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Posted: October 27, 2015 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Ben Carson, Ben Fields, David Green, Donald Trump, Hobby Lobby, illegal antiquities, Leon Lott, South Carolina, Thomas Jefferson, University of Virginia | 20 Comments
You've probably seen the latest police violence story out of South Carolina. From Mother Jones: Disturbing Video Shows School Cop Body Slam and Drag a Black Female Student.
Authorities in Richland County, South Carolina, are investigating a video that surfaced Monday showing a uniformed officer aggressively confronting a high school student. Local station WIS-TV reports that county sheriff's deputies are investigating the incident, which took place on Monday at Spring Valley High School, according to school officials. The video, which appears to have been recorded on a cellphone by a classmate, shows a white male officer standing over a black female student sitting at her desk; moments later he grabs the student and flips her on her back. After dragging her across the floor, the officer says, "Hands behind your back—give me your hands." The video has no additional context as to what led to or followed the altercation.
"Parents are heartbroken as this is just another example of the intolerance that continues to be of issue in Richland County School District Two, particularly with families and children of color," a local black parents group wrote in a statement responding to the video.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott told WIS-TV that the school resource officer (SRO) was responding to a student who was refusing to leave class. "The student was told she was under arrest for disturbing school and given instructions, which she again refused," Lott said. "The video then shows the student resisting and being arrested by the SRO."
Here's the video.
Why on earth was that level of violence necessary? It's not even clear what this young girl did to cause the teach to order her to leave class. From WISTV10: Sheriff contacts FBI, DOJ to investigate violent incident involving deputy at Spring Valley.
Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says he's asked the FBI to investigate an incident involving a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School.
Monday night Lott called the Special Agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigations for South Carolina, Dave Thomas to request an independent investigation of the incident. Tuesday morning the Sheriff followed up with a formal written request to U.S. Attorney William Nettles and Thomas for the US Justice Department asking for a formal investigation.
Richland School District 2 school officials have banned the officer from the district in response to a video supposedly taken at Spring Valley High School showing the officer slamming and dragging a student from her desk.
School officials confirmed the incident happened on Monday between a female student and school resource officer Ben Fields.
You can watch other angles of the violent attack at the link.
Deputy Ben Fields
Sheriff Lott says he wants to know what happened beyond the video. He said his department will cooperate with the federal investigation.
"The public wants answers. I want answers too and we're going to get them very quickly, and we're going to make sure the public knows what we're going to do and why we're going to do it. There's nothing that we're going to hide at the Sheriff's Department," Lott said. "His actions reflect on all of us and I'm about as upset as anybody can be right now."
Fields will not be back at any school pending the results of an investigation, Lt. Wilson said. Fields is currently on unpaid leave.
According to Heavy.com, the girl was using her cell phone in class and refused to get off it. Then a teacher and administrator told her to leave class. I have to believe there was more going on between this girl and the teacher/administration. We'll probably learn more in the days to come. Also from Heavy, a student named Aaron Johnson who was in class when the incident happened said the girl was new to the school and was "sitting quietly."
Johnson said, "When I asked (their teacher) Mr. Long if he felt bad for what happened to her … his reply was 'she should have cooperated.'"
He added, "I think we were all in shock and afraid they would say something to us, he put another girl in handcuffs for standing up, like standing up for the girl."
Apparently a boy in the class was also arrested and was still being held yesterday. Read more about Ben Fields past history and more videos at the Heavy link.
Hobby Lobby CEO David Green holding a bible.
The family that owns Hobby Lobby created some bad Karma for itself with its lawsuit over having to provide access to birth control in its health insurance plans, and no it's coming back to bite them. Exclusive from The Daily Beast: Feds Investigate Hobby Lobby Boss for Illicit Artifacts.
In 2011, a shipment of somewhere between 200 to 300 small clay tablets on their way to Oklahoma City from Israel was seized by U.S. Customs agents in Memphis. The tablets were inscribed in cuneiform—the script of ancient Assyria and Babylonia, present-day Iraq—and were thousands of years old. Their destination was the compound of the Hobby Lobby corporation, which became famous last year for winning a landmark Supreme Court case on religious freedom and government mandates. A senior law enforcement source with extensive knowledge of antiquities smuggling confirmed that these ancient artifacts had been purchased and were being imported by the deeply-religious owners of the crafting giant, the Green family of Oklahoma City. For the last four years, law enforcement sources tell The Daily Beast, the Greens have been under federal investigation for the illicit importation of cultural heritage from Iraq.
These tablets, like the other 40,000 or so ancient artifacts owned by the Green family, were destined for the Museum of the Bible, the giant new museum funded by the Greens, slated to open in Washington, D.C., in 2017. Both the seizure of the cuneiform tablets and the subsequent federal investigation were confirmed to us by Cary Summers, the president of the Museum of the Bible.
If the investigation ends with a decision to prosecute, on either criminal or civil charges, the Greens may be forced to forfeit the tablets to the government. There may also be a fine involved. The Green family, who successfully forced the federal government to legally recognize their personal moral standards, now find themselves on the other side of the docket, under suspicion of having attempted to contravene U.S. laws.
It's not yet clear if a crime has been committed, but the fact that the investigation has gone on so long suggests that some of the antiquities may have been illegally purchased and imported. Read the rest at the link.
A new CBS/NYT poll has Ben Carson leading Donald Trump nationally. CBS reports:
Ben Carson has surpassed Donald Trump and now narrowly leads the Republican field in the race for the nomination in the latest national CBS News/New York Times Poll.
Twenty-six percent of Republican primary voters back Carson, giving him a four-point edge over Trump (22 percent). Support for Carson has quadrupled since August.
The rest of the Republican presidential candidates lag far behind in single digits. Marco Rubio is now in third place (eight percent), followed by Jeb Bush (seven percent) and Carly Fiorina (seven percent). All other candidates are at four percent or lower.
Carson has made gains across many key Republican groups. In a reversal from earlier this month, he is now ahead of Trump among women and is running neck and neck with him among men. Carson's support among evangelicals has risen and he now leads Trump by more than 20 points with this group.
Carson performs well among conservative Republicans and those who identify as Tea partiers. Trump does well with moderates and leads Carson among those without a college degree – although Trump had a larger advantage with non-college graduates earlier this month.
Perhaps we're going to go through a cycle that resembles what happened in the Republican race in 2012–except that the cycles are longer. Could it be that Donald Trump is on his way out? Of course Trump is claiming the polls are mistaken. From Mediaite:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump explained on MSNBC's Morning Joe that the reason rival Ben Carson had surpassed him in recent polls was because they weren't "scientific." ….
"I think you have to understand polls…" Trump said. "I believe in polls. I generally believe in polls. The thing with these polls, they are all so different. They are coming from all over the lot where one guy is up here, somebody else is up there, you see swings of ten and twelve points immediately, even the same day."
Trump actually may have a good point. Anyway, the problem with Ben Carson taking over the lead is that he is even scarier than Trump. Paul Waldman at The Week: How Ben Carson's snoozy demeanor masks his bonkers views.
Ben Carson is calm — calm like a cool spring breeze, or a long nap on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The Republican presidential hopeful speaks softly and slowly. He doesn't wave his arms about. He shows barely any emotion at all. But Ben Carson is also the possessor of ideas that are positively bonkers, not just about policy questions, but about the world and how it works.
This odd combination of a gentle manner and extremist ideas seems to be just what a healthy chunk of the Republican electorate is looking for. Carson is running a close second to Donald Trump nationally, and leading in Iowa. As The New York Times recently reported, Iowa voters in particular are enraptured with Carson's manner. "That smile and his soft voice makes people very comforted," said one farmer. "I believe someone as mild-mannered and gentlemanly as Ben Carson is just about the only kind of person that could" get things done in Washington, said another Iowan.
You'd think they were talking about someone with moderate views who'd be able to get along and work with anyone, not someone who wants to outlaw abortion even in cases of rape and incest, thinks we should ditch Medicare, and holds to all manner of weird conspiracy theories. And that's not to mention all the stuff the retired neurosurgeon says about slavery and Nazis, his belief that Muslims should be barred from the presidency unless they offer a public disavowal of their religion, or his latest proposal to turn the Department of Education into something that sounds like it comes out of China's Cultural Revolution, in which he would have students report professors who displayed political bias to the government so universities' funding could be cut.
Read the rest at The Week.
More interesting Ben Carson links:
Inside Higher Ed: Ben Carson explains how he would have education department identify and end "extreme views" on campus.
News Mic: Ben Carson Just Said Women Seeking Abortions are Tantamount to Slave Owners.
Mother Jones: Does Ben Carson Believe Most Evangelical Voters Are Going to Hell?
Dakinikat told me about this amazing and fascinating story about a historical find related to Thomas Jefferson. From NPR: Historic Chemistry Lab With Links To Thomas Jefferson Discovered Behind Wall.
A hidden chemistry lab was unearthed by a worker doing renovations to the iconic Rotunda at the University of Virginia, and school officials say the room is directly linked to the third U.S. president, Thomas Jefferson, who helped design the building.
The "chemical hearth," which dates back to the 1820s, is thought to be one of the few remaining in the world. It featured two sources of heat for conducting experiments and a system for pulling out fumes.
According to the University of Virginia press release, the room, described as "a semi-circular niche in the north end of the Lower East Oval Room," was preserved because the walls of the hearth were sealed shut in the mid-1800s:
This photo from the University of Virginia shows a chemical hearth discovered in the Rotunda at the University of Virginia during renovations at the school in Charlottesville, Va.
Dan Addison /University of Virginia Communications
"The University of Virginia's Rotunda still has its secrets, as conservators are discovering amid the building's ongoing two-year renovation.
"One of them is a chemical hearth, part of an early science classroom. It had been sealed in one of the lower-floor walls of the Rotunda since the 1850s, and thus was protected from the 1895 fire that destroyed much of the building's interior.
"Two small fireboxes of the hearth were uncovered in a 1970s renovation, but the hearth itself remained hidden until the current round of renovations. When preparing for the current renovations, workers examined some of the cavities in the walls and found the rest of the chemistry hearth."
The discovery was made by Matt Scheidt, who is a project manager for the company overseeing the renovations to the rotunda, according to the Charlottesville Newsplex. Scheidt told the publication he wanted to know how thick the walls were.
What else is happening? Please share your thoughts and links in the comment thread and enjoy the rest of your Tuesday.
Wednesday Reads: Hobby Lobby Loves Them Pre-Cooked
Posted: July 30, 2014 | Author: Minkoff Minx | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: abortion, Climate change, Felicia Allen, Hobby Lobby, hypocrisy, Jacqueline Bouvier (Kennedy), John Kerry, murder, Nixon tapes, NRA, religious violence, Reproductive Rights, Robert J. Dowlut | 21 Comments
You must have heard about the latest from Hobby Lobby, the hypocrisy is so disgusting…Hobby Lobby Allegedly Fired Employee Due to Pregnancy
When a very pregnant Felicia Allen applied for medical leave from her job at Hobby Lobby three years ago, one might think that the company best known for denying its employees insurance coverage of certain contraceptives—on the false grounds that they cause abortions—would show equal concern for helping one of its employees when she learned she was pregnant. Instead, Allen says the self-professed evangelical Christian arts-and-crafts chain fired her and then tried to prevent her from accessing unemployment benefits. "They didn't even want me to come back after having my baby, to provide for it," she says. Her allegations—as well as those brought by other former Hobby Lobby employees—call into question the company's public claims when it comes to protecting life and operating its business with Christian values. Additionally, they highlight a practice by which Hobby Lobby prevents its employees from seeking justice through the courts.
Yeah, you can read more details at the link. But as Eric Loomis, LG&M points out: That Pro-Life Hobby Lobby
And here I thought Hobby Lobby was acting out of very strong principle for life and not because it hates women and wants to punish them for having sex. There's also this gem:
When Allen applied for unemployment benefits, she says Hobby Lobby's corporate office gave the unemployment agency a false version of events, claiming she could have taken off personal leave but chose not to. In the end, Allen says she won her claim for unemployment benefits, but she felt she had been wrongly discriminated based on the fact that she was pregnant. In February 2012 she sued Hobby Lobby, but her lawsuit was swiftly dropped because, like most—if not all—Hobby Lobby employees, Allen had signed away her rights to sue the company. Though the multibillion-dollar, nearly 600-store chain took its legal claim against the federal government all the way to the Supreme Court when it didn't want to honor the health insurance requirements of the Affordable Care Act, the company forbids its employees from seeking justice in the court of law. Allen had signed a binding arbitration agreement upon taking the job, though she says she doesn't remember doing so. The agreement, which all Hobby Lobby employees are required to sign, forces employees to resolve legal disputes outside of court through a process known as arbitration.
Lying so she couldn't get unemployment is very special, but forcing employees to sign documents waiving their right to sue the company in order to be hired should be as illegal as the yellow-dog contract. I would ask how something like that is even legal in this nation, but of course I already know why–because corporations control our lives in ways they have not in a century.
I have plenty more links for you, but because I must take the boy to his endocrinologist in Atlanta tomorrow…I will just give it to you in dump fashion. Religious violence in 2013 displaced millions | Al Jazeera America
Millions of people were forced from their homes because of their religious beliefs last year, the U.S. government said Monday, citing the devastating impact of conflicts in Syria, Iraq and the Central African Republic. Secretary of State John Kerry called the displacement of families and devastation of communities from sectarian violence a troubling trend in the world, as he launched the State Department 2013 report on religious freedom. The report said that in much of the Middle East, the Christian presence is becoming "a shadow of its former self." Hundreds of thousands of minority Christians have fled Syria after three years of civil war. It also highlighted more than one million people displaced in the Central African Republic during 2013, amid an upsurge in Christian-Muslim violence. In Southeast Asia, the spread of anti-Muslim violence spread from Myanmar's volatile west to central Meiktila, with up to 100 deaths and 12,000 displaced. Kerry further cited the "savagery and incredible brutality" by the al-Qaeda-inspired militant group active in Iraq and Syria, known as the Islamic State, saying it had slaughtered Shiite Muslims and forcibly converted Christians under threat of death. The report, released annually, reviews how religious freedoms are respected and violated in almost 200 countries and territories.
This 19-year-old confessed to killing a woman in 1963. You won't believe what happened next.
In 1963, a 17-year-old Indiana youth named Robert J. Dowlut reportedly confessed to police — amid a pile of evidence — that he'd killed a local woman. The next year, a jury of his peers heard the case and found Dowlut guilty. What happened next? A) He died in the electric chair. B) He lived a long life and is currently the chief lawyer for the National Rifle Association.
Read about this here: The NRA's Murder Mystery | Mother Jones I really don't know why they bother to research this next item of news, WASHINGTON: Past-due debt prevalent across U.S., with South the highest | Economy | McClatchy DC What more would anyone expect. At least there is Good News: Mississippi's Only Abortion Clinic Can Remain Open Here is a few health stories: Take Two: Just How Good Are Generic Meds Anyway? | Mother Jones Previously unknown virus that lives in half the world's population could play a major role in obesity and diabetes – Medical News Today The Challenges of Having Sex as a Little Person – Merissa Nathan Gerson – The Atlantic And let's not stop with little people sex, what about panda sex: Nixon on Panda Sex – Lawyers, Guns & Money In fact, more of Nixon's tapes are in the news, as two new books are released, The Untapped Secrets of the Nixon Tapes – Evan Thomas – The Atlantic From a former president to a former First Lady: The Best "Dear John Letter" Ever Sent | Mother Jones
In 1947, years before she met John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Lee Bouvier sent her high school boyfriend what is maybe my favorite Dear John letter of all time.
"I've always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person—starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them—and I've always thought that every minute away from them would be hell—so looking at it that [way] I guess I'm not in love with you."
Jackie O. would have been 85 Monday. RIP.
For more fascinating reads, look at this: Read the Notorious RBG at Her Most Blistering
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, teeny tiny goddess of judicial feminism incarnate, has authored many a badass piece of legal writing in her day. Now, thanks to some devoted brainiacs who are better at this sort of thing than I am, you can read the sharpest work of the grand dame in one place.
The folks at People for the American Way (a progressive think tank) have put together a lovely treasury of RBG's greatest hits. Perfect light reading for the next time you put your head in a big pile of curls on your head and take a bubble bath, or lie out on a Caribbean beach, or a good thing to read to the kids when you're trying to get them to bed. Yep. Just a little light legal reading.
Meanwhile, Officials Pull Back From Crash Site as the Army Puts Pressure on Rebels – NYTimes.com And if you are worried about the big flood: Climate refugees, DO NOT MOVE TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST | Grist
Many Seattle residents revere Cliff Mass as the Yoda of weather in the Northwest. On his blog and through spots in local media, this professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington helps us process our snowpocalypses and measure out Lexapro for 10 months of the year. Now he's turning his big-weather brain to something regularly on our minds here at Grist: "As global warming takes hold later in the century, where will be the best place in the lower 48 states to escape its worst effects?" Here's the short answer from Cliff:
Cliff Mass
Everyone stay where you are.
On his blog entry, Mass goes into much more scientific detail on climate effects for the Lower 48 (complete with loads more charts). But even from this map, we can glean a few key takeaways.
You'll notice Mass highlighted most of the Eastern seaboard, the Gulf of Mexico, and sections of California in bright red. Areas of sea-level rise? Ohnonononono. You misunderstand completely. Those are spots where candy will grow on trees — because adaptation! Florida's famous orange groves will evolve into chocolate orange groves and just work their way up the coast to Connecticut. Delicious!
Take a look at all that yellow in the Southwest. Any guesses? Correct: That is precisely where state and local governments are likely to enforce three-day workweeks. And if you worry that moving to Phoenix, Los Angeles, or Austin means you'll spend every extra-long weekend wearing spikes and riding in a rusty dune buggy on your way to bludgeon the neighbors to death over water resources, here's a tip: Don't!
Orange! This DOES NOT mean this area gets more oranges (duh, pay attention; that was yellow). It does signify that every day will be Christmas. It also signifies that more Christmases will be wetter, windier, and generally more hurricane-y. P.S. I got you galoshes. (AGAIN, I know. Tee-hee!) Merry Christmas!
Purple, purple, purple — Big Purp practically owns the map. Good thing, too, because from Montana to Maine, climate-changed citizenry will THRILL to the incredible cellphone coverage. No more dropped calls in Chicago. No more blips in Butte. Just blazing-fast downloads and crystal-clear audio, from your hot, cracked lips to your heatstroked fingertips. (Caveat: Customers will notice an increase in dropped calls from underground bunkers and heat hovels.)
Say what about the green dots? Oh, those are flooding rivers and total shitholes.
Now for the last few remaining links for the day, a couple of stories from Hollywood and two others on digging up the past… Effort to save 'Tara' plantation facade before it's 'Gone with the Wind' – NY Daily News Kodak, Studios Negotiating Last Ditch Effort to Keep Film in Hollywood – Hollywood Reporter Traces of Lincoln's Courthouse Found in Illinois – Archaeology Magazine Erosion Exposes Human Remains on Kwajalein Atoll – Archaeology Magazine Have a good day and hope you share your thoughts in the comments below. A woman waves from a float during the Carnaval des Fleurs…
Fourth of July Reads
Posted: July 4, 2014 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics, Women's Rights | Tags: corporate personhood, corporatizing religious liberty, Declaration of Independence, Fourth of July, Hobby Lobby, Independence Day, John Roberts, legal precedent, religion, Samuel Alito, SCOTUS, separation of church and state, Statue of Liberty, Wheaton College | 14 Comments
Today we celebrate the Declaration of Independence. I've assembled a few informational readings about this day in history.
From The Cagle Post: Fourth of July Fast Facts.
"I'm confused. I thought July 4 was the day our country declared independence from King George III of Great Britain."
"Actually, according to ConstitutionFacts.com, that's not so. The Continental Congress declared independence from Great Britain on July 2, 1776."
"Then why do we celebrate our independence on the Fourth every year? Is that when we started the American Revolution?"
"That is a common misunderstanding, as well. The American Revolution began in April 1775, more than a year earlier."
"I'm stumped. Was the Fourth the day Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft of the Declaration of Independence?"
"Nope. Thomas Jefferson wrote the first draft in June 1776. Also, Jefferson didn't write the Declaration alone."
"He didn't? I always thought he was the sole author."
"A common misconception. In fact, the Continental Congress appointed a five-person to write the Declaration. It included Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston and Roger Sherman." ….
"Though Jefferson wrote the first draft, it was changed 86 times by other members of the committee and other members of the Continental Congress."
I did not know that.
David Armitage at The Wall Street Journal: The Declaration of Independence: The Words Heard Around the World.
The Declaration of Independence is the birth certificate of the American nation—the first public document ever to use the name "the United States of America"—and has been fundamental to American history longer than any other text. It enshrined what came to be seen as the most succinct and memorable statement of the ideals on which the U.S. was founded: the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the consent of the governed; and resistance to tyranny.
But the Declaration's influence wasn't limited to the American colonies of the late 18th century. No American document has had a greater impact on the wider world. As the first successful declaration of independence in history, it helped to inspire countless movements for independence, self-determination and revolution after 1776 and to this very day. As the 19th-century Hungarian nationalist, Lajos Kossuth, put it, the U.S. Declaration of Independence was nothing less than "the noblest, happiest page in mankind's history."
In telling this story of global influence, however, it is important to separate two distinct elements of the Declaration—elements that sometimes get conflated. The first of these is the assertion of popular sovereignty to create a new state: in the Declaration's words, the right of "one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them." The second and more famous element of the Declaration is its ringing endorsement of the sanctity of the individual: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."
From the LA Times: The slow-spreading news of American independence.
In this era of instant communication, it's interesting to note the slow distribution of the Declaration, and the spreading of the word to those on whose behalf independence had been declared. (Imagine the Twitter version: Dudes, we're on our own. #independence #totallyrad #stickitkinggeorge).
The text was set in type by Philadelphia printer John Dunlap just hours after the Continental Congress approved the manifesto on July 4. He ran off about 200 copies, most of which were then distributed via horse and boat around the Colonies. He reprinted it in his own newspaper, Dunlap's Pennsylvania Packet, or The General Advertiser (great newspaper names back then). Over the next few weeks, Jefferson's stirring words were reprinted inlocal newspapers and pamphlets around the Colonies.
And, naturally, in Britain. It took more than a month for the first reports of the Declaration to reach Britain in letters ferried by the Mercury packet ship. Gen. William Howe, who was leading the crown's forces in the Colonies, included a brief mention in his report to his overseers. So the first public airing of the news came in the London Gazette, the crown's official paper. If you weren't a close reader, you could have easily missed it.
In the four-page issue dated Aug. 6-Aug. 10, 1776, the Gazette's lead story was Howe's update of the war, reporting that "the Rebels, who are numerous, and are very advantageously posted with strong Entrenchments both upon Long Island and that of New York, with more than One Hundred pieces of Cannon for the Defence of the Town towards the Sea, and to obstruct the passage of the [British] Fleet up the North [Hudson] River, besides a considerable Field Train of artillery."
Finally, Carina Kolodny at Huffington Post: This Is Not Your Independence Day.
The 4th of July might commemorate the independence of our country — but it also serves as a bitter reminder that in 1776, the country that I love had no place for me in it.
When our founding fathers penned, "All men are created equal," they meant it. Not all people. Not all humans. Just all men — the only reason they didn't feel obliged to specify "white" men is because, at the time, men of color were considered less than men, less than human.
The 4th is not my Independence Day — and if you're a Caucasian woman, it isn't yours either. Our "independence" didn't come for another 143 years, with the passage of The Woman's Suffrage Amendment in 1919. The 4th of July is also not Independence Day for people of color. It wasn't until the 15th Amendment was ratified in 1870 that all men had the right to vote regardless of race — on paper, that is, not in practice. People of color were systematically, and all too successfully, disenfranchised for another century. July 4th of 1776 was certainly not a day of Independence or reverence for Native Americans. It wasn't until 1924 that Native Americans could unilaterally become citizens of the United States and have the voting rights to go with it.
Now, before anyone argues that Independence is about more than voting rights, I'd like to point out that our Founding Fathers would fundamentally disagree with you. The Revolutionary War was fought, in large part, because of "taxation without representation" — the then English colonists believed they were not free because their voices were not represented. The right to vote, the right to have your say is the delineating characteristic of a democracy.
The Aftermath of the Hobby Lobby Decision
On that note, today many concerned citizens are looking back at the latest Supreme Court decisions that take women backwards in their pursuit of freedom and autonomy. The court-approved limits on access to birth control go beyond the Hobby Lobby decision. Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog: Broader right to object to birth control.
Expanding the rights of religious opponents of birth control, a divided Supreme Court on Thursday afternoon spared an Illinois college — and maybe hundreds of other non-profit institutions — from obeying government regulations that seek to assure access to pregnancy prevention services for female workers and students. In the same order, the majority essentially told the government to modify its own rules if it wants to keep those services available.
Three Justices wrote a sharply worded dissent, accusing the majority of creating on its own a "new administrative regime" that will seriously complicate the operation of the birth control mandate under the new federal health care law. The majority, the dissenters said, "has no reason to think that the administrative scheme it foists on the government today is workable or effective on a national scale."
The ruling, which the majority insisted was temporary and had settled nothing finally about the legal issues at stake, came three days after the Court in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby had given for-profit businesses whose owners have religious objections to birth control a right to refuse to provide those services in their employee health plans.
The plea by Wheaton College, a religious institution in Illinois with about 3,000 students, moved the Court beyond for-profit firms to the world of non-profit religious colleges, hospitals, and other charities. The government had already moved to accommodate their beliefs, but that had not gone far enough for the college and for scores of other non-profits. With the Court's new order, they gained additional separation from the birth-control mandate.
At Mother Jones, Kevin Drum writes: Supreme Court Now Playing Cute PR Games With Hobby Lobby Decision.
For the last few days, there's been a broad argument about whether the Hobby Lobby ruling was a narrow one—as Alito himself insisted it was—or was merely an opening volley that opened the door to much broader rulings in the future. After Tuesday's follow-up order—which expanded the original ruling to cover all contraceptives, not just those that the plaintiffs considered abortifacients—and today's order—which rejected a compromise that the original ruling praised—it sure seems like this argument has been settled. This is just the opening volley. We can expect much more aggressive follow-ups from this court in the future.
POSTSCRIPT: It's worth noting that quite aside from whether you agree with the Hobby Lobby decision, this is shameful behavior from the conservatives on the court. As near as I can tell, they're now playing PR games worthy of a seasoned politico, deliberately releasing a seemingly narrow opinion in order to generate a certain kind of coverage, and then following it up later in the sure knowledge that its "revisions" won't get nearly as much attention.
At Slate, Micah Schwartzman, Richard Schragger, and Nelson Tebbe explain that Hobby Lobby rewrites religious-freedom law in ways that ignore everything that came before.
Monday's decision in Hobby Lobby was unprecedented. Much of the commentary has focused on the Supreme Court's decision to extend rights of religious free exercise to for-profit corporations. Hobby Lobby is for religion what Citizens United was for free speech—the corporatization of our basic liberties. But Hobby Lobby is also unprecedented in another, equally important way. For the first time, the court has interpreted a federal statute, theReligious Freedom Restoration Act (or RFRA), as affording more protection for religion than has ever been provided under the First Amendment. While some have read Hobby Lobby as a narrow statutory ruling, it is much more than that. The court has eviscerated decades of case law and, having done that, invites a new generation of challenges to federal laws, including those designed to protect civil rights.
The authors explain how the right wing Roberts Court has moved beyond any concern for legal precedent in making its decisions.
Hobby Lobby is unprecedented because it corporatizes religious liberty. It extends to for-profit businesses the rights and privileges that have long been associated only with churches and religious nonprofits. But that change is the result of a more pervasive and deeper upending of the law of religious liberty in America. Ignoring congressional intent, the court reads RFRA as having shed its First Amendment skin. It is not entirely clear what American law will look like after that change. But if anything is clear, it is that the Roberts Court is now unconstrained by precedent. It has loosened itself from decades of First Amendment doctrine and has begun remaking the law of free exercise.
Please read the whole thing.
Ironically, the Hobby Lobby decision may have also created some serious problems for the human beings who own corporations (h/t Dakinikat). From Mother Jones: How Hobby Lobby Undermined The Very Idea of a Corporation. Basically, now that SCOTUS has said that some corporations are inseparable from the people who own them, those owners could lose their legal protection from debts and lawsuits that result from corporate actions. There's some instant Karma for you!
A few more links for your holiday reading pleasure:
Miami Herald: FBI records: Chilling find in Bradenton dumpster (new clues to Saudi involvement in the 9/11 and the cover-up of that involvement by the Bush/Cheney administration).
Study links Oklahoma earthquake swarm with fracking operations
LA Times: Study links Oklahoma earthquake swarm with fracking operations.
WaPo: Firing fracking wastewater into the earth likely triggered Okla.'s many earthquakes.
USA Today: Privacy watchdog files complaint over Facebook study.
RTT News: Dark Chocolate May Improve Walking Ability.
Boston Globe: People prefer electric shocks to time alone with thoughts.
LA Times: Tibetans get high-altitude edge from extinct Denisovans' genes.
What stories are you following on this Independence Day?
Wednesday Reads: Hypocrisy and Parrots
Posted: April 2, 2014 | Author: Minkoff Minx | Filed under: just because, morning reads, Women's Rights | Tags: earthquake Chile, General Motors, GM, Hobby Lobby | 33 Comments
As Boston Boomer mentioned the other day, when the news is bad…it feels strange to say "good" morning. At least five people are dead in the tsunami that hit Chile after the massive earthquake which struck just of the Chilean coast late yesterday evening.
Massive 8.2 earthquake off Chile coast sparks tsunami
A major earthquake of magnitude 8.2 struck off the coast of Chile on Tuesday, leading to five deaths and triggering a tsunami that pounded the country's northern coast with 2-meter-tall waves.
Officials said the dead included people who were crushed by collapsing walls or were killed by heart attacks.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was shallow at 12.5 miles below the seabed and struck about 100 km northwest of the mining port of Iquique near the Peruvian border.
Live: Tsunami strikes Chile after earthquake measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale causes huge wave
Five people have been confirmed dead after the quake, which struck 50 miles from the coast of Chile, sparked a 6.3ft wave
Meanwhile, here in the states…13 GM traffic deaths are tied to a 57-cent part
The fix for a faulty ignition switch linked to 13 traffic deaths would have cost just 57 cents, members of Congress said Tuesday as they demanded answers from General Motors' new CEO on why the automaker took 10 years to recall cars with the defect.
At a hearing on Capitol Hill before a House subcommittee, GM's Mary Barra acknowledged under often testy questioning that the company took too long to act. She promised changes at GM that would prevent such a lapse from happening again.
"If there's a safety issue, we're going to make the right change and accept that," said Barra, who became CEO in January and almost immediately found herself thrust into one of the biggest product safety crises Detroit has ever seen.
But as relatives of the crash victims looked on intently, she admitted that she didn't know why it took years for the dangerous defect to be announced. And she deflected many questions about what went wrong, saying an internal investigation is under way.
More at the link.
Oh, and for the hypocrisy bit…Hobby Lobby's Hypocrisy: The Company's Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers | Mother Jones
When Obamacare compelled businesses to include emergency contraception in employee health care plans, Hobby Lobby, a national chain of craft stores, fought the law all the way to the Supreme Court. The Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, the company's owners argued, forced them to violate their religious beliefs. But while it was suing the government, Hobby Lobby spent millions of dollars on an employee retirement plan that invested in the manufacturers of the same contraceptive products the firm's owners cite in their lawsuit.
Documents filed with the Department of Labor and dated December 2012—three months after the company's owners filed their lawsuit—show that the Hobby Lobby 401(k) employee retirement plan held more than $73 million in mutual funds with investments in companies that produce emergency contraceptive pills, intrauterine devices, and drugs commonly used in abortions. Hobby Lobby makes large matching contributions to this company-sponsored 401(k).
I don't have to tell you how hard I laughed at that headline.
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby's retirement plan have holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby's health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
These companies include Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla and Mirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.
More details at the link.
I found this infographic interesting, Here's How The World's Most Brilliant People Scheduled Their Days
You can click on the link to see the bigger image here: daily-rituals.png (PNG Image, 3600 × 5400 pixels)
I really hate what wordpress has done with their new format editor…it sucks ass!!!!! So, sorry about that mess with the image up top. It is so damn frustrating! Click the PNG link and then click the image on that page when it loads, it should get larger for you so you can read the writing.
Finally, there is nothing like having a parrot that curses like a sailor…Parrot kicked out of garden centre for squawking rude words
A foul-mouthed parrot has been kicked out of a garden centre after customers complained she was turning the air blue with a string of rude words.
Ruby the African Grey was put on display at the Norcutts Garden Centre in Ashton, Greater Manchester – but came under fire for her non-stop swearing, which staff say is getting much worse.
They have had to remove Ruby from the shop floor for fears her profane language could offend more customers or be picked up by children.
All is not lost, however – as they are hoping to re-educate Ruby with a more polite vocabulary and return her to public display so she can find a loving home.
African Greys have been dubbed the Einsteins of the parrot world for their intelligence.
A 2012 study found the birds were capable of thinking at the same intellectual level as a young human child.
Have a good day, and take it easy this first Wednesday of April…share your thoughts and such in the comments below.
Wednesday Reads: Put up your dukes!
Posted: March 26, 2014 | Author: Minkoff Minx | Filed under: abortion rights, Accommodation and Compromise, Affordable Care Act (ACA), American Gun Fetish, Barack Obama, birth control, Diplomacy Nightmares, Discrimination against women, Egypt, Foreign Affairs, fundamentalist Christians, Gun Control, morning reads, NSA, National Security Agency, Religious Conscience, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Russia, SCOTUS, the GOP, U.S. Politics, Ukraine, Violence against women, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights | Tags: China, Crimea, ebola, Guinea, Hobby Lobby, international space center, Justice Kennedy, Liberia, NASA | 38 Comments
Oi! Put up your dukes and lets duke it out!
WordPress has fugged up with their editor, which means that the pictures and formatting may be a little off in this post. That said the images are all found on pinterest and are all various vintage picture of women boxing.
Because, the shit going on with the Supremes is something that makes me want to put on a pair of boxing gloves and kick some PLUB #HobbyLobby loving ass.
Justice Kennedy Thinks Hobby Lobby Is An Abortion Case — That's Bad News For Birth Control | ThinkProgress
"Your reasoning would permit" Congress to force corporations to pay for abortions, Kennedy told Verrilli. This was not the Anthony Kennedy that worried about conservatives imposing their anti-gay "animus" on others, this was the Anthony Kennedy that views abortion as a grave moral wrong. Shortly after Kennedy made this statement, Justice Kagan's face dropped. It appeared that she'd just figured out that she would be joining a dissenting opinion.
It's worth noting that Kennedy expressed a different concern than one offered shortly thereafter by Chief Justice John Roberts. Hobby Lobby objects to four forms of contraception on the mistaken ground that these contraceptive methods are actually forms of abortion — a brief filed by numerous medical organizations explains that they are not. Roberts, however, suggested that someone's mere belief that something is an abortion is enough to trigger an religious exemption to federal law.
More from :
SCOTUSblog: Birth control, business, and religious beliefs: In Plain English
Wednesday round-up : SCOTUSblog
Ugh….but that fucked up crap about the pill being "abortion" aside, last night Boston Boomer put up a tweet in the comments that I think needs to be shared up on the front page.
In China they kill millions of baby girls after they're born. That doesn't stop #HobbyLobby from buying 90% of their goods from the Chinese.
— PrObama (@proadstudio) March 26, 2014
This brings up a good point, one of the tweets in this thread says that Hobby Lobby responded…
@bebird @proadstudio We sincerely respect & share ur concern re Chinese gov policies…our suppliers.. no control over govt's policies
— villageidiotone (@villageidiotone) March 26, 2014
Some of the tweets mention the "myth" of infanticide and forced abortions…which is bullshit. Take a look at this from Telegraph:
Malaysia Airlines missing flight exposes tragedy of China's 'orphaned' one-child parents
Much has been written about the human rights abuses associated with China's notorious one-child policy: the forced abortions, sterilisations and even cases of infanticide as rural families sought to rid themselves of girls they thought were less useful than boys.
But the disappearance of MH370 has cast light a less well-known but equally devastating phenomenon: that of the "orphaned" parents who, through accident or illness, lost the only child the Chinese government allowed them to have.
There are an estimated one million so-called "shidu" families in China, with state media reporting that around 76,000 new families are "orphaned" each year.
"When you lose your only child, it feels like the sky has fallen in," said one bereaved Shanghai mother, who lost her only daughter and her husband to a 2012 car accident.
"Because of the one-child policy a million families have lost their offspring forever," added the woman, who requested anonymity because of the politically sensitive nature of the subject. "It is an ethical tragedy. Nobody can take away the pain."
Recent months have seen several major Chinese cities and provinces including Beijing and Shanghai start to change the controversial birth control policy, relaxing family planning rules so parents who are both only children can now have two children.
On the subject of lost children…grown children…the numbers have gone up in the death toll over in the Washington state landslide claims up to 24, more than 100 missing.
The number of dead climbed to as high as 24 with the recovery Tuesday of two more bodies and another eight believed to have been located in the debris.
Authorities did not immediately release the identities of the dead nor did they provide details about where the bodies were found.
At least 176 people are unaccounted for. Officials have stressed those unaccounted for are not necessarily all victims of the disaster. They say they believe many names have been duplicated.
Three sheriff's deputies who specialize in missing persons cases have begun reviewing the lists to get a more accurate count, Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said.
And if death from plane crash or mudslide is not depressing enough, how about Ebola: W Africa scrambles to prevent Ebola spread
West African nations scrambled to contain an outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus suspected to have killed at least 59 people in Guinea, with symptoms of the disease reported in neighbouring Sierra Leone and Liberia as well.
The spread of Ebola, one of the most lethal infectious diseases known, has spooked nations with weak health care systems. In Guinea's southeast, home to all the confirmed cases, residents are avoiding large gatherings and prices in some markets have spiked as transporters avoid the area.
Health authorities in Liberia said they had now recorded eight suspected cases of Ebola, mainly in people who crossed the border from Guinea.
Five of these had died but tests were still being carried out to check if the cases were indeed Ebola, the Reuters news agency reported.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) said a total of 86 suspected cases, including 59 deaths, had been reported in southeastern Guinea near the border with Sierra Leone and Liberia.
This next quote is very scary:
"People are really frightened. They have seen people die in a matter of just two or three days. They are constantly worried who is going to be the next fatality," said Joseph Gbaka Sandounou, who manages operations for aid agency Plan International in Guekedou.
On to more "newsy" link goodness. Major Garrett has a piece up over at National Journal: Obama Tries to Put Putin in His Place—Again
Moments after deflecting a question about his diminished influence on the world stage, President Obama described Russia as a "regional power" operating in Crimea out of weakness, not strength.
Noting Russia's long-standing influence in all of Ukraine, Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea "indicates less influence, not more."
I guess that's why Ukraine's defense minister resigned and Ukrainian troops bugged out of Crimea, leaving it to Russian forces. This is the only "off ramp" that matters in Crimea. Ukraine and its rhetorically florid Western allies took it. Not Putin.
Even as the White House insists Crimea is not "lost" (Putin can find it without satellite imagery, after all), the grudging language of concession seeps from every corridor of Ukrainian talks here.
"It's not a done deal in the sense that the international community by and large isn't recognizing the annexation of Crimea," Obama said, before acknowledging the "facts on the ground" favored Russia. "It would be dishonest to say there is a simple solution to resolving what has already taken place in Crimea."
Obama and European leaders are rattled and resentful, thunderstruck that the wispy bonds of international "norms" could be so easily shredded. Fearful of the precedent they appear incapable of reversing, and desperate to limit Putin's ambitions to Crimea, the G-7 nations have effectively conceded Crimea. They threatened "sectoral sanctions" if Putin further bulldozed international law by gobbling up more of Ukraine or plowing into Moldova. Weak or strong, Putin enforces the new Crimean status quo. All he's lost is Russia's G-8 membership pin and decoder ring.
Read the rest at the link.
One of our astronauts hitched a ride yesterday. Leaving politics behind, Russian-U.S. crew blasts off for space | Reuters
Two Russian cosmonauts and a U.S. astronaut blasted off for six-month stay aboard the International Space Station on Tuesday, a partnership unaffected by the political rancor and economic sanctions triggered by Russia's annexation of Crimea.
The Russian Soyuz rocket carrying cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev and NASA astronaut Steven Swanson lifted off at 5:17 p.m. EDT from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
The trip to the space station, a $100 billion research laboratory that flies about 260 miles above Earth, was scheduled to take about six hours. However, an unknown problem caused the crew's Soyuz capsule to skip two planned steering maneuvers, delaying the crew's arrival until Thursday.
"The crew is in no danger. The Soyuz (is) equipped with plenty of consumables to go even beyond the next two days, should that be become necessary. Nobody expects that that will be the case," mission commentator Rob Navias said during a NASA Television broadcast.
My son has a sinus infection, and was home from school yesterday…so he watched the launch live.
At Least Russia and the U.S. Still Get Along in Outer Space – NationalJournal.com
NASA, however, is not worried about the Ukraine crisis taking a toll on space exploration.
"We do not expect the current Russia-Ukraine situation to have an impact on our long-standing civil space cooperation with Russia, which goes back decades, including our partnership on the International Space Station program," said NASA spokesman Joshua Buck in a statement to National Journal. "We are confident that our two space agencies will continue to work closely as they have throughout various ups and downs of the broader U.S.-Russia relationship."
The International Space Station has indeed weathered terrestrial political storms in the past. "It doesn't appear that we are affected by what's going on diplomatically with the Russians," Al Sofge, director of NASA's human exploration and operations division, has said of the conflict in Syria and Russia's protection of American whistle-blower Edward Snowden. "I don't know that we've ever even discussed it."
After 16 years in orbit, the International Space Station is truly a bilateral effort. The station, divided into American and Russian segments, uses American solar arrays and power systems, Russian life-support systems, and a navigation system that comes from both nations.
The U.S. and Russia first collaborated in space in July 1975, when a Soviet Soyuz capsule carrying two cosmonauts docked with a U.S. Apollo module carrying three astronauts. In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the U.S. asked Russia to join its work on the International Space Station. Russia was too financially strapped to build a program of its own, BBC's Melissa Hogenboom explained in 2012, and the U.S. was behind schedule on the project and needed help.
This "reluctant codependency," as NBC space analyst James Oberg dubbed it, persists to this day. At the International Space Station, Russia depends on NASA's electronics and communications technology, which are more advanced. The U.S. depends on Roscosmos, the Russian federal agency, to send its astronauts to space. After NASA retired its space-shuttle program in 2011, Russia became the sole nation with the capability of carrying astronauts and cargo to and from space. Even U.S. national security satellites are powered into orbit on an American rocket with a Russian-built rocket engine.
While Jake was watching that rocket take off, I told him the Russians would not mess up that arrangement, they are getting paid. How much?
Right now, NASA pays $70.7 million per seat to send its astronauts to space on Russian Soyuz capsules, $8 million more than a previous agreement. But by 2017, NASA officials say the U.S. should be able to send its astronauts to the International Space Station on its own, thanks to private American spaceflight companies.
I will put this other link here for you, Zandar Versus The Stupid: Last Call For One Hell Of A Coincidence, where an article in the Business Insider by Michael Kelley is asking the question:
U.S. officials think that Russia recently obtained the ability to evade U.S. eavesdropping equipment while commandeering Crimea and amassing troops near Ukraine's border.
The revelation reportedly has the White House "very nervous," especially because it's unclear how the Kremlin hid its plans from the National Security Agency's snooping on digital and electronic communications.
One interesting fact involved is the presence of Edward Snowden in Russia, where he has been living since flying to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23.
In July, primary Snowden source Glenn Greenwald told The Associated Press that Snowden "is in possession of literally thousands of documents that contain very specific blueprints that would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it."
So it's either a crazy coincidence that the Russians figured out how to evade NSA surveillance while hosting the NSA-trained hacker, or else it implies that Snowden provided the Russians with access to the NSA's blueprint.
No doubt Kelley's article is going to draw a massive screed from Double G and the usual suspects. But as the people who support Snowden's actions remind us, we need to have a serious debate about American intelligence capabilities, and that includes debating the consequences of someone with the vast knowledge of these capabilities defecting to a foreign country.
I've said on a number of occasions that the actions of Snowden and his partners are not consistent with the goal of reigning in the NSA through existing means, but very consistent with the goal of taking it upon themselves to irreparably damage our intelligence-gathering abilities as a lesson to the Unites States government.
The threats have been made that if anything happens to Snowden, the full trove of information would be leaked.
Zandar asks…
It's a reasonable question to ask if that's already happened.
So, over at CNN they are looking for news since their 24/7 coverage of MH Flight 370 is coming to a close….Two CNN Producers Arrested in Sad Attempt to Break into the WTC Site
Two CNN producers were arrested today after trying—and failing miserably—to break into the World Trade Center site for a story about people who successfully broke in.
A CNN spokesperson said that producers Connor Boals, 26, and Yon Pomrenze, 35, were on assignment "but were not asked to sneak onto the WTC site."
According to reports, the pair first tried to talk their way past security guards into the heavily guarded construction site. When that failed, they tried scaling a nearby fence. Both times officers merely turned them away.
The tipping point came on their third attempt, when they tried to forcibly push their way through a security checkpoint.
That coup de grâce got Boals and Pomrenze cuffed and booked on criminal trespass, obstruction of governmental administration and disorderly conduct charges.
Sad…sad…sad…when all they had to do was head on over to Jersey: Body parts injure 4 after man killed by train
A man was struck and killed by a train Tuesday in a gruesome scene that left others on the New Brunswick Station platform injured.
Preliminary eyewitness accounts suggest that the man was struck after leaning into the path of the oncoming train while standing on the station platform.
As a result of the collision, at least four other people waiting on the platform were struck by parts of the man's body, officials said.
The incident happened at about 5 p.m. EDT and involved a New York-bound Northeast Corridor train carrying about 300 passengers, NJ Transit spokesman John Durso said.
Three of the four people who were hurt went to the hospital with injuries…eek! Now that is a "story" those producers could have gotten into…dirty laundry there. Literally.
Back to the MH370 for a moment: Families of Flight MH370 Victims Issue Blistering Statement | Vanity Fair
The families on the receiving end didn't take kindly to the message or the manner in which it was delivered. Families gathered in Beijing read a blistering rebuke of Malaysian Airlines and authorities on Monday:
"At 10pm on March 25, the Malaysian prime minister sent a statement to the families of MH370 passengers without any direct evidence that MH370 crashed in the south Indian ocean and no people survived.
From March 8 when they announced that MH370 lost contact to today, 18 days have passed during which the Malaysian government and military constantly tried to delay, deceive the passengers' families and cheat the whole world.
This shameless behaviour not only fooled and hurt the families of the 154 passengers but also misguided and delayed rescue actions, wasting a large quantity of human resources and materials and lost valuable time for the rescue effort.
If the 154 passengers did lose their lives, Malaysia Airlines, the Malaysian government and military are the real executioners who killed them. We the families of those on board submit our strongest protest against them.
We will take every possible means to pursue the unforgivable crimes and responsibility of all three."
Malaysia Airlines claims a representative for the company told the assembled families in person, and that phone calls and SMS messages were only sent to relatives who were not in the family-support center.
The rest of the links are in quick dump fashion:
What happens when a female student in a hot pink top walks through Cairo University? – News – Student – The Independent
A shocking video shows a female student being sexually harassed as she walks through her campus at Cairo University in Egypt.
Wearing a pink top and tight jeans, the young woman is whistled and shouted at as she makes her way through the site amongst a growing group of men following her.
University guards are seen in the clip, which has gone viral on social media, escorting her off the premises after she hid in a toilet to escape the group, who were allegedly trying to remove her clothes.
The school Dean blamed the girl of course…video at the link.
From the fuckwads in my state, In Georgia, Carry a Gun, Just Not in the Capitol – NYTimes.com
There's a lot of concern about new legislation in Georgia that expands how people can buy, carry and use guns. It reduces some licensing requirements and provides Georgians with a stronger "Stand Your Ground" defense should they feel threatened and decide to open fire. Some critics were calling it the "guns everywhere" law. That's so unfair. Georgia's lawmakers are not allowing everyone's safety to be endangered by gun-slinging people. They are deeply concerned, for example, with their own.
The bill, passed on Thursday and awaiting the governor's signature, will, among other things, allow people to carry concealed weapons into more places — including ones, like bars, which conveniently enough are spots where they are likely to be put to use.
They may also be carried in unsecured areas of airports. Even toting a gun in secured areas will merely be a misdemeanor in Georgia as long as you did it by mistake. After all, who among us has not had the embarrassing experience of forgetting they were carrying their Glock semiautomatic through airport security?
Republican lawmakers in the Georgia House tried — and failed — to require colleges and churches to allow concealed weapons. The law bans them on college campuses (thank goodness for that, at least) and requires armed Georgians to get permission from their church before they go to Sunday services packing heat.
But, while patting themselves on the back for protecting the Second Amendment rights of their fellow citizens and dismissing any notion that guns could be a danger to the public, Georgia lawmakers were careful to continue to ban the carrying of weapons in government buildings with security checkpoints, like the Capitol itself, though guns are welcomed in buildings without screening.
How thoughtful of them.
Barbara Boxer: Why no Viagra complaints? – Tal Kopan – POLITICO.com
As the Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday about the Obamacare mandate on birth control coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer questioned why those up in arms about the requirement have no problem with most insurance covering Viagra.
"I have never heard Hobby Lobby or any other corporation, I could be wrong, or any other boss complain that Viagra is covered in many insurance plans, practically all of them, or other kinds of things, you know, for men, which I won't go into," Boxer said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Jansing & Co."
Yeah, isn't every sperm sacred?
After 27 years, Burger King Baby finds birth mom, feels pure joy
A woman who, as a newborn, was abandoned in the bathroom of a Pennsylvania fast-food restaurant said Tuesday she has found her birth mother just three weeks after launching a search that garnered worldwide attention.
Next…another blast from 80s' past, an interview with Boy George: Boy George Discusses New Album, Gender Identity, Madonna And More
If you're ever given 60 minutes to sit down with Boy George, one of the most beloved pop icons of the 20th century, in a private club on the west side of Manhattan in the middle of February, take them.
In the course of that hour, you'll not only be treated to stories about how as a teen, his brothers would cross the street so they didn't have to be seen with him and find out if he ever considered transitioning to the other end of the gender binary, but you'll also quickly realize that he is one of the most thoughtful — and refreshingly honest — interview subjects you've ever had the pleasure of encountering.
Next, tales of animals…remember that zoo in Copenhagen? The one that killed the young giraffe and butchered it then fed it to the lions?
Look what the zoo did to the lions: Danish zoo that killed giraffe puts down four lions
Two lions and their two 10-month-old cubs, all from the same family, were put down on Monday to make way for a new male after the zoo failed to find a new home for the felines.
Copenhagen Zoo said in a statement: "Because of the pride of lions' natural structure and behaviour, the zoo has had to euthanise the two old lions and two young lions who were not old enough to fend for themselves".
The cubs "would have been killed by the new male lion as soon as he got the chance," it added.
WTF? Am I right?
On the case of inbreeding and genetic defects…no I am not talking about Banjoville, Birth Defects In Last Woolly Mammoths Suggest Inbreeding May Have Led To Species' Extinction
Scientists studying 12,000-year-old mammoth fossils unearthed near the North Sea discovered that many of them had extra ribs along their neck vertebrae. Cervical ribs, while innocuous on their own, are usually a sign that something went wrong during the animal's development and are associated with chromosome abnormalities and even cancer.
Researchers found that cervical ribs were 10 times more common in woolly mammoths from the North Sea than in modern elephants. Scientists were stunned to find such a high rate of cervical ribs among European woolly mammoths.
"The high incidence and large size of the cervical ribs [in woolly mammoths] indicates a strong vulnerability, given the association of cervical ribs with diseases and congenital abnormalities in mammals," the researchers noted in a study published in the journal PeerJ. "The vulnerable condition may well have contributed to the eventual extinction of the woolly mammoths."
Scientists theorized that there are two possible explanations for the high frequency of cervical ribs in the last of the mammoths. The first is that there was rampant inbreeding among the last mammoth populations. This theory fits nicely with the idea that climate change fragmented the woolly mammoth's habitat, isolating small pockets of the animals from each other. These groups would have lost their genetic variation through inbreeding, which would have made them susceptible to abnormalities and disease.
The second theory is that woolly mammoth mothers suffered prenatal stress due to outside factors like famine and disease.
And finally, Goats are far more clever than previously thought
Goats learn how to solve complicated tasks quickly and can recall how to perform them for at least 10 months, which might explain their remarkable ability to adapt to harsh environments, say researchers at Queen Mary University of London.
Writing in the journal Frontiers in Zoology today, the scientists trained a group of goats to retrieve food from a box using a linked sequence of steps; first by pulling a lever with their mouths and then by lifting it to release the reward.
The goats' ability to remember the task was tested after one month and again at 10 months. They learned the task within 12 trials and took less than two minutes to remember the challenge.
"The speed at which the goats completed the task at 10 months compared to how long it took them to learn indicates excellent long-term memory," said co-author Dr Elodie Briefer, now based at ETH Zurich.
Before each learning session, some of the goats had the opportunity to watch another goat to demonstrate the task.
Dr Briefer added: "We found that those without a demonstrator were just as fast at learning as those that had seen demonstrations. This shows that goats prefer to learn on their own rather than by watching others."
Wow, I wonder if a goat could learn that the birth control pill does not = an abortion? Yeah, they sound like they are smarter than some of the Supremes sitting on the bench.
Have a great day, and let us know what you are reading and thinking about today.
Tuesday Reads: Are Women People?
Posted: March 25, 2014 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: morning reads, Real Life Horror, religion, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, SCOTUS, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: abortion, Affordable Care Act, Antonin Scalia, Are Women Human?, Are Women People?, Birth Control, Citizen's United, contraception, Hobby Lobby, Manhattan Declaration, Obamacare, religious freedom, Sandra Fluke, U.S. Constitution | 47 Comments
Question for today: Are women human? Are we people in the eyes of our government? We've been told that corporations are people. We know that white men are people–that was established by the U.S. Constitution when it was ratified in 1789. Since that time, there have been amendments that granted some rights to non-white men and to women. We can vote now. Does that mean our government recognizes our humanity?
Today our ultra-conservative, mostly Catholic Supreme Court will hear two cases that bring this question to the forefront, and the Court's decisions may give us some answers to the question of whether American women are officially people with individual rights.
From MSNBC: Supreme Court to hear birth control case
Depending on whom you ask, Tuesday morning's oral argument at the Supreme Court is about whether Obamacare can keep treading on religious liberty – or it's about a woman's right to access contraception on her employee insurance plan, no matter what her employer thinks of it. Either way, it is the first time the Affordable Care Act will be at the nation's highest Court since it was first largely upheld as constitutional. The same two men as in that case, current Solicitor General Don Verrilli and former Bush administration solicitor general Paul Clement, are facing off to argue over a narrower provision.
Before the Supreme Court decides whether the contraceptive coverage required of insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act violates a 1993 law governing religious liberty, it has to settle the threshold question: Does a corporation even have religious liberty?
I think the question about the rights of women is far broader than that. Without access to birth control and abortion, a woman has no real autonomy as a human being. If she becomes pregnant–even through rape–she loses the ability to make choices about her future life. It has been a relatively short period of time since women have had the power to make those choices. But that power has led to other advances for women–such as the right to prosecute a rapist or an abusive boyfriend or husband, the right to have credit in her own name, the right to an education, and entry into careers from which women were previously blocked. We can only hope that the justices see clearly what their decisions will mean for women's lives and women's personhood.
Back to the MSNBC article:
Hobby Lobby Stores, an Oklahoma-based, evangelical-owned craft chain with about 13,000 employees, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a small Mennonite-owned cabinet maker in Pennsylvania, sued the administration and got two very different answers from the lower courts. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals declared of Hobby Lobby that "such corporations can be 'persons' exercising religion." In ruling on Conestoga's bid for exemption from the requirement, the Third Circuit disagreed: "For-profit secular corporations cannot exercise in religious exercise."
The companies are among the 47 for-profit corporations that have objected to their company plans complying with the minimum coverage requirements under the Affordable Care Act. Under those regulations, contraception is covered fully, without a co-pay, as preventive care. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood object to a handful of contraceptives that they speculate can block a fertilized egg, which is neither documented in the science nor the medical definition of abortion. Other for-profit plaintiffs object to any birth control coverage at all….
The Obama administration says that the government has a compelling interest in women's health and in gender equality. The Department of Health and Human Services agreed to classify contraceptives as preventive care after considering testimony from medical experts, who cited the country's high rate of unintended pregnancy and the persistence cost barriers to accessing effective birth control.
Some legal experts argue that to rule for Hobby Lobby would be imposing religion on others, by forcing the women who work for such companies to pay the cost of their employers' religion. Frederick Gedicks, a law professor at Brigham Young, has even argued in a brief before the Court that doing so would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment.
What will SCOTUS decide?
At NPR, Nina Totenberg offers some scary quotes from Steve Green, the president of Hobby Lobby:
"We believe that the principles that are taught scripturally is what we should operate our lives by … and so we cannot be a part of taking life," explains Hobby Lobby President Steve Green.
"It's our rights that are being infringed upon to require us to do something against our conscience," adds CEO and founder David Green.
Using birth control is "taking a life?" Apparently one of the arguments Hobby Lobby is using that–contrary to scientific facts–some forms of birth control are equal to abortion. So is every sperm is sacred too? Should men be prosecuted for masturbating? But those questions are not likely to be asked, because it is already legally established that men are people.
At the WaPo, Sandra Fluke writes: At the Supreme Court, a potential catastrophe for women's rights.
Unlike my congressional testimony in 2012, which was about Georgetown University — a Catholic-affiliated university — refusing to include contraception in student insurance because it was a religiously affiliated school, the institutions arguing before the Supreme Court are not houses of worship or religious non-profits. The Affordable Care Act already includes special arrangements for those types of organizations. These are private, for-profit corporations — a craft store and a cabinet manufacturer — that want to be excluded from health insurance and employment laws because of bosses' personal views.
Laws that include religious protection have never given corporations the right to have religious views, and it would be a terrible idea to make such an enormous change to our legal precedent now. Our laws protect individuals' private religious beliefs, but when you cross over into the public sphere to become a corporation and make a profit off of the public, you must abide by the public's laws.
Depending on the court's rulings, the cases' outcomes could deny millions of women coverage of any or all forms of birth control, limiting women's ability to control their reproductive health, plan their pregnancies and manage their lives. As I testified, women also need birth control for many other medical reasons, including relief of painful health problems like endometriosis.
And, Fluke argues, recognizing a right for corporations to hold religious views will open the door to
Allowing any private employer to dictate which laws fit inside its religious beliefs could upset the necessary balance of both religious liberty and employee health and safety laws. Depending on the exact ruling, any for-profit corporation could cut off its employees' insurance coverage for blood transfusions, vaccinations or HIV treatment — all of which some Americans have religious objections to. Any critical health coverage the boss doesn't agree with could be eliminated.
Furthermore, SCOTUS could not limit these proposed "religious freedoms" to Christians.
Although this country predominantly descends from a Judeo-Christian tradition, our valuable religious protection laws ensure that anyone is free to practice any religion they want, including religions whose belief systems and practices many of us would disagree with vehemently. In fact, far-ranging beliefs that are not associated with any organized religion could be used to justify a corporation's practices as well.
Sahil Kapur of TPM points out that Justice Scalia, who might be expected to vote in favor of a corporate "right to religious freedom," will have to deal with one of his previous rulings: Justice Scalia's Past Comes Back To Haunt Him On Birth Control.
In 1990, Scalia wrote the majority opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, concluding that the First Amendment "does not require" the government to grant "religious exemptions" from generally applicable laws or civic obligations. The case was brought by two men in Oregon who sued the state for denying them unemployment benefits after they were fired from their jobs for ingesting peyote, which they said they did because of their Native American religious beliefs.
"[T]he right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability," Scalia wrote in the 6-3 majority decision, going on to aggressively argue that such exemptions could be a slippery slope to lawlessness and that "[a]ny society adopting such a system would be courting anarchy."
"The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind," he wrote, "ranging from compulsory military service, to the payment of taxes, to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."
That opinion could haunt the jurist if he seeks to invalidate the birth control rule.
"Scalia will have to reckon with his own concern in Smith about the lawlessness and chaos created by liberal exemptions to generally applicable law," said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA. "For him to uphold an exemption now is to invite more of the lawlessness that he warned about."
At Think Progress, Ian Millhiser addresses the right wing organizations that have waged a concerted war against women's rights during the past several years: Read This One Document To Understand What The Christian Right Hopes To Gain From Hobby Lobby.
2009 was a grim year for social conservatives. Barack Obama was an ambitious and popular new president. Republicans, and their conservative philosophy, were largely discredited in the public eye by a failed war and a massive recession. And the GOP's effort to reshape its message was still in its awkward adolescence. If the conservative movement had a mascot, it would have been a white man dressed as Paul Revere and waving a misspelled sign.
Amidst this wreckage, more than two hundred of the nation's leading Christian conservatives joined together in a statement expressing their dismay at the state of the nation. "Many in the present administration want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development," their statement claimed, while "[m]ajorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views." Meanwhile, they feared that the liberals who now controlled the country "are very often in the vanguard of those who would trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife."
The signatories to this statement, which they named the "Manhattan Declaration," included many of America's most prominent Catholic bishops and clergy of similar prominence in other Christian sects. It included leaders oftop anti-gay organizations like the National Organization for Marriage, and of more broadly focused conservative advocacy shops such as the Family Research Council. It included university presidents and deans from Christian conservative colleges. And it included the top editors from many of the Christian right's leading publications.
Perhaps most significantly, however, the document's signatories includes Alan Sears, the head of one of the two conservative legal groups litigating what are likely to be the two most important cases decided by the Supreme Court this term. Indeed, the Manhattan Declaration offers a virtual roadmap to understanding what religious conservatives hope to gain from Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood v. Sebelius, two cases the justices will hear Tuesday which present the question whether a business owner's religious objections to birth control trump their legal obligation to include it in their employee's health plan.
Read the gory details at the link.
Finally, I ask that everyone read this year-old article at Time Magazine by Jessica Winter, Subject for Debate: Are Women People? It is both darkly humorous and deadly serious.
All my adult life, I've been pretty sure I'm a sentient, even semi-competent human being. I have a job and an apartment; I know how to read and vote; I make regular, mostly autonomous decisions about what to eat for lunch and which cat videos I will watch whilst eating my lunch. But in the past couple of months, certain powerful figures in media and politics have cracked open that certitude.
You see, like most women, I was born with the chromosome abnormality known as "XX," a deviation of the normative "XY" pattern. Symptoms of XX, which affects slightly more than half of the American population, include breasts, ovaries, a uterus, a menstrual cycle, and the potential to bear and nurse children. Now, many would argue even today that the lack of a Y chromosome should not affect my ability to make informed choices about what health care options and lunchtime cat videos are right for me. But others have posited, with increasing volume and intensity, that XX is a disability, even a roadblock on the evolutionary highway. This debate has reached critical mass, and leaves me uncertain of my legal and moral status. Am I a person? An object? A ward of the state? A "prostitute"? (And if I'm the last of these, where do I drop off my W-2?)
Please go read the whole thing. It's not long.
So . . . those are my recommended reads for today. What stories are you following? Please post your links on any topic in the comment thread.
Sunday Reads: Byzantine Werewolves, Engraved Roman Penises, and Walter White's Obit
Posted: October 6, 2013 | Author: Minkoff Minx | Filed under: Accommodation and Compromise, birth control, children, Congress, Discrimination against women, Economy, Federal Government Shutdown, Government Shutdown, Mental Health, misogyny, morning reads, physical abuse, poverty, Religious Conscience, religious extremists, Republican politics, the GOP, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: Domestic violence awareness month, Hobby Lobby | 27 Comments
Who needs strange headlines when the news of the past week has been crazy enough?
This morning I want to stay away from links about the Shutdown and stick with things that don't deal with DC assholes. It does not mean I will not post an article about rich misogynistic, anti-Semitic assholes…have you seen the latest crap out of Hobby Lobby? Hobby Lobby Boycotts Jewish Hanukkah And Passover (UPDATE)
Hanukkah comes early this year. But it apparently never comes to Hobby Lobby.
The national craft store owned by conservative billionaire Steve Green seemingly refuses to carry merchandise related to Hanukkah because of Green's "Christian values," and some Jews are taking offense.
"I will never set foot in a Hobby Lobby. Ever." wrote Ken Berwitz, the New Jersey blogger who brought the Hobby Lobby Hanukkah flap to light in a Friday (Sept. 27) blog post.
Berwitz's outrage has spread to other bloggers who are taking Hobby Lobby to task as a store that courts the general public, but refuses to stock anything related to Judaism — even in communities with significant Jewish populations.
It really should not come as a surprise, I mean if Hobby Lobby won't provide birth control for its women employees, of course it goes without saying they would have a "fuck the Jews" attitude.
Green owns more than 550 Hobby Lobby stores nationwide, all of which are closed on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. He is also known for his lawsuit against President Obama's health care law, which he says tramples on his religious liberty by forcing him to insure employees for medical services he objects to on religious grounds. Many legal experts agree the case has a good chance of landing at the Supreme Court.He's also known for holding one of the country's largest collections of ancient biblical artifacts, including what's believed to be the oldest known copy of a Hebrew prayer book. In unveiling the book on Thursday, Green dated the item to 840 C.E., declining to use the more Christian-sounding 840 A.D. so as not to offend Jews.
The Hobby Lobby Hanukkah controversy began when Berwitz learned that on a recent shopping trip his wife's friends could not find anything related to Hanukkah at their local Hobby Lobby store in Marlboro, N.J., though it was stocked with Christmas items.
According to Berwitz, one of the women asked about bar mitzvah cards, and a Hobby Lobby salesperson replied: "We don't cater to you people."
That story prompted Berwitz, who own a market research company and writes the "Hopelessly Partisan" blog, to call the Marlboro store and ask why it seemed to be ignoring Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish festival of lights, which begins on Nov. 27 this year. He wrote that he received the following response:
"Because Mr. Green is the owner of the company, he's a Christian, and those are his values."
Berwitz told Religion News Service that he then called Hobby Lobby's corporate headquarters in Oklahoma City, and the company confirmed that it does not stock items for Hanukkah, and did not give a reason. When he asked whether the company carries Passover merchandise, he was again told no.
Well, I guess the backlash from this bad anti-Jewish PR made Mr. Green reconsider his "fuck the Jews" stance on carrying Hanukkah items in his stores:
UPDATE: 10/4 6:20pm
Hobby Lobby has promised to begin to sell Jewish holiday items in areas near large Jewish populations.
UPDATE 10/4/13 10:15am: Hobby Lobby President Steve Green has issued the following statement on behalf of the company:
We sincerely apologize for any employee comments that may have offended anyone, especially our Jewish customers and friends. Comments like these do not reflect the feelings of our family or Hobby Lobby. Our family has a deep respect for the Jewish faith and those who hold its traditions dear. We're proud contributors to Yad Vashem, as well as to other museums and synagogues in Israel and the United States. We are investigating this matter and absolutely do not tolerate discrimination at our company or our stores. We do not have any policies that discriminate; in fact, we have policies that specifically prohibit discrimination. We have previously carried merchandise in our stores related to Jewish holidays. We select the items we sell in our stores based on customer demand. We are working with our buyers to re-evaluate our holiday items and what we will carry in the future.
So the only group of people getting discriminated against at Hobby Lobby now is Women! Yeah, lets say it loud…
at Hobby Lobby, we value our customers and employees and are committed to:
Honoring the Lord in all we do by operating the company in a manner consistent with biblical principles.
Offering our customers exceptional selection and value in the crafts and home decor market.
Serving our employees and their families by establishing a work environment and company policies that build character, strengthen individuals and nurture families.
Providing a return on the owner's investment, sharing the Lord's blessings with our employees, and investing in our community.
Unless you are a woman…than…fuck you!
Alright, enough with that Hobby Lobby dick.
I am going to stick articles about with women….and add the all important subject of poverty and domestic violence for just a moment.
You are well aware that the Shutdown pretty much is the GOP giving the "fuck you" to poor women and children on the WIC program: Colbert on the Government Slimdown | BobCesca.com | Liberal Politics Blog and Podcast | We Cover the World
Fox News is calling it a slimdown, which is a great name 'cause you know who's really going to slim down? The 9 million women and children who will lose supplemental nutrition from the government.
Put that quote from Colbert into perspective: Women and Poverty, State by State | National Women's Law Center
More than one in seven women, nearly 17.8 million, lived in poverty last year. Poverty rates were particularly high for families headed by single mothers – more than four in ten (40.9 percent) were poor. More than half (56.1 percent) of poor children lived in female-headed families in 2012.
With women as primary breadwinners in more than 40 percent of families today, women and their families simply cannot afford to make do with less.
Click on a state below to see how many female-headed families are living in poverty, plus:
The share of all women living in poverty
The share of Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American women living in poverty
The share of children and of women 65 and older living in poverty
You can also download the data for every state, and see more of NWLC's analyses of the latest data on women and poverty.
Go to the link to see all the info from each state. Mississippi has the highest poverty levels across the board.
Here is another map for you, States With The Most Natives – Business Insider
Are the people who live in your state predominantly people who were born in that state, or did they come from somewhere else?
Seth Kadish at the brilliant Vizual Statistix Tumblr has come up with this great visualization which answers just this question, using Census data.
The redder an area is, the more likely it is that residents of that county were born in that state. The whiter an area is, the more likely it is that residents came from somewhere else.
Not surprisingly, parts of Florida, Nevada, Arizona and around DC are filled with people who came from somewhere else. Parts of Texas, Louisiana, and the upper-Midwest are among those places inhabited by original residents.
Click the image to see it larger!
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month: AAEC – Political Cartoon by Terry Wise, Ratland Ink Press – 10/02/2013
How to Tell if Someone You Love is in an Abusive Relationship – and What to do About It | Care2 Causes
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, so today we wanted to do our part to spread a little information about a topic that, despite being incredibly common, too often ends up getting swept under the rug. While most of us want to help victims of domestic violence (Republican politicians notwithstanding), one of the major reasons this important issue often goes ignored is that friends and family simply may not know how to spot an abusive relationship. Even if you have doubts about your loved one's home life, you may not know how to bring up the issue or the best way to help out.
Remember, while most domestic violence situations involve women being abused by men, it can happen to anyone, gay or straight. Don't assume that just because your friend doesn't fit the "typical" mold of an abuse victim that nothing is wrong.
Be sure to read the rest of that article at the link above and forward it to some of your friends.
Now for some fun links.
Hey, the twin panda cubs are getting ready to be named! Check it out:
Voting begins soon to name the giant panda twins
Zoo Atlanta has partnered with Good Morning America on an official voting contest to name the twin male giant pandas born to Lun Lun on July 15, 2013. The contenders for the five sets of names for the 2-month-old duo were announced by Good Morning America on October 3, 2013. Voting will begin online through Good Morning America on Wednesday, October 9, 2013. The winning names will be revealed during the cubs' 100 Day Naming Celebration on October 23, 2013.
Name options for Zoo Atlanta panda cubs announced | www.wsbtv.com
The twin giant panda cubs at Zoo Atlanta, the only twins ever to survive in the U.S., are hitting all of their developmental milestones as they approach 100 days since their birth.
Like all giant pandas, they were born nearly hairless, pink, blind and not much larger than a cell phone. Now, they have developed their characteristic black-and-white coats and weigh nearly 30 times their birth weights, tipping the scales at around 7 pounds. Their eyes have opened and they are responding more to their environment and to one another, the zoo said. Plus, the cubs are slowly starting to show off their personalities to keepers.
Channel 2's Wendy Corona visited the cubs at Zoo Atlanta to see how they're developing.
The pandas are affectionately known as "Cub A" and "Cub B" until their 100-day birthday, a milestone date in the Chinese tradition, when pandas are named.
"Cub A has been kind of the more vocal cub," said Zoo Atlanta's Curator of Mammals Dr. Rebecca Snyder. "Especially when he's with Lun Lun."
During our visit, he was sound asleep. Then there was his brother, the more awake Cub "B".
"I think he's momma's boy. He just wants to be with Mom," said Dr. Snyder. The calmer, more quiet one. Knowing this about their personalities might help you help Zoo Atlanta in deciding their names.
Since their July 15 birth, the adorable duo has charmed zoo staffers, who have been nursing the pandas around the clock when they are not with their mother, 15-year-old Lun Lun. In the wild, a giant panda mother would typically rear only one offspring at a time, which is why the zoo staff has been swapping the cubs between Lun Lun and a specially designed box.
Five sets of names were provided by the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China's Sichuan province, and Zoo Atlanta is teaming up with "Good Morning America" to put it to a public vote, which kicks off Oct. 9.
Watch "GMA" for more panda news and check back here to vote for your names on Oct. 9 on GoodMorningAmerica.com.
There is video at the wbtv link, here are the names, I like number 5 the best:
1. Mei Lun and Mei Hua
(Pronounced May Loon and May Hwaa)
In English, the names mean Lun Lun's twin cubs born in the USA.
2. Mei Lun and Mei Huan
(Pronounced May Loon and May Hwaan)
These names stem from an ancient Chinese idiom, "Mei Lun Mei Huan," which was used to describe constructed buildings that are tall and magnificent. It has come to mean something indescribably beautiful and magnificent.
3. Tian Lun and Tian Le
(Pronounced Tee-an loon and Tee-an luh)
These names come from the Chinese idiom, "Tian Lun Zhi Le," which means the joy of family life or family happiness. In this context, the cubs' names would mean, "Lun Lun and her twin cubs are enjoying heavenly gifted family happiness," according to the staff at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding.
4. Lan Tian and Bi Shui
(Pronounced Lan tee-an and Bee Shway)
The names, meaning blue sky and clear water, are derived from another the Chinese idiom, "Lan Tian Bi Shui," which is used to describe beautiful scenery.
5. Da Lan and Xiao Lan
(Pronounced Dah Lan and Sheow Lan)
The literal meaning of these names is bigger one ("Cub B") and smaller one ("Cub A") of the Atlanta-born twins.
Sting is putting together a Broadway show: Sting's 'The Last Ship' Concert Series at the Public Theater
Andrew Spear for The Wall Street Journal At the Public Theater, Sting aims to stir interest in 'The Last Ship' with a series of 10 concerts featuring songs and characters from the show.
With a run of concerts at the Public Theater, Sting is putting more pieces in place for the launch of a Broadway musical called "The Last Ship." To compose the score, the former Police frontman drew on characters and imagery from the doomed shipyard in his hometown of Wallsend, England. The musical, which Sting is developing with a squad of theater elite, starts a tryout run this summer in Chicago before opening on Broadway next fall.
Sting is hoping to prime interest in the musical with his 10-concert series at the Public, which ends on Wednesday. During the intimate show, which also features vocalists such as cast member Jimmy Nail, Sting plays acoustic guitar and sings in a thick brogue, voicing various characters. He is accompanied by a small band that includes fiddle and accordion players. Between songs that blend Broadway anthems with folk sounds from the British Isles, he tells anecdotes from his childhood and the process of creating a musical.
This week, after the release of the companion album "The Last Ship," Sting's first set of original material in eight years, the singer paused to discuss songwriting, his accent and the spotty track record of rock stars on Broadway.
Read the interview at the link.
Oh, now for some cool pictures…real old pictures. Photographs Taken With Kodak's First Commercial Camera Are Now 125 Years Old
Remember when Kodak created its first commercial camera, a nifty invention that boasted the slogan "You Press the Button, We Do the Rest"?
Woman in a rowing boat, about 1890. Collection of National Media Museum/Kodak MuseumYou probably don't, because this feat happened 125 years ago when George Eastman introduced the second Kodak camera ever made. The contraption looked almost nothing like the devices we're used to, but it brought photography into the homes of everyday people with, well, the press of a button. And a fairly reasonable price of $25 — a cost that amounts to around $600 today, according to Design Taxi.
Thanks to a little UK-based institution known as the National Media Museum, we're able to look back on history and peruse some of the very first amateur photographs ever taken. Snapped with the Kodak No. 1 (the first Kodak camera was simply named "Kodak"), the images provide a striking, black-and-white glimpse into life in the 1890s.
There are some amazing pictures in that Huffpo link…look at them and enjoy them.
Now for the last few articles of this morning's post. Halloween is later this month, with the crazy things going on this week, it seems like it has come early. Anyway, this first link is a bit on werewolves.
How the Byzantines dealt with Werewolves
A new article explores how Byzantine doctors treated people those suffering from lycanthropy, a mental disorder where a patient believes he or she is, or has transformed into, a wolf and behaves like one. This disease is the basis for the legendary werewolves.
In "Lycanthropy in Byzantine times (AD 330–1453)," four scholars from the University of Athens examine the writings of six Byzantine physicians to see what they believed lycanthropy was and how it should be treated.
More at the link, go and read it.
Engraved Penises Reveal Birth of Italian City : Discovery News
Two penises engraved on a 2,000 year old stone may shed light on the foundation of the city of Aosta in northern Italy, revealing its deep connection with the Roman emperor Augustus.
Named Augusta Praetoria Salassorum by the Romans — who captured it from the local Salassi people in 25 B.C. to control strategic mountain passes — Aosta boasts several monuments dedicated to Augustus.
"But the newly discovered stone tells even more about Aosta's connection with the Roman emperor. It reveals the city was built under Augustus' sign during the winter solstice," Giulio Magli, professor of archaeoastronomy at Milan's Polytechnic University, told Discovery News.
Carved on both sides, the block features two very clear figures on one side — a phallus and, over it, a spade — and some partly damaged reliefs on the other. There, a phallus is again represented. Over it, a plough and a partly eroded character which appears to be a Capricorn.
The plough and the spade openly hint to the sulcus primigenius, the original trench plowed to mark the perimeter of a new city in the Roman foundation ceremony. Related to the god Priapus, the phallic effigies most likely had an "apotropaic" function, evoking some sort of protection from evil forces.
"The chunk of mud has certainly preserved the stone from damage and censorship," Bertarione said. "In medieval times the evident phallic figures would have been erased since they were regarded as obscene pagan symbols."
And finally, 'Breaking Bad' anti-hero Walter White gets spoiler-filled obituary in Albuquerque newspaper
A group of die-hard "Breaking Bad" fans have posted an obituary notice for the show's anti-hero Walter White in a local paper in New Mexico, made famous by the cult series.
David Layman, coincidentally a science teacher like White, was among 10.3 million viewers who tuned in to last weekend's final episode of the series about the central character's transformation into a drug lord, after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.
"I've been a humongous 'Breaking Bad' fan since the beginning," Layman told the Albuquerque Journal, which published the obituary on page 4, with a small photo.
"I was actually in the pilot, and putting the obit in the paper was fitting, because the series was based in Albuquerque and it provides some of us some closure."
The short obituary reads:
"White, Walter, aka 'Heisenberg,' 52, of Albuquerque, died Sunday after a long battle with lung cancer, and a gunshot wound.
"A co-founder of Gray Matter, White was a research chemist, who taught high school chemistry, and later founded a meth manufacturing empire.
"He is survived by his wife, Skyler Lambert; son Walter 'Flynn' Jr; and daughter Holly. A private memorial was held by his family. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to a drug abuse prevention charity of your choice. He will be greatly missed."
Innit great?
Well, that is it for this Sunday's reads. Y'all have a good day and take it easy…see you in the comments later on, until then…ciao!
Men Discussed Opening Fire at Pro-Gun Rally in Richmond, Officials Say (Wall Street Journal)
If CNN Can't Take Punches, They Shouldn't Be Throwing Them (David Marcus/The Federalist)
Martha McSally's staggering cynicism (Chris Cillizza/CNN)
Donald Trump, Impeachment, and the Houston Astros (Jonathan V. Last/The Bulwark)
We caught up with Sen. Gardner at the airport to ask if he supports new witnesses in impeachment trial (KUSA-TV)