April 23, 2014

8 year old disabled boy on his way to becoming a convicted felon.

Edward Hart, 8, faces two felony counts after an altercation with police and damage done inside a police vehicle, according to court documents.

“I don’t even think he did anything wrong in this case.” stepfather Robert Bluhm said. “He’s special need[s].”

Edward, ran away on March 19 from the Hillside Learning and Behavior Center in Allegan where Edward Hart attends school, Bluhm said.

An Allegan police report lays out what happened from the responding officer’s perspective. A teacher and the principal chased after the 8-year-old, and a third teacher caught up with Edward at a party store, a block away off of M-40, the report said.

“He’s ran away from the school before,” Bluhm said. “And he’s made it to M- 40 before. But he’s never made it as far as he did this time.”

Police were called to help, and, according to the their report, school staff requested the officer drive Edward back to the school. When he was asked his name, Edward is said to have cursed at and assaulted the officer.

“He has anger issues,” said Bluhm. “They know this. And they’re going to throw him in the back of a cop car all by himself.”

The officer reproted that Edward broke the police camera in the back of the car. As a result, Edwared is charged with malicious destruction of police property and resisting and obstructing.

http://fox17online.com/2014/04/21/little-boy-faces-two-felony-charges/

Good thing he left his pencil at school.

April 23, 2014

Man Found Dead Inside Port-A-Potty; Lived There For Months As Shelter During Cold Winter...

An autopsy is planned for an elderly man who was found dead inside a portable toilet that he might have been living in for months.

The man’s remains were discovered Sunday by a security guard at a municipal boat launch on 9 Mile Road near Jefferson Avenue in St. Clair Shores, just outside the Detroit city limit.

Police said there were no obvious signs of foul play or trauma to the man’s body. An autopsy will be conducted Tuesday to determine a cause of death

Police said the remains were so decomposed, it appears the man could have been dead inside the portable toilet for about five months. Investigators also believe the man might have been using the portable toilet as a shelter during the cold winter. His identity is still not known.

Read More: http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2014/04/22/autopsy-planned-for-man-found-dead-in-portable-potty/

April 23, 2014

Do the pictures prove that Russian special forces are engaged in Ukraine?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/22/-sp-does-us-evidence-prove-russian-special-forces-are-in-eastern-ukraine

Yellow cake, Yellow cake, Mobile Gas factories, etc. The Neocon playbook is so predictable.

April 22, 2014

#myNYPD Backfires As Twitter Users Share Photos of Police Brutality

Following in the successful footprints of #McDStories and #ILoveWalgreens, the New York Police Department created a hashtag to commemorate our love for New York’s finest:

Do you have a photo w/ a member of the NYPD? Tweet us & tag it #myNYPD. It may be featured on our Facebook. http://t.co/mE2c3oSmm6—

NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) April 22, 2014

That’s when things went horribly wrong. The Twitter community has been running with #MyNYPD for the past few hours, taking the liberty to share their own endearing photos:

Read More: http://betabeat.com/2014/04/mynypd-backfires-as-twitter-users-share-photos-of-police-brutality/

April 22, 2014

Nevada GOP drops platforms against abortions, gay marriage, endorses Sandoval

Amid raucous debate, Nevada Republican Party conventioneers on Saturday stripped opposition to gay marriage and abortion from the party platform...

snip

Republicans who sat on the platform committee said they decided not to deal with social issues this year because the U.S. Supreme Court and lower courts have weighed in and it doesn’t make sense for the party of “personal freedom” to have the government or the political party get involved in people’s personal lives.

Read More: http://www.reviewjournal.com/politics/nevada-gop-drops-platforms-against-abortions-gay-marriage-endorses-sandoval

Two "wedge" issues go to the dustbin.

April 22, 2014

Insurer Admits Nearly 1,000 Doctors Wrongly Placed On Covered California Provider List

Two months after KPIX 5 ConsumerWatch first reported about some doctors listed on the Covered California exchange were actually not accepting the plans, insurer Anthem Blue Cross admitted that nearly 1,000 doctors were erroneously listed.

According to a statement by the California Medical Association, the insurer recently notified 965 physicians that they were wrongly placed on the exchange’s list. The notice, which was posted on April 9th, stated that the doctors were “inadvertently” listed for “a certain period of time” during the open enrollment period.

The CMA said Anthem Blue Cross acknowledged the error after receiving a number of complaints from physicians who believed they were listed inaccurately as participating.

Guda Venkatesh, a Covered California enrollee, was one of those affected. He told KPIX 5 in February that he chose an Anthem plan because the website said the plan had a variety of Stanford doctors near him.

“Except when I started going through the doctors, each one and calling them up, none of them actually accepted the Covered California plan,” Venkatesh said.

Read More: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2014/04/21/insurer-admits-nearly-1000-doctors-wrongly-placed-on-covered-california-list/

April 22, 2014

The U.S. Military Is a Socialist Paradise

In an era defined by 13 years of continuous war, most Americans still seem to regard the U.S. military as a mysterious and remote way of life. Then a tragedy involving a soldier or veteran happens, and reliably experts come forward to explain the strange customs of the folkloric troop in its native habitat. Shame that so many of the experts seem to have barely a clue what the military is really like. They’ve studied it from a distance without getting a real feel for the customs and characteristics of the culture they’re eager to explain.


It probably comes as a surprise to many, but the army may have more in common with Norway than Sparta.

The U.S. military is a socialist paradise. Imagine a testing ground where every signature liberal program of the past century has been applied, from racial integration to single-payer health care—then add personal honor, strict hierarchy, and more guns. Like all socialist paradises, the military has been responsible for its share of bloodshed, but it has developed one of the only working models of collective living and social welfare that this country has ever known.

Not that the leadership always gets things right and protects those who serve. Over and over again, the military has betrayed its own best principles and traditions, from the practical exclusion of non-white veterans from the World War II G.I. Bill to the massive lapses and failures in the VA system and today’s rising dependence on food stamps in military homes. The military suffers from the same problems that all mammoth bureaucracies do but less so, because its membership largely believes in its core values and has seen those values upheld often enough to expect action when they are betrayed.

So what’s life like for those in uniform living in the socialist paradise?

The military is an enormous jobs program. There are more than 2 million active duty and reserve members of the armed forces spread out between bases in more than 150 countries. As with any employer of that size, you’ll get a range of answers about working conditions depending on who you ask and how much they got screwed by the bureaucracy, let down by their leaders, or punished by circumstance.

Across the thousands of bases where soldiers, marines, and airmen live with their families, a few common features shape military life. It’s the commonness of the life, actually, that makes it unique. From Fort Bragg to Camp Pendleton, there is a shared experience on a scale that exists almost nowhere else in America.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/21/troops-of-the-uniform-unite-the-military-is-a-socialist-paradise.html

When congress men get sick they don't run to blue cross they go to Walter reed.

April 22, 2014

Florida fisherman may have record with 800 pound shark caught in Gulf

A Florida man has pulled in an 11-foot, 805-pound mako shark from the shores of the Gulf in what may be a new world record for land-based shark fishing.

Joey Polk from Milton, Fla., spent an hour wrestling the monster onto land last Tuesday night, sometimes with almost 900 yards of line pulled out of his reel.

The mako is the fastest of all sharks and can swim at speeds up to 60 miles per hour, and Polk said he now knows that is the truth.

"She was pulling line out of my reel at easily 60 miles and hour. We call that 'smokin' the drag' round here," said Polk who already holds one land-based shark fishing record.

&quot The reel) has 60 pounds of drag on it, it's amazing that these fish can pull it out," Polk said, adding that a person can barely pull out the line by hand.

"When I saw it, I knew it was a big fish. I've been fishing since I was a little kid, but I thought it was maybe 700 pounds or so, then when we weighed it, it came in at 805!  It was amazing," said Polk.

Polk's shark is set to beat out the previous land-based shark fishing record held by his cousin Earnie, who caught a 674 pound mako in 2009.

Read More: http://www.sfgate.com/hunting-fishing/article/Florida-fisherman-may-have-record-with-800-pound-5418081.php

April 22, 2014

How republicans and the political focus has changed.

Today metrics, the national good, the future of generations don't matter.

April 22, 2014

International Lawyers Seek Justice for Iraqis

International lawyers and activists converged at a conference titled The Iraq Commission, in Brussels, Belgium, April 16 and 17, with the primary aim of bringing to justice government officials who are guilty of war crimes in Iraq.

"Within a few days of this, a lawless atmosphere developed within my unit,” Ross Caputi, a former marine who took part in the brutal November 2004 siege of Fallujah told the Iraq Commission. "There was a lot of looting going on. I saw people searching the pockets of the dead resistance fighters for money. Some people were mutilating corpses."

The conference represents the most powerful and most current organized attempt in the world to bring justice to those responsible for the catastrophe in Iraq, and included powerful international lawyers like International Court of Justice lawyer Curtis Doebbler and Louie Roberto Zamora Bolanos, a lawyer from Costa Rica who successfully sued the government of his country for supporting the war in Iraq.

Their goal for the conference was to begin taking concrete steps toward international lawsuits that will bring former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President George W. Bush, along with those responsible in their administrations, to justice for the myriad war crimes committed in Iraq.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/23175-international-lawyers-seek-justice-for-iraqis