers in American politics. Even conservative politicians used to find it necessary to pretend that they cared about the poor. Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Mr. Romney has, however, done away with that pretense.

At this rate, we may soon have politicians who admit what has been obvious all along: that they don’t care about the middle class either, that they aren’t concerned about the lives of ordinary Americans, and never were.

Susan G. Komen Top Officials Resign As Backlash Gains Steam

2012-02-02T19:06:00.000-06:00

This from "The Huffington Post" - please follow link to original-
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Susan G. Komen Top Officials Resign As Backlash Gains Steam

Dr. Kathy Plesser, a Manhattan radiologist on the medical advisory board of Susan G. Komen for the Cure's New York chapter, said she plans to resign from her position unless Komen reverses its decision to pull grant money from Planned Parenthood.

"I’m a physician and my interest is women’s health, and I am disturbed by Komen’s decision because I am a very strong advocate for serving under-served women," Plesser told The Huffington Post. "Eliminating this funding will mean there’s no place for these women to go. Where are these women to go to have a mammography? Do they not deserve to have mammography?"

With her decision, Plesser joins Komen's top public health official, Mollie Williams, and the executive director of Komen's Los Angeles County chapter, Deb Anthony, both of whom also resigned in protest.

Susan G. Komen, the nation's largest breast cancer charity, announced on Tuesday that it had adopted a new rule against partnering with organizations that are under investigation, and that it would therefore sever ties with Planned Parenthood, which is currently under investigation in Congress. The groups that prompted that investigation are anti-abortion advocacy organizations that have long criticized Planned Parenthood, primarily a women's health and family planning organization, over the fact that some of its clinics offer abortions.

Komen has faced an increasing amount of pressure from the public, women's health groups, lawmakers and even some of its own regional affiliates to reverse the decision and continue its five-year partnership with Planned Parenthood. The $600,000 that Komen donated annually to the organization provided underserved women with free and low-cost breast exams.

Planned Parenthood announced Wednesday that it had received $400,000 in donations in the 24 hours following Komen's announcement. In addition, New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said on Thursday that he would give $250,000 to Planned Parenthood to help make up for the loss.

“Politics have no place in health care,” he said in a statement. “Breast cancer screening saves lives and hundreds of thousands of women rely on Planned Parenthood for access to care. We should be helping women access that care, not placing barriers in their way."

A spokesperson for Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) said that he personally called Komen founder Nancy Brinker to complain when he heard the news on Tuesday, and he and 22 other members of the House of Representatives have signed onto a letter asking her to reverse her decision.

"This is an alarming development resulting from political pressure from anti-women’s health organizations," the letter says. "We ask – in the strongest possible terms – that Susan G. Komen reconsider its decision, as the health of millions of brave women everywhere demands the same kind of bravery exhibited the Komen Foundation."

A similar letter was signed by two dozen senators.

Komen maintains that pressure from anti-abortion groups and the recent hiring of vice president Karen Handel, who ran for governor of Georgia on an anti-Planned Parenthood platform as a Republican in 2010, had nothing to do with the decision. Founder Nancy Brinker went on the defensive Thursday during an appearance on MSNBC, saying that the decision was a result of a number of congressional and state investigations into Planned Parenthood, and that most people actually applauded the decision to defund the family planning provider.

"All I can tell you is that the responses we're getting are very, very favorable," she told host Andrea Mitchell. "People who have bothered to read the material, who have bothered to understand the issues-- again, we work for a mission every day of our lives."

Honda, whose chief of staff is a breast cancer survivor, said he is concerned that Komen's decision will set a precedent, in which any politician can simply open an investigation into a group they disagree with now in order to jeopardize that group's funding.

"We know that breast cancer does not discriminate, nor should our support to vanquish the disease," he said.

Komen's $7.5 Million Grant to Penn State Appears to Violate New Policy

2012-02-02T19:01:00.000-06:00

Oh Dear! How twisted can it get? As the noose draws tighter, S.G. Komen will most likely follow the Republican play book and deny, deny, deny -- while "staying the course".

In other words -- they really don't give a damn if poor, liberal, Democratic, women die. After all, they have their "principals" (let the "libtards", black and brown folks, and anyone who thinks women have a mind, and the right to make their own decisions -- DIE) ---- this from "Mother Jones" - please follow link to original
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Komen's $7.5 Million Grant to Penn State Appears to Violate New Policy

Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which recently announced that it is ending grants to Planned Parenthood for breast cancer screening because of a controversial investigation launched by an anti-abortion Republican congressman, currently funds cancer research at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center to the tune of $7.5 million. Like Planned Parenthood, Penn State is currently the subject of a federal government investigation, and like the Planned Parenthood grant, the Penn State grant appears to violate a new internal rule at Komen that bans grants to organizations that are under investigation by federal, state, or local governments. But so far, only the Planned Parenthood grants appear to have been cancelled.

An internal Komen memo written by President Elizabeth Thompson and obtained by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic states that if "an applicant or its affiliates" is under investigation "for financial or administrative improprieties by local, state or federal authorities," then "the applicant will be ineligible to receive a grant." Penn State, the Pennsylvania university that the Hershey center is affiliated with, is currently under investigation by the federal government over the sexual assault scandal involving former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who has been indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse of children. In 2008, the Komen foundation awarded a five-year, $7.5 million grant to the Hershey center to study treatments that could reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Under the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act, university officials are required to "issue a timely warning if a reported crime represents a threat to the campus community." The Department of Education announced that it was investigating Penn State over possible Clery Act violations last November, and a Penn State spokesperson told Mother Jones that the investigation is ongoing. The Komen foundation has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Komen's founder, Nancy Brinker, is a former Bush administration official who has given almost $200,000 to Republican officials over the years, and Karen Handel, Komen's top lobbyist, is a pro-life Republican who was elected secretary of state in Georgia. Komen officials have insisted that Brinker and Handel's right-leaning politics weren't a factor in the decision to cut off funding, but Goldberg reported that the new grant standards were written as a pretext for denying funds to Planned Parenthood, and that the decision was "driven" by Handel.

Brinker, appearing on MSNBC Thursday afternoon, denied the decision had anything to do with politics. "I'm troubled that it's been labeled as political. This is not a political decision," Brinker said.

More on Susan G. Komen

2012-02-02T13:14:00.000-06:00

BOYCOTT the Komen Foundation! Forget about all the pink crap. Two of my very favorite baseball caps (I wear one almost all the time) are pink, and have the pink ribbon logo. One is still almost new, the other is stained, old, and has various pins on it. Though I hate to stop wearing those specific caps -- I just might have to. T can still root for The Texas Rangers and The New York Yankees, without wearing those caps.

BOYCOTT the SUSAN G. KOMEN FOUNDATION! -- the one dedicated to curing only certain women. As of now, they are telling the rest they might as well die.

That's not a charity -- it's a club for some folks, but not others.

BOYCOTT!!

Komen Foundation official deletes evidence of anti-choice bias from Twitter

2012-02-02T11:32:00.000-06:00

This from "Daily Kos" -- follow link to original -- then follow their link and send an e-mail to the "We Will Only Serve The 'Right' Kind Of Women -- the rest of you bi!@&#$ can DIE!!, Susan G. Komen Foundation"

By the way -- since they seem to "own" PINK -- lose it!
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Komen Foundation official deletes evidence of anti-choice bias from Twitter

by Kaili Joy Gray

The Susan G. Komen Foundation, and its senior vice president of public policy, Karen Handel, who is "staunchly and unequivocally pro-life," have been getting beat up pretty bad for the blatantly political decision to stop funding cancer screen and prevention at Planned Parenthood.

It appears that yesterday, Handel signed on to the "cry me a freaking river" sentiment on Twitter that anti-choicers are gleefully expressing because nothing makes them happier than women dying of cancer if it means sticking it to the nation's biggest provider of health care to women.

However, since that sentiment didn't really lend credence to the Komen Foundation talking point that its decision wasn't political, the tweet was deleted.

But, as sharp-eyed Lisa McIntire tweeted, "This is why we take screen shots."

Karen Handel is apparently a typical Republican and doesn't understand how the internet works. Nice try, Ms. Handel, but too late. The tweet may be gone, but your true feelings about this horrible decision are already out there and have been spread far and wide.

Send an email to the Susan G. Komen foundation to share your true feelings about this horrible decision.

Police Violence Targets Occupy Oakland Demonstration

2012-02-02T01:51:00.000-06:00

This from The National Lawyers Guild. Please follow link to original --
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Police Violence Targets Occupy Oakland Demonstration
January 30, 2012

NLGSF Demands Action From The Monitor On Police Misconduct

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter (NLGSF) condemns Oakland Police (OPD) and Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) violence, mass arrests and abuses against Occupy demonstrators at Saturday’s demonstration. Police violently attacked activists with chemical weapons, so called Less-Lethal munitions, and physical assaults. Hundreds were arrested unlawfully, without opportunity to disperse, and then detained for many hours on the street and then in buses, in stress positions, and without bathrooms, food or water. Once in jail, protesters faced inhumanely crowded conditions, abusive treatment and were denied access to legal counsel. Many remain unaccounted for, though certainly arrested and awaiting booking two days after being detained.

“It is appalling that the OPD continues to violate the law and its own policies,” said Carlos Villarreal, NLGSF Executive Director. “The police instigated the confrontation by immediately attacking the march with chemical agents, flashbang bombs, and a volley of rifle or shotgun-fired projectiles.”

As of 11 a.m., Monday, January 30, the NLGSF can confirm that at least 284 people were arrested on Saturday during Occupy Oakland’s Move In Day. The NLGSF received many reports of assaults on protesters, including an incident in which police knocked one person’s teeth out with a baton strike to the face. Police reportedly threw others through a glass door, and down a flight of steps. A videographer was pushed to the ground and clubbed.

“OPD has shown itself incapable of handling crowd control in a legal, much less professional manner,” said NLGSF Attorney Rachel Lederman. “We would urge the appointed monitor to take action immediately to rein in this abusive conduct, which is leading to ever increasing liability for the City.”

Once in Alameda County custody, the arrestees have been held for a prolonged period under horrendous conditions, often remaining overnight in holding areas with no beds or blankets. Some arrestees were apparently held in a shower room. NLGSF has received many reports of injured persons being denied medical care and arrestees denied access to necessary medications. Women arrestees were forced to give urine samples in front of male officers, ostensibly for pregnancy testing.

Critically, arrestees were denied access to counsel. On Sunday night volunteer lawyers with the NLGSF were denied access to clients and told to return in the morning.

“OPD and Alameda County Sheriffs Department Officers are responsible for yesterday’s violence,” said NLGSF President Michael Flynn. “The NLG supports the Occupy Movement and will continue to push back against the violation of human rights by OPD and the misinformation from public officials that follows.”

NLGSF is currently litigating two lawsuits against Oakland and Alameda County based on similar abuses at a 2010 police brutality demonstration and the October 25, and November 2, 2011, OPD enforcement actions against Occupy.

The NLGSF is the Bay Area chapter of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) – a bar association founded in 1937. The NLG is providing legal support to activists from coast to coast and has dispatched hundreds of legal observers to monitor law enforcement at the Occupy protests. More information is available at www.nlgsf.org.
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NOTE: "Women arrestees were forced to give urine samples in front of male officers, ostensibly for pregnancy testing." -- what sort of anti-American actions are these? Who ARE these "Police"? Do they have mothers, daughters, sisters? Total insanity!!

Regime Change In Oakland

2012-02-02T01:22:00.000-06:00

This from "Occupy Wall Street" -- please follow link to original.
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Regime Change In Oakland

On Saturday, January 28, thousands of parents, families and engaged citizens gathered together to open a community center in the heart of downtown Oakland. The Police, under orders from Mayor Quan, responded to this peaceful demonstration of direct democracy and community building by arresting around 400 people. Hundreds more were injured when an army of officers marched on these unarmed families, raised their guns and fired bullets, tear gas canisters, smoke bombs, concussion grenades and other explosive devices into the crowd. Mayor Quan, on the same day as solidarity marches were organized by dozens of occupations across the nation, has called on the Occupy Movement to denounce Oakland’s show of bravery under fire and community strength. We stand with Oakland and call for the immediate resignation of Quan, who on Saturday made it clear that the state has abandoned democracy and joined the 1% in declaring war against the people.

Extreme economic injustice and true democracy can never co-exist. We have seen this violent truth before: in Pinochet’s Chile, 1990’s Russia, Suharto’s Indonesia. Four months ago, the Occupy Movement showed that this historical truth has finally come home: The economic oppression by the 1% has become so egregious that it cannot exist without destroying the spirit of the American democratic system. Across the country, people are rising up to demand a more just nation, and police brutality and state violence are the only things keeping this injustice in place. In Oakland, thousands of active community members chose to engage in true democracy by supporting the real and pressing needs of the people. The state, which supposedly represents these people, exercised extreme police brutality and violence to protect the 1%'s vacant assets. The explicit goal of the action was to build community—to open a desperately needed community center with a library, medical care, free education and emergency housing in a city that has suffered massive budget cuts, high unemployment rates and ravaged public schools. In response, the city government poured hundreds of thousands of dollars, bullets and canisters of tear gas into declaring open war on these parents, students, workers, artists, teachers, children and veterans. These people’s only offense was to believe so deeply in the American tradition of democracy, self-sufficiency, and sacrifice for the next generation that they were willing to put their bodies on the line to make this nation the empowering democracy that we know it can be.

On Saturday, Mayor Quan's actions again demonstrated that open war has been declared on the spirit of democracy and the people of Oakland and this nation. We call for the end of Mayor Quan's administration and a regime change in Oakland. We continue to stand in solidarity with Occupy Oakland and will support them as they continue peaceful protest and community building until this and all other authoritarian administrations have been ousted from their place of illegitimate power. Together, we are building a stronger world, a stronger community, a stronger promise for the next generation.

Random

2012-02-01T20:33:00.000-06:00

O.K. - Romney "not concerned about the very poor" -- and, this surprises you, HOW? Next, when he speaks of "the middle class" he IS concerned about -- ask him to DEFINE Middle class.

"Susan G. Komen For The Cure" has decided to defund Planned Parenthood. According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams. So, an organization that helps ALL women, many POOR women is now "defunded" -- a PURELY POLITICAL MOVE.

I suggest we all DEFUND Susan G. Komen.

More to come -- later

Out of touch once again

2012-02-01T14:16:00.000-06:00

This from Markos Moulitsas of "Daily Kos" fame. It was posted on "The Hill" - please follow link to original
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Out of touch once again
By Markos Moulitsas - 01/31/12 06:27 PM ET

Talking with top Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod this past Sunday on his show, host David Gregory pushed back against arguments that the wealthy should pay their fair share of taxes.

“[I]f you really want shared sacrifice, then the middle class should pay taxes, too. I mean, roll back the Bush tax cuts for everybody rather than looking at the, you know, just having the rich pay more,” Gregory argued. “If it’s shared sacrifice, why not say to everybody, everybody’s going to have to do with less in terms of a social safety net, in terms of taxes and all the rest.”

Who is this “everybody” that Gregory is talking about? It’s not himself, obviously. Or the people he hangs out with at his D.C. cocktail parties.

Because our nation’s social safety net isn’t designed for Gregory and his pals.

Yet here is Gregory, atop the Beltway media ecosystem, pretending that the middle class hasn’t “sacrificed.” One could hardly seem more out of touch, unless that person’s name was Mitt Romney. “You guys are great to get up at — what time is it here, 9 o’clock in the morning in Florence?” Romney asked his audience at a campaign rally in Florence, S.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 17. “Gosh, this is a workday, right?”

Yes, Mitt. Tuesday is a workday. And being somewhere at 9 a.m. isn’t that notable if, you know, you work for a living. Not everyone has Swiss bank accounts or offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands!

But this is the financial elite who make the economic decisions for the rest of us, and this is the media elite who cheer them on. And the worst part is that when it comes to economics, they’re pretty much wrong about everything. Back in October 2010, David Broder couldn’t contain his glee at developments across the Atlantic. “[British Prime Minister David] Cameron and his partners in the coalition have pushed ahead boldly, brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession,” he wrote. “If Republicans emerge next month with sufficient leverage in the House and Senate to approach Obama with a proposition, they could insist that he ‘do a Cameron’ when it comes to federal spending: a radical rollback now in the welfare state.”

Thankfully, Obama ignored this idiotic advice, because as Britain has learned, there’s no such thing as economic expansion during times of austerity. The fourth-quarter data show that Britain’s economy contracted 0.2 percent, and as Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman noted, “the ongoing slump in Britain is now longer and deeper than the slump in the 1930s.” The median projection for 2012 is a growth rate of just 0.4 percent, with the gloomiest economists actually predicting contraction.

Fact is, austerity has never spurred economic recovery, anywhere in the world. Yet the financial elite — on both sides of the Atlantic — cling to the fiction that slashing government budgets will spur economic growth. Ask for a rationale, and they’ll spin some yarn about “economic confidence,” or some such nonsense. They revel in ignoring the warnings of economists, who actually do know better. In other words, they’re operating on ideological faith.

Unfortunately, their recommendations are being taken seriously as economic policy. And while the elite will never suffer the consequences of their fantasies (“shared sacrifice” means “someone else I don’t know suffers”), far too many other people will.

Youth Unemployment Across Europe

2012-02-01T13:01:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting chart. So, are the "Very Serious People" of Europe just totally giving up on ANY future?

What’s the Economy For Anyway?

2012-02-01T12:57:00.000-06:00

This from Robert Reich -- please follow link to original
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The Biggest Risk to the Economy in 2012, and What’s the Economy For Anyway?

Monday, January 30, 2012

Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos a few days ago, said the “critical risks” facing the American economy this year were a worsening of Europe’s chronic sovereign debt crisis and a rise in tensions with Iran that could stoke global oil prices.

What about jobs and wages here at home?

As the Commerce Department reported Friday, the U.S. economy grew 2.8 percent between October and December – the fastest pace in 18 months and the first time growth exceeded 2 percent all year. Many bigger American companies have been reporting strong profits in recent months. GE and Lockheed Martin closed the year with record order backlogs.

Yet the percent of working-age Americans in jobs isn’t much different than what it was three years ago. Yes, America now produces more than it did when the recession began. But it does so with 6 million fewer workers.

Average after-tax incomes adjusted for inflation are moving up a bit. (They increased at an annual rate of .8 percent in the last three months of 2011 after falling 1.9 percent in prior three-month period. For all of 2011, incomes fell .1 percent.)

But beware averages. Shaquille O’Neal and I have an average height of six feet. Exclude Mitt Romney’s $20 million last year — along with everyone else securely in the top 1 percent — and the incomes of most Americans are continuing to slip.

Consumer spending picked up slightly in the fourth quarter mainly because consumers drew down their savings. Obviously, this can’t last.

Meanwhile, government is spending less on schools, roads, bridges, parks, defense, and social services. Government spending at all levels dropped at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the last quarter – and that’s likely to continue.

Some economists worry this drop is a drag on the economy. But it also means fewer public goods available to all Americans regardless of income.

Congress still hasn’t decided whether to renew the temporary payroll tax cut and extend unemployment benefits past February. If it doesn’t, expect another 1 percent slice off GDP growth this year.

Tim Geithner is surely correct that the European debt crisis and Iran pose risks to the American economy in 2012. But they aren’t the biggest risk. The biggest risk is right here at home – that most Americans will continue to languish.

All of which raises a basic question: Who or what is the economy for? Surely not just for a few at the top, and not just big corporations and their CEOs. Nor can the success of the economy be measured by how fast the GDP is growing, or how high the Dow Jones Industrial Average is rising, or whether average incomes are turning upward.

The crisis of American capitalism marks the triumph of consumers and investors over workers and citizens. And since most of us occupy all four roles – even though the lion’s share of consuming and investing is done by the wealthy – the real crisis centers on the increasing efficiency by which all of us as consumers and investors can get great deals, and our declining capacity to be heard as workers and citizens.

Modern technologies allow us to shop in real time, often worldwide, for the lowest prices, highest quality, and best returns. Through the Internet and advanced software we can now get relevant information instantaneously, compare deals, and move our money at the speed of electronic impulses. We can buy goods over the Internet that are delivered right to our homes. Never before in history have consumers and investors been so empowered.

Yet these great deals increasingly come at the expense of our own and our compatriots’ jobs and wages, and widening inequality. The goods we want or the returns we seek can often be produced more efficiently elsewhere around the world by companies offering lower pay, fewer benefits, and inferior working conditions.

They also come at the expense of our Main Streets – the hubs of our communities – when we get the great deals through the Internet or at big-box retailers that scan the world for great deals on our behalf.

Some great deals have devastating environmental consequences. Technology allows us to efficiently buy low-priced items from poor nations with scant environmental standards, sometimes made in factories that spill toxic chemicals into water supplies or pollutants into the air. We shop for great deals in cars that spew carbon into the air and for airline tickets in jet planes that do even worse.

Other great deals offend common decency. We may get a great price or high return because a producer has cut costs by hiring children in South Asia or Africa who work twelve hours a day, seven days a week. Or by subjecting people to death-defying working conditions.

As workers or as citizens most of us would not intentionally choose these outcomes but as seekers after great deals we are indirectly responsible for them. Companies know that if they fail to offer us the best deals we will take our money elsewhere – which we can do with ever-greater speed and efficiency.

The best means of balancing the demands of consumers and investors against those of workers and citizens has been through democratic institutions that shape and constrain markets.

Laws and rules offer some protection for jobs and wages, communities, and the environment. Although such rules are likely to be costly to us as consumers and investors because they stand in the way of the very best deals, they are intended to approximate what we as members of a society are willing to sacrifice for these other values.

But technologies for getting great deals are outpacing the capacities of democratic institutions to counterbalance them. For one thing, national rules intended to protect workers, communities, and the environment typically extend only to a nation’s borders. Yet technologies for getting great deals enable buyers and investors to transcend borders with increasing ease, at the same time making it harder for nations to monitor or regulate such transactions.

For another, goals other than the best deals are less easily achieved within the confines of a single nation. The most obvious example is the environment, whose fragility is worldwide. In addition, corporations now routinely threaten to move jobs and businesses away from places that impose higher costs on them – and therefore, indirectly, on their consumers and investors – to more “business friendly” jurisdictions. The Internet and software have made companies sufficiently nimble to render such threats credible.

But the biggest problem is that corporate money is undermining democratic institutions in the name of better deals for consumers and investors. Campaign contributions, fleets of well-paid corporate lobbyists, and corporate-financed PR campaigns about public issues are overwhelming the capacities of Congress, state legislatures, regulatory agencies, and the courts to reflect the values of workers and citizens.

As a result, consumers and investors are doing increasingly well but job insecurity is on the rise, inequality is widening, communities are becoming less stable, and climate change is worsening. None of this is sustainable over the long term.

Blame global finance and worldwide corporations all you want. But save some blame for the insatiable consumers and investors inhabiting almost every one of us, who are entirely complicit. And blame our inability as workers and citizens to reclaim our democracy.

India Factory Workers Revolt, Kill Company President

2012-01-31T18:37:00.000-06:00

Class war -- not just for the rich. This from Forbes. Follow link to original.

By the way, now you know why our leaders are so upset by even PEACEFUL protest. Why there are drones flying around in parts of the USA ("for your protection" -- of course). And why the "security state" has been so ramped up.

Could it be they actually believe there will be riots, violent protests, and an actual revolutionary movement? I doubt it can or will happen in the good old USA -- but something has our leaders spooked.
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India Factory Workers Revolt, Kill Company President

Workers at the Regency Ceramics factory in India raided the home of their boss, and beat him senseless with lead pipes after a wage dispute turned ugly.

The workers were enraged enough to kill Regency’s president K. C. Chandrashekhar after their union leader, M. Murali Mohan, was killed by baton-wielding riot police on Thursday. The labor violence occurred in Yanam, a small city in Andra Pradesh state on India’s east coast. Police were called to the factory by management to quell a labor dispute. The workers had been calling for higher pay and reinstatement of previously laid off workers since October. Murali was fired a few hours after the police left the factory.

The next morning, at 06:00 on Friday, Murali went to the factory along with some workers and tried to obstruct the morning shift, local media reported. Long batons, known as lathis in India, were used by police who charged the workers, injuring at least 20 of them, including Murali. He died on the way to hospital, according to The Times of India. Hundreds of workers gathered outside the police station and demanded that officers be charged with homicide.

Curfew and other civil orders were imposed in Yanam because of the uprising that ultimately lead to the murder of the Regency president a few hours after being attacked with led pipes. Police reported that rioters also torched several vehicles outside the police station. Eight Regency Ceramics workers were injured in police firing that followed; the condition of two of them is critical. More than 100 protesters have been arrested.

India’s factory workers are the lowest paid within the big four emerging markets. Per capita income in India is under $4,000 a year, making it the poorest country in the BRICs despite its relatively booming economy.

At Regency Ceramics, workers went on strike Jan. 1 over the wage dispute. The management had reportedly decided to slap a restraining order on five workers and managed to obtain an order from a high court saying that the striking workers should not come within 220 yards, more than the size of two football fields, from the factory.

Once news of Murali’s death spread, the factory workers allegedly destroyed 50 company cars, buses and trucks and lit them on fire. They ransacked the factory. Residents joined hands with around 600 workers, while others were enroute to Chandrashekhar’s house.

To My Old Master

2012-01-31T16:41:00.001-06:00

This from "Letters of Note" -- please follow link to original.
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To My Old Master

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson.
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Obviously, any comment from me would be meaningless.

Virginia Democrat Proposes ‘Gender Equity’ To Anti-Abortion Bill, Requires Rectal Exams For Men Seeking Viagra

2012-01-31T15:38:00.000-06:00

This from "Think Progress" -- please follow link to original. By the way, SUPPORT THIS BILL!!
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Virginia Democrat Proposes ‘Gender Equity’ To Anti-Abortion Bill, Requires Rectal Exams For Men Seeking Viagra

The Virginia legislature is starting off 2012 with a bicameral attack on a woman’s right to choose. The General Assembly’s very first bill, House Bill 1, is a “personhood” amendment that seeks to essentially outlaw abortions. Over in the state senate, Sen. Jill Vogel (R) has introduced a bill that would require all women seeking an abortion “to have an ultrasound image taken to determine the gestational age of the fetus.” Piqued by the unnecessary intrusion into a woman’s doctor-patient relationship, state Sen. Janet Howell (D) sought to level the playing field.

“If pregnant women should have to get an ultrasound before having an abortion, men should have to undergo additional medical procedures before getting a prescription for erectile dysfunction,” she noted, and introduced an amendment to Vogel’s bill requiring that men “undergo a digital rectal exam” for pills like Viagra:

On Monday Howell expressed her disdain for legislation requiring the ultrasound by proposing an amendment she described as a simple matter of fairness. Her amendment said that before being treated for erectile dysfunction, a man would have to undergo a digital rectal exam and a cardiac stress test.

“We should just have a little gender equity here,” Howell said.

Vogel argued that “erectile dysfunction, in this context, is different from pregnancy,” and the “gender equity” amendment failed in a 21 to 19 vote mostly along party lines. Vogel’s ultrasound bill will receive a final vote today, and is expected to clear the full Senate.

Aware that such measures are a blatant attempt to obstruct and intimidate women from considering their constitutional right to an abortion, Howell pointed out that the ultrasound is also “adding to the cost” and “opening up [women] to emotional blackmail.”

Will Germany Bully Europe Over the Brink?

2012-01-31T15:35:00.000-06:00

This from Jeff Madrick on "New Deal 2.0" -- please follow link to original
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Will Germany Bully Europe Over the Brink?

There’s still hope for Europe to avoid a crisis, but it will first have to reject Germany’s self-righteous demands for austerity.

The audacity Germany has shown in floating a demand to manage Greece’s finances is a window on the leaders of that country and how much perspective they’ve lost. Let’s be clear; not all in Germany agree with this narrow, insensitive stance and the uninformed and uneducated demands for austerity economics in debt-ridden and recessionary nations. For example, there are political parties in Germany that want their country to take the lead on a Marshall Plan for the periphery of the eurozone. But they are not the ones setting policy.

I am tempted to say that antediluvian economics is ruling in Germany, but it may not really be about economic theory, but rather superior pride, irrational fear of inflation, and perhaps vindictiveness. It’s as if a German version of our own Tea Party is now running economic policy in Europe. Germany reduced its unit labor costs beginning in the late 1990s, which were higher than much of the rest of the EU, but with the euro fixed, they benefited as their export prices remained low. Could they have done well without their eurozone trading partners buying more from them than they were selling? And they lent them the money to do so. Do they have no moral obligation here? Without the fixed euro, the DM would have soared.

Then there is David Cameron of Britain and his finance minister lecturing the rest of Europe about how to run their economies. Move over Monty Python. As everyone now knows, Britain’s GDP is still below its pre-recession high, its deficit is high and not falling as promised, it may have slid into recession, and often ignored, average wages are well down since a recovery supposedly began. The bombast with which Cameron proclaims the rightness of his austerity economics while his people suffer is right out of school-boy debating. This time his countrymen will lose the debate, not only him.

There are some hints that people of influence are talking sanely and recognize growth is necessary and that austerity in this environment is tragically anti-growth. Some believed there would be some actual policy initiatives in Monday’s summit, but there weren’t. Instead, the EU agreed to a nutty deficit limit for all its nations. The good news is that they won’t abide by in a crunch. Must we remind ourselves yet again that it was Germany that conspicuously violated the prevailing EU limits on deficits to 3 percent of GDP when it had problems? Some say the current limit is over a full economic cycle and therefore not that stifling, but 0.5 percent of GDP is stifling any way you size it up.

Other analysts are saying that now that Germany has won this round it will support further lending by the European Central Bank. What a group! Remember when Trichet, then the head of the ECB, actually raised interest rates in the spring of 2011? It is all a matter of confidence, he said. But trying to cut spending in the face of recession will not generate confidence; only renewed growth will.

Click here to buy Senior Fellow Richard Kirsch’s new book on the epic health care reform battle, Fighting for Our Health.

It looks like Spain may have had enough of austerity economics. After all, it didn’t run crazy government deficits in the first place. I bet few non-expert citizens know how little government budget deficits had to do with the crisis, including in the U.S. For a long while, Spain’s leaders kept promising they would meet reduced deficits target, but slow growth and suddenly outright negative growth is reducing tax revenues far faster than expected. Spain is a dog chasing its tail, and it may finally realize it. Deficits as a percent of GDP come down a bit at the expense of a recession and high unemployment, but not nearly enough to satisfy Germany (or, apparently, bond markets) or to meet political promises. If Spain pursues further austerity, it may remain in recession for several years. What will that do to their democracy? Let’s hope they stop.

The Greeks would not stand for Germany running their country. Big surprise. Sarkozy then said no one should stand for it, and Merkel apparently backed off. Who knows if she was ever foolish or insensitive enough to believe in it? But she has some mighty thick-headed colleagues in her country to deal with. Meantime, Portugal is flailing, deep into recession, so it’s not only Greece we must worry about. Spain just reported negative growth. Ireland remains a mess, despite momentary cheers that austerity was working. Alas, GDP is still 10 or 15 percent below its pre-recession high there.

Germany wants to cure the problem by getting wages to fall — a solution it imposed on itself in the late 1990s — in Greece, Spain, Portugal and so on. It is commonly called an internal devaluation. Had everyone not been linked to the euro, some could have devalued explicitly. With an internal devaluation, these countries would allegedly reduce their European imbalances by importing less and exporting more as prices fell — and in the case of Greece in particular, attracting more tourists as prices fell. This is a long, painful process that will probably only marginally change imbalances.

Europe needs growth, but it is being handed recession by the Germans. Growth builds tax revenues. It’s just like the old days when even many economists believed a recession just cleaned out the dead wood so we could rebuild, which led to self-destructive policies in the early 1930s. Now we have learned that the ugly part of recessions is that they feed on themselves and sink economies deeper, clean out more new wood than old, have grave long-term consequences for standards of living, and can destabilize democracies.

Any good news? As recession hits, talk has increased that austerity is not working, as noted above. If Germany itself begins to suffer some pain because it can’t sell its exports, the nation may indeed wake up. The self-righteous there may at last be overwhelmed by the rational and sensitive.

Europe, and most importantly Germany, needs to encourage its central banks to lend more. It needs to build its rescue fund, and ultimately it needs to sell eurozone-backed bonds to generate more rescue money and enable it to transfer funds to needy countries as they scale back on spending so that citizens do not suffer so much. The U.S. does just this. There is no mystery, except one. That mystery is how nations repeat their follies so regularly in history.

For all I’ve said, I am not completely pessimistic. I see the glimmer of a horizon of hope. I think most of Europe believes in the euro and a united continent. I think they will save the day, but just by a hair’s breadth. And that’s too close for comfort. There is a chance the ship will sail too close to the horizon and fall off the earth

Self-steering bullet researched by US weapons experts

2012-01-31T15:00:00.000-06:00

Ah yes, just a little more to think about. Or, as was said, many years ago -- "verry inter-resting" From BBC News
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Self-steering bullet researched by US weapons experts

A self-guiding bullet that can steer itself towards its target is being developed for use by the US military

The bullet uses tiny fins to correct the course of its flight allowing it to hit laser-illuminated targets.

It is designed to be capable of hitting objects at distances of about 2km (1.24 miles). Work on a prototype suggests that accuracy is best at longer ranges.

A think tank says the tech is well-suited to snipers, but worries about it being marketed to the public.

Work on the project is being carried out by an Albuquerque-based subsidiary of defence contractor Lockheed Martin on behalf of the US government.

The current prototype involves a 4in (10cm) bullet which includes an optical sensor in its nose to detect the laser. This information is then processed and used to move motors within the bullet which steer tiny fins, altering the ammunition's path.

"We can make corrections 30 times per second," said researcher Red Jones.

"That means we can over-correct, so we don't have to be as precise each time."
Accuracy

The team has carried out both field tests and computer simulations, and says "engineering issues" remain. However, they add that they are confident of bringing the product to market.

Experts say there would be great demand for the innovation on the battlefield.

"One of the big successes in Libya was that the accuracy of the munitions used was much higher than in previous campaigns," Elizabeth Quintana, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank told the BBC.

"97% of Nato's weapons hit their target to within about 2m (6.5ft). But that was achieved through air munitions.

"This would be a revolution for ground forces, and may help further cut down on civilian casualties in future conflicts."

Unlike most bullets the self-guided prototype minimises spin, aiming to fly like a dart.
Prototype bullet Researchers say special gunpowder may be needed to help the bullet achieve faster speeds

Normally small calibre rifle bullets are spun at over 2,000 revolutions per second to stabilise their flightpath and maximise speed.

But the team's patent application notes that previous attempts to create self-guiding rapidly-spinning bullets ran into the problem that the electronics required became too complicated.

To simplify things the researchers moved the bullet's centre of gravity further forward than it would normally be.

When combined with the fins this caused it to only spin a few revolutions per second, making it easier to steer. Because the bullet's motion settles the longer it is in flight, the researchers say its accuracy improves at longer ranges.

Tests with commercially available gunpowder have measured the bullet reaching just over twice the speed of sound (2,400ft per second), which is still below standard military speeds.

But the researchers say they are confident that they can increase its velocity with customised gunpowder.
Terrorism

A press release said that: "Potential customers include the military, law enforcement and recreational shooters."

That concerns some industry watchers.

"The public may be uncomfortable with the implications of people being able to use this without needing to have a sight line to the target - you could see this having terrorist uses," said Ms Quintana.

"There's talk of selling to recreational hunters, but I would imagine the authorities would want to limit the public's access to this kind of technology.
(gee -- I wonder why?)
"But it would be useful for law enforcement - particularly in hostage situations."

Austria's President Fischer intervenes in far-right row

2012-01-31T14:53:00.000-06:00

Oh gee, those kooky Austrians are at it again. How long before full-fledged Antisemitism returns? It seems it's never too far below the surface in ALL of Europe. I guess it is hard to end a 1600-1700 year old tradition. I wish they would just try harder. (please follow link to original on BBC News)
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Austria's President Fischer intervenes in far-right row

Austrian President Heinz Fischer has withdrawn an award from a far-right leader who allegedly likened his supporters to Jews under the Nazis.

Freedom Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache was said to have made the remarks after protesters picketed a controversial far-right Vienna ball.

The event was widely criticised as it was held on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Foreign Minister Michael Spindelegger told reporters that he was "profoundly disgusted" by Mr Strache's words.
'Monstrous provocation'

Although far-right organisers insisted the Wiener Korporationsring (WKR) ball was always held on the last Friday in January, Green Party head Eva Glavischnig said that guests would be "dancing on the graves of Auschwitz".

An estimated 2,500 protesters gathered on Friday night to condemn the ball and several arrests were made.

"We are the new Jews," Mr Strache was quoted as telling other guests by Austrian newspaper Der Standard on Monday, as some complained their taxi had been stopped by protesters.

"That was like the Night of Broken Glass," he was reported to have said, referring to the violent pogrom against Jewish businesses and homes in Nazi Germany and Austria on 9-10 November 1938.

The Jewish community described his words as a "monstrous provocation".

President Fischer had been due to give Mr Strache a state honour in recognition of the time he had served in parliament and the Vienna assembly. But in light of the comments he announced the award would not take place.

Speaking later, the Freedom Party leader did not deny making the remarks but said his words had been "intentionally misrepresented" and that "things [had been] taken entirely out of context".

Saying that a ball and the Nazi persecution of the Jews could not be compared, Mr Spindelegger urged Mr Strache to apologise immediately.

Former RBS boss Fred Goodwin stripped of knighthood

2012-01-31T14:45:00.000-06:00

At least SOMEONE is doing SOMETHING about the venal bankers --- this from BBC News
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Former RBS boss Fred Goodwin stripped of knighthood

Former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin has had his knighthood removed.

Mr Goodwin, who was heavily criticised over his role in the bank's near-collapse in 2008, was given the honour by the Labour government in 2004.

The Queen cancelled and annulled the title following Whitehall advice.

Party leaders, led by Prime Minister David Cameron, welcomed the decision. In the past, only convicted criminals or people struck off professional bodies have had knighthoods taken away.

Mr Goodwin oversaw the multi-billion-pound deal to buy Dutch rival ABN Amro at the height of the financial crisis in 2007, which led to RBS having to be bailed out to the tune of £45bn by taxpayers.

There had been a growing clamour for Mr Goodwin to be stripped of his honour following thousands of job losses at RBS and in the banking industry since then, and the impact on the wider economy.
'Exceptional case'

After the removal of the knighthood, a Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The scale and severity of the impact of his actions as CEO of RBS made this an exceptional case."

He added: "Both the Financial Services Authority and the Treasury Select Committee have investigated the reasons for this failure and its consequences.

"They are clear that the failure of RBS played an important role in the financial crisis of 2008/9 which, together with other macroeconomic factors, triggered the worst recession in the UK since the Second World War and imposed significant direct costs on British taxpayers and businesses.

"Fred Goodwin was the dominant decision-maker at RBS at the time. In reaching this decision, it was recognised that widespread concern about Fred Goodwin's decisions meant that the retention of a knighthood for 'services to banking' could not be sustained."
'Proper process'

The BBC's business editor Robert Peston said Mr Goodwin was in a "class of his own" in terms of the risks that he took at RBS - reflected in the size of the bailout required to rescue the company.

In 2009, Mr Goodwin, who received an annual pension of £650,000 - later reduced to £342,500 - after leaving the bank, told a committee of MPs he "could not be more sorry" for what had happened.

George Osborne, Ed Miliband and Alex Salmond react to Fred Goodwin losing his knighthood

Both Mr Cameron and Labour leader Ed Miliband welcomed the decision.

"The FSA report into what went wrong at RBS made clear where the failures lay and who was responsible," Mr Cameron said. "The proper process has been followed and I think we have ended up with the right decision."

And Mr Miliband said the public wanted to see further sweeping changes to boardroom culture and remuneration.

"It is right that Fred Goodwin lost his knighthood but I think it is only the start of the change we need in our boardrooms.

"We need to change the bonus culture and we need real responsibility right across the board."
'Public opprobrium'

Deputy Prime Minister and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg said Tuesday's announcement was the "right decision" while Chancellor George Osborne described the decision as "appropriate".
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote

RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong in the British economy in the last decade”

George Osborne Chancellor

"RBS came to symbolise everything that went wrong in the British economy in the last decade," he said.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond said it was the "correct decision", since the knighthood "was for services to banking which could not therefore be sustained".

The Unite union also welcomed the move, with senior official David Fleming saying it was "a token gesture... but one which will be well received by the thousands of workers who lost their jobs during his rule".

Conservative MP David Ruffley, a member of the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, said Mr Goodwin had acted "recklessly" and the public wanted him to be "held to account".

He told Sky News "there was a sense that this guy had got away scot-free and the only thing left really to show the public opprobrium was for the knighthood to be stripped".
'Politicising honours'

However, the move was not welcomed by all. Simon Walker, director general of the Institute of Directors, did not approve of the honour withdrawal, saying he was concerned there was "a hysteria about the whole situation".

While he said that the system of stripping an honour for criminal offences was "appropriate", he added: "To do it because you don't like someone, you don't approve of someone, you think they have done things that are wrong but actually there is no criminality alleged or charged, I think is inappropriate and politicises the whole honours system."

The forfeiture committee - whose members include the cabinet secretary, the top civil servant at the Home Office, the top lawyer at the Treasury and the top official in the Scottish government - made the decision to recommend he lose the honour.

The Queen has the sole authority to rescind a knighthood, after taking advice from the government.
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Personally, I thought some other penalty would be in order (let your mind run free)

Cold weather kills dozens in eastern Europe

2012-01-31T14:40:00.002-06:00

Gee -- I guess it's winter somewhere. Here in Texas we are having a VERY mild winter.

This from BBC News

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Cold weather kills dozens in eastern Europe

At least 60 people have died due to freezing conditions caused by a cold snap in eastern and central Europe.

The drop in temperatures, forcing some countries to deploy the army and set up emergency shelters, is set to continue to Friday, forecasters say.

At least 30 people - mostly homeless - have died in Ukraine. Deaths have also been reported in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, among others.

Temperatures plunged to -20C (-4F) on Monday.

Health officials in Ukraine say nearly 24,000 people have sought refuge in some 1,590 shelters over the past three days.

More than 600 people have sought treatment for frostbite and hypothermia during this time.

The authorities say they are planning to set up 150 more centres, as heavy snow was forecast in the region on Wednesday.
'Elderly and homeless'

The death toll in Poland over recent days rose to 21 on Tuesday. The Interior Affairs Ministry said some had suffered carbon monoxide poisoning from faulty heaters, according to the Associated Press news agency.

BBC weather forecaster Susan Powell explains what is causing the cold snap in much of Europe

Poland had been having a relatively mild winter, until temperatures dropped last Friday from just below freezing to -26C (-15F).

Malgorzata Wozniak of Poland's interior ministry said elderly people and the homeless were among the dead, AP reports.

Polish forecasters have warned that temperatures could fall further during the week, to below -20C during the day and -30C at night.

At least eight people have died in Romania and five in Bulgaria.

Troops in Romania were deployed last week to rescue those stranded in cars by blizzards.

In Serbia, police reported that the snowy conditions had led to the deaths of a woman and two elderly men. Two other men, in their 70s, are believed to be missing in the south of the country.

Reports say there were also deaths in Lithuania, Bosnia, Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Religious Reactionaries stick together

2012-01-31T14:37:00.000-06:00

Here's one of MANY interesting posts from Digby on "Hullabaloo" -- please follow link, read the rest.
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Religious Reactionaries stick together

by digby

Perlstein's column today is a fascinating recent history of religion in American politics. It's specifically about how the right will have little problem accepting Mitt's Mormonism because they always come around on this when the chips are down. Read the whole thing. I think it's persuasive.

I just want to highlight one bit of information which I don't think is common knowledge:

You may have heard of the group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Nowadays Evangelicals despise it as a heathen outfit bent on banishing God from the public square. (Here they celebrate the civil liberties victory represented by the display of a Flying Spaghetti Monster next to the Nativity scene at the courthouse in Loudoun County, Virginia.) A generation ago, however, Evangelicals were fans – back when the group was known as "Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State," and was the institutional home for those who feared the Roman church was a wicked conspiracy to colonize the United States.

Think about that. In the 1960s "Americans United for the Separation of Church and State" was called "Protestants and Other Americans United for the Separation of Church and State". I'm pretty sure that clearly illustrates how times have changed.

All this started changing in the 1970s. Fighting abortion had once been an almost exclusively Catholic crusade; indeed much of the work Americans United for the Separation of Church and State was devoted to fighting those attempting to ban abortion, on the grounds that such attempts sought to introduce into government "a biased religious viewpoint." Which was around the time Evangelicals began separating themselves from Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. They, Evangelicals, wanted to ban abortion too – and were now willing to stand shoulder to shoulder with Catholics to do it. Christianity Today, the magazine founded by Billy Graham, advised its readers in 1975 not to fear joining the "pro-life" cause; it had "matured," and could "no longer be dismissed as a group of cold-hearted Catholics simply taking orders from the Pope."

Rick doesn't go into this in his piece, but it's worth pointing out here. From The Nation on the occasion of Jerry Falwells death:

While abortion clinics sprung up across the United States during the early 1970s, evangelicals did little. No pastors invoked the Dred Scott decision to undermine the legal justification for abortion. There were no clinic blockades, no passionate cries to liberate the "pre-born." For Falwell and his allies, the true impetus for political action came when the Supreme Court ruled in Green v. Connally to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory private schools in 1971. At about the same time, the Internal Revenue Service moved to revoke the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, which forbade interracial dating. (Blacks were denied entry until 1971.) Falwell was furious, complaining, "In some states it's easier to open a massage parlor than to open a Christian school."

Seeking to capitalize on mounting evangelical discontent, a right-wing Washington operative and anti-Vatican II Catholic named Paul Weyrich took a series of trips down South to meet with Falwell and other evangelical leaders. Weyrich hoped to produce a well-funded evangelical lobbying outfit that could lend grassroots muscle to the top-heavy Republican Party and effectively mobilize the vanquished forces of massive resistance into a new political bloc. In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His pleas initially fell on deaf ears.

"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."

These cross-currents are always there. And religious reactionaries seem to be able to find a way to work together when it comes to suppressing any pressure for freedom and equality from below. They just need to find that sweet spot.

Red Families v. Blue Families Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture Naomi Cahn and June Carbone

2012-01-31T14:12:00.000-06:00

Here is part of a review of a new book titled "Red Families v. Blue Families
Legal Polarization and the Creation of Culture" -- by Naomi Cahn and June Carbone

Please follow link to original -- read the rest.

Looks like a very interesting book.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Description
Red Families v. Blue Families identifies a new family model geared for the post-industrial economy. Rooted in the urban middle class, the coasts and the "blue states" in the last three presidential elections, the Blue Family Paradigm emphasizes the importance of women's as well as men's workforce participation, egalitarian gender roles, and the delay of family formation until both parents are emotionally and financially ready. By contrast, the Red Family Paradigm--associated with the Bible Belt, the mountain west, and rural America--rejects these new family norms, viewing the change in moral and sexual values as a crisis. In this world, the prospect of teen childbirth is the necessary deterrent to premarital sex, marriage is a sacred undertaking between a man and a woman, and divorce is society's greatest moral challenge. Yet, the changing economy is rapidly eliminating the stable, blue collar jobs that have historically supported young families, and early marriage and childbearing derail the education needed to prosper. The result is that the areas of the country most committed to traditional values have the highest divorce and teen pregnancy rates, fueling greater calls to reinstill traditional values.

Featuring the groundbreaking research first hailed in The New Yorker, this penetrating book will transform our understanding of contemporary American culture and law. The authors show how the Red-Blue divide goes much deeper than this value system conflict--the Red States have increasingly said "no" to Blue State legal norms, and, as a result, family law has been rent in two. The authors close with a consideration of where these different family systems still overlap, and suggest solutions that permit rebuilding support for both types of families in changing economic circumstances. ..................

A visit to an alternate universe. In other words, "Some Assembly Required". If our "leaders" ever told us the truth, there would be rioting in the streets, public hanging, and heads on pikes. I think it best if we keep it peaceful

2012-01-31T13:54:00.001-06:00

Today is a good day to visit "Some Assembly Required" -- please follow link to original
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There's Something (Not) Happening Here: Since 2005, while global crude oil production has hovered around 74 mbd, European consumption has fallen by 1.5 mbd and US consumption is down 2 mbd. Internal consumption by the producing countries and significant growth in demand by the developing world has taken up the slack, while prices have climbed from $65 to $100 a barrel. Why hasn't production increased 2 or 3 mbd to take advantage of the increased price per barrel? It has, but that just made up for the decline in production from older fields. The future seems to have snuck in unannounced.

Investment 101: People buy US Treasuries not for their high yield, but to preserve their capital. What sort of an economy is anticipated if 10-year Treasuries are returning 1.84% and 10-year TIPS yield 0.49%?

Mrs. Lincoln: Austerity was going to fix the British and Italian and Greek economies - how are things working out? We'll skip Greece because that's outright embarrassing, and move on to Great Britain – which is doing worse in GDP terms that it did back during the Great Depression. And Italy? Well, Italy has become a dictatorship, but one of EU design and not yet fascistic. The US, on a national level, has only just dabbled in austerity cuts, but the states and cities have embraced the idea with a vengeance. And that's just the word for it, vengeance.

More is More: There is a fundamental problem facing us: no matter what the energy source, no matter what you use the energy for, using energy creates heat. The more energy we use, the more waste heat we generate. There is no such thing as "clean energy" on the usage end of the cycle

Follow The Money: The US insists that Iran must be punished for trying to develop nuclear weapons, although there is no credible evidence that Iran is doing so. What Iran is doing is accepting things other than dollars as payment for oil. And that will not be tolerated - just ask Saddam or Qaddafi. Oh, wait...
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There is more good stuff -- go there, then follow his links to the originals. Very interesting stuff.

Corporations Have No Use for Borders

2012-01-31T13:43:00.000-06:00

The latest column from Chris Hedges -- posted on "Truthdig" -- please follow link to original
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Corporations Have No Use for Borders

By Chris Hedges

What happened to Canada? It used to be the country we would flee to if life in the United States became unpalatable. No nuclear weapons. No huge military-industrial complex. Universal health care. Funding for the arts. A good record on the environment.

But that was the old Canada. I was in Montreal on Friday and Saturday and saw the familiar and disturbing tentacles of the security and surveillance state. Canada has withdrawn from the Kyoto Accords so it can dig up the Alberta tar sands in an orgy of environmental degradation. It carried out the largest mass arrests of demonstrators in Canadian history at 2010’s G-8 and G-20 meetings, rounding up more than 1,000 people. It sends undercover police into indigenous communities and activist groups and is handing out stiff prison terms to dissenters. And Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper is a diminished version of George W. Bush. He champions the rabid right wing in Israel, bows to the whims of global financiers and is a Christian fundamentalist.

The voices of dissent sound like our own. And the forms of persecution are familiar. This is not an accident. We are fighting the same corporate leviathan.

“I want to tell you that I was arrested because I am seen as a threat,” Canadian activist Leah Henderson wrote to fellow dissidents before being sent to Vanier prison in Milton, Ontario, to serve a 10-month sentence. “I want to tell you that you might be too. I want to tell you that this is something we need to prepare for. I want to tell you that the risk of incarceration alone should not determine our organizing.”

“My skills and experience—as a facilitator, as a trainer, as a legal professional and as someone linking different communities and movements—were all targeted in this case, with the state trying to depict me as a ‘brainwasher’ and as a mastermind of mayhem, violence and destruction,” she went on. “During the week of the G8 & G20 summits, the police targeted legal observers, street medics and independent media. It is clear that the skills that make us strong, the alternatives that reduce our reliance on their systems and prefigure a new world, are the very things that they are most afraid of.”

Advertisement
The decay of Canada illustrates two things. Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington. This, I suspect, is why the tactics to crush the Occupy movement around the globe have an eerie similarity—infiltrations, surveillance, the denial of public assembly, physical attempts to eradicate encampments, the use of propaganda and the press to demonize the movement, new draconian laws stripping citizens of basic rights, and increasingly harsh terms of incarceration.

Our solidarity should be with activists who march on Tahrir Square in Cairo or set up encampamentos in Madrid. These are our true compatriots. The more we shed ourselves of national identity in this fight, the more we grasp that our true allies may not speak our language or embrace our religious and cultural traditions, the more powerful we will become.

Those who seek to discredit this movement employ the language of nationalism and attempt to make us fearful of the other. Wave the flag. Sing the national anthem. Swell with national hubris. Be vigilant of the hidden terrorist. Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources Joe Oliver, responding to the growing opposition to the Keystone XL and the Northern Gateway pipelines, wrote in an open letter that “environmental and other radical groups” were trying to “hijack our regulatory system to achieve their radical ideological agenda.” He accused pipeline opponents of receiving funding from foreign special interest groups and said that “if all other avenues have failed, they will take a quintessential American approach: sue everyone and anyone to delay the project even further.”

No matter that in both Canada and the United States suing the government to seek redress is the right of every citizen. No matter that the opposition to the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway pipelines has its roots in Canada. No matter that the effort by citizens in the U.S. and in Canada to fight climate change is about self-preservation. The minister, in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry like the energy czars in most of the other industrialized nations, seeks to pit “loyal” Canadians against “disloyal” Canadians. Those with whom we will build this movement of resistance will not in some cases be our own. They may speak Arabic, pray five times a day toward Mecca and be holding off the police thugs in the center of Cairo. Or they may be generously pierced and tattooed and speak Danish or they may be Mandarin-speaking workers battling China’s totalitarian capitalism. These are differences that make no difference.

“My country right or wrong,” G.K. Chesterton once wrote, is on the same level as “My mother, drunk or sober.”

Our most dangerous opponents, in fact, look and speak like us. They hijack familiar and comforting iconography and slogans to paint themselves as true patriots. They claim to love Jesus. But they cynically serve the function a native bureaucracy serves for any foreign colonizer. The British and the French, and earlier the Romans, were masters of this game. They recruited local quislings to carry out policies and repression that were determined in London or Paris or Rome. Popular anger was vented against these personages, and native group vied with native group in battles for scraps of influence. And when one native ruler was overthrown or, more rarely, voted out of power, these imperial machines recruited a new face. The actual centers of power did not change. The pillage continued. Global financiers are the new colonizers. They make the rules. They pull the strings. They offer the illusion of choice in our carnivals of political theater. But corporate power remains constant and unimpeded. Barack Obama serves the same role Herod did in imperial Rome.

This is why the Occupy Wall Street movement is important. It targets the center of power—global financial institutions. It deflects attention from the empty posturing in the legislative and executive offices in Washington or London or Paris. The Occupy movement reminds us that until the corporate superstructure is dismantled it does not matter which member of the native elite is elected or anointed to rule. The Canadian prime minister is as much a servant of corporate power as the American president. And replacing either will not alter corporate domination. As the corporate mechanisms of control become apparent to wider segments of the population, discontent will grow further. So will the force employed by our corporate overlords. It will be a long road for us. But we are not alone. There are struggles and brush fires everywhere. Leah Henderson is not only right. She is my compatriot.

The Austerity Debacle

2012-01-31T12:10:00.000-06:00

Here is Paul Krugman's latest column -- please follow link to original
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The Austerity Debacle
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: January 29, 2012

Last week the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, a British think tank, released a startling chart comparing the current slump with past recessions and recoveries. It turns out that by one important measure — changes in real G.D.P. since the recession began — Britain is doing worse this time than it did during the Great Depression. Four years into the Depression, British G.D.P. had regained its previous peak; four years after the Great Recession began, Britain is nowhere close to regaining its lost ground.

Nor is Britain unique. Italy is also doing worse than it did in the 1930s — and with Spain clearly headed for a double-dip recession, that makes three of Europe’s big five economies members of the worse-than club. Yes, there are some caveats and complications. But this nonetheless represents a stunning failure of policy.

And it’s a failure, in particular, of the austerity doctrine that has dominated elite policy discussion both in Europe and, to a large extent, in the United States for the past two years.

O.K., about those caveats: On one side, British unemployment was much higher in the 1930s than it is now, because the British economy was depressed — mainly thanks to an ill-advised return to the gold standard — even before the Depression struck. On the other side, Britain had a notably mild Depression compared with the United States.

Even so, surpassing the track record of the 1930s shouldn’t be a tough challenge. Haven’t we learned a lot about economic management over the last 80 years? Yes, we have — but in Britain and elsewhere, the policy elite decided to throw that hard-won knowledge out the window, and rely on ideologically convenient wishful thinking instead.

Britain, in particular, was supposed to be a showcase for “expansionary austerity,” the notion that instead of increasing government spending to fight recessions, you should slash spending instead — and that this would lead to faster economic growth. “Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong,” declared David Cameron, Britain’s prime minister. “You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second.”

How could the economy thrive when unemployment was already high, and government policies were directly reducing employment even further? Confidence! “I firmly believe,” declared Jean-Claude Trichet — at the time the president of the European Central Bank, and a strong advocate of the doctrine of expansionary austerity — “that in the current circumstances confidence-inspiring policies will foster and not hamper economic recovery, because confidence is the key factor today.”

Such invocations of the confidence fairy were never plausible; researchers at the International Monetary Fund and elsewhere quickly debunked the supposed evidence that spending cuts create jobs. Yet influential people on both sides of the Atlantic heaped praise on the prophets of austerity, Mr. Cameron in particular, because the doctrine of expansionary austerity dovetailed with their ideological agendas.

Thus in October 2010 David Broder, who virtually embodied conventional wisdom, praised Mr. Cameron for his boldness, and in particular for “brushing aside the warnings of economists that the sudden, severe medicine could cut short Britain’s economic recovery and throw the nation back into recession.” He then called on President Obama to “do a Cameron” and pursue “a radical rollback of the welfare state now.”

Strange to say, however, those warnings from economists proved all too accurate. And we’re quite fortunate that Mr. Obama did not, in fact, do a Cameron.

Which is not to say that all is well with U.S. policy. True, the federal government has avoided all-out austerity. But state and local governments, which must run more or less balanced budgets, have slashed spending and employment as federal aid runs out — and this has been a major drag on the overall economy. Without those spending cuts, we might already have been on the road to self-sustaining growth; as it is, recovery still hangs in the balance.

And we may get tipped in the wrong direction by Continental Europe, where austerity policies are having the same effect as in Britain, with many signs pointing to recession this year.

The infuriating thing about this tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary. Half a century ago, any economist — or for that matter any undergraduate who had read Paul Samuelson’s textbook “Economics” — could have told you that austerity in the face of depression was a very bad idea. But policy makers, pundits and, I’m sorry to say, many economists decided, largely for political reasons, to forget what they used to know. And millions of workers are paying the price for their willful amnesia.

Gingrich Wants Kids To Work As Janitors, But Refused To Work Himself

2012-01-30T17:06:00.000-06:00

More wonderful information about one of "The Men Who Would Be President" - this from Alternet -- please follow link to original
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Gingrich Wants Kids To Work As Janitors, But Refused To Work Himself

Newt Gingrich has made headlines and raised eyebrows on the campaign trail for proposing to make poor children work as janitors in their school, saying it would help them understand the value of work and money.

But apparently, even on child janitorial work, Gingrich is employing a double standard. As Karen Tumulty notes, in a 1995 Vanity Fair profile, Gingrich seemed to refuse to get a job as a student. From the profile:

Newt, who avoided Vietnam with student and marriage deferments, resisted taking a job. During his college years, Newt called up his father and stepmother to ask for financial help. His stepmother, Marcella McPherson, can still hear his exact words: “I do not want to go to work. I want all my time for my studies…Bob Gingrich told me he will not help me one bit. So I wondered, would you people help me?” Big Newt began sending him monthly checks.

Dolores Adamson, Gingrich’s district administrator from 1978 to 1983, remembers, “Jackie [Gingrich's first wife] put him all the way through school. All the way through the P.h.D…He didn’t work.” Adds Adamson, “Personal funds have never meant anything to him. He’s worse than a six-year-old trying to keep his bank balance…Jackie did that.”

Man arrested for DWI, held in solitary for two years, remembers almost none of it

2012-01-30T13:56:00.000-06:00

Here is another example of insanity -- this from "Raw Story", by way of "AmericaBlog" -- Please follow link to original
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Man arrested for DWI, held in solitary for two years, remembers almost none of it
By Gaius Publius on 1/30/2012 02:21:00 PM

We go to Raw Story for this hellacious story (my emphasis):

In August of 2005, Stephen Slevin was arrested for driving while intoxicated (DWI). He spent most of the next two years in the Dona Ana County Detention Center without his case ever going before a judge.

Slevin was rarely allowed to go outside, fungus grew underneath his skin and his toenails curled around his foot because they were so long. At one point, he even had to pull his own tooth.

“He can’t really remember any of it,” Dart Society Reports’ Susan Greene, who interviewed Slevin, told Raw Story. “It’s all sort of lost in his mind, which is a typical trauma response, a pretty extreme though not unheard of trauma response.”

Attorney Matt Coyte explained to MSNBC.com that police had mistakenly believed that Slevin had stolen the car he was driving when police pulled him over and arrested him for a DWI. Slevin informed authorities that he had been depressed, but instead of getting mental help, he found himself on suicide watch in a padded cell. Three days later, he was transferred to solitary confinement.

Coyne commented: "Their policy is to then just put [detainees with mental health issues] in solitary. He disappeared into delirium...".

It's a horrifying story. Apparently, at some point he snapped alert. Once released, he sued, winning a $22 million award just last week. It's the award that makes this news, but the underlying thought is stunning.

How do you go from DWI to two years in solitary without ever seeing a judge? I knew we were prosecutorial, punishing lot. Are we that prosecutorial, that mindlessly punishing? Guess so.

I hope it just a species thing, and not something in the American water supply.

One last quote. In a radio interview, Slevin said this:

“Prison officials were walking by me every day, watching me deteriorate. ... Day after day after day, they did nothing, nothing at all, to get me any help.”

Lord help him. As the article makes clear, he'll have PTSD for the rest of his life. As for the county, they're offering media tours of the facility — apparently there's nothing a PR campaign can't totally cure.

Now you know why

2012-01-30T12:35:00.000-06:00

Read the next two posts. Now you know why I wanted to take a day off. The amount of inhumanity we now visit on those who bother us, disagree with us, don't follow OUR rules to the letter, is amazing. After a while it becomes difficult to read. Why does any entity tolerate this crap?

It's a shame, and a stain of ALL HUMANITY!

Jury finds Afghan family guilty in honor killings

2012-01-30T12:30:00.000-06:00

Now a post about "The Religion of Peace" in CANADA - not any part of "the middle east", or "Asia Minor" -- CANADA.

Granted, all of the "desert religions" can go this far if carried to some "fundamentalist" extreme, but the other two haven't quite devolved to this point YET (there are some "Ultra-Orthodox" Jews in Israel who are coming close, and some Fundamentalist Sects also are coming closer and closer).

If the "mainstream" versions of these anti-woman, patriarchal "religions" do not protest actions like these, they will ALL be complicit in MURDER. It will be more than just allowing women to die in childbirth -- folks will start killing women "just because".

I do not give a damn about "delicate sensibilities" when people get away with MURDER simply because a child is developing a mind of her own.

SHAME on these inhuman monsters! (please follow link to original)
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Jury finds Afghan family guilty in honor killings

KINGSTON, Ontario (AP) — A jury on Sunday found three members of an Afghan family guilty of killing three teenage sisters and another woman in what the judge described as "cold-blooded, shameful murders" resulting from a "twisted concept of honor," ending a case that shocked and riveted Canadians.

Prosecutors said the defendants allegedly killed the three teenage sisters because they dishonored the family by defying its disciplinarian rules on dress, dating, socializing and using the Internet.

The jury took 15 hours to find Mohammad Shafia, 58; his wife Tooba Yahya, 42; and their son Hamed, 21, each guilty of four counts of first-degree murder. First-degree murder carries an automatic life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years.

After the verdict was read, the three defendants again declared their innocence in the killings of sisters Zainab, 19, Sahar 17, and Geeti, 13, as well as Rona Amir Mohammad, 52, Shafia's childless first wife in a polygamous marriage.

Their bodies were found June 30, 2009, in a car submerged in a canal in Kingston, Ontario, where the family had stopped for the night on their way home to Montreal from Niagara Falls, Ontario.

The prosecution alleged it was a case of premeditated murder, staged to look like an accident after it was carried out. Prosecutors said the defendants drowned their victims elsewhere on the site, placed their bodies in the car and pushed it into the canal.

Ontario Superior Court Judge Robert Maranger said the evidence clearly supported the conviction.

"It is difficult to conceive of a more heinous, more despicable, more honorless crime," Maranger said. "The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your completely twisted concept of honor ... that has absolutely no place in any civilized society."

In a statement following the verdict, Canadian Justice Minister Rob Nicholson called honor killings a practice that is "barbaric and unacceptable in Canada."

Defense lawyers said the deaths were accidental. They said the Nissan car accidentally plunged into the canal after the eldest daughter, Zainab, took it for a joy ride with her sisters and her father's first wife. Hamed said he watched the accident, although he didn't call police from the scene.

After the jury returned the verdicts, Mohammad Shafia, speaking through a translator, said, "We are not criminal, we are not murderer, we didn't commit the murder and this is unjust."

His weeping wife, Tooba, also declared the verdict unjust, saying, "I am not a murderer, and I am a mother, a mother."

Their son, Hamed, speaking in English said, "I did not drown my sisters anywhere."

Hamed's lawyer, Patrick McCann, said he was disappointed with the verdict, but said his client will appeal and he believes the other two defendants will as well.

But prosecutor Gerard Laarhuis welcomed the verdict.

"This jury found that four strong, vivacious and freedom-loving women were murdered by their own family in the most troubling of circumstances," Laarhuis said outside court.

"This verdict sends a very clear message about our Canadian values and the core principles in a free and democratic society that all Canadians enjoy and even visitors to Canada enjoy," he said to cheers of approval from onlookers.

The family had left Afghanistan in 1992 and lived in Pakistan, Australia and Dubai before settling in Canada in 2007. Shafia, a wealthy businessman, married Yahya because his first wife could not have children.

Shafia's first wife was living with him and his second wife. The polygamous relationship, if revealed, could have resulted in their deportation.

The prosecution painted a picture of a household controlled by a domineering Shafia, with Hamed keeping his sisters in line and doling out discipline when his father was away on frequent business trips to Dubai.

The months leading up to the deaths were not happy ones in the Shafia household, according to evidence presented at trial. Zainab, the oldest daughter, was forbidden to attend school for a year because she had a young Pakistani-Canadian boyfriend, and she fled to a shelter, terrified of her father, the court was told.

The prosecution said her parents found condoms in Sahar's room as well as photos of her wearing short skirts and hugging her Christian boyfriend, a relationship she had kept secret. Geeti was becoming almost impossible to control: skipping school, failing classes, being sent home for wearing revealing clothes and stealing, while declaring to authority figures that she wanted to be placed in foster care, according to the prosecution.

Shafia's first wife wrote in a diary that her husband beat her and "made life a torture," while his second wife called her a servant.

The prosecution presented wire taps and mobile phone records from the Shafia family in court to support their honor killing allegation. The wiretaps, which capture Shafia spewing vitriol about his dead daughters, calling them treacherous and whores and invoking the devil to defecate on their graves, were a focal point of the trial.

"There can be no betrayal, no treachery, no violation more than this," Shafia said on one recording. "Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows ... nothing is more dear to me than my honor."

Defense lawyers argued that at no point in the intercepts do the accused say they drowned the victims.

Shafia's lawyer, Peter Kemp, said after the verdicts that he believes the comments his client made on the wiretaps may have weighed more heavily on the jury's minds than the physical evidence in the case.

"He wasn't convicted for what he did," Kemp said. "He was convicted for what he said."

Angels We Have Heard On High: Activist Priest, 83, In Solitary Confinement by Abby Zimet

2012-01-30T12:07:00.000-06:00

I was not going to post anything more today. Just a day away from internet stuff -- BUT -- THIS is beyond the pale. A total disregard for human rights. It's a POLICE STATE "flexing its muscles" simply because SOMEONE considers this 83 year old PRIEST a "pain in the ass".

SOLITARY for NON-VIOLENT protest.

Are we ALL insane? (please follow link to original)
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Angels We Have Heard On High: Activist Priest, 83, In Solitary Confinement

by Abby Zimet

Jesuit priest and peace activist Father Bill "Bix" Bichsel, 83, is in his second week of a hunger strike to protest solitary confinement at Washington's SeaTac Federal Detention Center, where he'd been held for an earlier action against a proposed nuclear weapons plant in Tennessee. A member of Disarm Now Plowshares, Bichsel has been arrested several times for nonviolent civil disobedience at military bases, nuclear weapons manufacturers, and the School of the Americas. He is currently being punished - including having to wear shackles at his hearing - for an "unauthorized" visit by two Buddhist monks who drummed and prayed outside for him. Despite cold and health problems, Father Bichsel says he sings to himself in his cell. His resolve remains strong to fight against nuclear weapons and other US policies "that are without conscience." He has alot of work ahead of him.

Addresses:

William J. Bichsel, S.J
# 86275-020 SHU
P.O. Box 13900
Seattle, WA 98198 – 1090

Here is list of people to contact:

Charles E. Samuels, Jr.
Director, Federal Bureau of Prisons
320 First St., NW,
Washington, DC 20534
Office hours: 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Eastern time
Monday through Friday
For general information, call 202-307-3198.

Marion Feather, Warden
Federal Detention Center SeaTac
P.O. Box 13901
Seattle, WA 98198
Phone: 206-870-5700
Fax: 206-870-5717
E-mail: mxfeather@bop.gov

Terry McGuire
The Catholic Northwest Progress
710 9th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98104
Terry.McGuire@seattlearch.org
Phone: 206-382-4560
Fax: 206-382-4840

The News Tribune
P.O. Box 11000, Tacoma, WA 98411
Phone: 253-597-8742
Matt Misterek
(253) 597-8472
matt.misterek@thenewstribune.com

The Seattle Times
PO Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111
Newsroom: (206) 464-2200
Newsroom fax: (206) 464-2261
Newsroom and Seattletimes.com staff
Main: (206) 464-2111
Accepts letters of up to 200 words at opinion@seattletimes.com

Contact your government representatives
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Patty Murray– www.murray.senate.gov/email/index.cfm
Tacoma Office
950 Pacific Avenue, Ste. 650
Tacoma, Washington 98402
Phone: (253) 572-3636
Fax: (253) 572-9488

Maria Cantwell – www.cantwell.senate.gov/contact/

Gov. Christine Gregoire
www.governor.wa.gov/contact/

Norm Dicks
www.house.gov/dicks/email.shtml

Archbishop Sartain
Archdiocese of Seattle, 710 9th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104
Phone: 206-382-4560 | Fax: 206-382-4840

Now, A little Music

2012-01-30T01:42:00.001-06:00

Rosemary Clooney~ What'll I do~

2012-01-30T01:41:00.002-06:00

Lotte Lenya - Pirate Jenny

2012-01-30T01:21:00.002-06:00

Lotte Lenya sings Alabama Song

2012-01-30T01:18:00.002-06:00

Edith Piaf - Milord

2012-01-30T01:16:00.000-06:00

Ella Fitzgerald - Louis Armstrong "Dream a Little Dream of

2012-01-30T01:12:00.002-06:00

It's Official: German Economy Minister Demands Surrender Of Greek Budget Policy, Says It Is First Of Many Such Sovereign "Requests"

2012-01-29T18:17:00.000-06:00

An interesting post from "Zero Hedge" submitted by Tyler Durden. Please follow link to original
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It's Official: German Economy Minister Demands Surrender Of Greek Budget Policy, Says It Is First Of Many Such Sovereign "Requests"

While over the past 2 days there may have been some confusion as to who, what, how or where is demanding that Greece abdicate fiscal sovereignty (with some of our German readers supposedly insulted by the suggestion that this idea originated in Berlin, and specifically with politicians elected by a majority of the German population), today's quotefest from German Economy Minister Philipp Roesler appearing in Germany's Bild should put any such questions to bed. And from this point on, Greece would be advised to not play dumb anymore vis-a-vis German annexation demands. So from Reuters, "Greece must surrender control of its budget policy to outside institutions if it cannot implement reforms attached to euro zone rescue measures, the German economy minister was quoted as saying on Sunday. Philipp Roesler became the first German cabinet member to openly endorse a proposal for Greece to surrender budget control after Reuters quoted a European source on Friday as saying Berlin wants Athens to give up budget control." And some bad news for our Portuguese (and then Spanish) readers: you are next.

More:

"We need more leadership and monitoring when it comes to implementing the reform course," Roesler, also vice chancellor, told Bild newspaper, according to an advance of an interview to be published on Monday.

"If the Greeks aren't able to succeed themselves with this, then there must be stronger leadership and monitoring from abroad, for example through the EU," added Roesler, chairman of the Free Democrats (FDP) who share power with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Reuters reported on Friday that Germany wants Greece to give up control of budget policy to European institutions as part of discussions over a second rescue package.

Greece, which has repeatedly failed to meet the fiscal targets set out by its international lenders, is in talks to finalise a second 130 billion-euro ($172 billion) package.

With many Greeks blaming Germans for the austerity medicine their country has been forced to swallow, officials in Athens dismissed the idea of relinquishing budget control as out of the question.

Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said on Sunday Greece was perfectly capable of making good on its promises.

"Anyone who puts a nation before the dilemma of 'economic assistance or national dignity' ignores some key historical lessons," he said in a statement before heading to Brussels for a European Union summit on Monday.

And by the way, this is just the beginning:

A government source in Berlin said Germany's proposal was aimed not just at Greece but also at other struggling euro zone members that receive aid and are unable to make good on their obligations.

So yes, it is true, and Germany is dead serious. Ball is in the Greek court now: just how far will the new technocrat PM go to sell its people in exchange for a few banker smiles?

Obama Risks Alienating Republicans By Using Facts Radical Tactic Sparks Outrage

2012-01-29T18:06:00.000-06:00

THis from "The Borowitz Report" - please follow link to original
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Obama Risks Alienating Republicans By Using Facts
Radical Tactic Sparks Outrage

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – In what some critics are calling the most radical tactic ever employed in a State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama risked alienating congressional Republicans last night by repeatedly using facts.

Mr. Obama stirred controversy throughout the speech with his relentless references to facts, data, and things that have actually happened, all long considered the third rail of American politics.

As the President made reference to tax rates and unemployment numbers, as well as sixteen separate mentions of Osama bin Laden, congressional Republicans’ blood began to boil.

After the speech, a furious Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters, “It’s been a longstanding tradition in our politics not to use facts in a State of the Union Address, a tradition the President chose to ignore in an outrageous way tonight. I won’t stand for it and the American people won’t stand for it.”

“We want to work with the President for the good of the American people,” added House Speaker John Boehner. “But he’s going to have to take facts off the table. That’s a deal-breaker for us.”

The President did not mention any of his GOP presidential rivals by name in his speech, but at one point said that government should be “leaner,” a blatant jab at former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

These folks are NAZIS. Let's stop beating around the bush.

2012-01-28T23:25:00.000-06:00

Given all the "hang 'em", "shoot 'em", "kill the libtards" crap floating around the "interwebs", and our "public discourse" these days --- can we finally agree that most of these folks are honest-to-God, absolute, bona fide, NAZIS!!

No more "nice" words -- NAZIS, NAZIS, NAZIS. Nothing more, nothing less. Nazis!

NC GOP lawmaker calls for public hangings, including for abortion providers

2012-01-28T16:31:00.000-06:00

This from "Raw Story" - follow link to original.

What century am I living in? What country is it? Are any of these folks "edumacated"? Once again, I'm really happy I'm approaching 73 years old, and not 33.

There's so much crap being reported, so many lies being spewed by our "leaders", and "wannabe leaders", that there are times I just want to curl up into a little ball and cry. What is worse, folks actually BELIEVE the most insane crap.

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NC GOP lawmaker calls for public hangings, including for abortion providers

A Republican lawmaker from North Carolina is seeking a return to the days of public hangings, according to WRAL-TV.

Rep. Larry Pittman delivered an email this week to every member of the state’s General Assembly, describing that hangings needed to be reinstated as a “deterrent to crime,” including those who provide abortions.

“We need to make the death penalty a real deterrent again by actually carrying it out,” Pittman wrote. “Every appeal that can be made should have to be made at one time, not in a serial manner. If murderers (and I would include abortionists, rapists, and kidnappers, as well) are actually executed, it will at least have the deterrent effect upon them. For my money, we should go back to public hangings, which would be more of a deterrent to others, as well.”

Pitmman, whose radical position was driven by an inmate bragging about life in prison and delaying his execution date, said he intended the email to be sent to just one colleague instead of the entire chamber.

The last legal public hanging in America occurred in 1936 in Owensboro, Kentucky.

Apple has created up to 700,000 jobs ... in Asia

2012-01-28T15:56:00.000-06:00

This from "AmericaBlog News - read. Follow link to original
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Apple has created up to 700,000 jobs ... in Asia
By Gaius Publius on 1/28/2012 09:15:00 AM

This is a two-fer; I'm going to link two opinion pieces to make one point.

First, Paul Krugman, in a recent column commenting on Mitch Daniels' assertion that American businessman Steve Jobs was a hero–job creator who should be emulated. He gets to the Apple point midway through (my emphasis):

[A]nyone who reads The New York Times knows that [Daniels'] assertion about job creation was completely false: Apple employs very few people in this country.

A big report in The Times last Sunday laid out the facts. Although Apple is now America’s biggest U.S. corporation as measured by market value, it employs only 43,000 people in the United States, a tenth as many as General Motors employed when it was the largest American firm.

Apple does, however, indirectly employ around 700,000 people in its various suppliers. Unfortunately, almost none of those people are in America.

Krugman points out that it's not just the low wages; it's also the local supply infrastructure. But even so, how did the whole of it, the factories and that lovely network of local parts suppliers, get there to begin with?

Answer — American industrial policy. Yes, we did it to ourselves. (By "we" I mean the do-ers, Our Betters; and by "ourselves" I mean the do-ees, you and me.)

American government always has an industrial policy. We've never been without one. And in the last 30 years, the right-wing Reagan government — and every U.S. government since — has grown campaign-contribution-fat by picking corporate winners and labor losers in the newspeakishly named "free market." The rest is just disinformation, something to keep you confused until they've robbed you totally blind.

Here's Robert Reich to make the connection:

Jobs Won't Come Back to America Until the Government Pushes Greedy Corporate Executives to Invest at Home

That's his headline, not to put too fine a point on it.

And here's a bit of the meat (my emphasis below).

... An Apple executive says “We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems. Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” He might have added “and showing a big enough profits to continually increase our share price.”

Most executives of American companies agree. If they can make it best and cheapest in China, or anywhere else, that’s where it will be made. Don’t blame them. ... What they want in America is lower corporate taxes, less regulation, and fewer unionized workers. But none of these will bring good jobs to America. These steps may lower the costs of production here, but global companies can always find even lower costs abroad. ...

But here’s the political problem. American firms have huge clout in Washington. They maintain legions of lobbyists and are pouring boatloads of money into political campaigns. After the Supreme Court’s Citizen’s United decision, there’s no limit.

Who represents the American workforce? ... [C]orporate America isn’t their friend. Without bold government action on behalf of our workforce, good American jobs will continue to disappear.

The headline makes the point stronger than the piece itself, but still, the point is there.

Government always acts (or not-acts) in someone's behalf. It always picks winners and losers, in exactly the same way you do when you decide to see Chucky Does Paris rather than Midnight in Missoula — or even when you stay home instead with a big box of deep-fried Drummer Boy Wings and your tears. Someone walks away with your dollar, and the rest just walk. Same diff.

The real question is — What's American labor, chained as it is to the NeoLiberal-dominated Democratic party, going to do about it?

Not many choices, are there? I can think of just three — Leave the party. Kick those corporate-financed NeoLibs out of first position and take over. Whine.

If you don't pick (1) or (2), the third picks you (not to put too fine a point on it).