Alan Simpson to GOP: Show me a guy who won’t compromise & I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains

Alan Simpson Slams Fellow Republicans For Unwillingness To Compromise
VIDEO:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/27/alan-simpson-republicans_n_1549604.html

"You can’t cut spending your way out of this hole," Simpson, who was appointed as co-chair of President Obama's Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010, said. "You can’t grow your way out of this hole, and you can’t tax your way out of this hole. So put that in your pipe and smoke it, we tell these people. This is madness."

Simpson continued: "If you want to be a purist, go somewhere on a mountaintop and praise the east or something. But if you want to be in politics, you learn to compromise. And you learn to compromise on the issue without compromising yourself. Show me a guy who won’t compromise and I’ll show you a guy with rock for brains."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/27/alan-simpson-republicans_n_1549604.html

Leveson Inquiry: Tony Blair called 'war criminal' by intruder

Source: Telegraph UK

Leveson Inquiry: Tony Blair called 'war criminal' by intruder David Lawley Wakelin
Tony Blair's evidence to the Leveson Inquiry was briefly interrupted by a protester accusing the former Prime Minister of being a "war criminal".

The protester, wearing a white shirt, entered the courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice through a door reserved for the judge.

The protester was later named as David Lawley Wakelin, a film maker who has made films criticising the Iraq war.

"This man is a war criminal," he shouted. He referred to Mr Blair's work for JP Morgan, a US investment bank, suggesting the bank had profitted from the 2003 war in Iraq.

Lord Justice Leveson, who rose to his feet when the intruder entered dressed in white shirt and trousers, called for an immediate inquiry into how he had got in.

Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9294967/Leveson-Inquiry-Tony-Blair-called-war-criminal-by-intruder-David-Lawley-Wakelin.html

America "LOST"

Are Voters Just Rooting for Clothes?

Fans of the opposite party are not against the President because he doesn’t agree with them on the issue. They are against the President because he plays for the “wrong” team. And unless he is willing to change teams ... , he can try to “reach across the aisle” all day and he will never make the other team’s fans happy.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/05/24/are-voters-just-rooting-for-clothes/

Cleveland Occupy arrests are the latest in FBI's pattern of manipulation

Source: The Guardian

Cleveland Occupy arrests are the latest in FBI's pattern of manipulation
The FBI says the five arrested before May Day are terrorists, but friends in Cleveland say they were goaded on by informant

........................

The Cleveland Five – Brandon Baxter, 20; Anthony Hayne, 35; Joshua Stafford, 23; Connor Stevens, 20; and Douglas Wright, 26 – were allegedly goaded by a criminal on the FBI dime who said "I could show you" how to take down a bridge, led them to the bridge, told them taking it out "would cost the corporate big wigs a lot of money", secured inoperable C4 explosives provided by an undercover agent, and then warned them they are "on the hook" for it. The informant also provided them with jobs, money, a place to live, a friendly ear, beer, pot and the prescription stimulant Adderall.

Because the bureau announced the arrests on May 1 as Occupy protests were taking place in some 110 US cities, many observers claim they were politically motivated. Then on May 19 and 20 authorities slapped five men with terrorism charges during anti-NATO protests in Chicago. Will Potter, who analyzes FBI entrapment plots in his book Green is the New Red, says the two incidents are "a reflection of an ongoing pattern of behavior from the FBI of singling out political activists and having a direct influence in creating so-called terrorist plots for the purpose of proclaiming a victory in the war on terrorism."

In the Cleveland and Chicago cases, the FBI is so desperate to manufacture terrorists it is now netting children. In Cleveland friends and family describe the boys – which everyone calls them – as lost souls who had found hope in the Occupy movement. Lea Tolls, a 46-year-old self-described "Occu-mom," says: "They are angry. Some have mental illnesses, and there is alcoholism and abuse in their families."

Prior to the arrests, all five except Doug Wright lived at a dilapidated brick warehouse, dubbed "the Fortress," which Occupy Cleveland had leased as a crash pad. In mid-May I visited the warehouse on a dead-end street and was immediately assaulted by pungent toilets, stale cigarette smoke, soiled dishes, tinny rock music, crude political graffiti and dank youth slumbering in the mid-day heat.
It was Anarchist Romper Room.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/28/cleveland-occupy-arrests-fbi-manipulation

Bird populations dropping in EU tied to farming policies (The Guardian)

How EU farming policies led to a collapse in Europe's bird population
New survey shows devastation to farmland birds caused by policies – and experts can see no sign of improvement
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/may/26/eu-farming-policies-bird-population

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Indeed, according to a new survey, the chances of encountering any one of the 36 species of farmland birds in Europe – species that also include the lapwing, the skylark and the meadow pipit – are now stunningly low. Devastating declines in their numbers have seen overall populations drop from 600 million to 300 million between 1980 and 2009, the study has discovered.

This dramatic decline represents a 50% reduction and is blamed on major changes in farming policies enforced by the EU over the last 30 years.

In order to boost food production across Europe, the wholesale ripping up of hedgerows, draining of wetlands and ploughing over of meadows has robbed farmland birds of their homes and food. Numbers of linnets, turtle doves and lapwings have crashed as a result.

via: http://www.americablog.com/2012/05/bird-populations-dropping-in-eu-tied-to.html

Here’s to more picnics and fewer wars.

Presidential Proclamation--Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2012

Presidential Proclamation -- Prayer for Peace, Memorial Day, 2012

PRAYER FOR PEACE, MEMORIAL DAY, 2012
- - - - - - -
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION

Our Nation endures and thrives because of the devotion of our men and women in uniform, who, from generation to generation, carry a burden heavier than any we may ever know. On Memorial Day, we honor those who have borne conflict's greatest cost, mourn where the wounds of war are fresh, and pray for a just, lasting peace.

The American fabric is stitched with the stories of sons and daughters who gave their lives in service to the country they loved. They were patriots who overthrew an empire and sparked revolution. They were courageous men and women who strained to hold a young Union together. They were ordinary citizens who rolled back the creeping tide of tyranny, who stood post through a long twilight struggle, who saw terror and extremism threaten our world's security and said, "I'll go." And though their stories are unique to the challenges they faced, our fallen service members are forever bound by a legacy of valor older than the Republic itself. Now they lay at rest in quiet corners of our country and the world, but they live on in the families who loved them and in the soul of a Nation that is safer for their service.

Today, we join together in prayer for the fallen. We remember all who have borne the battle, whose devotion to duty has sustained our country and kept safe our heritage as a free people in a free society. Though our hearts ache in their absence, we find comfort in knowing that their legacy lives on in all of us -- in the security that lets us live in peace, the prosperity that allows us to pursue our dreams, and the love that still beats in those who knew them. May God bless the souls of the venerable warriors we have lost, and may He watch over the men and women who serve us now. Today, tomorrow, and in perpetuity, let us give thanks to them by remaining true to the values and virtues for which they fight.

In honor of all of our fallen service members, the Congress, by a joint resolution approved May 11, 1950, as amended (36 U.S.C. 116), has requested the President issue a proclamation calling on the people of the United States to observe each Memorial Day as a day of prayer for permanent peace and designating a period on that day when the people of the United States might unite in prayer. The Congress, by Public Law 106-579, has also designated 3:00 p.m. local time on that day as a time for all Americans to observe, in their own way, the National Moment of Remembrance.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim Memorial Day, May 28, 2012, as a day of prayer for permanent peace, and I designate the hour beginning in each locality at 11:00 a.m. of that day as a time to unite in prayer. I also ask all Americans to observe the National Moment of Remembrance beginning at 3:00 p.m. local time on Memorial Day.

I request the Governors of the United States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the appropriate officials of all units of government, to direct that the flag be flown at half-staff until noon on this Memorial Day on all buildings, grounds, and naval vessels throughout the United States and in all areas under its jurisdiction and control. I also request the people of the United States to display the flag at half-staff from their homes for the customary forenoon period.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-fifth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.

BARACK OBAMA

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/05/25/presidential-proclamation-prayer-peace-memorial-day-2012

Trump on Romney: ‘He’d Buy Companies, He’d Close Companies, He’d Get Rid Of Jobs’

Trump on Romney: ‘He’d Buy Companies, He’d Close Companies, He’d Get Rid Of Jobs’
By Judd Legum posted from ThinkProgress Election on May 25, 2012 at 7:00 pm
In the last few days, there has been a lively discussion about whether the Obama campaign’s critisims of Bain are “in bounds” or whether such criticism are outside the realm of acceptable political debate.

Mitt Romney, for his part, has Obama’s criticism amounts to “attacking capitalism.”

Among those who hate capitalism, apparently, is Donald Trump. Last April, Trump described Romney’s experience at Bain as follows: “He’d buy companies, he’d close companies, he’d get rid of jobs.” Watch it:

Judge strikes down Defense of Marriage Act provision in state employees' case

Source: Marin Independent Journal

Judge strikes down Defense of Marriage Act provision in state employees' case

Bay City News Service


OAKLAND -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the state's public-employee pension system must make long-term care insurance equally available to same-sex spouses and partners.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken said a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, is unconstitutional to the extent that it limits same-sex spouses of state workers in obtaining the insurance.

The provision of the 1996 DOMA law defines marriage as "a legal union of a one man and one woman as husband and wife."

It has been used to bar gay and lesbian spouses from obtaining a variety of federal benefits.

Read more: http://www.marinij.com/ci_20706868/judge-strikes-down-defense-marriage-act-provision-state