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FourScore

FourScore's Journal
FourScore's Journal
October 1, 2014

Why are all the secret service failures coming to light now?

That's what really worries me. I hope it is not the foreshadowing of something worse.

The security breaches are bad. Really bad. But some of them happened years ago, so why are they being disclosed or discussed now?

I always wonder about the timing of these disclosures. I don't believe they are happenstance.

I am so worried about my President's well-being.

September 28, 2014

Ebola Breakthrough?

Sat Sep 27, 2014 at 10:59 AM PDT
Ebola Breakthrough?
by wilderness voice

Dr. Gobee Logan, a doctor in rural Liberia, has given an HIV drug, lamivudine, to 15 Ebola patients. 13 survived. Continue past the mating paramecium for more:

http://www.cnn.com/...

"My stomach was hurting; I was feeling weak; I was vomiting," Elizabeth Kundu, 23, says of her bout with the virus. "They gave me medicine, and I'm feeling fine. We take it, and we can eat -- we're feeling fine in our bodies." Kundu and the other 12 patients who took the lamivudine and survived, received the drug in the first five days or so of their illness. The two patients who died received it between days five and eight.
...
[Dr. Logan] also knows American researchers will say only a real study can prove effectiveness. ..."Our people are dying and you're taking about studies?" he said. "It's a matter of doing all that I can do as a doctor to save some people's lives."
...
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases says that theoretically, Logan's approach has some merit.... other drugs in this class are being studied to treat Ebola


Lamivudine is a nucleoside analog:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...

These agents can be used against hepatitis B virus, hepatitis C virus, herpes simplex, and HIV. Once they are phosphorylated, they work as antimetabolites by being similar enough to nucleotides to be incorporated into growing DNA strands; but they act as chain terminators and stop viral DNA Polymerase. They are not specific to viral DNA and also affect mitochondrial DNA. Because of this they have side effects such as bone marrow suppression.


Ebola virus uses RNA only and does not create any DNA. However, RNA requires nucleotides for its assembly just as does DNA, so it stands to reason it could work for Ebola as well as HIV. In any case, it seems to be working, since the chance of this large a proportion of patients surviving otherwise, without treatment, would be quite unlikely.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/27/1332809/-Ebola-Breakthrough
September 26, 2014

Women's Rights Activist tortured and executed by ISIS

Thu Sep 25, 2014 at 07:36 PM PDT
Women's Rights Activist tortured and executed by ISIS
by Radiowalla

Outrage upon outrage. Here's the latest scoop from the War Against Women, ISIS-style:

An Iraqi lawyer known for her work promoting women’s rights has been killed by Islamic State fighters, the head of the United Nations human rights office said on Thursday, continuing a pattern of attacks on professional women.

The lawyer, Sameera Salih Ali al-Nuaimy, was seized from her home by Islamic State fighters last week and tortured for several days before a masked firing squad executed her in public on Monday, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations human rights commissioner, said in a statement.


The New York Times brings us this grisly report of yet another outrageous act of barbarism by the deranged Islamist mobsters known as ISIS.

Women (and their children) often bear the brunt of military hostilities, but the present situation is particularly vicious.

United Nations monitors in Iraq have received numerous reports of executions of women by Islamic State gunmen, some after perfunctory trials, the organization said. “Educated, professional women seem to be particularly at risk,” it added.

These killings, together with abductions and the enslavement of women and children, illustrate the “utterly poisonous nature” of the extremist group, Mr. Zeid said, drawing attention to the plight of hundreds of women and girls of the Yazidi religious minority and other ethnic and religious groups sold into slavery, raped or forced into marriage after the group overran large areas of northern Iraq.


So, there you have it. Women who dare to venture out of the veil, out of the kitchen, out of enslavement are targeted and murdered by the men who would enslave them. It's the Neanderthal Age, déjà vu all over again. Who would have imagined that such a thing could occur in 2014?

We are all Sameera Salih Ali al-Nuaimy. May her soul rest in peace.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/25/1332478/-Women-s-Rights-Activist-tortured-and-executed-by-ISIS
September 26, 2014

WOW! Rolling Stone EXPOSES Koch Bros: financially, politically, environmentally ***MUST READ

One of the most eye-opening articles I have read in a long time. How are these guys not rotting in jail?? Unbelievable!!!

About the patriarch:

...Fred had built a domestic oil empire under a new company eventually called Rock Island Oil & Refining, transporting crude from wellheads to refineries by truck or by pipe. In those later years, Fred also became a major benefactor and board member of the John Birch Society, the rabidly anti-communist organization founded in 1958 by candy magnate and virulent racist Robert Welch. Bircher publications warned that the Red endgame was the creation of the "Negro Soviet­ Republic" in the Deep South. In his own writing, Fred described integration as a Red plot to "enslave both the white and black man..."


On their "Market Based Management" which rewarded workers for cutting costs and fired those who acted responsibly, a risky business model in the oil industry:

...On the day before Danielle Smalley was to leave for college, she and her friend Jason Stone were hanging out in her family's mobile home. Seventeen years old, with long chestnut hair, Danielle began to feel nauseated. "Dad," she said, "we smell gas." It was 3:45 in the afternoon on August 24th, 1996, near Lively, Texas, some 50 miles southeast of Dallas. The Smalleys were too poor to own a telephone. So the teens jumped into her dad's 1964 Chevy pickup to alert the authorities. As they drove away, the truck stalled where the driveway crossed a dry creek bed. Danielle cranked the ignition, and a fireball engulfed the truck. "You see two children burned to death in front of you – you never forget that," Danielle's father, Danny, would later tell reporters.

Unknown to the Smalleys, a decrepit Koch pipeline carrying liquid butane – literally, lighter fluid – ran through their subdivision. It had ruptured, filling the creek bed with vapor, and the spark from the pickup's ignition had set off a bomb. Federal investigators documented both "severe corrosion" and "mechanical damage" in the pipeline. A National Transportation Safety Board report would cite the "failure of Koch Pipeline Company LP to adequately protect its pipeline from corrosion."

Installed in the early Eighties, the pipeline had been out of commission for three years. When Koch decided to start it up again in 1995, a water-pressure test had blown the pipe open. An inspection of just a few dozen miles of pipe near the Smal­ley home found 538 corrosion defects. The industry's term of art for a pipeline in this condition is Swiss cheese, according to the testimony of an expert witness – "essentially the pipeline is gone."

Koch repaired only 80 of the defects – enough to allow the pipeline to withstand another pressure check – and began running explosive fluid down the line at high pressure in January 1996. A month later, employees discovered that a key anti­corrosion system had malfunctioned, but it was never fixed. Charles Koch had made it clear to managers that they were expected to slash costs and boost profits. In a sternly worded memo that April, Charles had ordered his top managers to cut expenditures by 10 percent "through the elimination of waste (I'm sure there is much more waste than that)" in order to increase pre-tax earnings by $550 million a year...


There is so much more, but I can't copy any more. Just read it. It's long and INFORMATIVE!

Honestly! Its just incredible these men are not in jail!

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-the-koch-brothers-toxic-empire-20140924#ixzz3EO6wCy9K
September 18, 2014

Girl beats up attacker - Impressive!



For those who think it is staged, here is the Chinese news report on the incident:



My apologies if this has already been posted. It looks as though it is about a year old.
September 15, 2014

Urban Outfitters selling "Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt" complete with blood splatter

Mon Sep 15, 2014 at 06:45 AM PDT
Urban Outfitters selling "Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt" complete with blood splatter
by Jen HaydenFollow



You honestly cannot make this up:

Urban Outfitters is facing a public backlash after offering for sale a "Vintage Kent State Sweatshirt" with red blotches that could be interpreted as blood stains.

Twitter lit up as people blasted the company for its insensitivity for selling an item citing a university nationally known as the site of the May 4, 1970 deaths of four students by the Ohio National Guard during Vietnam War protests.

"We take great offense to a company using our pain for their publicity and profit" the university said in a statement Monday. "This item is beyond poor taste and trivializes a loss of life that still hurts the Kent State community today."


Someone at Urban Outfitters was smart enough to pull it down over the weekend. Quite possibly the smartest person who works there.



http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/15/1329863/-Urban-Outfitters-selling-Vintage-Kent-State-Sweatshirt-complete-with-blood-splatter
September 9, 2014

I just voted for Zephyr Teachout and Timothy Wu in the Dem primary.

Cuomo is horrible. I'd love to see a Cantor-style upset.

If you live in NY, get to the polls!!! They're open till 9:00.

September 9, 2014

NBC Meet The Press Transcript Conveniently Edited

Mon Sep 08, 2014 at 05:13 PM PDT
NBC Meet The Press Transcript Conveniently Edited
by illinifan17

The earlier excellent diary by TeamSarah4Choice pointed out Chuck Todd's blatant lie to the face of President Obama, and demonstrated that he had mentioned Syria four times before Todd said

You've not said the word, "Syria," so far in our conversation.


The NBC New website now has a transcript of the interview up, and it is curious, to say the least.

The transcript is far from complete, but nowhere does is say it is edited, abridged, or just highlights. And three of the four references to Syria are gone. Only the earliest one, furthest from Todd's false claim, remains. Here is the portion that jumps over the refernce to Syria 12 seconds before Todd's claim.

You don't believe these people--

PRES. OBAMA:

Not yet. But they-- they can evolve. And I was very specific at that time. What I said was, not every regional terrorist organization is automatically a threat to us that would call for a major offensive. Our goal should not be to think that we can occupy every country where there's a terrorist organization.

CHUCK TODD:

You've not said the word, "Syria," so far in our conversation. Obviously, if you're going to defeat ISIS, you have used very much stronger language. It's gone through the week during your trip to Wales. You have got to go to Syria in some form or another.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/08/1328194/-NBC-Meet-The-Press-Transcript-Conveniently-Edited

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