Ghulam Nabi Azad, India Health Minister, Calls Homosexuality A 'Disease' From The West

"India health minister calls homosexula­ity a disease"
Hey Azad,

so is the caste system, but that aint stopped its spread
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Happy July 4th 2011

Yeah, I stole the pic. The article on Discovery News is a couple of years old, but interesing:

Eco-Friendly Fireworks Offer Safer Pyrotechnics
Emily Sohn, Discovery News
July 2, 2009
"While particle-filled smoke may be the most obvious concern, it's not the only issue -- or even the worst one...

...Animal studies have linked perchlorates, such as potassium perchlorate and ammonium perchlorate, to thyroid problems. Repeated pyrotechnic displays, especially ones that occur every day at theme parks, can take their toll."

Hmm, reminds me of this. Somebody over at the Huffpo made some crack on a fireworks article that cracked me up, but also caused me to sharply inhale, and then it made me very, very sad. Pretty great comment to make me do all that in one sentence.

Ralph Nader Is Tired of Running for President
Posted on Jul 4, 2011
By Chris Hedges
The most important moral and intellectual voices within a disintegrating society are slowly discredited when their nonviolent protests and calls for justice cannot alter intransigent and corrupt systems of power. The repeated acts of peaceful civil disobedience, efforts at electoral and political reform and the fight to protect the rule of law are dismissed as useless by an embittered, dispossessed and betrayed public. The demagogues and hatemongers, the purveyors of violence, easily seduce enraged and bewildered masses in the final stages of collapse with false promises of vengeance, new glory and moral renewal. And in the spiral downward the good among us are reviled as naive and ineffectual fools...

Fox News Twitter feed says Obama dead in apparent hack

By Richard Allen Greene, CNN
July 4, 2011 -- Updated 1509 GMT (2309 HKT) | Filed under: Social Media

(CNN) -- Hackers apparently broke into the FoxNews.com's Twitter feed for political news early Monday and used it to announce -- falsely -- that President Barack Obama had been assassinated.
Obama was "shot twice at a Ross' restaurant in Iowa while campaigning. RIP Obama, best regards to the Obama family," read one of several Twitter messages posted on @FoxNewsPolitics early Monday.

Apparently Hacked, a Fox News Twitter Account Sent Out Alarming Posts
By LIZ ROBBINS and BRIAN STELTER
Published: July 4, 2011

“Hackers sent out several malicious and false Tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created.”


I'm watching a BBC and PBS special called Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State (C) 2005. The mind boggles.

HA

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.

Donate to wikileaks.

Idaho Lawmaker Who Drunkenly Stole Car Gets Off With Misdemeanor

Aaron Wiener | July 1, 2011, 11:38AM
After he stole a Ford Excursion and drove it with a .15 blood alcohol content -- almost twice the legal limit -...

My husband is funny sometimes

The following is a little exchange that I found humorus.

Me- "Oh my gosh, honey, we can't afford for her to continue going to school, the CA budget was passed and because the tuition is probably going up 23% and that's not chump change, we only have blah blah blah in the savngs account. If Granpa wants her to get her Masters he's going to have to help more than he has been."

Him- "Well, it's a good thing we didn't have three thousand of them, huh?"

Me - "I got my tubes tied for a reason."

Him - "Good job."

2 articles on the healthcare business

Nonprofit Insurers: Reaping Profits at the Expense of the Consumer
Posted: 06/27/11 10:09 AM ET
Wendell Potter
Analyst, Center for Public Integrity; Former insurance company executive; Author

"... Kaiser alone has spent $700,000 so far this year lobbying lawmakers in Sacramento...

...According to public filings, Kaiser has made a whopping $5 billion in profits since 2009..."


A Depressing Story You need to Read.
Robert KuttnerCo-founder and co-editor, The American Prospect
Posted: 06/26/11 09:05 PM ET

"If President Obama's health reform, the Affordable Care Act, backfires politically, one reason will be the staggering political power of the drug industry.."

Better hope you know exactly how your loved one died

Because most places aint like the CSI you see on TV.
Frontline: Post Mortem


I can't beieve this lizard-like creature has been re-elected 10 times and working in Nawlins for 40 years. No, seriously look at this guy, watch him speak on the Frontline show and then pray to God that you don't die in custody in New Orleans.

Or many other places in the US for that matter. And oh, wait, re-elected? I did not know that coroners were elected, and didn't have to have anything other than a high school diploma in some places.
Huh?
RuEffinKidding me?

My country is so sad now

Report: Private Prisons Love Mass Incarceration, And Want Politicians To Love It Too
Ryan J. Reilly | June 24, 2011, 5:45AM
TPMMuckraker

"...The private prison population has grown 353.7 percent in the past 15 years, according to a study by the Justice Policy Institute."

Michelle Bachmann, frightening to me

Michelle Bachmann is a zealot, and she knows how to talk to her possible voters, the Evangelicals.

" Minnesota politician s who have squared off against Bachmann all speak with a kind of horrified reverence for her martial indomitability, her brilliantly fortifying lack of self-doubt , even the fact that she hasn't appeared to physically age at all in 10 years. "She will not stop," says Cecconi... "

"...Bachmann didn't talk a lot about her religion. She didn't have to—she knows how to signal it in ways that go right over secular heads. In criticizing Obama's Libya policy, for example, she said, "We are the head and not the tail." The phrase comes from Deuteronomy 28:13: "The Lord will make you the head and not the tail." As Rachel Tabachnick has reported, it's often used in theocratic circles to explain why Christians have an obligation to rule...

Republicans do not have the power to block an Elizabeth Warren recess appointment

Here's the rule

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

That’s Article I, section 5, clause 4 of the U.S. Constitution. You have to hand it to the House Republicans. They read the Constitution.

But they may not have read the whole thing. A little bit later—in the very same Constitution—is this passage on presidential powers:

[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

That’s Article II, section 3, clause 3 (the emphasis is mine, not the founders’). Yes, you read it correctly. If the Senate wants to adjourn and the House won’t permit it, the President can adjourn both houses of Congress. That would be a fitting end to the House meddling in nominations—a power the Constitution expressly assigns to the President and the Senate, not the House.

Read the whole post here.

SDG&E and solar = epic fail

Me visiting a photovoltaic array ↑ many years ago. Granted, photovoltaic collectors as a source of electricity were notoriously inefficient at that time, but hot water systems were efficient, and that was my training. And that didn't turn out so well:
People ask me why I'm so angry all the time?

"...I trained 23 28 years ago to install solar powered domestic hot water systems. I never worked in the field because the bottom fell out of the market when Reagan yanked the tax breaks on solar powered systems. I live in a country run by fucking idiots, anybody who's paying attention is pissed, I don't know why people ask me why I'm pissed...."

I knew the Sunrise Powerlink was not the pretty picture that SDG&E painted because of my very limited experience with photovolatics and my suspicion of SDG&E's PR campaign. I tried to ask the guy manning the Del Mar Fair booth in 2005 if he knew specifics about the green energy PR that was splashed about the booth and dude didn't have a fucking clue. I knew more from the trip to the photovoltaic array in 1983.

SDG&E's Big Solar Failure

And believe me, SDG&E wants nothing to do with the efficiency of the new cells because they can't make money on them. You could save money investing in them now, and tell the Kochs to fuck off and die, even though they don't have anything to do with my local power company, they still have to fuck around in my state's politics, and probably yours too.

JUNE 20, 2011 6:58 AM PDT
Alta Devices lifts curtain on high-efficiency solar cell
by Martin LaMonica

Semantics

Us killing each other; 4 is a "massacre" in a robbery gone haywire.

New York Shooting: Four Dead In Pharmacy Massacre
By FRANK ELTMAN 06/19/11 11:30 PM ET


Us killing them in a drone attack; 19 not a massacre, just "dead."

19 dead in US drone strikes
Published: June 16, 2011New

Tomgram: Karen Greenberg, How to End the War on Terror

Posted by Karen J. Greenberg at 5:21pm, June 19, 2011.

Every time we get a peek inside Washington’s war on terror, it just couldn’t be uglier. Last week, three little home-grown nightmares from that “war” caught my attention. One you could hardly miss. On the front page of the New York Times, Glenn Carle, a former CIA official, claimed that the Bush administration had wanted “to get” Juan Cole, whose Informed Comment blog devastatingly critiqued the invasion and occupation of Iraq (and who writes regularly for TomDispatch). Not only that, administration officials called on the CIA to dig up the dirt on him.

*sigh*

Quinceañera

Quinceañera (2006)

90 min - Drama - 5 July 2006 (France)

IMDB

I loved this little indie flick. I was raised in southern California and I raised my daughter here so I know what a Quinceañera is and in fact my daughter attended one, altlhough she was not part of the ceremony. Her friend was half Indian, so my kid was in heaven, Oh my gosh, Indian AND Mexican food?

The movie was filmed in 3 weeks on a low budget and the writers explain what an LA Quinceañera is from an outsiders view because they are from England. I thought they did a great job and so did Sundance . It's in Spanglish, which I am used to hearing, but there are subtitle options.

Shutting down cell phone taping of live events

Report: Apple Patents Technology That Will Stop Users From Taping Live Events With Their iPhones
by Jon Bershad | 12:56 pm, June 16th, 2011

Hmmm. My first thought after reading this article? So how long before law enforcement organizations claim exclusive rights to this technology and abuses do NOT get taped by bystanders?

Anthony Weiner

I'm seeing lots of information that say he will resign, because he committed twittercide .

I love his fiery rants . The way I feel towards the hypocritical GOP is so strong. It goes back and forth between a flash of hot anger and that absolutely determined, cold as ice, calm feeling that I get right before I give someone a good tongue lashing that does damage. The GOP are loyal like dogs, kind of stupid, but loyal. Trying to get the Democrats together to get shit done, or close ranks around one of their own is like herding cats.

2:33 p.m. ET

Well, that's it, he resigned.

Shit.

‘Anonymous’ targets Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke

By Business Insider
Monday, June 13th, 2011 -- 8:49 am

Anonymous has set its sights on Ben Bernanke.

The group also provided a Google Map guide to a series of protests, aimed to "* End the campaign finance and lobbying racket* Break up the Fed & Too Big to Fail banks* Enforce RICO laws against organized criminal class* Order Ben Bernanke to step down."

She did it.

Kind of hard to see from the nosebeleed section, but she now has a BS degree.

Dude, I thought she was born with one of those, lol.

I started to cry, but then I yelled instead, you know, kinda the opposite of what actually worked with her, lol. Anyway, since I never graduated from high school, and neither my husband or I graduated from a four year college, this was kind of a big deal.

Her words?

"Sort of anticlimactic Mom, but cool."

Her aunts and I marveled at how well the kids turned out, especially since uh...we didn't have a clue as to how to do this thing called parenting.

E coli vs. terrorism

100% Scared
How the National Security Complex Grows on Terrorism Fears
By Tom Engelhardt

"...In other words, in terms of damage since 9/11, terror attacks have ranked above shark attacks but below just about anything else that could possibly be dangerous to Americans, including car crashes which have racked up between 33,800 and 43,500 deaths a year since 2001...

...The National Security Complex has, in fact, grown fat by relentlessly pursuing the promise of making the country totally secure from terrorism, even as life grows ever less secure for so many Americans when it comes to jobs, homes, finances, and other crucial matters. It is on this pledge of protection that the Complex has managed to extort the tidal flow of funds that have allowed it to bloat to monumental proportions, end up with a yearly national security budget of more than $1.2 trillion, find itself encased in a cocoon of self-protective secrecy, and be 100% assured that its officials will never be brought to justice for any potential crimes they may commit in their “war” on terrorism...."

Asia Times Online :: This crisis has an exit

Asia Times Online :: This crisis has an exit
By Ellen Brown

"...Governments usually get the blame for excessive spending, but governments did not initiate the crisis..."


The Foreign Exchange Market’s Reaction to a Debt Ceiling Increase


As America inches towards a deal raising the debt ceiling, one wonders about the impending reaction of the foreign exchange market. While domestic bond holders would see selling opportunities in the likely event that the Treasury drops its yields, foreign holders of U.S. debt would only see the downside – a weaker dollar.

White House Taking 'Seriously' Al Qaeda's Eying Of America's Gun Show Loophole

“I knew there would be knuckle dragging Obama bashers flapping that one right wing so hard that they (lke their hatred) spin in circles.

Thanks for not disappoint ing y'all!
roflamo”

Favorite (2) Flag as Abusive
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AussieLib
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21 minutes ago (3:59 PM)
How are comments like this even remotely relevant?
I've been watching the thread, I've seen a lot of comments offering personal experience s in regards to gun shows, many stating that purchasing a full auto is not simple, others stating that full auto conversion s are not easy, simple or reliable.
There have been a few that have been ridiculous talking points, a few that have been standard loon comments, but most seem to be calm, rational and significan tly less condescend ingly arrogant than the above.

My response?
It's hard to be calm and reasonable when a country that is less than an hour away from me has lost tens of thousands of people in a ridiculous war on drugs that my country funds both sides of --

"Mexico updates four years of drug war deaths to 34,612"

http://www­.bbc.co.uk­/news/worl­d-latin-am­erica-1217­7875

"U.S. Flailing as American Guns Fuel Mexico’s Drug War"
By Adam Rawnsley November 10, 2010

http://www­.wired.com­/dangerroo­m/2010/11/­u-s-flaili­ng-as-amer­ican-guns-­fuel-mexic­os-drug-wa­r/

"NRA and Some of Its Board Members Have Direct Financial Interests in Stopping Ban on High-Capac­ity Ammunition Magazines" http://www­.commondre­ams.org/ne­wswire/201­1/01/19-3

Is that arrogant enough for you?
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Weiner is not the most compelling reason to elect more women

Dan CollinsNew York Editor-At-Large of The Huffington Post
GET UPDATES FROM DAN COLLINS

Anthony Weiner Gives Us Another Reason to Vote for Women
Posted: 06/ 6/11 04:59 PM ET

Just before Anthony Weiner went before the cameras to announce his Twittering problem, he confessed all to Nancy Pelosi.

"She was not happy," he reported.

"....The rest of us might want to confine ourselves to electing women."


This is:

Facts on Women in Congress 2011
Summary
Women hold 89, or 16.5%, of the 535 seats in the 112th US Congress — 17, or 17.0%, of the 100 seats in the Senate and 72, or 16.5%, of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives. In addition, three women serve as Delegates to the House from Guam, the Virgin Islands and Washington, DC.

We are over 50% of the population and a measly 17% of Congress.

So, how do we get the fucking banksters out of our way?

Greece Austerity Protests Grow

Grotesque Global Financial System: Greece. Economic Theft on an Unpreceden­ted Scale

Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war rarely reported as such.

by John Pilger



"...In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred them. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers put in charge. For the EU and the IMF, the opportunit­y presents to "change the culture" and to dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF and the World Bank have "structura­lly adjusted" (impoveris­hed and controlled­) countries across the developing world...

http://tin­yurl.com/3­oobnts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families

The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families
by Dean Henderson
Global Research
June 1, 2011

The Four Horsemen of Banking (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Wells Fargo) own the Four Horsemen of Oil (Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch/Shell, BP and Chevron Texaco); in tandem with Deutsche Bank, BNP, Barclays and other European old money behemoths. But their monopoly over the global economy does not end at the edge of the oil patch.

According to company 10K filings to the SEC, the Four Horsemen of Banking are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation.[1]

So who then are the stockholders in these money center banks?

This information is guarded much more closely. My queries to bank regulatory agencies regarding stock ownership in the top 25 US bank holding companies were given Freedom of Information Act status, before being denied on “national security” grounds. This is rather ironic, since many of the bank’s stockholders reside in Europe....


So, by now I'm familiar with most of the historical family names because this series of articles is supplemental to the third book I'm reading on the Federal Reserve Banking system that supplies our money...and our debt to international banksters. I've read Secrets of the Temple (c) 1987 , and I've also read The Creature from Jekyll Island.

Anybody else remember that stupid Rothschild candy ad from the 70's?

Wheeeeeeee, fun stuff.

The Professional Left

These two are the only way I can stand to read the crapola that the corporate media shovels at me on a daily basis.

Wal-Mart to be scrutinized by shareholders

Friday, June 3, 2011
By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO
Retail AP Writer

"FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. (AP) - Investors gathering at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s shareholders' meeting Friday are likely to be a little restless given a two-year sales slump in its namesake business that shows no clear signs of turning around yet..."

If I hear one more time that we don't know if humans are affecting climate change...

I'm going to ask them cui bono?

Seriously, who benefits when we don't believe that human activities have anything to do with it?

THINK.

Oil Group's 'Citizen' Rally Memo Stirs Debate
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 16, 2009

This is how (they) do it.

↓ ↓

Journal of Management Studies 40:4

June 2003 0022-2380
A Neo-Gramscian Approach to Corporate Political Strategy: Conflict and Accommodation in the Climate Change Negotiations*
David L. Levy and Daniel Egan
University of Massachusetts, Boston; University of Massachusetts, Lowell

Thursday, June 2, 2011

DARRELL ISSA: IT ISN’T BP’S FAULT

Tomgram: Bill McKibben, Obama Strikes Out on Global Warming
Posted by Bill McKibben at 8:28am, June 2, 2011.



Global Warming
NYT global warming index
Updated: Jan. 13, 2011

Scientific American Global warming articles

EPA - Climate Change

Duke University Study Connects Water Contamination to Fracking Natural Gas Wells
May 10th, 2011 | By admin | Category: Lead Articles, Regulation

Euro Endgame

05/13/2011
"..Yesterd­ay Eurostat disclosed that in order to hide its debt over the past decade, Greece had entered into not one, not two, but a total of 13 different currency swap contracts with Goldman Sachs, all based on the exchange of assorted currencies against the euro as well as one involving a dollar-CHF swap..."

http://tin­yurl.com/6­4qvm85

The US Federal Reserve board is investigat­ing the role of Goldman Sachs, which gambled on the bankruptcy of Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evadin­g rich deposited €360bn in Swiss

http://tin­yurl.com/3­oobnts
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Inside The Cult Of Elizabeth Warren

A cult? A bunch of us supporting someone who came from our ranks to defend us from greedy banksters who have been allowed to run wild in the name of unholy profits is a cult?



"The word cult pejorative­ly refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre.[1­] The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices.

http://en.­wikipedia.­org/wiki/C­ult



One word: Whatever.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Doctors Abandoning The Republican Party In Favor Of The Democrats

The NYT article totally tip-toed around the problem of insurance companies. The reason doctors no longer want to own their own practices is because they need too many people fighting the insurance companies to get what the patients need.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost