Jesus Malverde
Jesus Malverde's JournalCalifornia on course for driest year on record
Thirsty California may get a smidgen of rain this coming week, but it is not likely to change what, so far, has been the driest calendar year in recorded history.
No rain at all fell in San Francisco in October and only 3.95 inches has fallen since Jan. 1, the smallest amount of precipitation to date since record keeping began 164 years ago, according to the National Weather Service.
Things can still change, but the storm predicted to roll in Monday and Tuesday has already petered out, according to forecasters, who are expecting only sprinkles, if that.
"It's absolutely dry," said Bob Benjamin, a National Weather Service forecaster. "We just went through October where there was no measurable precipitation in downtown San Francisco. That's only happened seven times since records started."
http://www.sfgate.com/science/article/California-on-course-for-driest-year-on-record-4971192.php
Israeli cabinet approves Avigdor Lieberman's return as foreign mininster
Source: Telegraph UK
Avigdor Lieberman, one of the most belligerent and uncompromising foreign ministers in Israel's history, is to return to his old job just as the country's ties with the outside world reach new levels of sensitivity over negotiations with the Palestinians and Iran's nuclear program me.
The Israeli cabinet voted on Sunday to reinstate Mr Lieberman, leader of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, after his acquittal last week on corruption charges. His appointment is expected to be confirmed by the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, on Monday.
Mr Lieberman, 55, a burly former nightclub bouncer, stepped aside as Israel's leading diplomatic representative last December to contest fraud and breach of trust charges. He had been accused of promoting an ambassador who improperly tipped him off concerning a separate corruption police inquiry into his affairs .
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, agreed to keep the foreign minister's portfolio open for Mr Lieberman while he fought to clear his name. Mr Lieberman once served as Mr Netanyahu's chief-of-staff and is thought to have ambitions to succeed him in the top job.
Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/10439150/Israeli-cabinet-approves-Avigdor-Liebermans-return-as-foreign-mininster.html
Isaac Herzog, a Labour parliamentarian, called Mr Lieberman "the worst foreign minister in Israel's history" and added: "I don't understand why he should be returned to power."
Israel to Lobby US Congress to Prevent Iran Deal
Naftali Bennett reveals lobbying initiative in IDF Radio interview Sunday; aims to rally international support before renewing talksIsrael is planning to lobby the US Congress to prevent future deals with Iran, AFP reports.
Economics Minister and Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Chairman Naftali Bennett revealed the initiative in an interview Sunday with IDF Radio. "Before the talks resume, we will lobby dozens of members of the US Congress to whom I will personally explain [. . .] that Israel's security is in jeopardy," Bennet said.
The statements follow a letter Bennett drafted to members of Jewish organizations in the US and abroad which urged them to help pressure international leaders to stop continuing to entertain a diplomatic agreement with the nuclear threat.
Talks with Iran and other world powers failed to culminate in an agreement this weekend, renewing hope among Israeli leaders and civilians that the international community will reconsider accepting a deal before talks are set to resume on November 20.
Bennett also alluded to Israel's very public "differences" within US President Barack Obama's administration on reaching a deal with the Islamic republic. "If in ten years an atomic bomb hidden in a suitcase explodes in New York, or a nuclear missile hits Rome, one could say it is because of concessions that would have been made" to Iran, he said.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/173808
Threatening to nuke New York...
America non grata
The possibility of a nuclear deal rankles Israeli leaders and turns the press against the USWhile the world waited to see whether world powers would reach an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program (spoiler: they didn’t), the Israeli press didn’t wait for the final bell in order to go on the offensive. And the new target for most of the papers is not Iran, but America.
Shalom Yerushalmi weighs in on the negotiations and concludes that “Israel will pay for the concessions.” Yerushalmi also addresses the possible pivot the Obama administration is taking with Israel. “Kerry comes to Israel, has two meetings, gives an anti-Israeli interview with Channel 2, and then fled to Geneva to close the show with the Iranians, defying Israel,” he writes. In the end he thinks Kerry took a side, and it wasn’t Israel’s.
Boaz Bismuth writes an op-ed praising the levelheadedness of the French, saying that “they too do not believe the Iranians.” Bismuth points out that the French weren’t blocking an agreement just for Israel’s sake; they also have considerable ties to the Gulf and won’t abandon those interests there. He concludes his piece by not only praising the French, but also highlighting what he sees as a new problem. “And perhaps the saddest story of the current talks in Geneva: the problem, as far as Jerusalem is concerned, it is not only Iran but is also the United States. “
Only Haaretz doesn’t go the anti-American route, instead going with a pretty dry account of the nuclear talks. The paper includes an article on the diplomatic crisis between America and Israel and says that it doesn’t look like it will end soon. Israel thinks the US gave up too much, too fast. After seeing that the US was willing to give a lot to the Iranians, Israeli diplomats tried to convince the French not to sign the agreement (which seemed to work).
http://www.timesofisrael.com/america-non-grata/
Too much of too little
They were already running late for a doctor’s appointment, but first the Salas family hurried into their kitchen for another breakfast paid for by the federal government. The 4-year-old grabbed a bag of cheddar-flavored potato chips and a granola bar. The 9-year-old filled a bowl with sugary cereal and then gulped down chocolate milk. Their mother, Blanca, arrived at the refrigerator and reached into the drawer where she stored the insulin needed to treat her diabetes. She filled a needle with fluid and injected it into her stomach with a practiced jab.
“Let’s go,” she told the children, rushing them out of the kitchen and into the car. “We can stop for snacks on our way home.”
The family checkup had been scheduled at the insistence of a school nurse, who wanted the Salas family to address two concerns: They were suffering from both a shortage of nutritious food and a diet of excess — paradoxical problems that have become increasingly interconnected in the United States, and especially in South Texas.
For almost a decade, Blanca had supported her five children by stretching $430 in monthly food stamp benefits, adding lard to thicken her refried beans and buying instant soup by the case at a nearby dollar store. She shopped for “quantity over quality,” she said, aiming to fill a grocery cart for $100 or less.
But the cheap foods she could afford on the standard government allotment of about $1.50 per meal also tended to be among the least nutritious — heavy in preservatives, fats, salt and refined sugar. Now Clarissa, her 13-year-old daughter, had a darkening ring around her neck that suggested early-onset diabetes from too much sugar. Now Antonio, 9, was sharing dosages of his mother’s cholesterol medication. Now Blanca herself was too sick to work, receiving disability payments at age 40 and testing her blood-sugar level twice each day to guard against the stroke doctors warned was forthcoming as a result of her diet.
Hidalgo County, Tex., is one of the fastest growing and poorest places in the nation. Although 40 percent of the county's residents are enrolled in the food-stamp program, diabetes and obesity have exploded in the region.
She drove toward the doctor’s office on the two-lane highways of South Texas, the flat horizon of brown dirt interrupted by palm trees and an occasional view of the steel fence that divides the United States from Mexico. Blanca’s parents emigrated from Mexico in the 1950s to pick strawberries and cherries, and they often repeated an aphorism about the border fence. “On one side you’re skinny. On the other you’re fat,” they said. Now millions more had crossed through the fence, both legally and illegally, making Hidalgo County one of the fastest-growing places in America.
“El Futuro” is what some residents had begun calling the area, and here the future was unfolding in a cycle of cascading extremes:
Hidalgo County has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation .?.?. which has led almost 40 percent of residents to enroll in the food-stamp program .?.?. which means a widespread reliance on cheap, processed foods .?.?. which results in rates of diabetes and obesity that double the national average .?.?. which fuels the country’s highest per-capita spending on health care.
This is what El Futuro looks like in the Rio Grande Valley: The country’s hungriest region is also its most overweight, with 38.5 percent of the people obese. For one of the first times anywhere in the United States, children in South Texas have a projected life span that is a few years shorter than that of their parents.
It is a crisis at the heart of the Washington debate over food stamps, which now help support nearly 1 in 7 Americans. Has the massive growth of a government feeding program solved a problem, or created one? Is it enough for the government to help people buy food, or should it go further by also telling them what to eat?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/national/2013/11/09/too-much-of-too-little/?hpid=z3
How Jimmy Kimmel’s China joke became an issue for the White House
It’s one thing for late-night comics to make jokes about the White House. But Jimmy Kimmel managed to offend so many people with a joke about China that the Obama administration is now officially compelled to respond.
On Oct. 16, Kimmel aired a segment of his Kids Table, where he asks small children to address complex issues. The subject was China and how the U.S. could solve the $1.3?trillion trade imbalance. “Kill everyone in China,” answered one laughing 6-year-old.
Some viewers were so upset that they took their anger to the White House’s “We the People” online initiative, where citizens petition the administration to comment on various issues — and are promised a response if at least 100,000 people sign on during a 30-day period.
“H.Z.” of Cedar Park, Texas started the Kimmel petition, asking for an investigation of the show: “The kids might not know anything better,” it read in part. “However, Jimmy Kimmel and ABC’s management are adults. They had a choice not to air this racist program, which promotes racial hatred. .?.?.This is the same rhetoric used in Nazi Germany against Jewish people.” The petition reached 100,000 signatures by Thursday morning, less than three weeks after the show aired, reports Deadline.
Of course, Kimmel manages to offend viewers on a regular basis. This week’s outrage: Child psychologists are weighing in on his annual Halloween stunt in which parents pretend to eat their children’s candy, then post the tearful reactions on YouTube.
His China segment, however, really hit a nerve. A group of Asian Americans picketed outside of Kimmel’s studio in L.A.; the host met with protestors and issued an on-air apology. ABC pulled the clip from the website, edited it out of any repeat broadcasts, and issued its own mea culpa: “We would never purposefully broadcast anything to upset the Chinese community, Asian community, anyone of Chinese descent or any community at large.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/reliable-source/wp/2013/11/08/how-jimmy-kimmels-china-joke-became-an-issue-for-the-white-house/
Arctic Sunrise seized by Russian security agents
Previously unseen footage shows the moment the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise was boarded and seized by Russian security agents in international waters on September 19.
The footage shows Greenpeace International activists and crew responding peacefully with arms raised and how the ship was subsequently towed to the port of Murmansk.
A Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman suggested the Netherlands should not have allowed the Greenpeace icebreaker the Arctic Sunrise, registered in the Netherlands, to set sail for a protest in September against drilling in the Arctic. All 30 people on board the Arctic Sunrise were detained by Russian authorities after activists attempted to scale the rig, which belongs to state-owned gas giant Gazprom.
http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2013_11_08/Russia-Criticizes-Dutch-Over-Arctic-Sunrise-Amid-Royal-Visit-2057/
Confessions Of A Syrian Activist: “I Want Assad To Win”
To one prominent activist, Syria’s revolution is already lost. “If we keep going down this line, I think this will be known in history as the Islamic revolution in Syria.”The activist threw himself into Syria’s revolution from its early days. He organized protests, documented the deadly crackdowns and disseminated the news, risking his life. When the opposition took up arms, he worked closely with rebel groups, helping to spread their message of resistance and taking toll of the war’s carnage in places journalists couldn’t reach. He has won widespread recognition for his work, and he remains deeply involved in the struggle today — though he no longer calls it a revolution. In fact, he thinks it needs to end.
The activist works under his real name, but he requested anonymity to give the candid assessment of the conflict laid out in these remarks, which are compiled from a recent in-depth interview. Asked to speak on the record, he deliberated with friends and colleagues and ultimately declined. He says he fears a backlash: His words could be used to undermine his work, or he could be misunderstood. He also cites safety concerns. But he believes that his message, unpopular among his revolutionary colleagues, is one they need to hear — that their revolution has ended; that a dangerous wave of Islamic extremism has welled up in its place; that they should work to stop the fighting now; and that if they can’t, they should hope it’s Syrian President Bashar al-Assad who wins.
“To simply say I want Assad to win would be a disaster if anyone heard it,” the activist says. “But we’ve created a monster. For too long on the ground, there was too much focus on the crimes the regime was committing and not enough on our own problems. And addressing these problems was always being delayed.
“So we knew there was some sort of Islamism in the fighting even when it was starting back in 2012 and we would ignore this, because we would say it would all end soon — Assad is going to fall in two weeks; Assad is going to fall in a month; Assad’s going to fall in Aleppo. At each moment, we thought it was going to end very soon, and that meant we were neglecting the mistakes that were being made (among the revolution). We were thinking, OK, the regime’s going to fall, and we can solve this later. We just need to get rid of Assad. This was a big mistake.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikegiglio/confessions-of-a-syrian-activist-i-want-assad-to-win
Minnesota scores bragging rights on Obamacare
The Gopher State is now enrolling individuals through its health-insurance exchange by the thousands and at health insurance premium rates that are among the lowest in the country.
Next door in Wisconsin, the numbers of Obamacare enrollees have barely hit the hundreds and premium rates are between 25 and 35 percent higher than in Minnesota.
“I wish that wasn’t the case, but I’m sure glad,” says Atkins, who lives near the Twin Cities and is a member of Minnesota’s Democratic Farm Labor Party, a political organization that traces its roots back to Hubert H. Humphrey and supports the ideals of the U.S. Democratic Party. “Folks are thinking I’m pretty smart right now.”
Minnesotans and Wisconsinites share a long-standing rivalry — in politics, business, and, of course, on the football field. But the new federal health law has opened another front in the competition. And so far, Minnesota is winning.
http://www.stevenspointjournal.com/article/20131109/SPJ0197/311090111/Minnesota-scores-bragging-rights-on-Obamacare
(MO) Council might consider easing penalties for marijuana cultivation
At the end of Monday night's Columbia City Council meeting, Sixth Ward Councilwoman Barbara Hoppe asked city staff to draft an ordinance setting a maximum penalty of $250 for growing up to six plants. Hoppe was responding to a request from attorney Dan Viets, a longtime advocate of eliminating penalties for marijuana.
Under state law, growing marijuana, no matter the amount, is a felony, with a minimum term of five years and a maximum penalty of life in prison if the offense takes place within 2,000 feet of a school or a school bus. Like Columbia's possession ordinance, the new proposal, if passed, would direct police to bring offenders before municipal court instead of filing state charges.
Viets, who made his pitch for the lower penalties during the public comment portion at the start of the meeting, was not there at the end when Hoppe acted on his proposal. He said he was surprised, but pleased, that the council was acting swiftly.
Hoppe said she thinks this effort could give police the chance to "focus on other issues."
http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/local/council-might-consider-easing-penalties-for-marijuana-cultivation/article_0c417b1e-4909-11e3-9ef3-10604b9f6eda.html
"It is valid to say that if there is less commercial activity in marijuana, there may be less violence related to commerce in cannabis," Viets said. "It is the money — not the marijuana — that is the root of the problem."
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Name: Jesus MalverdeGender: Male
Hometown: SF
Current location: Japan
Member since: Fri May 17, 2013, 11:44 PM
Number of posts: 10,274
