October 16, 2015

Memo to Cecile Richards and reps of other progressive orgs: STOP APOLOGIZING WHEN YOU'RE RIGHT!

Published on Oct 13, 2015

Planned Parenthood has decided to stop taking money for fetal tissue donations. While they’ve never profited from fetal tissue donations (though the smear campaign against them has convinced many otherwise), the only type of money they’ve ever received for fetal donations was to cover transportation costs. Nonetheless, the group has decided to stop taking reimbursement for even these costs. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian (The Point), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Planned Parenthood announced Tuesday that it will no longer accept any reimbursement for the fetal tissue it supplies to medical researchers, a move to distance itself from recent political attacks.

In a letter to the director of the National Institutes of Health, Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards wrote that though reimbursement for procuring fetal tissue for research purposes is legal, she intends to “completely debunk the disingenuous argument that our opponents have been using—and to reveal the true political purpose of these attacks.””*

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2015/10/13/planned_parenthood_will_no_longer_accept_reimbursement_for_fetal_tissue.html

October 14, 2015

Rahm Emanuel, POS

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the head of the nation's third largest city, is standing by his deadly pronouncement that police officers need to return to "pre-Ferguson" non-transparent and "aggressive” policing. This is the racist policing style that not infrequently results in brutality, the targeting of people of color and law enforcement officers literally getting away with murder.

As reported in The Chicago-Sun Times on October 9, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is blaming a record-setting bloodletting September in Chicago on police officers allegedly becoming less aggressive. Emanuel contemptuously - and puzzlingly - complains that the murder spike among citizens occurred in the wake of the video revelations of police around the nation murdering people of color and harassing them:

Chicago’s police union is taking exception to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s description of Chicago cops as being “fetal” and not proactively policing because they’re afraid of getting in trouble when citizens post YouTube videos of their interactions with the public.

Emanuel’s comments came as he urged support for police during a private meeting [last] Wednesday with big-city police chiefs, the U.S. attorney general, the head of the FBI and other law-enforcement and elected officials, according to a Washington Post reporter who was there.

“We have allowed our police department to get fetal and it is having a direct consequence,” Emanuel told U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. “They have pulled back from the ability to interdict . . . they don’t want to be a news story themselves, they don’t want their career ended early, and it’s having an impact.”

Emanuel's pushback on the outrage over police harassing and brutally treating people of color is an astonishing and repulsive position. In trying to defend his own culpability for a rising murder rate in Chicago, he is blaming what he and his chief of police derisively call "a Ferguson effect." ................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/in-horrifying-statement-chicago-mayor-blames-city-s-soaring-murder-toll-on

October 13, 2015

Surprising Number Of Drunk Vegetarians Secretly Eat Meat

Surprising Number Of Drunk Vegetarians Secretly Eat Meat
They relapse and go on the lamb.

Ron Dicker
General Assignment Reporter, The Huffington Post


Vegetarians are going to have a cow over this. Oh, wait, they already are.

A new survey says more than a third of vegetarians eat meat when they've had too much to drink. What's more, they're sneaky about it, with 69 percent saying they don't fess up.

The study of 1,789 British vegetarians by the deal-offering service VoucherCodesPro revealed a few other morsels worth fleshing out:

More than a third also revealed they go beast mode every time on a drunk night out. Kebab was the most popular relapse of choice (remember, this is the UK), followed by burgers, bacon, fried chicken and sausages, according to the Telegraph.

"I know a few 'vegetarians' who sometimes crave meat, but it seems that a few are giving into their cravings when drunk," Voucher Codes Pro founder George Charles said in outlets. "I think it's important for friends of these 'vegetarians' to support them when drunk and urge them not to eat meat as I'm sure they regret it the next day." ..................(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/vegetarians-eat-meat-drunk-survey_56167f34e4b0e66ad4c69f50

October 13, 2015

I just don't know that I could be on a plane for THIS long.....

........the longest nonstop segment I've taken is Detroit-Rome. For the journey in this story, I think I'd need to connect.





(Bloomberg) Singapore Airlines Ltd. is poised to regain the title of world’s longest flight with a nonstop service to New York.

The 19-hour journey covering more than 15,300 kilometers (9,300 miles) will beat the proposed 13,821-kilometer flight that Emirates intends to start in February from its Dubai home to Panama City. Singapore Air will take delivery of an ultra-long range version of Airbus Group SE’s A350 in 2018 for the nonstop service, the carrier said in an e-mailed statement Tuesday.

“This will be the right equipment for Singapore Airlines to make the numbers work for them for the nonstop flights,” said Shukor Yusof, founder of Endau Analytics in Malaysia. “Singapore has the reservoir of business travelers around the region to make this work. This will help Singapore Airlines strengthen its U.S. market, where it was lagging.”

Currently, the world’s longest flight is Qantas Airways Ltd.’s service from Sydney to Dallas.

Airlines globally are again embracing ultra-long range flights on expectations they’ll be profitable as fuel prices have declined and new technologies make planes more fuel-efficient. Iconic trans-Atlantic flights on the supersonic Concorde were scrapped more than a decade ago, and the shrinking of Wall Street firms and travel cutbacks since the global financial crisis have made it difficult for airlines to lure top-dollar clients. ........................(more)

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-13/singapore-air-to-restart-world-s-longest-flight-with-airbus-jet

October 13, 2015

TPP is “Worst Trade Agreement” for Medicine Access, Says Doctors Without Borders

UNITED NATIONS, Oct 7 2015 (IPS) - “The TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) will…go down in history as the worst trade agreement for access to medicines in developing countries,” said Doctors without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in a statement following the signing of the TPP trade deal.

The controversial agreement is the largest trade deal in a generation, bringing together 12 countries around the world including the United States to govern 40 percent of the world’s economy.

Negotiations on the TPP deal, initiated in 2008, finally came to a conclusion on Oct. 5 in the southern US city of Atlanta. It includes a range of economic policies including lowered tariffs as well as standards for labor law, environmental regulation, and international investments.

“This partnership levels the playing field for our farmers, ranchers, and manufacturers by eliminating more than 18,000 taxes that various countries put on our products,” said US President Barack Obama in a statement following the end of negotiations. He also noted that the deal has the “strongest” commitments on labor and the environment of any trade agreement in history. .........................(more)

http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/10/tpp-is-worst-trade-agreement-for-medicine-access-says-doctors-without-borders/

October 13, 2015

The Color of Debt: How Collection Suits Squeeze Black Neighborhoods

from ProPublica, via Truthout:



On a recent Saturday afternoon, the mayor of Jennings, a St. Louis suburb of about 15,000, settled in before a computer in the empty city council chambers. Yolonda Fountain Henderson, 50, was elected last spring as the city's first black mayor.

On the screen was a list of every debt collection lawsuit against a resident of her city, at least 4,500 in just five years. Henderson asked to see her own street. On her block of 16 modest ranch-style homes, lawsuits had been filed against the occupants of eight. "That's my neighbor across the street," she said, pointing to one line on the screen.

And then she saw her own suit. Henderson, a single mother, fell behind on her sewer bill after losing her job a few years ago, and the utility successfully sued her. That judgment was listed, as well as how one day the company seized $382 from her credit union account - all she had, but not enough to pay off the debt.

As the lines of suits scrolled by on the screen, Henderson shook her head in disbelief, swinging her dangling, heart-shaped earrings.

"They're just suing all of us," she said.

.....(snip).....

The disparity was not merely because black families earn less than white families. Our analysis of five years of court judgments from three metropolitan areas - St. Louis, Chicago and Newark - showed that even accounting for income, the rate of judgments was twice as high in mostly black neighborhoods as it was in mostly white ones. ..................(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/33204-the-color-of-debt-how-collection-suits-squeeze-black-neighborhoods

October 12, 2015

WI GOP Begins Retroactive Decriminalization of Scott Walker Fundraising

(HuffPost) The far-right Wisconsin Supreme Court already handed Governor Scott Walker a "get out of jail free card" when it called a halt to the John Doe criminal probe into campaign finance violations by Walker and his team of advisors during the 2011-2012 recall elections.

Now, the Wisconsin legislature is going the extra mile with three separate bills to retroactively decriminalize the behavior at the heart of the investigation and to defang the nonpartisan elections agency that aided it. Two of the bills are on a fast track being sped through the legislature with an unusual Joint Senate/Assembly hearing on Tuesday.

The first will allow candidates to directly coordinate with big money "issue ad" groups that keep their donors secret -- allowing politicians to form their own shadow campaign committee, and then ask billionaires and corporations from around the country (or even overseas) to contribute million-dollar checks, without any public disclosure. The second will destroy the nonpartisan Government Accountability Board, widely regarded as a "model" for the nation, that assisted prosecutors in the Walker investigation. The third will exempt politicians as a category from these types of corruption probes.

Legislative leaders are calling it an overhaul of the state's campaign finance laws, but it really isn't campaign finance at all. Wisconsin should inaugurate new chapters in the statutes including "Facilitating Secret Money in Wisconsin Elections" and "Protecting Politicians from Independent Oversight and Accountability." ..................(more)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-bottari/wi-gop-begins-retroactive_b_8270286.html

October 12, 2015

New York's Bus Terminal: Overcrowded, Fragile and Largely Ignored

(Transportation Nation) In some respects, the Port Authority Bus Terminal is a victim of its own success. Built in the 1950s to centralize bus operations in midtown Manhattan, it reached capacity 16 years after opening. Now, the behemoth at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue serves 50 percent more people than it was built for. Today, buses move more people into the city from New Jersey each morning than NJ Transit trains do. And those buses regularly back up from the crowded bus terminal all the way through the Lincoln Tunnel.

"Every day is hit or miss," says commuter Cherise Canton, who has been taking a bus from Teaneck to her job in lower Manhattan for 15 years. She says it usually takes her at least an hour to go the 12 miles. "It's very seldom less than that. And it shouldn't be that long."



In the second of five stories in its series "Running Late," WNYC finds that a key piece of the region's transportation network is falling apart due to its age, neglect and second-class status. Double-decker or articulated buses could help bring in more passengers per hour, but those vehicles are prohibited because they are taller and heavier than the light 1950s-era buses the terminal was designed for. There is also no westbound exclusive bus lane that would prevent Jersey-bound buses from getting stuck in Lincoln Tunnel traffic during the afternoon rush. Even worse: officials say the building's concrete support slabs have 15 to 25 years of life left in them. ...................(more)

http://www.wnyc.org/story/port-authority-bus-terminal/

October 12, 2015

WTF? ... Even crazier Stand Your Ground 2.0 law proposed in Florida

Published on Oct 7, 2015

Stand your ground laws have spread across America over the past decade, but we’re not done yet. Florida is moving to bolster the law. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola (Think Tank), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Florida legislators want to make it harder to convict you.

Not only that, if you escape conviction, they want to give you up to $200,000 for your trouble.

In a bizarre, dangerous and costly new expansion to the NRA-backed "stand your ground law," GOP legislators want to increase the burden of proof on prosecutors trying to convict anyone who claims self-defense.

In the old days, if you shot or beat someone with a baseball bat, you had to prove you had a good reason for doing so.”*


http://crooksandliars.com/2015/10/florida-goes-wrong-direction-gun-issue

October 12, 2015

Celebration of a Psychopath

Published on Oct 6, 2015

Monday, October 12th is Columbus Day, which we have celebrated in this country since the eighteenth century… and that’s probably long enough. When you find out the actual facts of what Columbus did when he got to America, you’ll find one of the darkest chapters in American history. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola (Think Tank), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

"Second, Columbus wasn't a hero. When he set foot on that sandy beach in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, Columbus discovered that the islands were inhabited by friendly, peaceful people called the Lucayans, Taínos and Arawaks. Writing in his diary, Columbus said they were a handsome, smart and kind people. He noted that the gentle Arawaks were remarkable for their hospitality. "They offered to share with anyone and when you ask for something, they never say no," he said. The Arawaks had no weapons; their society had neither criminals, prisons nor prisoners. They were so kind-hearted that Columbus noted in his diary that on the day the Santa Maria was shipwrecked, the Arawaks labored for hours to save his crew and cargo. The native people were so honest that not one thing was missing.

Columbus was so impressed with the hard work of these gentle islanders, that he immediately seized their land for Spain and enslaved them to work in his brutal gold mines. Within only two years, 125,000 (half of the population) of the original natives on the island were dead.”*

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-kasum/columbus-day-a-bad-idea_b_742708.html