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WillyT

WillyT's Journal
WillyT's Journal
January 16, 2014

WTF !!! - IOC's Mario Pescante Rips U.S. For Including Openly Gay Athletes In Official Delegation To

IOC's Mario Pescante Rips U.S. For Including Openly Gay Athletes In Official Delegation To Sochi
By ANDREW DAMPF - HuffPo/AP
01/15/14 04:50 PM ET EST


The Olympic Rings stand outside of Sochi International Airport on January 8, 2014 in Alder, Russia. The region will host the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics which start on February 6th, 2014. (Photo by Michael Heiman/Getty Images) | Michael Heiman via Getty Images

<snip>

ROME (AP) — A senior Italian IOC member criticized the United States on Wednesday for including openly gay athletes in its official delegation for next month's Sochi Olympics.

"It's absurd that a country like that sends four lesbians to Russia just to demonstrate that in their country gay rights have (been established)," Mario Pescante said at an Italian Olympic Committee meeting in Milan on Wednesday, in comments widely reported by Italian media. "The games should not be an occasion and a stage to promote rights that sports supports daily."


The Italian Olympic Committee would not confirm or deny Pescante's comments, but his speech was reported by the Gazzetta dello Sport and the ANSA news agency.

Asked for clarification later by The Associated Press, Pescante said he is not against gays.

"Of course not," the 75-year-old Pescante told The AP by telephone. "I just wanted to make the point not to let politics interfere with the Olympics."


<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/ioc-italy-mario-pescante-us-gay-delegation_n_4604568.html


January 16, 2014

Confirmed: Not Only Do We Suck... But We Need To Suck More...

World May Have To Suck Gases From Air To Meet Climate Goals
Reuters/HuffPo - By Alister Doyle
Posted: 01/15/2014 9:48 am EST | Updated: 01/15/2014 11:04 am EST



<snip>

OSLO, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Governments may have to extract vast amounts of greenhouse gases from the air by 2100 to achieve a target for limiting global warming, backed by trillion-dollar shifts towards clean energy, a draft U.N. report showed on Wednesday.

A 29-page summary for policymakers, seen by Reuters, says most scenarios show that rising world emissions will have to plunge by 40 to 70 percent between 2010 and 2050 to give a good chance of restricting warming to U.N. targets.

The report, outlining solutions to climate change, is due to be published in Germany in April after editing by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It will be the third in a series by the IPCC, updating science from 2007.

It says the world is doing too little to achieve a goal agreed in 2010 of limiting warming to below 2 degrees (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for dangerous floods, heatwaves, droughts and rising sea levels.

To get on track, governments may have to turn ever more to technologies for "carbon dioxide removal" (CDR) from the air, ranging from capturing and burying emissions from coal-fired power plants to planting more forests that use carbon to grow.

Most projects for capturing carbon dioxide...

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/15/climate-goals-un_n_4602208.html






January 16, 2014

AmericaBlog Was Prescient... Lots Of Good Links Here:

Numerous Chris Christie corruption scandals would re-emerge if he ran for president in 2012
10/4/2011 10:45am by Gaius Publius

Link: http://americablog.com/2011/10/numerous-chris-christie-corruption-scandals-would-re-emerge-if-he-ran-for-president-in-2012.html


January 15, 2014

The Time Chris Christie Shut Down a Public Television Station That Did a Tough Story on Him

The Time Chris Christie Shut Down a Public Television Station That Did a Tough Story on Him
By Vanessa Grigoriadis - nymag
1/14/14

<snip>

There’s a fair amount of Schadenfreude this week among the New Jersey press corps, as they wait for the other shoe to drop in Chris Christie’s Bridgegate scandal and wonder if it’s Michael Drewniak, Christie’s press secretary and his “id,” as one official calls him. Drewniak is on the hot seat after it emerged last week that he got dinner with former Port Authority official and Christie friend David Wildstein two days before Wildstein resigned. “If Drewniak can’t explain what he did at dinner with David, he’s going to be gone, because the press corps in New Jersey hates him with a passion,” says a Democratic strategist. “If you put him on the train to D.C. this week and turned the lights off it would be like Murder on the Orient Express — he’d have 50 slashes in him. You can only be a jackass for so long before everyone wants to knife you.”

As a reporter, it’s hard not to feel your stomach turn while sifting through the documents released from Governor Chris Christie’s office last week, as Drewniak brushes off reporters’ inquiries about the closures (“Fuck him and the S-L [Star Ledger],” he wrote, and then called a reporter “a fucking mutt”). Christie's office wasn't always this way: When he was nominated to be U.S. Attorney by George W. Bush in 2001, remaining in the job until he became governor, he was adept at befriending reporters.

But as governor, that changed. “He became like an angry dictator toward the press,” says a former Corzine aide. “The reporters who did his bidding, he’d reward, and the ones who asked hard questions, he’d call morons and idiots, and stick Drewniak, a vulgar guy with serious anger issues and no impulse control, on him. Drewniak is Mr. No to reporters he doesn’t like. He just chokes off access to documents — ‘You want to see this? No.’” Christie stopped calling on reporters he didn’t like, like Ginger Gibson at Politico, and is well known for calling one an idiot and screaming at another about being “the thinnest-skinned guy in America."

In August 2009, Zack Fink, currently the statehouse reporter for NY1 but then a reporter for New Jersey Network, the PBS channel in New Jersey, developed a source who told him about a $46,000 loan that Christie had given Michele Brown, a subordinate that he’d promoted in the U.S. Attorney’s office, to pay her mortgage. This raised questions immediately about Christie’s ties to the U.S. Attorney’s office while he was running for governor, and was followed by a string of terrible press for Christie, including a story in the New York Times that said he didn’t report the income from the loan on his personal financial disclosure forms. (Brown was eventually forced to resigned, though Christie rehired her when he became governor — something that is perceived as a middle finger to those who revealed their relationship.)

“When Zack Fink broke the story about the undisclosed loan that Christie had made to Michele Brown, it was without a doubt the most important story of the 2009 race,” says Lis Smith, who was a press secretary for Corzine during the campaign. “Corzine was down double digits in the polls then. None of our campaign’s attacks were gaining any traction. Once Zack wrote that story it opened the floodgate to a whole new range of stories that hadn’t been out there before — how Christie ran the U.S. Attorney’s office, how Michele was using the attorney’s office to benefit Christie’s campaign, even a traffic incident with Christie and Brown where Christie acted in an abusive and vindictive manner.”

In 2011, Christie announced in his budget address that he was going to shut down NJN...

<snip>

More: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/01/christie-an-angry-dictator-toward-the-press.html


January 15, 2014

Item: Blagojevich Prosecutor To Lead NJ Bridge Scandal Inquiry - CBSPhilly

Blagojevich Prosecutor To Lead NJ Bridge Scandal Inquiry
CBSPhilly
January 15, 2014 2:40 PM

<snip>

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The federal prosecutor who helped convict former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is being asked to investigate the apparent political payback scandal involving New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration.

The New Jersey Assembly tapped former assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar, who helped convict Blagojevich of corruption, as special counsel Wednesday.


The special counsel will advise a legislative committee investigating a plot that shut down lanes to the George Washington Bridge for four days in September

<snip>

Link: http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/01/15/blagojevich-prosecutor-to-lead-nj-bridge-scandal-inquiry/


January 15, 2014

Question: Name A Federally Elected Democrat That Is NOT Bought Off By The PTB...

I've got this at this point:

Elizabeth Warren
Alan Grayson
Sherrod Brown
Barbara Lee

And Bernie Sanders... with an aterisk. (He's an Independent)

Who am I missing?


January 15, 2014

Take Just ONE MORE LOOK At This Photo... "I Don't Even Know This Guy!"



Eyes on the cameraman, hand down by his side, not rising to shake the offered hand of Wildstein, etc...

And...


Director of Interstate Capital Projects David Wildstein, Port Authority Chairman David Samson, Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, Gov. Chris Christie, and Mary Pat Christie, arriving at the site of the Sept. 11 Memorial, Sept. 11, 2013, in this photo obtain by The Wall Street Journal.

And...


Mr. Christie and Mr. Wildstein, in striped tie, in June, with Port Authority officials Bill Baroni and David Samson, in a photo obtained by The Journal, at a ceremonial announcement of the raising of the Bayonne Bridge roadway in New Jersey. Mr. Baroni stands to the left of Mr. Christie, and Mr. Samson is to the right of Mr. Wildstein.

And...


Gov. Chris Christie greeting Bill Baroni, deputy executive director of the Port Authority, in lower Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2013, in this photo obtained by The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Baroni was helping an associate, Mr. Wildstein, manage the local fallout from controversial lane closures in Fort Lee, N.J., which were in their third day.

Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2014/01/14/christie-official-who-arranged-bridge-closures-together-during-fiasco/

January 15, 2014

Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill

Freedom Industries: Meet The Chemical Provider At The Center Of The West Virginia Chemical Spill
By Dennis Lynch - IBTimes
on January 12 2014 5:22 PM


The site of the Freedom Industries chemical spill. via Flickr user iwasaround: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iwasaround/ iwasaround via Flickr

<snip>

Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the recent chemical spill in West Virginia, has had its hands full with not just the cleanup, but with the resulting backlash from angry West Virginians and authorities. Here is some information about Freedom Industries and its handling of the spill.

On its website, Freedom Industries says it was founded in 1986 and has two production facilities. The Etowah River Terminal, where the leak occurred, can store 4 million gallons worth of chemicals. According to WOWKTV, Freedom bought the property in December.

The website says it is a “full service producer of specialty chemicals for the mining, steel, and cement industries [and] a leading producer of freeze conditioning agents, dust control palliatives, flotation reagents, water treatment polymers and other specialty chemicals.” The leaked chemical, 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (MCHM), is used in a coal cleaning process.

Kanwaha County Commission President Kent Carper said yesterday that a containment wall meant to prevent chemicals from reaching soil at Freedom Industries was in need of $1 million in repairs, but was never fixed...

<snip>

More: http://www.ibtimes.com/freedom-industries-meet-chemical-provider-center-west-virginia-chemical-spill-1536036

Main site: http://www.freedom-industries.com/about.html


January 15, 2014

Do You Think Anybody In The Democratic Party Pays Attention To Voters Who Post Online ???

Because they should...

When they start the same old tired pablum in September... I think many will tune out.

Does the Democratic Party even have a person or two tuned into what's going down online?

Anybody know?


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