Clinton Wins A Majority Of Pledged Delegates


Based on the early results from California and other states, FiveThirtyEight projects that Clinton will win a large enough percentage of the vote to capture an overall majority of pledged delegates, and an overall majority of the popular vote.

5,000 year old tree in Scotland is changing gender, a rare and unusual phenomenon
Fortingall Yew, in Perthshire, has been recorded as 'male' for centuries, but in recent years it has started to sprout seeds, suggesting that part of it is changing gender. This 'rare and unusual phenomenon' move has baffled botanists.

The Fortingall Yew standing in a church yard in Perthshire, Scotland is estimated to be 5,000 years old. For as long as people have been recording data on the tree, it was assumed to be male - meaning that it produces pollen instead of berries. Yet, this year three red berries were spotted growing on its branches, which can only mean one thing: at least part of the tree is changing its sex to female.


How can this occur? Max Coleman of Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh says, "It's a rare occurrence... rare and unusual and not fully understood." He believes that environmental stress may have led to hormonal changes in the tree, causing the berries to begin sprouting. The autumn and winter seasons make it easy to differentiate a yew's sex. Coleman recognizes that other yews and similar trees have been observed to seemingly switch sexes.

JUN 6 2016, 8:28 PM ET Clinton Hits 'Magic Number' of Delegates to Clinch Nomination
Clinton Looks to Clinch Democratic Nomination as Trump Ramps Up New Attacks Facebook Twitter Google Plus Embed
Clinton Looks to Clinch Democratic Nomination as Trump Ramps Up New Attacks 3:14
Hillary Clinton has secured a majority of delegates to the Democratic National Convention, NBC News projects, meaning the former secretary of state is now the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party on Monday.

To win the nomination, a candidate must secure a majority of all delegates, or 2,383. But 15 percent of the total delegate pool is made up of superdelegates — current and former elected officials and party activists who aren't bound to vote for the candidate selected by voters in their home state's primary.

Many — but not all — of the Democratic superdelegates have publicly declared their support for either Clinton or her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Clinton's win in the Puerto Rico primary — where 60 unpledged delegates were at stake — pushed her total, including hundreds of superdelegates, beyond 2,383.

Clinton was widely expected to reach the 2,383 threshold on Tuesday, when six states hold their nominating contests on one of the final primary nights of the race.

New rule would let VA provide sex reassignment surgery to transgender vets
Veterans Affairs doctors could begin providing sex reassignment surgery in coming years under a new rule proposed by the department.

The move would remove a long-held ban on the surgery and likely provide another cultural point of controversy in the wake of federal rules, issued last month, that mandate public schools allow transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they choose.

The proposal, made public this week by transgender advocates and Time magazine, states that past surgical procedures were poorly understood. Officials therefore could not justify providing them to veterans with gender dysphoria, a condition experienced by individuals who don’t identify with their biological gender for a variety of mental and physiological reasons.

“However, increased understanding of both gender dysphoria and surgical techniques in this area have improved significantly, and surgical procedures are now widely accepted in the medical community as medically necessary treatment for gender dysphoria,” the proposed rule says.

Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia: An Ever Expanding Catalog Of Lies
When Donald Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president, he embarked on a mission that immediately sought to exalt himself, insult and disparage his critics, and reduce the intellectual tenor of American politics to the level of remedial third grade bullies.

Donald Trump


Now, after five months it has become clear that, more than anything else, Trump seems determined to break all records for blatant dishonesty and promulgation of outright lies. The sheer quantity of falsehoods, whether born of purpose or ignorance, has shattered any previous attempt to mislead by a political charlatan. There is a distinct pathological urgency to his disgorging deceptions. And his refusal to ever concede a point or to apologize, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence, is a reflection of his tunnel-blind, Olympic-grade Narcissism.

As a result of the rapidly expanding incidence of Trump’s daily forays into fiction, it has become necessary to initiate a catalog in order to keep track of his doublespeak. It is a formidable task considering the breadth of his deceit. But without such a resource it will be impossible to manage. Hopefully this will be useful for those wishing to document the brazenly disreputable utterances of The Donald. It will be appended as necessary, and contributions are welcome in comments. So without further ado, let’s dig into Trump’s lies, lies, and ever more lies.

Donald Trump’s Bullshitopedia
JUST ADDED: Just two months after Trump said that countries like Japan and Saudi Arabia should get their own nukes, he denied having said it and called Clinton a liar for bringing it up.
JUST ADDED: In a display of hysterical hyperbole, Trump said that it “is Hillary Clinton’s agenda to release the violent criminals from jail. She wants them all released.” Which she never said or even implied.|JUST ADDED: In a display of hysterical hyperbole, Trump said that it “is Hillary Clinton’s agenda to release the violent criminals from jail. She wants them all released.” Which she never said or even implied.
At the NRA’s annual convention, Trump falsely stated that “Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment. She wants to abolish it. Hillary Clinton wants to take your guns away and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment.”

A History of Protest Foods, from Eggs and Tomatoes to Cream Pies
Food as protest tool has a long history, of course. Perhaps the first recorded food protest took place in 63 A.D., when Vespasian—then the governor of Africa, later emperor—was pelted with turnips by the people of Hadrumetum, who may have been angry about food shortages.

After that, the items lobbed got a little less painful—and a whole lot messier. Eggs seem like a no-brainer protest tool: They’re easy to find, and easier to detonate. But although folklore has it that prisoners in the Middle Ages were put in stocks and pelted with eggs, the first written documentation of eggs used in a protest may have been much later: 18th-century texts recorded an act of egg-throwing to persecute Methodists on the Isle of Man, and in 1834 abolitionist George Whittier was pelted with eggs after an anti-slavery lecture in Concord, New Hampshire.

Today eggs remain one of the most reached-for weapons of choice for political protestors. On the campaign trail for governor of California, in 2003, Arnold Schwarzenegger was hit with an egg. (He brushed it off like a boss.) And in 2004, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was pelted so hard with an egg launched by an opposition activist that he was taken to the hospital. In 2011, Afghan demonstrators threw eggs at the Iranian consulate to protest a blockade of fuel tanks that caused prices to skyrocket, and last year a group of protestors in London vowed to cover former prime minister Margaret Thatcher‘s casket in eggs—but security at the funeral procession was too tight for them to succeed. One of the biggest modern egg protests occurred in August 2013, when French farmers took to the streets, breaking 100,000 oeufs a day to protest low prices set in place by the European Union.

Tomatoes, especially rotten ones, seem particularly predisposed to be used as protest food. But since they originated in the New World, their history is rather short. Legend has it that tomatoes were tossed at actors at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, but it just wasn’t the case: Tomatoes didn’t even appear in English cookbooks until 1752, so no one would’ve had them on hand to pelt performers in the 16th century. Unlike eggs, these overripe fruits are most often associated with protesting theatrical performances (consider the movie review website RottenTomatoes.com). Indeed, a New York Times article from 1883 discusses John Ritchie, an actor who was “demoralized by tomatoes” after an underwhelming performance that included a shoddy somersault.

Scholars Release The Latest Date For Apocalypse - June 3-4, 2016
As four years after the deadline for the end of the world (as set by the Mayan calendar) came and went without incident, scholars across the world have been trying to put their heads together to understand how the advanced knowledge of the Mayans had gone wrong.
Turns out, it hadn't.
Modern day scholars were the ones who got the date wrong. A series of miscalculations led to the faulty date, which has now been revised to five days from today, June 3-4 this year!
It was earlier believed that the end of the calendar marked the end of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar. This would mean a new era of positive energy on Earth and the beginning of a new age. This is believed to be a cryptic message marking the end of the world.
“As far as we know, the people of Mesoamerica, the Maya included, didn’t care about leap years,” Anthony Aveni, an expert in ancient Mesoamerican astronomy at Colgate University told the National Geographic.
“Our philosophy about leap year is a complicated scheme to make the seasons jibe with the calendar,” Aveni said. “They were more concerned that time should be unbroken, not interfered with, and that the count of time should have continuity.”