February 26, 2018

John Oliver Mocks Donald Trump over Gun Control............"Show of Hands"

"Show of Hands"

February 26, 2018

Disgraced anti-vaxxer Andrew Wakefield aims to advance his agenda in Texas election

Anti-vaccine campaigners have found a growing political voice for their debunked ideas in Texas, the adopted home of discredited British researcher Andrew Wakefield, and now hope to unseat a moderate Republican in the heart of Houston.

Texas has seen rates of children opting out of vaccines for philosophical reasons skyrocket after Wakefield – the man behind the UK’s MMR vaccine controversy in the early 2000s – moved to the state’s capital, Austin, more than a decade ago.

Since the early 2000s, when he arrived, the rate of Texas children exempted from at least one vaccine has shot up by 1,900% according to one analysis, while Houston has become a battleground for anti-vaccine activists of growing clout.

Now, Wakefield sees the upcoming Republican primary in Houston on 6 March as an “an extremely important time” to advance his anti-vaccine agenda.


https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/26/texas-vaccinations-safety-andrew-wakefield-fear-elections


I have said this often, and will say it again.......................your military has to have all of its shots, when they and their family deploy to a country outside of the United States, and if anyone thinks that this will not effect military readiness, you cannot be or have military readiness if you a have a epidemic to a squad, company, battalion or division ---------------you are wrong.................take for example ...............diphtheria / polio shots....................

And if anyone thinks that polio and diphtheria is some benign thing you are wrong....................you can die.................

February 26, 2018

'This country has been violated': Trump's wall ignites tensions in Arizona

February 26, 2018

'Gory, botched': Alabama's aborted execution of inmate was bloody, says lawyer

An execution in the US was aborted last week after the inmate was left with 10 puncture wounds when medical personnel were unable to find a vein after two and a half hours of trying. The failed attempts left behind a bloodied death chamber, the inmate’s lawyer said.

On Thursday, Alabama tried to execute by lethal injection convicted murderer Doyle Hamm, 61, who has spent more than half his life on death row. After about two and a half hours of trying, the state called the execution off because issues with Hamm’s veins could not be resolved before a death warrant expired at midnight.

“It was a gory, botched execution. They gave up when they could not find a vein,” Bernard Harcourt, a professor at the Columbia University law school who is representing Hamm, said by email on Sunday.

The execution has come under federal court review, with a US district judge calling for the state to preserve evidence, including the clothes Hamm was wearing.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/26/gory-botched-alabamas-aborted-execution-of-inmate-was-bloody-says-lawyer

This is just sadistic................next up on the list of methods to do this shit in Alabama and other states .............is fucking nitrogen gas, with a bag over the person's face hooked up to a hose

February 25, 2018

Opioid deaths mounting, lawmakers hit gas on new legislative pus

Source: The Hill

Congress is moving to take a second crack at opioid legislation, with lawmakers broadly agreeing that they need to do more to deal with a crisis that’s killing more than 42,000 people per year.

There’s a sense of urgency to the push, as lawmakers continue to hear story after story of people in their communities dying from overdoses. The crisis is showing no signs of abating, as the rate of opioid overdose deaths increased nearly 28 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Congress already passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) in 2016, but lawmakers and advocates broadly agree that it’s only one part of the puzzle.

“CARA in a lot of ways provided a starting point for a lot of the work that needs to be done,” said Grant Smith, the interim director for the Drug Policy Alliance’s office of national affairs.

Read more: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/375373-opioid-deaths-mounting-lawmakers-hit-gas-on-new-legislative-push

---

I just have to fucking ask................what about the Sackler's and their responsibility to this issue..................

All one has to do is type in Sackler's and see what the fuck the country is getting and what they are getting..................l

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/19/who_profits_from_the_opioid_crisis


I mean really......................

February 25, 2018

Warren Buffetts Berkshire Hathaway made $29 billion off the Republican tax cuts

Warren Buffett’s multinational conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway, made an extra $29 billion in 2017 thanks to the Republican tax bill, the billionaire investor said in his annual letter to shareholders released on Saturday. For reference, that’s nearly half of the conglomerate’s entire net gain last year.

“A large portion of our gain did not come from anything we accomplished at Berkshire,” Buffett, 87, wrote. Of the $65 billion the company made last year, $36 billion was from its operations. The rest was thanks to the GOP tax cut, passed in December, which dropped the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent.

That the tax bill would make such an enormous difference for Berkshire Hathaway, which as of 2017 has $702 billion in total assets, is not a surprise: That is largely how it was designed. The bill is most beneficial to corporations, including Berkshire, and the wealthy, particularly the ultra-wealthy, such as Buffett, who according to Forbes has an estimated personal net worth of $86.9 billion.


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/24/17048378/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-tax-cuts

This is just totally fucked up, because back in the day when there was a 90% tax rate, he would have still took home 8.6 billion---------------------------"ayn rand" is alive and fucking people over............and paying exactly how much to defense, firefighters, police, parks, roads, bridges, hospitals, etc...................not fucking much......................

February 25, 2018

Police in Washington sell seized assault weapons back to the public

SEATTLE (AP) — When law enforcement agencies in Washington and other states sell guns they've confiscated during criminal investigations, they're not just selling pistols and hunting rifles, they're also putting assault weapons, including AR-15s, back on the street.

Sheriff's offices and police departments across Washington state have sold dozens of AR-15s, AK47s and other assault weapons since 2010, an Associated Press investigation found.

Most states allow law enforcement agencies to decide whether to sell, trade or destroy their confiscated firearms, but a growing list of states has passed laws in recent years requiring agencies to sell all forfeited guns. Supporters say selling seized guns provides law enforcement with needed revenue, and if the practice were abandoned, people would just buy weapons somewhere else.

But Yakima Police Captain Jeff Schneider said it's "absolutely insane" that police are selling assault weapons.


http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/02/police_in_washington_sell_seiz.html

February 25, 2018

Inside Atomwaffen As It Celebrates a Member for Allegedly Killing a Gay Jewish College Student

ProPublica obtained the chat logs of Atomwaffen, a notorious white supremacist group. When Samuel Woodward was charged with killing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein last month in California, other Atomwaffen members cheered the death, concerned only that the group’s cover might have been blown.

by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica, Ali Winston, special to ProPublica, and Jake Hanrahan, special to ProPublica Feb. 23, 5 a.m. EST


Late last month, ProPublica reported that the California man accused of killing a gay and Jewish University of Pennsylvania student was an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of Atomwaffen Division, one of the country’s most notorious extremist groups.

The news about the murder suspect, Samuel Woodward, spread quickly throughout the U.S., and abroad. Woodward was accused of fatally stabbing 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein and burying his body in an Orange County park.

The report, it turns out, was also taken up in the secretive online chats conducted by members of Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist group that celebrates both Hitler and Charles Manson.

“I love this,” one member wrote of the killing, according to copies of the online chats obtained by ProPublica. Another called Woodward a “one man gay Jew wrecking crew.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/atomwaffen-division-inside-white-hate-group

I was living in Riverside, California when Manson was committing murders in the LA areas.........................

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/charles-manson-today-the-final-confessions-of-a-psychopath-20131121

February 25, 2018

An obscure State Department policy change is likely to send immigrants to their death

Asylum seekers are likely to be sent back to their home countries to be tortured or killed.

IAN MILLHISER

FEB 25, 2018, 11:00 AM

The State Department has “been ordered to pare back passages in a soon-to-be-released annual report on global human rights that traditionally discuss women’s reproductive rights and discrimination,” Politico reported earlier this week. This change is likely to have a devastating impact on many foreign nationals seeking asylum in the United States after facing persecution, or even the threat of death, in their home nation.

A trio of federal immigration laws and human rights treaties permit individuals, who otherwise would be subject to deportation, to remain in the United States — if they are likely to face certain kinds of persecution in their home country. An immigrant seeking asylum, for example, may remain in the United States if they can establish that they have a “well-founded fear of future persecution” in their country of origin. Similarly, under Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, the United States agrees not to “expel, return, or extradite” a foreign national if it is “more likely than not that they would be tortured if removed to a specific country.”

Immigrants seeking asylum or similar protections often rely heavily on the State Department’s annual human rights reports to establish that their fear of persecution or torture in their home nation is well-founded. For example: The 2016 State Department report on the northwestern African nation of Mauritania warns that members of the Resurgence of the Abolitionist Movement, an anti-slavery organization that advocates for the rights of Mauritania’s Haratine ethnic group, were arrested and tortured there. This report could provide members of this organization (or even members of Mauritania’s Haratine minority more generally) who arrive in the United States with the evidence they need to be able to stay.


https://thinkprogress.org/an-obscure-state-department-policy-change-is-likely-to-send-immigrants-to-their-death-faece8bc18ba/

This current administration is just plain fucking sick

February 25, 2018

Union workers rally ahead of major Supreme Court case

Unionized workers and their allies held rallies across the country Saturday to support unions in advance of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could significantly weaken the power of organized labor. Workers are attending rallies as part of a “working people’s day of action.”

There’s a rally in Foley Square in New York City, a street party in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a Columbus, Ohio party on the statehouse steps, and a gathering at Clayborn Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Clayborn Temple has historical significance. It’s the place where striking sanitation workers, who had the support of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., began their march to City Hall in 1968 and where they gathered during another march when police attacked them with tear gas.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the Mark Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, Council 31 (AFSCME) case. Non-union public school teachers in California brought the case.

Mark Janus, a child support specialist who chose not to join the union, said “fair-share” fees levied on non-members, amounting to 78 percent of full union dues, are a violation of his First Amendment rights. A Supreme Court decision in his favor, which is expected, would be a huge setback for public sector unions, which depend on these funds.

https://thinkprogress.org/union-workers-rally-ahead-of-major-supreme-court-case-cc1445955d66/


Now "SCABS" the fucking freeloading SCABS and the National Right to Work for Less and the fucking Bradley Foundation, have finally got there main SCAB on the bench, Gorsuch ...............................

I strongly feel that if we take back the house and the senate, we should move to have him (Gorsuch) impeached under the due process and advise and consent rule of the senate being violated, by Grassley and McConnell and all of those assholes that voted him him everyone of them .........................

I hate fucking free loading SCABS, that infringe on my right to have "majority" vote and ask to be represented by a UNION, and then use the bullshit minority to over rule a majority.......................FUCK YOU, Citizens United.......................