kpete
kpete's JournalRepukes: Finished a a national party
Obama = First black president.
Hillary = First woman president
Castro = First Hispanic president
The Pukesters are facing 18 more years w/o a presidential win.
They are FINISHED as a national party.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/julian-castro-hillary-clinton-elections-2016-106797.html
Which State has the Most Gerrymandered Districts?
Which State has the Most Gerrymandered Districts?
Posted at 7:50 a.m. today
Christopher Ingraham: The point of gerrymandering is to “give your opponents a small number of safe seats, while drawing yourself a larger number of seats that are not quite as safe, but that you can expect to win comfortably.”
“The compactness of a district — a measure of how irregular its shape is, as determined by the ratio of the area of the district to the area of a circle with the same perimeter — can serve as a useful proxy for how gerrymandered the district is. Districts that follow a generally regular shape tend to be compact, while those that have a lot of squiggles and offshoots and tentacle-looking protuberances tend to score poorly on this measure.”
“I calculated compactness scores for each of the districts of the 113th Congress and mapped them so you can see where the least compact — and likely most-gerrymandered –districts are.”
North Carolina comes out near the top with three of the ten most gerrymandered districts.
http://wonkwire.rollcall.com/2014/05/19/state-gerrymandered-districts/
I had not realized the Koch's were such a nice family...
.......................
Frederick, the oldest, was an outsider in the rough-and-tumble boys club of the Koch house. "Freddie was a sophisticate, a man of the world, in addition to the fact that he was gay, (which) wasn't easily accepted in those days," said a family friend.
Instead, it was Charles, the middle child, who became the vehicle for his father’s ambitions. According to a friend, the father worried that he had been "too kind to Freddie, and that's why he turned out to be so effeminate. When Charles came along, the old man wasn't going to make that mistake. So he was really, really tough on Charles."
The result was a serious, extremely disciplined man, who along with his younger brother David, would transform their father's medium-sized oil refining business, Koch Industries, into one of the largest privately held corporations in the world. But their success came at a high price.
Schulman describes how Charles, unable to convince brother Frederick to sell his stake in Koch Industries, allegedly resorted to "a homosexual blackmail attempt to force Frederick to sell his shares." And when the youngest twin, Bill, launched a bid to wrest control of Koch Industries from his older brothers, Charles' legal team responded by releasing a dossier of opposition research on Bill, filled with sordid details of his personal life.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/17/koch-brothers-book_n_5342694.html?utm_hp_ref=politics
Gov. Awards Full Benefits To Wife Of Female Soldier Killed In Afghanistan (1st Same-Sex Couple)
Source: Huffington Post
Government Awards Full Benefits To Wife Of Female Soldier Killed In Afghanistan
Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Tracy Dice Johnson, whose wife was killed fighting in Afghanistan, has received word from the Department of Veterans Affairs that she will receive the same survivor benefits that heterosexual married couples are entitled to.
Johnson's wife, 29-year-old Army National Guard Staff Sgt. Donna Johnson, was killed Oct. 1, 2012, by a suicide bomber. They are believed to be the first same-sex couple to suffer a casualty after the 2011 repeal of "don't ask, don't tell," the federal law that barred openly gay and lesbian individuals from serving in the military.
According to the Army Times, Johnson announced the VA's decision on Saturday at the American Military Partner Association's gala, where she received the organization’s 2014 Community Hero Award. She called the VA's announcement "an important step toward our end goal of achieving equal treatment for all military families."
Johnson was an outspoken advocate for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as being between one man and one woman for federal purposes. It therefore barred Johnson and other gay war widows from receiving equal benefits, including the return of the wedding ring recovered from the body and a monthly indemnity payment of $1,215.
Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/19/tracy-dice-johnson_n_5351243.html?1400508534
Last year, 25 hedge fund managers earned more than double every kindergarten teacher combined
Last year, 25 hedge fund managers earned more than double every kindergarten teacher combined
Alpha magazine is out with its annual "rich list" detailing the successes of the highest earning hedge fund managers in America. The news once again is that it's good to be a successful hedge fund manager: the top 25 earned a collective $21.1 billion this year.
Even within that group there's considerable inequality. The top earner, David Tepper, took home $3.5 billion which is about five times as much as either of the two men tied for the tenth slot.
How does that look in context? Well, it's about 0.13 percent of total national income for 2013 being earned by something like 0.00000008 percent of the American population. Another way of looking at it is that this is about 2.5 times the income of every kindergarten teacher in the country combined.
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/6/5687788/last-year-25-hedge-fund-managers-earned-more-than-double-every
When Guns Are Everywhere, Only People With Guns Will Have Guns--- by Tom Tomorrow
?1400275744
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/19/1299907/-Cartoon-Guns-everywhere
Krugman on Geithner: He was “…all for bailing out banks but against bailing out families…”
Paul Krugman
New York Times
MAY 19, 2014
By any normal standard, economic policy since the onset of the financial crisis has been a dismal failure. It’s true that we avoided a full replay of the Great Depression. But employment has taken more than six years to claw its way back to pre-crisis levels — years when we should have been adding millions of jobs just to keep up with a rising population. Long-term unemployment is still almost three times as high as it was in 2007; young people, often burdened by college debt, face a highly uncertain future.
Now Timothy Geithner, who was Treasury secretary for four of those six years, has published a book, “Stress Test,” about his experiences. And basically, he thinks he did a heckuva job…
…
…where is the rebound in the real economy? Where are the jobs? Saving Wall Street, it seems, wasn’t nearly enough. Why?
…
…fiscal austerity wasn’t the only reason recovery has been so disappointing. Many analysts believe that the burden of high household debt, a legacy of the housing bubble, has been a big drag on the economy. And there was, arguably, a lot the Obama administration could have done to reduce debt burdens without Congressional approval. But it didn’t; it didn’t even spend funds specifically allocated for that purpose. Why? According to many accounts, the biggest roadblock was Mr. Geithner’s consistent opposition to mortgage debt relief — he was, if you like, all for bailing out banks but against bailing out families…
…
… In the end, the story of economic policy since 2008 has been that of a remarkable double standard. Bad loans always involve mistakes on both sides — if borrowers were irresponsible, so were the people who lent them money. But when crisis came, bankers were held harmless for their errors while families paid full price.
And refusing to help families in debt, it turns out, wasn’t just unfair; it was bad economics. Wall Street is back, but America isn’t, and the double standard is the main reason.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/19/opinion/krugman-springtime-for-bankers.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/19/1300352/-Krugman-on-Geithner-He-was-all-for-bailing-out-banks-but-against-bailing-out-families
Seriously Mr. Cheney? Dick wants Hillary Clinton held "accountable" for #Benghazi
DICK:“She was secretary of state at the time that it happened,” Cheney opined. “She was one of the first in Washington to know about it. I think she clearly bears responsibility for whatever the State Department did or didn’t do with respect to that crisis.”
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/05/18/dick-cheney-wants-hillary-clinton-held-accountable-for-benghazi-terror-attacks/
*********************
SUN MAY 18, 2014 AT 10:29 AM PDT
Dick Cheney wants Hillary Clinton held "accountable" for #Benghazi
byVyanFollow
Well, here's one from the complete lack of irony and self-awareness column.
After all that Dick Cheney thinks that the person who needs to be held accountable for a deadly terrorist attack - is Hillary Clinton.
Yes, seriously.
MORE-Lots of links:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/18/1300205/-Dick-Cheney-wants-Hillary-Clinton-held-accountable-for-Benghazi#
Calling BULLSHIT on NYT
HIGH STANDARDS?
New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. is denying the “shallow and factually incorrect” allegations that the paper’s executive editor, Jill Abramson, was fired over her complaints that she was paid less than her male colleagues. Women at the Times, Sulzberger argues in a memo to Times staffers on Saturday, “do not look for special treatment”
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/ny-tim...
But the last editor (with Judy Miller) was kept on for years after he supported the invasion of Iraq based on WMD. After it was disclosed that he sat on an NSA story for over a year until after Bush was reelected. After he had been giving all of their content away for free online for years.
It just seems hard to believe that he suddenly has such high standards.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2014/05/ny-times-explains-abramson-firing-188715.html
you wanna tell me Jesus rode THIS dinosaur?
?itok=gZeoYoKn
Fossilised bones of a dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed in Argentina, palaeontologists say.
Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall.
Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus.
Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur - an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period.
MORE:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27441156
http://www.avantnews.com/news/35092-creationist-paleontologists-discover-dinosaur-saddle
Profile Information
Member since: Fri Sep 17, 2004, 03:59 PMNumber of posts: 71,985
