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Segami

Segami's Journal
Segami's Journal
May 4, 2013

Harvard Professor TRASHES Keynes For Homosexuality


Harvard Professor and author Niall Ferguson says John Maynard Keynes' economic philosophy was flawed and he didn't care about future generations because he was gay and didn't have children.







- Speaking at the Tenth Annual Altegris Conference in Carlsbad, Calif., in front of a group of more than 500 financial advisors and investors, Ferguson responded to a question about Keynes' famous philosophy of self-interest versus the economic philosophy of Edmund Burke, who believed there was a social contract among the living, as well as the dead. Ferguson asked the audience how many children Keynes had. He explained that Keynes had none because he was a homosexual and was married to a ballerina, with whom he likely talked of "poetry" rather than procreated. The audience went quiet at the remark. Some attendees later said they found the remarks offensive.



It gets worse.



Ferguson, who is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University, and author of The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die, says it's only logical that Keynes would take this selfish worldview because he was an "effete" member of society. Apparently, in Ferguson's world, if you are gay or childless, you cannot care about future generations nor society.



This takes gay-bashing to new heights. It even perversely pins the full weight of the financial crisis on the gay community and the barren.



Not only is this intellectually void, it's mad. And anyone with a moral conscience should be outraged. It is one thing to take issue with a society fueled by self interest and one fueled by a larger ethic. But it's entirely vulgar to make this argument about sexual preference -- and to do so glibly.


cont'




http://www.fa-mag.com/news/harvard-professor-gay-bashes-keynes-14173.html





May 4, 2013

Egyptian TV Host Riham Said REMOVES VEIL During Interview, CLASHES With Guest Cleric Yousuf Badri







Excerpt:


"…..I would have accepted it if it was in order to make me please Allah,….But, off-the-air, YOU have NO problem talking to me without the Hijab……..and then, when the viewers can see, YOU make me wear it?!..."




"….I feel like I am playacting when I put this scarf on. - Let's start the show.



"….Change the subject, and put on that Hijab!……….I'm not going to put it on. I will wear it for God, not for you…."


.
May 4, 2013

New GMO Labeling Bill: Ultimate Test Between People vs. The Greed & Power of The BioTech Industry

In an exciting move in Washington, Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Congressman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) together have sponsored new federal legislation that requires the labeling of all genetically engineered food in the U.S. The Genetically Engineered Food Right-to-Know Act is the first national labeling bill to be introduced in Congress since 2010. U.S. citizens have demonstrated overwhelming support to label GMO foods in this country. Jeffrey Smith, founder of the Institute for Responsible Technology, has argued that GMO labeling could bring an end to the dangerous growth of GMOs. Genetically modified foods have consistently been shown to be dangerous to health in studies conducted by independently funded researchers. It is time for the U.S. to join other industrialized nations in their mandatory labeling policies.


Federal Labeling Bill enjoys widespread support

On April 24th, the new Federal Labeling Bill was proposed with the support of nine senators and 22 representatives. The bipartisan labeling bill has been supported by over 100 organizations and businesses including the Environmental Working Group, Just Label It, the Center for Environmental Health, and Lundberg Family Farms. This bill follows the passage last month of an amendment to the Senate budget resolution to require the labeling of GE fish.



Overwhelming majority of citizens are demanding GMO labeling

Consistently nearly 95 percent of American have demonstrated support for GM labeling. In October 2011, the Center for Food Safety filed a legal petition with the FDA to require labeling of all food produced using genetic engineering. In 2012, 55 members of Congress wrote a letter to FDA commissioner Hamburg in support of the petition. Over one million public comments have been submitted to the FDA supporting the CFS's legal petition for labeling. This is the largest public response ever received by the FDA.

In response to consumers demand for labeling of GM foods, 37 GE food labeling bills have been introduced in 21 states in 2013. Hawaii, Washington, Indiana, Missouri and Vermont are among the states with bills pending.
An important grass roots effort is being made to fight GMOs with an international protest against Monsanto. US citizens are participating across the country on May 25th, joining with citizens around the world. See http://occupy-monsanto.com/ for additional information.

cont'






http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/16154-new-gmo-labeling-bill-will-be-the-ultimate-test-between-the-will-of-the-people-versus-the-greed-and-power-of-the-biotech-industry
May 3, 2013

Clarence Thomas - Obama Became POTUS Because He Was APPROVED BY ELITES and MEDIA



"..I DON'T UNDERSTAND POLITICS.."



When asked about how he felt about the nation's first black President, Barack Obama, Thomas said he always knew it would have to be a person who was "approved by the elites and the media" because if it was someone who they didn't agree with, that person would be picked apart.

"Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart... So, I always assumed it would be someone the media had to agree with," Thomas said.
May 3, 2013

Don’t Vent, Organize -- And “Primary” a Democrat Near You

Progressives often wonder why so many Republican lawmakers stick to their avowed principles while so many Democratic lawmakers abandon theirs. We can grasp some answers by assessing the current nationwide drive called “Primary My Congressman” -- a case study of how right-wing forces gain ground in electoral terrain where progressives fear to tread.

Sponsored by Club for Growth Action, the “Primary My Congressman” effort aims to replace “moderate Republicans” with “economic conservatives” -- in other words, GOP hardliners even more devoted to boosting corporate power and dismantling the public sector. “In districts that are heavily Republican,” the group says, “there are literally dozens of missed opportunities to elect real fiscal conservatives to Congress -- not more ‘moderates’ who will compromise with Democrats. . .”


Such threats of serious primary challenges often cause the targeted incumbents to quickly veer rightward, or they may never get through the next Republican primary. Progressive activists and organizations could launch similar primary challenges, but -- to the delight of the Democratic Party establishment -- they rarely do. Why not?


Here are some key reasons:



* Undue deference to elected Democrats.

Members of Congress and other elected officials deserve only the respect they earn. All too often, for example, plenty of Congressional Progressive Caucus members represent the interests of the establishment to progressives rather than the other way around.

* Treating election campaigns more like impulse items than work that requires long-term planning and grassroots follow-through.

The same progressives who’ve spent years planning, launching and sustaining a wide range of community projects are apt to jump into election campaigns with scant lead time. Progressives need to build electoral capacity for the long haul, implementing well-planned strategic campaigns with candidates who come out of social movements and have a plausible chance to win on behalf of those movements.

* Assuming that millions of dollars are necessary to win.

Yes, successful campaigns require effective fundraising -- but money is often a less significant obstacle than a shortage of commitment and willingness to do painstaking grassroots organizing.

* Self-marginalization by ignoring elections.

Some on the left prefer to stay out of electoral contests while focusing on the next protest demonstration -- thus leaving the electoral field to battles between corporate Democrats and Republicans. One sure result: a progressive won’t win.

* Self-marginalization with third-party efforts in partisan races.

In congressional races, Green Party and other progressive third-party candidates have a zero record of success in our lifetimes. In other races with party affiliations also on the ballot (such as governor and state legislature), victories have been almost nonexistent. In such races, the corporate-military complex is not in the slightest threatened by third-party candidates, who rarely get higher than a low single-digit percentage of the vote. In nonpartisan races, by contrast, there are examples of successful and uplifting campaigns by third-party candidates, as with Green Party member Gayle McLaughlin, the mayor of Richmond, California......cont'

cont'




http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/16126-dont-vent-organize-and-primary-a-democrat-near-you
May 3, 2013

Meet The PRO-AUSTERITY HYPOCRITES: 'Fix The Debt' WEASELS Using A Loophole To AVOID Paying Taxes


The major corporations backing a group founded by the pro-austerity icons Simpson and Bowles take advantage of a loophole to avoid paying taxes on some of what they pay their CEOs, according to a new report.


SLIME WEASELS!!





-...The report, from the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, finds that between 2009 and 2011, top executives at the 90 publicly held corporate members of the Fix the Debt coalition raked in at least $953 million — and as much as $1.6 billion — through the “performance pay” loophole, which counts some executive compensation as a tax-deductible business expense, instead of a salary. Fix the Debt, founded by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is one of the many groups tied to Wall Streeter cum policy entrepreneur Pete Peterson, who has spent the last 20 years trying to reduce the debt, in large part through cuts to programs like Social Security and Medicare. The group has attracted some of the largest corporations in the country as sponsors, as well as former lawmakers, giving it serious clout in Washington.



Liberal critics have long charged that the group and others like it are little more than corporate fronts that use the language of the deficit as a pretext to slash social safety programs while preserving policies favorable to the wealthy. And the IPS report charges hypocrisy in the group’s corporate members depriving the U.S. Treasury of revenues on executive pay while at the same time demanding vulnerable Americans make sacrifices through reduced deficits. “The very taxpayers who pay into and depend on these programs and benefits are subsidizing excessive compensation for the top executives of Fix the Debt member corporations and other large firms,” the report’s authors wrote. In 1993, Congress passed a law that prevented corporations from counting executive pay above $1 million as business expenses, which are deductible, but corporations found a way around it with the “performance pay loophole.”



For instance, United Health, the nation’s largest HMO, paid CEO Stephen Hemsley $199 million between 2009 and 2011. Of that, at least $194 million was fully deductible “performance pay,” according to the report, which works out to “a $68 million taxpayer subsidy to United Health Group — just for one individual CEO’s pay.” On average, the report found that the corporate members of Fix the Debt exploited the loophole to the tune of $1.5 million per executive. “If Fix the Debt CEOs were serious about addressing our nation’s fiscal challenges, they would push for greater fairness in the tax code, including the elimination of entitlement programs benefiting CEOs like the ‘performance pay’ loophole,” the authors wrote.

cont'




http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/how_pro_austerity_executives_use_loopholes_to_break_the_debt/
May 3, 2013

Maddow Calls Bush Library’s ‘DECISION POINTS’ Game ‘A NATIONAL SCANDAL’


After picking apart the former president’s defense of Iraq point for point, Maddow shifted to footage of elementary school students taking part in the Bush library’s game. “This is how kids, right now, today, are being taught about that part of our nation’s history,” Maddow concluded. “I kind of think this is a national scandal.”




In the newly commissioned George W. Bush Presidential Library on the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, a peculiar display has the political world buzzing. In this display, called “Decision Points,” participants play a game where they’re forced to make the same decisions President Bush did. On the issue of Iraq, there’s even a wholly new video message from the former president, who comes out when participants choose not to invade the country.


Just imagine if President Bill Clinton set up a whole interactive display at his presidential library designed to convince viewers that his biggest scandal wasn’t that bad either, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said Wednesday night. Or President Richard Nixon basing his library around an exhibit illustrating how he really, really wasn’t a crook.


“There have been all kinds of vague print press descriptions about this game,” Maddow said. “That it lets you decide. It sensitively handles the various controversies of the Bush presidency by letting you decide. No.”



On the first day the library was opened to the public, Maddow’s camera crew was ready and waiting to play the “Decision Points” game and put it on film. “It’s amazing,” she said. Video of the exhibit shows what Maddow called “contemporary George W. Bush, recently, still making the case for invading Iraq.” He even cites “the weight of evidence” that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and the “consensus of the world” to depose him — both of which were and still are fabrications.

cont'




http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/02/maddow-calls-bush-librarys-decision-points-game-a-national-scandal/
May 2, 2013

Craig Holman: This Is VERY SERIOUS........This Could Be A CAREER ENDER For Michele Bachmann.”





With a special investigator soon to be appointed by the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, the ethics cloud hovering over Rep. Michele Bachmann could quickly become a major problem for the Tea Party hero, experts tell Salon. “This is very serious,” said Craig Holman, a government ethics lobbyist at liberal-leaning watchdog group Public Citizen. “It’s not Watergate, or at least not yet, but these are a series of allegations that are each serious on their own, and when you put them all together, this could be a career ender for Michele Bachmann.”





Ken Boehm, chairman of the conservative-leaning National Legal and Policy Center, told Salon that we should wait to see what investigators find — indeed, no wrongdoing has been reported so far — though he acknowledged the escalating scrutiny could be a major headache for the congresswoman down the line. The Iowa investigation, looking into whether the campaign improperly paid a state senator, is just one of at least three different probes examining a range of allegations related to Bachmann’s failed presidential campaign, including charges that she improperly used campaign funds to promote her book, that her campaign “launder[ed]” money, and that one of her staffers stole an email list from a home-school organization.





Two former staffers, including her former chief of staff, have agreed to testify against Bachmann, which Holman said is “very unusual” and something that will push investigators at the Federal Elections Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics, each of which reportedly has its own investigations into the campaign, to take the matter seriously. OCE can’t issue penalties itself, but instead refers matters to the House Ethics Committee, where the range of potential punishments is huge, from a letter of censure to expulsion from the House, though the committee has a reputation for partisan gridlock and could easily sidestep the matter. FEC violations, meanwhile, come with civil fines, but the commission is even more notoriously ineffectual than the Ethics Committee.



The real punishment, even if no wrongdoing is found, would likely instead come in November of next year, when Bachmann will face off against Democrat Jim Graves, whom she beat by less than 4,500 votes in 2012. The race presents real challenges for Graves, as turnout will be lower without a presidential race, and the district remains the most conservative in Minnesota. But Professor Larry Jacobs, who runs the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at University of Minnesota, says the ethics questions are a “big problem” for Bachmann. “There are a lot of things a conviction politician like Michele Bachmann can withstand, and being attacked by Democrats is definitely one of them. But the kind of krypton that will disable her is having her convictions challenged,” he told Salon.


cont'




http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/this_could_be_a_career_ender_for_michele_bachmann/
May 2, 2013

Republican Senator TED CRUZ GETS SCHOOLED By Jon Stewart




John McCain: Ted Cruz is a " WACKO BIRD "....... .......




-.....After mocking Cruz for being the most hated man in the Senate, Stewart turned his attention to the possibility of Cruz running for President.


“Yes, why limit yourself to being hated by your colleagues when you can hated by the whole country,” Stewart said of Cruz running for the office. Stewart then reminded us that Cruz is a conspiracy theory subscriber, including birtherism, which made the next clip Stewart played all the more hilarious.


The clip was of Sean Hannity pointing out that Cruz was born in Canada which would disqualify him from being President, and Stewart reveled in that fact.


“Oh, Canada! Boom! Boom! Our beloved Texas freedom fighter is nothing but a dirty syrup guzzler. What a terrible twist, aye? He’s a foreigner!” Stewart then suggested that Donald Trump, aka “F*ckface Von Clownstick” pull his birther team from Hawaii and head to Winnipeg.







http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/05/02/republican-senator-ted-cruz-gets-schooled-by-jon-stewart-video/
May 1, 2013

Kentucky 5-Year-Old Gets RIFLE AS GIFT And SHOOTS 2-Year-Old Sister DEAD





A 5-year-old boy in Kentucky shot and killed his 2-year-old sister on Tuesday while playing with a .22 caliber rifle that he was given as a gift, state police said in a statement.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, the shooting happened at the family’s home in Cumberland County around 1 p.m. The 2-year-old girl was later pronounced dead at Cumberland County Hospital.


Cumberland County Coroner Gary White identified the girl as Caroline Starks.

He said the children's mother was at home when the shooting occurred, and the gun was a gift the boy received last year.

"It's a Crickett," he said. "It's a little rifle for a kid. ...The little boy's used to shooting the little gun."

White said the gun was kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell had been left in it.

http://www.kentucky.com/2013/04/30/2621458/5-year-old-boy-accidentally-shoots.html


cont'


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/05/01/kentucky-5-year-old-gets-rifle-as-gift-and-shoots-2-year-old-sister-dead/

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