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| The result would be as jarring as the color scheme. |
The story here is a simple one: while social security may enjoy overwhelming support across the political spectrum, it does not poll nearly as well among the wealthy people – who finance political campaigns and own major news outlets. The predominant philosophy among this group is that a dollar in a worker['s] pocket is a dollar that could be in a rich person's pocket – and these people see social security putting lots of dollars in the pockets of people who are not rich.
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There is also the flip side to this story. Politicians, especially Democrats, who speak up for cuts to social security can count on lavish praise from the media. Political figures of no obvious stature, like former Louisiana Senator John Breaux or former Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, were lionized in the media for their willingness to cut social security benefits. After leaving the Senate, both took lobbying positions where they were almost certainly earning well over $1m a year.
This is the fundamental economics of social security that explains why it has not figured more prominently in the presidential race. If President Obama were to rise in defense of the program, he could count on losing the financial backing of many supporters. He would also get beaten up by the Washington Post and other major news outlets for challenging their agenda.That about sums it up, but it does not go far enough. Obama, for reasons he has never explained, has been trying to cut Social Security from the beginning of his presidency. He called for what are euphemistically called "entitlement reforms" from the word jump. He tried to make the Simpson-Bowles slash-and-burn pirates into a fast-track committee. He tried to cut Social Security in his "grand bargain," which was a bargain for nobody who ever shopped for a bargain.
So, he DID have a situation like that happen and he jumped on it with both feet. He didn't use his supposedly large brain to filter out the idea, because he already had that idea in mind! The handlers only crafted the message, at best. This was no misstep or misstatement. It was on him.Audience member: If you get the call as president, and you had hostages…Ronald Reagan was able to make a statement, even before he became, was actually sworn in—Romney: Yeah—
Audience member: the hostages were released—
Romney: on the day of his inauguration, yeah.
Audience member: So my question is, really, how can you sort of duplicate that scenario?
Romney: Ohhhh. [A few chuckles in audience.] I'm gonna ask you, how do I duplicate that scenario.
Audience member: I think that had to do with the fact that the Iranians perceived Reagan would do something to really get them out. In other words [unintelligible]…and that's why I'm suggesting that something that you say over the next few months gets the Iranians to understand that their pursuit of the bomb is something that you would predict and I think that's something that could possibly resonate very well with American Republican voters.
Romney: I appreciate the idea. I can't—one of the other things that's frustrating to me is that at a typical day like this, when I do three or four events like this, the number of foreign policy questions that I get are between zero and one. And the American people are not concentrated at all on China, on Russia, Iran, Iraq. This president's failure to put in place a status forces agreement allowing 10-20,000 troops to stay in Iraq? Unthinkable! And yet, in that election, in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we have hostages in Iran, I mean, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the desert, I mean that's—that was—that was the focus, and so him solving that made all the difference in the world. I'm afraid today if you said, "We got Iran to agree to stand down a nuclear weapon," they'd go hold on. It's really a, but…by the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.
In 1976, five Boy Scouts wrote detailed complaints accusing a Pennsylvania scoutmaster of two rapes and other sex crimes, according to his file. He abruptly resigned in writing, saying he had to travel more for work.
"Good luck to you in your new position," a top troop representative wrote back. He said he was accepting the resignation "with extreme regret."Of course the lawyers fought tooth and nail to cover up the cover-up. These files apparently only cover the '70s to the early '90s.
A few months after Humphries' arrest in 1984, local Scouting official Jack Terwilliger told the Virginian-Pilot newspaper that no one at the local Scout council had had suspicions about Humphries.Another sanctimonious "religious" organization aiding and abetting horrific crimes. Lovely. Disband the thing by court order.
But that was not true. Records in Humphries' file show that six years earlier, Terwilliger had ordered officials to interview a Scout who gave a detailed account of Humphries' repeated acts of oral sex on him.
"He then told me to do the same and I did," the 12-year-old boy said in a sworn statement in 1978.
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Humphries continued to work with Scouts and molested at least five more boys before police, acting on a tip, stopped him in 1984. He was convicted of abusing 20 Boy Scouts, some as young as 8, and was sentenced to 151 years in prison.
The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of othersThis is about the notably bad video, Innocence of Muslims. It may or not be made by its poster, Sam Bacile.
On Wednesday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Mr. Jones and asked him to consider withdrawing his support for the video, a senior administration official told reporters in a conference call. Mr. Jones’ response was “non-committal,” the administration official said.Perhaps the statement came out before the rest of it all. I don't know. If so, that's a problem for a blame-the-statement messaging, and backtracking may ensue. Whether chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff should be calling up private citizens and telling them to put a lid on it, that I have the answer to. Er, no. Love him or hate him, this nut job has every right to pull his nuttery. He can light Goodnight Moon, holy books, or a set of encyclopedias on fire in the public square, for all I care.
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| Burger King at his coronation as the Messiah. |
The greatest lesson Mom ever taught me, though, was this one: she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. She said to always pick being respected, that love without respect was always fleeting — but that respect could grow into real, lasting love.
Now, of course, she was talking about women.
But I have learned over time that it applies just as much to leadership. In fact, I think that advice applies to America today more than ever.
I believe we have become paralyzed by our desire to be loved.
Our Founding Fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance and popularity is fleeting and that this country's principles needed to be rooted in strengths greater than the passions and emotions of the times.
Our leaders today have decided it is more important to be popular, to do what is easy and say "yes," rather than to say no when "no" is what's required.
In recent years, we as a country have too often chosen the same path.
It's been easy for our leaders to say not us, and not now, in taking on the tough issues. And we've stood silently by and let them get away with it.
But tonight, I say enough.
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Tonight, we choose respect over love.
We are not afraid. We are taking our country back.
Dear Paul Ryan,
The blaze Sunday morning gutted the Velvet Rope, at 728 Lake St. The club's owner, Frank Elliott, said derogatory messages were scrawled on the wall inside the burned-out club. Authorities were seen removing a piece of a wall and loading it onto a truck.I have no idea whether any of these arson events are connected, or if there's a copycat factor. Even one individual acting alone is committing terrorism when the intent is to cause terror in any community. Period.
Authorities have not said whether they believe the business was targeted because it was a gay club.
The archdiocese acknowledged it paid suspected pedophile clergy to leave the priesthood after an abuse victims' group produced a court document that references a 2003 proposal to pay $20,000 to "unassignable priests" who agree to leave the ministry. The document from the archdiocese's bankruptcy proceedings includes minutes from a 2003 meeting of its Finance Council, which included then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan, now a cardinal and head of the New York archdiocese.Odd timing, that last one. Perhaps he had never been accused until 2003? I don't have those details. So, Cardinal Dolan was getting the guy booted, by the now-Pope, no less. Then he either claims not to know about the payoff, or considers it "charity." Which is it? I think the press needs to press him on this issue.
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The archdiocese acknowledged in 2006 that it gave $10,000 to former priest Franklyn Becker to help pay his health insurance until he became eligible for Medicare.
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Dolan asked then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2003 to defrock Becker after allegations of repeated sexual abuse of children that dated back to at least 1970. Dolan wrote the letter about two weeks after Becker was arrested in California in connection to a sexual assault there in the 1970s. Becker was removed from the priesthood in 2004.
"SNAP has no credibility whatsoever," Dolan said. “To respond to charges like that that are groundless and scurrilous in my book is useless and counterproductive.”Working his best to keep the story alive, Dolan denies a proposal that seems to have gone forward during his leadership. Wait, we have it from a court filing. Is the document the Catholic Church provided a fake? Is that what he's claiming? Doubtful.
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Dolan’s comments Sunday seemed to contradict a statement made to WNYC by a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York last week, which said that the cardinal "has read and supports the statement from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee."
On Thursday, the archdiocese confirmed that it had offered payoffs to abusive priests as "the most expedient and cost-effective way to have offenders laicized or removed from the priesthood."
Having an abuser volunteer to go through the process known as laicization - formally leaving the priesthood - "was faster and less expensive. It made sense to try and move these men out of the priesthood as quickly as possible," the archdiocese said in a statement.Lovely. How expedient. The abuser cash-out. I guess there were enough of them to push the Milwaukee church into BANKRUPTCY. Yeah, right, the Catholic Church is bankrupt. Sell a few bejewelled gewgaws and diadems and the like. Have a damn tag sale. Hell, donate all future bingo proceeds to a fun.
One Catholic church source defended the payment plan on Thursday, saying, “You either pay them to leave and give them money for food and clothes and shelter as they look for a job or you have a drawn out trial that could take years.”Er, better for WHOM? Exactly whom would that be better for? Can someone clue me in? Laicized indeed.
“Wouldn’t that be preferable than to keep them as priests and paying their salaries,” the source, who would agree to speak only anonymously. “And wouldn’t it be better than a trial and to have victims testifying and cross examined?”
NCAVP documented a 16% decrease in hate violence incidents from 2010 to 2011 but an 11% increase in murder. This year many NCAVP members saw a decline in reports of violence linked to a corresponding increase in murders. “In Detroit, an increase in the severity of violence and particularly murders made it challenging for us to find the capacity to do outreach which can lead to a decrease in reports,” said Nusrat Ventimiglia at Equality Michigan. This increase in murders consumed a great deal of organizational capacity. “NCAVP members across the country have spent a tremendous amount of time and resources responding to murders and the tragic, ongoing suicides of our LGBTQ youth,” said Rebecca Waggoner from OutFront Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The 2011 report also highlights a number of disturbing trends concerning the severity of violence experienced by LGBTQH people. This year’s report shows that LGBTQH youth and young adults between the ages of 18 and 30 years old were 2.41 times as likely to experience physical violence compared to LGBTQH people age 30 and older. As in the case of the murder statistics, transgender people and people of color were more likely to experience physical injury in a hate violence incident. The report found that transgender people were 28% as likely to experience physical violence compared to non-transgender people, and that LGBTQ people of color were two times as likely to experience physical violence compared to those who were not LGBTQ people of color.The actual number of murders is 30. Of course, the groups realize that many incidents go unreported. They say they are so strained by responding to individual incidents that perhaps some people are discouraged in reaching out for help.
If a club wants to cater to a gay clientele it needs to be open and accepting all the time, every night of the week.Okay, I agree, but, wait. This one-gay-night-a-week thing at club venues has been going on for a lo-o-o-o-ng time around here. You're just noticing? C'mon Next.
A federal appeals court has ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that denies a host of federal benefits to same-sex married couples, is unconstitutional.Not so fast! It's true as far as it goes, but this one's going to the U.S. Supreme Court, and we know the rotting composition of that fallen branch of government.
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| Murder-lover Curtis Knapp |
Curtis Knapp, pastor of Seneca, Kansas' New Hope Baptist Church:Another call for government-run genocide.
"Oh, so you're saying we should go out and start killing them? No, I'm saying the government should. They won't, but they should."
Since it hit the blogosphere, the church, identified as the Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Indiana, has received harassing phone calls, and its pastor, Jeff Sangl, has even gotten death threats at home, members told TMZ.com.
Federal agents are investigating two fires in the past week at women's clinics in metro Atlanta, authorities said. ...
The two fires, along with several burglaries that struck women's clinics in recent months, have raised concerns that the clinics are being targeted by vigilantes.
The physicians who were victims of the burglaries and Sunday's fire did not perform abortions but they had all visited the statehouse this session to discuss the impact of abortion-related legislation, said Dr. David Byck, president of the Georgia Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.This looks like either one person or a group at work to silence these doctors. That does constitute terrorism, by definition, no?
"We are concerned that each of these physicians spoke with lawmakers during the session and that each then became targets of felony crimes," Byck said in a statement.
"Every Friday and Saturday night, we're flooded with requests from straight girls in penis hats who want to ogle our gogos, dance with the gays and celebrate their pending nuptials. They are completely unaware that the people around them are legally prohibited from getting married," David Cooley, the founder of The Abbey said in a statement.Thanks to Steven T. for alerting me to this story.
In the study, 96 black-and-white photos of gay and straight men and women were shown to 129 students, who were then asked to guess their subject's sexuality.So, guys, switch off Grindr, stop woofing on Scruff, and use your eyes and ears (and your psychic kids' sixth sense, if you've got it tuned). What did the cavemen do? Do that, and I don't mean painting antelopes on cave walls.
In two-thirds of cases, they were able to tell if a woman was gay or straight, and they accurately judged 57 per cent of the males they saw.
Even turning the photos upside down did not stop ability of viewers to correctly guess the subject's sexuality.
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| Photo: RDinNYC |
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. [Transcript excerpt, errors included, from that site.]The words spread out from Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, NC, like an oil spill, and the church staff and preacher spent a day saying it was all a joke, or maybe just an exaggeration for effect, or whatever. Anything to get the phones to stop ringing. And the retraction has come in, via his blog. Oh, but wait!
However, I do not apologize for the manner in which the Word of God articulates sexual immorality, including homosexuality and effeminacy, as a behavior that is an abomination to God. Nothing in this official statement of retraction should be perceived as an apology for the overarching intent and message of the sermon and the need to define marriage as one man and one woman and to maintain the gender distinctions that God created from the beginning when He made them male and female (Genesis 1). I recognize that there are those in the LGBT community who believe that their sexual behavior is not sin. I do not agree with them and this official retraction should not be misunderstood as an apology for the gospel of Jesus Christ or the Word of God.My bold. So we have a non-retraction retraction. What was the "manner in which [he] emphasized"? Precisely to tell parents to break and beat their kids for the least wavering from beer-commercial gender roles. The man cannot help himself. Someone needs a rainbow intervention. Where's a bubble machine and a busload of drag queens? Time to show up in front of the place next Sunday.
I do not apologize for the manner in which I emphasized the importance of one man and one woman getting married and staying married for the benefit of their children and society.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland opened the daily news briefing with a salute to the handful of underage observers who joined journalists for the mid-day run-down of global events.Meanwhile, The Hill interviewed Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who said that she's been briefed about some new rules coming down the pike that will forbid Secret Service agents from going to "any place of bad acts."
But any hopes that the briefing would steer clear of the salacious dissipated as questions focused on charges that Secret Service agents and other U.S. government employees caroused with strippers and prostitutes on overseas assignments.
"What a topic to be talking about on Bring Your Kids To Work day," Nuland said. "Parents, you can explain all of this later."
This source witnessed the majority of the men drink heavily ("wasted," "heavily intoxicated") at the strip club. He says most of the Secret Service "advance-team" members also paid extra for access to the VIP section of the club where they were provided a number of sexual favors in return for their cash.
...The source is referred to as a subcontractor, and he's backed up by the owner. Apparently, two of the agents took two women back to the hotel, and boasted that they did that all the time.
"No surprise to me." The owner told Halsne his club routinely takes care of high-ranking employees of the U.S. embassy in San Salvador as well as visiting FBI and DEA agents.
This statement took guts, and he received a standing ovation in his church upon his appearance. Read the details. It looks like people are not just falling in line with bigotry any more.But at least one Catholic leader — Father Michael Ryan of St. James Cathedral — is resisting the effort and refusing to “circulate petitions inside his parish for the campaign to repeal the state’s same-sex marriage law”:
Dear Friends,
Archbishop Sartain has written a letter in which he has expressed his support for Referendum 74 and for the collecting of signatures in parishes. Media reports regarding this are somewhat misleading. While the Archbishop has given his support to the effort, he has wisely left it up to each pastor to decide whether to allow the collection of signatures in his own parish.
After discussing the matter with the members of the Cathedral’s pastoral ministry team, I have decided that we will not participate in the collecting of signatures in our parish. Doing so would, I believe, prove hurtful and seriously divisive in our community.
Father Ryan
Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, was briefed on the matter and told CNN that the government personnel brought prostitutes back to their rooms Wednesday night and "one of the women did not leave the room in the morning."
A hotel manager tried to get in the room, and eventually the woman emerged and said "they owed her money," according to King. Similarly, U.S. government sources said there was a dispute between at least one Secret Service member and a woman brought back to his hotel over a request to be paid.So, a dozen are dragged home, and another five are on lock-down in the hotel, still! Apparently they'd be drinking a huge amount, then went scrounging for hookers, and after they all or most got them, one of them had a dispute over the fees for now not-so-secret service.
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| Local hero of the week, Newark's mayor. |
But Booker won the forceful debate by turning to Det. Alex Rodriguez and declaring, “If I don’t go in, this lady is going to die.”
Small, puppy-like heads begin popping up out of the water.And, yes, they are cute. The cruises end in April, but the company has whale and dolphin jaunts that run through August.
It takes a moment to realize that they’re seals.
“The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks—two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage, develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots…”I would like Romney to open his mouth, yet again, and speak from the heart regarding this news of the week. It's another episode in the Perils of Mitt. How will he escape the quicksand pit? Did he know about this strategy, which NOM was apparently cooking up at about the same time? Who were his or his PAC's contacts in the group? Will he offer details about the dates and times of their meetings and conversations?
Another passage:
"The Latino vote in America is a key swing vote, and will be so even more so in the future, both because of demographic growth and inherent uncertainty: Will the process of assimilation to the dominant Anglo culture lead Hispanics to abandon traditional family values? We must interrupt this process of assimilation by making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity - a symbol of resistance to inappropriate assimilation."
A local bookstore has “sold out” of a controversial marriage guide that advises Muslim men on how to beat their wives.The story goes on to cite a horrendous honor killing, without providing more than a fuzzy linkage. I don't think that's fair journalism. The question is also put whether such a book should be sold in Canadian bookstores. They don't seem to have that freedom-of-the-press burden the U.S. has.
The 160-page book, published by Idara Impex in New Delhi, India, is written by Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi, who’s described in the book’s foreword as a “prolific writer on almost every topic of Islamic learning.”
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In terms of physical punishment, the book advises that a husband may scold her, “beat by hand or stick,” withhold money from her or “pull (her) by the ears,” but should “refrain from beating her excessively.”
What he did both on nuclear weaponry already in the - in the new START treaty, as well as his decision to withdraw missile defense sites from - from Poland and then reduce our missile defense sites in Alaska from the original plan, I mean these are very unfortunate developments. And if he's planning on doing more and suggests to Russia that - that he has things he's willing to do with them, he's not willing to tell the American people - this is to Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. They - they fight every cause for the world's worst actors. The I - the idea that he has some more flexibility in mind for Russia is very, very troubling, indeed. - CNN
Conservative Party co-treasurer Peter Cruddas has resigned after secretly filmed footage showed him apparently offering access to the prime minister for a donation of £250,000 a year.Via BBC News.
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| Scrubbed from the Web site, but the innertubes are forever. |
The company later released another apology.I guess they were aiming for that hard-to-target date-rapist market.
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| See. Nice, glowing bottles, shimmering crystal ceiling. And it's vodka. |
Someone actually should turn Mitt Romney upside down and shake him. A lot.
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