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Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Wednesday, November 19, 2014

The Daily Drift

Unfortunately we can - They're called wingnuts ...!
 
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Today in History

1620   The Pilgrims sight Cape Cod.
1828   In Vienna, Composer Franz Schubert dies of syphilis at age 31.
1861   Julia Ward Howe writes "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" while visiting Union troops near Washington.
1863   Lincoln delivers the "Gettysburg Address" at the dedication of the National Cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.
1885   Bulgarians, led by Stefan Stambolov, repulse a larger Serbian invasion force at Slivinitza.
1873   James Reed and two accomplices rob the Watt Grayson family of $30,000 in the Choctaw Nation.
1897   The Great "City Fire" in London.
1905   100 people drown in the English Channel as the steamer Hilda sinks.
1911   New York receives first Marconi wireless transmission from Italy.
1915   The Allies ask China to join the entente against the Central Powers.
1923   The Oklahoma State Senate ousts Governor Walton for anti-Ku Klux Klan measures.
1926   Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Politburo in the Soviet Union.
1942   Soviet forces take the offensive at Stalingrad.
1949   Prince Ranier III is crowned 30th Monarch of Monaco.
1952   Scandinavian Airlines opens a commercial route from Canada to Europe.
1969   Apollo 12 touches down on the moon.
1973   New York stock market takes sharpest drop in 19 years.
1976   Patty Hearst is released from prison on $1.5 million bail.
1981   U.S. Steel agrees to pay $6.3 million for Marathon Oil.
1985   US President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, meet for the first time.
1985   In the largest civil verdict in US history, Pennzoil wins $10.53 billion judgement against Texaco.
1990   Pop duo Milli Vanilli are stripped of their Grammy Award after it is learned they did not sing on their award-winning Girl You Know Its True album.
1996   Canada's Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril arrives in Africa to lead a multinational force policing Zaire.
1998   US House of Representatives begins impeachment hearings against President Bill Clinton.
2010   New Zealand suffers its worst mining disaster since 1914 when the first of four explosions occurs at the Pike River Mine; 29 people are killed.

How to Pronounce Worcestershire Sauce

Italian chef Pasquale Sciarappa speaks English much better than I speak Italian, but his struggle with the pronunciation of Worcestershire sauce is priceless. The sauce is named after the county in England, Worcestershire, meaning the shire of Worcester. An American would sound it out as written if they didn’t know the British pronounce it “WOOStershur.” However, the Italian pronunciation of the phonemes as written is quite different. After Sciarappa struggles with the common pronunciation, he gives us a rundown of how it would sound in Italian.    

Chef Pasquale has a recipe website and a YouTube channel devoted to Italian recipes plus a series on Italy.

Australian and American Words

You’ve heard it said that the U.S. and England are two countries divided by a common language. You can says that the U.S. and Australia are divided by a common language plus 12,000 miles. Mark and Christi Brown are a bicontinental couple -she’s American, he is Australian- who are teaching us the different words of their different languages. “Australian” as a language is close to British English with some colorful additions and wide-open pronunciations. The words can get confusing sometimes. In the followup video, they address common phrases as well, and we get some stories from their cross-cultural relationship.

Random Celebrity Photos

thedirtythirties:

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Trading 80 Million Bacteria

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It's Healthier At Home

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Ta-Backy vs Whacky-Backy

While it might seem logical to assume marijuana smoke isn't as harmful for you as cigarette smoke, the truth is a bit murkier, and it turns out that smoke is smoke -- exposure to either can raise your risk of heart disease.

Bernie Sanders Storms CNN and Destroys Their pro-repugican Shrieking Points

bernie sanders knocks down republican talking points on CNN
Sen. Bernie Sanders went on CNN  and knocked down questions that were nothing but thinly disguised repugican shrieking points by using facts, truth, and the history of repugican obstruction.
Video:
Transcript via CNN:
CUOMO:…Senator, great to have you on set here at NEW DAY. Let me ask you this. What’s your answer to the basic question of should the president do this?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS, (I) VERMONT: Look, Chris, this country faces enormous problems. Our middle class is disappearing. We have more people living in poverty almost at any other time in the history of this country, and massive wealth and income inequality. And what we’ve seen over the last six years is repugicans doing hundreds and hundreds of filibusters. We passed legislation. We got a majority vote to raise the minimum wage, to do pay equity, to do a jobs program. Republicans filibustered, filibustered, and filibustered.

I think what the president is finally saying, look, immigration is a serious problem. We have got to do something. And if you guys don’t do it — remember, the Senate last year passed a reasonably good bill. What has the House done? Absolutely nothing. So what the president is saying, this country has problems. I’m going to go forward. If you pass legislation, I’ll rescind the executive order. But do something, address problems.
CAMEROTA: Even if it means that by acting unilaterally he threatens the relationship for any possible compromise. If election meant that there was a new beginning that now they will once again be at loggerheads, there could be a government shutdown, and all the other ripple effect.
SANDERS: Threaten, compromise. Is that what you said?
CAMEROTA: Well —
SANDERS: For six years we are trying to get the Republicans to support anything. Look, the repugicans — I have to say I’m an independent. I’m not particularly partisan. But any objective observer understands they have become a wingnut cabal, not a center-right party. They have a wingnut base. They have an agenda can which does not want to work with the president.
And I think what the president is saying, look, we’ve got problems. We have got to move. To say that we’re going to break the wonderful harmony and working relationship that we’ve had six years, that did not exist.
CAMEROTA: It’s not that. It’s that they are threatening shutdown, that they won’t work with Democrats and the president if he were to do this.
SANDERS: Then the American people have to make a choice. If they think the government shutdown is a response to the enormous problems facing this country. Look, the American people in poll after poll and on Election Day said we could raise the minimum wage. Do you hear repugicans talking about that? The American people in poll after poll say women should get paid the same amount of money as men. Do you hear the repugicans talking about that? The American are disgusted with Citizens United.
CUOMO: They heard something, though, senator, because they just voted in the repugicans in a very big way. And I think there’s a political calculation here to be made. You’re certainly right about that. But there are a lot of lives in the balance.
What I don’t understand here is there’s an absence of leadership by the party and president. And by the party I mean the Democratic Party, because you can’t play the same game the Republicans are. You don’t have the leverage. So you’re dealing with need of these families being separated. Everybody should be able to agree that’s horrible. How does the party that you caucus with and leader of the country find a way to make that salable, which should not be so difficult?
SANDERS: Chris, I agree with you. It should not be so difficult. I think the vast majority of people in this country want immigration reform. We passed it in the Senate. We have kids who are born in this country that are going to see a situation if we don’t act that their parents may be expelled.
CUOMO: It’s happened before. The shrub and Reagan both did this. But here’s the difference. The difference was that the Congress had been massaged in those two situations in the direction of the ultimate reform, so that when the president signed these executive orders stopping the families from being separated, Congress undid it quickly. They were moving that way. That leadership, that compromise has not been found here.
SANDERS: I don’t think it’s leadership and I don’t think it’s compromise. The repugican cabal is today a very different party than it was back then. That’s just the simple reality. And you pay attention to this every day. Have you heard repugicans talking in a serious way about immigration reform? They have not.

So the president again on all of these issues, he is sitting there and saying, we have problems. We have got to act. And what he has said over and over again is if you pass legislation, I’ll rescind executive orders. Everybody knows executive orders are not the best way to do things. We know that. But you have a party now, I have to say this, which is really recalcitrant in terms of wanting to do much.
Sen. Sanders went on to explain to the CNN hosts why the Keystone pipeline is not a good idea, with host Chris Cuomo falsely arguing that the pipeline would lower U.S. dependence on foreign oil and create commerce.
The pro-repugican shrieking points were obvious. The idea that President Obama and Democrats have been unwilling to compromise. The false notion that Obama’s executive orders will poison the well and make it impossible for repugicans to pass an immigration bill. The whole mentality of Democrats lost so repugicans get to do whatever they want. These repugican shriekking points were all reflected in the questions that Sen. Sanders was asked.
Sanders knocked down every single repugican shrieking points based question with facts and history. In the media’s eyes, the six years of obstruction before the 2014 never happened. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) was correct to point out that John Boehner has refused to allow a vote on the Senate passed immigration reform bill.
The CNN interview demonstrated that the left is going to be battling both a repugican majority in Congress and the a corporate run media who will be cheering them on. Bernie Sanders brought the truth to CNN, and the rest of the left could learn a valuable lesson in how to handle the blame Obama media from the Vermont Independent.

A repugican cabal Writer: 2014 ‘repugican wave’ Spells Doom For repugican cabal

by Rika Christensen
There’s a huge takeaway from the so-called “repugican wave” of 2014 that repugicans aren’t talking about, and probably won’t because it’ll make them look bad. That takeaway is that there was no huge movement that turned blue states into red states, or even into purple states. Indeed, one analysis says that, despite the “repugican wave,” it looks like the opposite happened, making a repugican theft of the White House in 2016 virtually impossible.
According to Chris Ladd of the Houston Chronicle, the number of states—and electoral votes—that the repugicans can safely count on in 2016 actually dwindled in the 2014 midterm elections. It’s true that the repugican cabal stole governorships they never could have won (Illinois), retained governorships they should have lost (Kansas, Michigan), and defeated Democratic Congressional candidates that should have beaten them soundly (Alison Lundergan Grimes (Kentucky), Michelle Nunn (Georgia), Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)), so on the surface, things looks great for them for 2016.
Ladd, however, points out that when it comes to what’s known as The Blue Wall, repugican Senate candidates lost every single race. The Blue Wall is the bloc of states that no Republican presidential candidate can possibly hope to steal without a major party realignment.
Furthermore, the governorships that they stole behind The Blue Wall were very specific, and those states, of which Illinois is a prime example, did not become red in any other way. In fact, Democrats retained their supermajority in that state’s general assembly, without losing any seats at all. Liberal ballot measures also won big there.
Liberal ballot measures won big in other states, too, including raising the minimum wage in red states. It’ll be interesting to see how Congressional repugicans respond to that when they’re done gloating about their “repugican wave.” Ladd says that every personhood amendment also failed.
It’s worth pointing out that Chris Ladd is, himself, a repugican. He’s rightly concerned that his cabal isn’t returning to dominance, but rather, is continuing a trend that can only spell doom for them. What he wants the repugican cabal to do is continue to push their traditional leadership on issues of commerce, as the world’s economy becomes more integrated. He wants to see them make a global economy work for the U.S. at all levels.
Instead, he says the following:
What are we getting from repugicans? Climate denial, theocracy, thinly veiled racism, paranoia, and Benghazi hearings. Lots and lots of hearings on Benghazi.
Ladd believes this will continue. Indeed, according to Media Matters for America, James Inhofe (r-OK), the biggest climate-denier in Congress who also happens to be on track to become chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (stop laughing), said earlier this week that he started finding out in 2003 and 2004 that there are all these scientists who say the science for man-made climate change isn’t there. He’s wrong, but he holds to that.
The repugicans and wingnut media decried President Obama’s historic climate deal with China, too, according to the Los Angeles Times. They claim that the deal is bad for business (because everything that doesn’t allow complete monopolies to screw people over is bad for business), and said they will block any regulations needed to make this deal work. Mitch McConnell (r-KY) said this proves Obama won’t move toward the middle (what middle? There is no middle with these loons). And Inhofe, of course, vowed to rein in the power of the EPA.
Breitbart wrote a piece that complained…again…about Obama’s lawlessness. They want this “repugican wave” to go after Obama on both Benghazi and the IRS scandal…again…despite the fact that repeated Benghazi hearings have turned up nothing, and the IRS investigation is still going on. If repugicans listen to wingnut media (and let’s face it, they must), then they’ll waste a lot more time and money trying to get the answers they want on these two issues, while complaining about the deficit, too.
Knowing today’s repugicans, they will also see their alleged “repugican wave” as a mandate to prosecute Obama on, well, pretty much everything he’s ever done, including when he chooses to cut his fingernails, or drink a cup of coffee. They’ll also move to repeal Obamacare. Again.
In short, they’ll get nothing done and they’ll make The Blue Wall worse (or better, depending on your point of view). In the end, the takeaway from the midterm election is that the “repugican wave” was anything but. Their base still dwindles. Their candidates have to work extra hard to steal elections even swing states. This is not to say that Democrats won’t have to pull together a cohesive message and strategy, because they still will have to do those things. But this so-called “wave” was actually nothing of the sort.

Scraps of paper, a coin and sack of numbered ping-pong balls used to settle Florida election

Scraps of paper, a coin and a sack of numbered ping-pong balls settled a deadlocked local election in Florida on Saturday morning. For the first time in Duval County history, an election tie was broken by a game of chance, after the two candidates running for Neptune Beach city council seat four were tied at 1,448 votes apiece.
“You just have to prepare mentally for either way because it can go either way,” Richard Arthur, who emerged from the games of chance the victorious candidate, said. “You can never prepare for a game of chance. You just have to go in with the best attitude either way however it turns out.” On Saturday morning, Arthur and his challenger, Rory Diamond, met at the supervisor of elections office in Jacksonville, Florida, to settle the tie once and for all. “The statute says a game of chance,” Diamond said.
“I would have done a coin flip, because if it’s good enough for the Super Bowl it’s good enough for me. But ping-pong balls is just fine.” The rules governing the three-round game, (pdf doc), stipulated that the outcome would determine the winner of the election. Both men agreed to the terms. In the first round, the candidates’ names were written on “equally sized pieces of paper” and placed in a container. The supervisor drew a name: Diamond. He therefore got to call a coin toss in round two.
The supervisor flipped the two-sided coin and Diamond called heads. He won again, and therefore earned the right to decide if he drew first or second in round three. Diamond elected to draw second from a sack of ping-pong balls numbered one to 20, the drawer of the highest number being the winner of the election. Arthur selected a ball numbered 12. Now it was Diamond’s turn to draw. He drew No4, and lost. “We’ve seen so much,” said the Duval County supervisor of elections, Jerry Holland. “We’ve seen close races, as close as two votes, but I’ve never seen a tied race. So it’s great to be a part of history,”

There's a news video here.

When repugicans Mess With Legislation, People DIE!

dupont chemical leakEarly last Saturday morning, a quartet of Texans died at a DuPont plant on Strang Rd. in the coastal berg of La Porte, 20 miles outside of Houston. The toll included two brothers, a 40-year employee and a new hire of just eight months duration. They died, as is often the case in the Lone Brain Cell state, needlessly. It took the company 12 hours before acknowledging the deaths. It should surprise no one that the weekend fatalities were a consequence of a chemical leak. An additional worker was hospitalized as a precaution, but seems OK.
In a two-hour period from 4-6 AM, enough of the release escaped containment to kill the employees who were responding to the leaked chemical, methyl mercaptan, also known as methanethiol (CH4S). In La Porte, it was used as feedstock in the insecticide and fungicide manufacturing process. The odor stretched for 40 miles.
The wingnuts who go fiddlesticks berserk over the possible presence of the dreaded Ebola, but most likely live in close proximity or downwind of a chemical that makes the largely manufactured (1 death in the U.S.?) Ebola threat look like a hangnail. First, because the Ebola threat is 99% political: The “millions of Americans will die; it’s all Obama’s fault!” disappeared from the front pages November 5th). Secondly, this CH4S stuff is everywhere. In many parts of the U.S. it’s in your natural gas, but, not to worry, you’ll be dead of bunches of other chemicals long before the methyl mercaptan hits you.
Here’s the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Centers (TSDRC) scoop on methyl mercaptan. First of all your last breathe will be stale with the smell of “rotten garbage” because that’s the odor emitted from this chemical gas. You’ve got a harmless smidgeon of this gas in your tissues, blood and brain. It’s also, YUK, in animal feces.
There’s a naturally occurring quantity in some nuts and Beaufort cheese. Less natural is its use in wood-pulp mills, sewage treatment plants, the manufacturer of jet fuel and poultry feed. Methyl mercaptan has not been found in drinking water. It has been approved for use as a food additive, but because of its unpleasant smell, very little can actually be added to food. You could be exposed to small amounts of methyl mercaptan by eating foods that contain it.
However, we have no information on the levels of methyl mercaptan in food. How comforting. The scary part is that little to nothing is known about methyl mercaptan levels in many areas. Nonetheless, unless you discharge, spill or release more than 100 pounds of the gas, you don’t even have to report it to the Environmental Protection Agency. This being the case even though the feds admit to not knowing how much it takes to kill a human being.
Of great comfort to the owners and stockholders of the plant, DuPont, is secure in the knowledge that the state of Texas environmental officialdom has their back. The major consequences will be borne by the innocent dead employees and their survivors. The company will skate with what these indifferent corporate monsters always escape with, a fine.
Sometimes these fines are substantial, but as they say, who can put a price on a human life? Well, in its way, Texas, and some federal agencies, severely restricted by repugican legislation, put a price on human life and that amounts to very little. Hopefully, trial attorneys will take these corporate louts to court and drain them for millions. That’s why the biggie corporations are always getting their repugican legislative toadies to renounce trial attorneys and call for “tort or court reform.” Reform, as in minimal compensation and miserly punitive awards for deaths and horrific life-altering injuries and pollution-friendly judges, recipients of huge special interest campaign contributions.
The first company reaction is always an expression of deep sympathy for those who have died as a result of accidents of inhalations, explosions and collective chemical insults over the years. The familiar and predictable bromides of “Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the employees” and the mandatory “We know something wrong happened today and we are going to do the proper investigation to make sure it doesn’t happen again” always follow these catastrophic events.
Yeah, yeah. My sense is, beating sure lawsuits is where DuPont “thoughts and prayers” really reside while “doing the proper investigation” means making sure DuPont avoids all liability. In addition to manipulating the judicial system, after the initial shocked reaction blows over and the public returns to their football and the Kardashians, numerous backroom moves are made to guarantee that no manufacturer or business of any major proportion ever pays the full price for their roles as killers.
Yes, I realize that chemicals and other dangerous substances are an inevitable part of being a corporate-controlled country, and accidents will happen. And, I guess I have to accept that, or most of my creature comforts and occasional luxuries will disappear.
But I also have to accept that far fewer people need to perish to serve an oligarchy of enormous power, money and assets. This issue of environmental and pollution safety goes to the very core of the Koch brothers role in using huge, limitless, dark money, now into the SuperPac realm, to influence self-serving policy decisions of pliable elected and appointed officials and judges. Remember, Koch Industries is the second largest privately owned company in the country and relies on very weak environmental regulations to add untold wealth to their bottom line.
When the 2014 North Carolina and Kentucky Senate races settle in at expenditures of around $100 million each, society has lost control of its political self. Full public financing of elections and attacking Citizens United should be ballot issues in every state in 2016. The people must do what their legislators won’t do.
We know policy is influenced because you can knock off 15 people and injure hundreds of others (226 is the most accepted number) and receive little more than a slap on the wrist, as in a $118,000 fine from OSHA on 24 different counts of West Fertilizer wrongdoing, among other benign punishments. Jail for owner Donald Adair? Meaningful action from the state legislature? ROTFLMAO!!!
The Dallas Morning News had a wonderful special section on the West Fertilizer Company explosion in the small community of West, Texas back in April of 2013. Visit these pages and read accounts of the tragic event, the immediate aftermath and the series of foul-ups and questionable activities by Texas officials that kept a deadly secret from a vulnerable local population until it was too late.
I’m reminded once more of how much I miss Molly Ivins.
Lesson learned: Keep voting repugican and my colleagues and I will be writing dozens of stories that are mirror images of this one.

Anonymous Responds To KKK’s ‘Lethal Force’ Ferguson Threat By Hacking Twitter Account

anonymous
The ‘hacktivist’ group Anonymous responded to threats by a Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan to use lethal force against Ferguson protesters by hacking the organization’s national Twitter account on Sunday. Throughout the weekend, Anonymous had gradually revealed the identities of KKK members that lived in the St. Louis area. They had also warned the KKK that additional action would be taken against them. That action occurred Sunday afternoon when Anonymous took over the racist organization’s Twitter account and sent out the following tweet.
View image on Twitter
Ku Klux Klan @KuKluxKlanUSA
16 NOV 2014 09:11:47 You should've expected us. #OpKKK continues to be a success. Freedom will prevail.
Prior to Anonymous hacking the Twitter account, the KKK sent out a number of tweets taunting the loose-knit organization of hackers, claiming that Anonymous was nothing but all talk and no action.
Ku Klux Klan @KuKluxKlanUSA 
Anonymous is nothing but an act. Don't be worried by this, fellow klansmen. #OpKKK #HoodsON
Ku Klux Klan @KuKluxKlanUSA 
Anonymous is nothing but a bunch of wannabes. They won't take any action. We will not be brought down by some low-lives behind a screen.
Ku Klux Klan @KuKluxKlanUSA 
We are continuing to read Anonymous threats with much amusement. Still no action taken. #Cowards #HoodsON
Obviously, Anonymous showed the Klan that they weren’t all talk by eventually taking control of their Twitter account. As of Sunday evening, the last tweet sent by Anonymous for the KKK’s account was still up on the timeline and had been retweeted out more than 2,000 times.
This is all in response to a flier that was passed out by a Missouri chapter of the Ku Klux Klan last week stating that they will protect people and property from Ferguson protesters by using lethal force. Frank Ancona, the grand wizard of the Traditionalist American Knights, first spoke with the Riverfront Times, a local St. Louis newspaper, about the fliers and his intentions. He told the RFT that the Ferguson protests, which arose in the wake of Michael Brown’s death at the hands of Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, have been great for recruiting new members to the KKK.
The story went national and Ancona even made an appearance on MSNBC’s ALL In with Chris Hayes on Wednesday. While on with Hayes, Ancona told the host that the Ferguson protests have “awakened a sleeping giant.”
Due to Ancona’s statements in his interviews and his insistence that the Klan was seeing a huge spike in its membership and would be a major factor during protests if Wilson is not indicted for Brown’s murder, Anonymous told the organization that they would “take off the hoods” of local KKK members and reveal their names accompanied with photos.
Starting Friday afternoon and continuing through Saturday, Anonymous used its main Twitter account to post personal information of Klan members that either live in the St. Louis area or have local ties. More than twenty individuals were revealed in the action by the group. After the mass reveal, Anonymous told the Klan that further action would be taken. It appears that the acquisition of the KKK’s Twitter account may not the end of the line for Anonymous, based on statements from its members.
Anonymous @occupythemob 
When Anonymous gets disturbed. This happens:http://pastebin.com/aTiBHhqQ  #OpKKK #HoodsOff This is only the beginning.
It is debatable if Ancona and his chapter ever posed a meaningful threat to protesters and activists and if Ancona’s boasts that his organization is seeing a huge upsurge in membership are accurate. Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Klan is a shell of what is used to be, and there might be 5-6,000 members nationwide. Don Terry of the SPLC told the Daily Beast that the Klan is shrinking and they have zero influence as a group. However, they still should be watched as they can appeal to lone wolves who value the organization’s brand of old school racism.
The St. Louis American, a newspaper that caters to St. Louis’ black community, interviewed the three police leaders that will serve as the unified command of law enforcement providing security in Ferguson and other areas in the St. Louis metro region that protesters may gather in the wake of the grand jury decision. The three commanders all agreed that the KKK does not pose a serious threat and they aren’t concerned with them causing any additional problems during demonstrations.
“Let me handle this one,” [St. Louis County police chief Jon] Belmar said, when asked about those threats. “The only problem we’ll have if the KKK comes in is the hotels changing the bed sheets. They’re the biggest bunch of bed-wetters. Those guys are a bunch of punks.”
Whether or not the Klan should have ever be taken seriously in Ferguson, even after Ancona’s threat, is up for debate. However, one thing we know for certain is their online presence has been seriously compromised by Anonymous. On top of that, any hope of anonymity by St. Louis area Klan members has been destroyed by the hacktivist group.

Darren Wilson Threatened And Arrested Ferguson Man For Recording Video Of Him

darren wilson mike armanA man who was arrested last year by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson uploaded video of the incident to YouTube on Friday. Per the incident report filed at the time, Wilson arrested Ferguson resident Mike Arman for failing to comply with orders. Wilson, who shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown in August, approached Arman’s residence to deliver a summons for derelict vehicles on the property. Arman began to shoot video of the encounter with his cellphone.
Apparently, Wilson did not like that Arman was using his phone to record the encounter or take photos of him. In the video, you can hear Wilson telling Arman, “If you wanna take a picture of me one more time, I’m going to lock your ass up.” Arman responded that he wasn’t taking a picture of Wilson but was instead recording the officer. At that point, Wilson walks to Arman and the video cuts off. Arman told The Guardian that is when Wilson arrested him.
In his interview with The Guardian, Arman points out that charges were dropped after he informed his lawyer that he had a video recording of the incident. An additional charge of keeping pit bulls outside of city regulations was also dropped after Arman confirmed that that dog was actually a bulldog and not a pit bull. The Guardian did confirm that Arman had been arrested in the past for resisting arrest.
When the magazine called the Ferguson police department to confirm whether or not Wilson was the officer seen on the tape, the department responded by saying they did not believe it was video of Wilson. However, a police incident report shows that Wilson was the officer who arrested Arman on October 28th, 2013. Per the incident report, Wilson claims he only arrested Arman only after Arman refused to cooperate and demanded that Wilson give his name for a video recording. Wilson also claims in the report that he told Arman that an audio recording would be acceptable.
However, the video clip and Arman’s statements to The Guardian tell a different story altogether. Arman claims that Wilson only told him an audio recording would have been sufficient only after he arrested him. Also, while the report that Wilson filed states that Arman had the camera directly in Wilson’s face, the clip shows that Wilson was on the other side of the front yard when Arman recorded the video.
The main takeaway from this video and incident report is that it shows Wilson may have a tendency to exaggerate or just outright lie in order to justify his actions. In this instance, we can see he made several false claims surrounding the arrest of Arman. It appears that Wilson was upset with Arman recording or taking pictures of him while there to serve a summons and he overreacted. To make it seem he didn’t act out of emotion, he made demonstrably false statements in his report and seemingly added an additional charge regarding pit bulls to potentially give the arrest more credibility.
Arman’s story is vitally important when taken in the context of Wilson’s encounter with Brown. If Wilson is not indicted for Brown’s murder, it is likely due to the fact that the grand jury members believed his story surrounding the events that led to him shooting Brown at least six times. However, the incident with Arman shows that Wilson has no qualms with making something up to cover up his own mistakes or overreactions.

Grieving widow took dead husband’s ashes into phone shop in bid to have his contract cancelled

A grieving widow took her dead husband’s ashes into a mobile phone shop in a bid to have his contract terminated. But Maria Raybould has continued to receive bills from T-Mobile and even been threatened with bailiffs. Her loving husband, David, died of cancer on August 29 aged 57. Before his death he was paying £26 a month for a Samsung Galaxy mini SII on a T-Mobile contract. Maria, from Tongwynlais, Cardiff, Wales, said: “The money that they are charging is for bills since he died. Everything was paid by direct debit before he passed away. “David died on the Friday and the day after my son Craig went in to sort out the phone bill at their Caerphilly branch so it would be one less thing for us to worry about. “They told him he would have to bring in David’s death certificate. He went back with the death certificate and they told him they would send a copy of it to head office.” Maria thought that would resolve the matter but she has since received intermittent letters from the company demanding money. She said: “It’s gone downhill since then. I’ve had texts since then asking if David wanted to pay an extra £2.50 for broadband and letters saying that bailiffs would be coming.” Maria, 56, who is bi-polar and struggles with anxiety, said on her third visit to the shop in a bid to end the contract she even took her husband’s ashes into show the staff. She said: “I’ve been up to the shop with the death certificate, with a letter from the crematorium, the funeral bills – even his ashes. I took in everything I could.
“I lost it in the shop. I gave them 20 minutes to sort it out. I went outside and had a panic attack and took some diazepam. When I went back in the girl told me she had spoken to the manager and they were going to stop the contract. Then I had another letter about the bailiffs. My son spoke with T-Mobile again and was assured it was an automated letter sent in error and that it wasn’t going to happen again.” But on November 8 Maria received another letter addressed to her late husband from T-Mobile customer finance department. It asked for an overdue amount of £129.48 to be paid and threatened to apply a cancellation charge due for the remaining months of the contract as well as stating the account will be passed to a debt collection agency.
Maria said: “Now in my hand I have another letter saying there is £129 overdue. It says they have disconnected him and if he doesn’t pay this money they are going to take him to a debt collection agency. They just don’t seem to understand. I have tried and tried to get it through to them. The contract needs to stop. How much clearer can I make it to them? What more can I do? “How dare they put me and my sons through this after all we have been through already? I wouldn’t want anyone to go through what we have gone through over the last few months. It was easier for us to bury him than sort this out.” A spokesman for T-Mobile said there was a delay to the automated process that cancels the balance, which resulted in the letters being issued. The spokesman added: “We apologise to Mrs Raybould for any distress caused at this difficult time. We can confirm that the account has been closed and the balance cleared.” They are writing to Maria to apologize.

Brain fart probably caused man to let 10-year-old girl drive car in busy traffic

A man in charge of a 10-year-old girl driving erratically in busy traffic in Dunedin, New Zealand, thought it was okay as he too learned young.
Senior Sergeant Dave Scott, of Southern police, said police noticed a Ford Falcon driving "in a poor manner" in the Dunedin suburb of St Clair at about 9pm on Saturday. When the vehicle was stopped, police found a 10-year-old girl behind the wheel, he said.
A 52-year-old man, not believed to be related to the driver, was in the passenger seat, while another 10-year-old was also in the vehicle, he said. The man seemed to have had a "brain fart" and believed it would be okay to teach the girl to drive, as he had learned to drive at a similar age, Scott said.
Police returned the children to their parents, and the vehicle owner was served with a ticket for aiding and abetting an unlicensed driver. Police were considering if further action was appropriate. The pair's actions had been very risky, as the area had been very busy and the girl was not driving well, Scott said.

Bad Santa hunted after post office robbery

A man in a Santa Claus suit has robbed a post office in Melbourne, Australia, escaping with cash.
The man entered the post office at about 11:30am on Saturday and demanded money from a female staff member, police said.
The woman gave the man cash and he put it in a red Santa sack.

He left the shop and drove away in a cream-colored Jeep with false number plates. Police said the man did not appear to have a weapon and no-one was hurt.

Slamming door led to heavily armed police response

Heavily armed tactical officers surrounded a 12-unit apartment building in Waterloo, southern Ontario, Canada, on Saturday afternoon, after citizens and police reported gunshots.
But about two hours later, Waterloo Regional Police determined it was someone who had repeatedly slammed a door inside one of the apartments in the building. Nobody was hurt. No charges were laid, said Staff Sgt. Deborah McBride. "Apparently there was a heavy door that when it was slammed sounded just like a shotgun," McBride said.
"The officers who arrived heard it." Police were first called at 1:40pm after tenants in the building reported gunshots. When officers heard similar noises, they surrounded the three-storey building and called for backup. At least 10 police cars raced to the area to cordon off the area. Then tactical officers arrived to take over.
When they entered the building at about 4pm, they detained a man but didn't find any evidence of gunfire. "We don't know who slammed the door, but we don't think there was malicious intent," McBride said. Public safety concerns prompted the big police response, she said.

Robbery suspect accidentally killed self while hiding from deliveryman he thought was police

One of five suspects wanted in connection with a smash-and-grab robbery at a Cartier jewellery store in Midtown Manhattan is dead.
Ralik Hansen, one of the fugitives in the Jan. 30 brazen midday robbery, accidentally shot and killed himself on Oct. 31, according to the FBI.
A FedEx delivery man came to Hansen’s home in Brooklyn and knocked on the door. Hansen, 28, thought it was police at the door so he hid under the couch. His gun then discharged, killing him, according to the FBI.
Hansen was wanted on federal charges and considered armed and dangerous. He faced a federal indictment in April, but remained at large. The FBI and NYPD say he was a member of a violent interstate robbery crew from Brooklyn that also orchestrated heists in Atlantic City and Virginia.

Houdini's Secrets Revealed

The seemingly impossible stunts performed by master escapologist Harry Houdini have confused and delighted generations. Breaking locks, escaping submerged boxes, getting out of straitjackets, the fiendish Chinese Water Torture routine - his feats were simply astounding.

Yet magic always has a simple explanation and, in Houdini's case, his methods were in fact far more ingenious and impressive than the trick itself. Here are ten of Houdini's greatest stunts - and how he did them.

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Childhood in early Icelandic society

Representations of children in the Icelandic Sagas
By Anna Hansen
Illustration to Laxdœla saga, chapter 44 Drawing especially on the research of the past decade, including works such as Shulamith Shahar’s ‘Childhood in the Middle Ages’ (1992) and Sally Crawford’s ‘Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England’ (1999), I have come to the conclusion that representations of children in the Icelandic sagas suggest that the thirteenth century Icelanders acknowledged an early phase of life, childhood, which was distinct from the latter phases of life, adulthood. Unlike Western twentieth century attitudes towards childhood, however, the thirteenth century Icelanders did not sentimentalize childhood, but rather viewed it as a learning stage, a crucial period for the acquisition of culture. My paper will examine specific representations of children from the Icelandic Íslendingasögur, detailing what we can learn about thirteenth century Icelandic attitudes towards children from such representations.
Introduction: In his 1962 book, Centuries of Childhood, Philippe Ariès made the following assertion:
In medieval society the idea of childhood did not exist; this is not to suggest that children were neglected, forsaken or despised. The idea of childhood is not to be confused with affection for children: it corresponds to an awareness of the particular nature of childhood, that particular nature which distinguishes the child from the adult, even the young adult. In medieval society this awareness was lacking
Although Ariès’s views were accepted and elaborated upon by some scholars (Lloyd DeMause, for instance, characterised the medieval attitude towards children as one of indifference) the opposition to his conclusions, especially from medieval scholars, has been intense. In particular, the last decade and a half has seen a number of studies produced to counter Ariès’s claim. For example, Shulamith Shahar, in her 1990 book Childhood in the Middle Ages, argues that a concept of childhood existed in the Central and Late Middle Ages, that scholarly acknowledgement of the existence of several stages of childhood was not merely theoretical, and that parents invested both material and emotional resources in their offspring.

Skeleton Found In Alexander The Great-Era Tomb At Amphipolis

Archaeologists are holding their breath that a skeleton found in a mysterious, richly-decorated tomb from the time of Alexander the Great will solve the riddle of who ancient Greece's biggest burial mound was built for. Experts have finally found the body it was all built for.
The bones were found scattered around a wooden coffin in the third room of the vast mound near Amphipolis in northern Greece. Speculation is rife that it could be the remains of Roxana, Alexander's Persian wife, his mother Olympias, or one of his generals.

All Things Pompeii

The vases were found sealed under a layer of ash and pumice from Mount Vesuvius, and it appears they were just ready to be fired.
See photos of vases and kilns as they dropped and abandoned as Mt. Vesuvius' erupted in 79 A.D.

Here's How Often Small Asteroids Enter Earth's Atmosphere

NASA's Near Earth Object Program released a map showing what more and more people are beginning to realize: that small asteroids enter Earth's atmosphere frequently. What happens to these asteroids, and why didn't we know this before?
Many of the impacts are seen and reported as fireballs. Nearly all burn up in Earth's atmosphere; that is, our atmosphere does its job in protecting us from what would otherwise be impacts to Earth itself.

Gombe National Park

Gombe National Park is a unique ecosystem that is home to the most well-documented chimpanzee population living in the wild. Over 50 years ago, Dr. Jane Goodall began her work here, and the legacy of scientific discovery and conservation continues to this day through the Jane Goodall Institute.
Discover some of the hundreds of species that live in Gombe National Park as you wander the beach trails and forest paths in Street View.

Dog Hitches Ride on Ambulance to Follow His Owner

J.R. Nicholson, 85, is a rancher in Mason County, Texas. Last week, he suddenly experienced chest pains. Brian Wright, one of his ranch hands, summoned an ambulance. The ambulance crew drove him toward a hospital in Fredericksburg.
At about 20 miles along that journey, a driver flagged down the ambulance and told the crew that a dog was on one of the running boards of their vehicle. Buddy, a beagle mix, had decided to follow his owner, Nicholson, to the hospital. Michelle Gaitan writes for the Standard-Times:
“We didn’t have anything else to do but to load the dog up and put him in the ambulance and take him to the ER with us,” Brown said.
Brown remembers making the run out to Nicholson’s ranch in October after Nicholson’s ranch hand Brian Wright called for an ambulance. Nicholson had told Wright he felt dizzy and asked to go to the hospital. […]
Wright described Buddy as a playfully curious dog who likes rides on the tractor back on the ranch.
“It was kind of funny. We were inside and he had jumped onto the control switch and turned on the sirens and the lights,” Brown said as they were inside the emergency room. “We didn’t know what was going on.”
Nicholson was released from the hospital the same day.

The Poitou

The Donkey With Dreadlocks
The beautiful Poitou region of France, three hundred miles south-west of the French capital Paris, has been harboring a secret. Some secrets are dark and deadly: this one, however, is cute and cuddly.
The Poitou species of donkey has a remarkable story to tell. As a species it has teetered at the edge of extinction but thanks to some extremely hard work on the part of conservationists, it looks as if its future may be finally assured.

Why Cats Never Became Man's Best Friend

Dog lovers will find it baffling that cats are the world's most popular pet. After all, they're passive-aggressive, emotionally unavailable, and known for their chilly independence - traits that at most qualify felines for the role of 'man's best frenemy.'

It turns out, though, there's an evolutionary reason for this tense relationship. That is, cats are in many ways still wild.

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