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Today in History

1587		Mary, Queen of Scots is beheaded in Fotheringhay Castle for her alleged part in the conspiracy to usurp Elizabeth I.
1807		At Eylau, Napoleon's Marshal Pierre Agureau attacks Russian forces in a heavy snowstorm.
1861		Delegates from seceded states adopt a provisional Confederate Constitution.
1862		Union troops under Gen. Ambrose Burnside defeat a Confederate defense force at the Battle of Roanoke Island, N.C.
1865		Confederate raider William Quantrill and men attack a group of Federal wagons at New Market, Kentucky.
1887		Congress passes the Dawes Act, which gives citizenship to Indians living apart from their tribe.
1900		British General Buller is beaten at Ladysmith, South Africa as the British flee over the Tugela River.
1904		In a surprise attack at Port Arthur, Korea, the Japanese disable seven Russian warships.
1910		The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated.
1924		The gas chamber is used for the first time to execute a murderer.
1942		The Japanese land on Singapore.
1943		British General Orde Wingate leads a guerrilla force of "Chindits" against the Japanese in Burma.
1952		Elizabeth becomes Queen of England after her father, King George VI, dies.
1962		The U.S. Defense Department reports the creation of the Military Assistance Command in South Vietnam.
1965		South Vietnamese bomb the North Vietnamese communications center at Vinh Linh.
1971		South Vietnamese ground forces, backed by American air power, begin Operation Lam Son 719, a 17,000 man incursion into Laos that ends three weeks later in a disaster.
1990		CBS television temporarily suspends Andy Rooney for his anti-gay and ant-black remarks in a magazine interview.

Non Sequitur

Grammys 2013: CBS issues ban on side-boobs and ‘female breast nipples’

Also banned from Grammy telecast: political and other causes

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Back in 2002, Pink, Christina Aguilera and Mya won for "Lady Marmalade." Would the Grammy wardrobe inspectors approve of their skimpy clothing?

Attention Grammy attendees (particularly of the female persuasion): You better tighten your corsets and zip up your turtlenecks because if you show any kind of improper skin you’re going to be in wicked trouble with CBS Standard and Practice.

We have obtained a wardrobe advisory sent to an anonymous source, who quips, “I assume that my lovely colleagues do not get this same email for the Oscars. And yes, this is a real email.”

Here is the mail in all its glory:

“GRAMMYS 2013

CBS Program Practices advises that all talent appearing on camera please adhere to Network policy concerning wardrobe.

Please be sure that buttocks and female breasts DIRTY, DIRTY GIRLS are adequately covered. Thong type costumes are problematic WELL, THEY HAVE A POINT THERE. Please avoid exposing bare fleshy under curves of the buttocks and buttock crack. Bare sides or under curvature of the breasts is also problematic. Please avoid sheer see-through clothing that could possibly expose female breast nipples. AS OPPOSED TO FEMALE FOOT NIPPLES? EAR NIPPLES? Please be sure the genital region is adequately covered so that there is no visible “puffy” bare skin WHAT? exposure. Please avoid commercial identification of actual brand name products on T-shirts. SUCKS TO BE YOU, DOLCE & GABBANA. Foreign language on wardrobe will need to be cleared. DAMN. I GUESS “DU ER ET ENORMT TORSKEHOVED” ISN’T GOING TO FLY THIS YEAR. Obscenity or partially seen obscenity on wardrobe is unacceptable for broadcast. This as well, pertains to audience members that appear on camera. Finally, The Network requests that any organized cause visibly spelled out on talent’s wardrobe be avoided. DON’T BRING YOUR WHALE-SAVING, CHILD-FEEDING, WAR-STOPPING FILTH TO OUR SHOW. This would include lapel pins or any other form of accessory.”

OK, so the highlighted portions were added editorial comments

The repugicans are Jumping the Shark With Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Attack

The repugicans seem intent on jumping the shark, even if they have to do it one goldfish at a time. This time they are staking a lot of political capital on a battle to disable the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and its director Richard Cordray.
On Friday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and 42 other repugicans sent a letter to President Barack Obama announcing they will block the appointment of Cordray to be permanent director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency, a position he already holds through a recess appointment made by the President on January 4, 2012. This appointment will not be ratified, the letter said, “Until key structural changes are made to ensure accountability and transparency” at the CFPB. The letter demands the director be replaced by a commission, CFPB’s independent funding be replaced by Congressional appropriation, and “a safety-and-soundness check” for financial regulators who oversee those aspects of financial institutions be established.
CFPB was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren who was expected to head the agency. When the repugicans made it clear Warren stood a better chance of being deported than confirmed, the President nominated Cordray, former Attorney General of Ohio and Warren’s right-hand man. Of course it wasn’t just Warren, although they were particularly hostile toward her, but the Bureau itself to which the repugicans and their Wall Street buddies objected. In a 2011 letter much like the one last Friday, repugicans said no conceivable nominee would be acceptable so the President invoked his recess appointment powers.
That appointment and three others to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have been challenged in separate law suits and the NLRB appointments were invalidated by a federal appeals court last week, but more about that in a moment.
In attempting to defang CFPB Republicans of course are pandering to their Wall Street constituency. However Dodd-Frank is no longer the Wall Street bugaboo that it was two years ago and CFPB has earned some credibility, even if it is of the “devil we know” variety.
The Agency has only slowly rolled out its mandate, taking on consumer financial domains one at a time. It now regulates credit cards, mortgages, student loans, and credit reporting agencies. Elizabeth Warren described CFPB as “a new sheriff in town” and consumers are beginning to recognize it as such. In its first 15 months of operation it logged approximately 79,200 consumer complaints. Not a bad total for an agency just hitting the ground, especially since it did not have a director or launch its non-bank supervision until January 2012 or begin accepting student loan complaints until last March.
One of its responsibilities is formulating rules to carry out consumer laws and some critical ones for mortgage servicing, mortgage standards, and appraisals were released in final form in mid-January. While few of the stakeholders were happy about the idea of regulations they almost universally praised the process the Bureau had pursued in developing them. Lobbying groups representing mortgage bankers, credit unions, consumers, and home builders all issued statements thanking the Bureau for not just inviting their comments, but listening to and incorporating them. These rules are all due to go into effect in January 2014.
Small business owners – those job creators we hear so much about from McConnell – were recently surveyed by the Small Business Majority about Dodd-Frank generally and CFPB specifically. Eighty-four percent of the majority repugican sample supported the Bureau and 58 percent agreed its regulations are needed. Only one-third associated CFPB with bureaucracy that hurts small businesses and job creation.
Now back to the law suits. If the NLRB recess appointments are unconstitutional so too are any decisions those members made in the past year. If the Cordray appointment suffers the same fate so will some, but not all of CFPB’s rule making and even many personnel decisions. More worrisome is the potential for months of uncertainty about the new rules going into effect in 2014 at a time when major banks are gearing up and spending millions of dollars to meet their requirements.
There are a few ways to resolve this crisis should it emerge but the most immediate and cost neutral is Senate confirmation of a CFPB director who could then ratify the Bureau’s previous work. Instead the Republicans are preparing for a fight to rid the country of a regulator that no one but them seems heavily invested in destroying. Wall Street could spend millions to comply with rules that may be moot and that they aren’t all that opposed to anyway; small businesses actually like the Bureau, and consumers might notice that once again their financial welfare doesn’t count on one side of the Senate aisle.
Looks like the repugicans are about to be the stupid party again.
And particularly stupid when one realizes another little wrinkle in their plan. CFPB is Elizabeth Warren’s baby and she is now a senior U.S. Senator and a member of the Banking Committee. There will be vigorous defenses of the Bureau by consumer organizations and the President and Senate Democrats have said they will not consider the repugicans’ demands. But it will be Warren who will lead the charge. She may be a freshman senator but she is the survivor of many congressional hearings and a master of media sound bites. She also has a broad and enthusiastic army of supporters both inside and outside her home state and will be able to command a lot of vocal support from every senator’s constituency.
This will, in the end, give the Democrats another opportunity to point out the fact repugicans disregard the middle class and being pawns of Wall Street, an opportunity which Warren will exploit to the max, while Wall Street frankly doesn’t give much of a damn.

The repugicans Are Now a Step Closer to Shutting Down the Post Office

My congratulations to FedEx and UPS. By now, you’ve probably heard the United State Postal Service announcement that most of Saturday’s mail service will be eliminated.
Come August 5th there will be no more first-class Saturday mail. You’ll still get packages and express mail and meds but no letters or bills or assorted other stuff you’re used to finding in your mailbox. It’s all part of (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), “restructuring.” What’s being restructured are the votes of plaint legislators swooning to the siren songs and campaign money promises and whatever other sleazy tactics lobbyists use to twist our central government into a corporate-owned meaningless big room with chairs.
I’ve already backgrounded this subject in an earlier submission. The initial grease for the slide to oblivion was a piece of 2006 legislation with the alleged goal of reforming postal laws. It was titled the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.” A repugican Congress was behind its passage and its singular purpose was designed to kill the USPS.
For all the crocodile tears about competition from emails, texting et al, annual Postal Service revenues are about what they were in 2002. What has changed dramatically are the employment numbers. The nation’s largest employer of veterans has sacrificed a total of 200,000 career postal union jobs in the past 10 years.
The 2006 act forced USPS to pre-fund the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Plan for a decade paying 75 years forward. Most people who pay attention to current events are already aware of the huge multi-billion dollar obligation and profit drainer. Annual payments range from $5.4 – $5.8 billion. The Postal Service simply can’t pay the current installment.
And while all attention is riveted on the pre-funding issue, little notice is paid to that section of the bill that may sound the death knell for a venerable American institution. It recasts the Postal Regulatory Commission. The PRC is comprised of five members armed with incredible powers, virtually none in service to the Postal Service.
Section 702 as worded “Requires a report from the PRC to the President and Congress on universal postal service and the postal MONOPOLY in the United States, including the monopoly on the delivery of mail and access to mailboxes. A repugican Congress worried about a monopoly after laboring for the past century to guarantee same for their corporate pals?
Then we move on to Section 703. It requires a report from the Federal Trade Commission to the President, Congress and the PRC identifying federal and state laws that apply differently to the Postal Service with respect to the competitive category of mail and to private companies providing similar products.
And here’s the clincher; There’s another oversight group in play here, the Postal Service Board of Governors made up of a shrub-appointed wingnut lobbyist and former head of a state repugican cabal, a Carlyle Group (a wingnut international business junta) adviser, a former repugican Representative and a Chairman who is an active member of the Federalist Society. Supreme Court Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito were once members. Need I say more?
The Board of Governors establishes rates and classes for products in the competitive category of mail (priority and expedited mail, bulk parcel post and bulk international mail and mailgrams). With a 4-1 repugican Board of Governor’s majority, do you suppose these rates might favor the FedEx’s and UPS’s of the world?
Here’s the payoff. Under “Modern Rate Regulation”, the PRC is to establish “a modern system for regulating rates and classes for market-dominate products.” That would seem to include anything and everything that competitively moves through mail commerce; all first-class mail, parcels and cards, periodicals, standard mail, single-piece parcel post, media mail, bound printed matter, library mail, special services and single-piece international mail. All rate-regulated mind you. Regulation??? But mommy, I taut da wepugicins hated wegulation.
I’m not done yet. The system is also required to include an annual LIMITATION on percent changes in rates. Free Market? With hypocritical repugicans anything goes when it comes to destroying a unionized business.
So let’s take a peek at the makeup of this omnipotent Postal Regulatory Commission. Robert Taub is a member. He was appointed by Barack Obama in October of 2011 for a six-year term. He was once Chief of Staff to former repugican Representative John McHugh from upstate New York. Who is John McHugh you ask? Probably the one man who had more to do with the construction and passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act than any single Congressman or woman. That’s who John McHugh is and his former COS is the Fox in the PRC hen house as the Vice Chairman of the PRC looking after his former bosses legislative progeny. So what was Obama thinking? Maybe there’s another fox in the hen house.
Another PRC member is Mark Acton a big shot in the repugican national cabal. He was reappointed by Obama in 2011. Acton served as Executive Director of the RNC Redistricting Committee. You know all about repugican Redistricting especially designed to guarantee perpetual repugican Districts. Welcome back Mr. Acton.
Tony Hammond, a repugican is now serving his third term as commissioner. Something akin to a lifetime appointment for repugicans I guess. He’s another big rnc guy who was originally appointed by the shrub and obligingly re-upped by our current President. Hammond once served on the staff of Mississippi Representative Gene Taylor, a Democrat who proudly announced he voted for John McCain in ’08. He is from Mississippi after all. Oh, and Taylor was the ranking member of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee when he left office, so staffer Hammond will fit right in at the wake for the USPS.
A couple of years ago the PRC unanimously denied a USPS rate increase request while conceding the Postal Service pre-funding would bring about an even greater money crisis.
The irony of the Saturday closing is that despite claimed savings of billions, it will still be pretty much Saturday business as usual. There’s mail to be sorted for Monday, facilities will still be opened and Mail Carriers only work five-day weeks anyway. Postal employees tell me that there’s still lots of work to do and they see virtually no savings from the move.
Get ready to say bye bye to the Postal Service as we know it and hello to near-monopoly private providers who will charge high prices, pay low “Right to Work” wages, hire a majority of their workers on a part-time basis, pay little or no benefits and realize obscene profits.
It’s the American way as long as repugicans control any part of the political process.

Bernie Sanders Blasts House repugicans and Will Fight to Save Saturday Mail

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced today that he will oppose and fight against the USPS plan to end Saturday mail delivery. Sander said the cut in service will,”lead to a death spiral that will harm rural America while doing very little to improve the financial condition of the Postal Service.”
The USPS announced their new mail delivery schedule today, “Once implemented during August of 2013, mail delivery to street addresses will occur Monday through Friday. Packages will continue to be delivered six days per week. Mail addressed to PO Boxes will continue to be delivered on Saturdays. Post Offices currently open on Saturdays will remain open on Saturdays.”
Sen. Sanders replied that cutting services is not the way to save the USPS, “The postmaster general cannot save the Postal Service by ending one of its major competitive advantages. Cutting six-day delivery is not a viable plan for the future. It will lead to a death spiral that will harm rural America while doing very little to improve the financial condition of the Postal Service. Providing fewer services and less quality will cause more customers to seek other options. Rural Americans, businesses, senior citizens and veterans will be hurt by ending Saturday mail.”
Sanders also laid the blame for this cut in service at the feet of House repugicans, “”It is time for repugican leadership in the House to work with the Senate to reform the Postal Service in a way that will not harm rural America and allows the Postal Service to adjust to the digital age without ending Saturday mail delivery.”
The plot to kill the Postal Service was hatched by the then repugican controlled Congress in 2006. The repugicans passed a bill that required the USPS to fund 75 years’ worth of future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period. This mandate immediately pushed the Postal Service into debt, and it has led to the end of Saturday mail delivery.
House repugicans could easily fix the problem, but they won’t.
The end game for repugicans is the privatization of the USPS. The end of Saturday mail delivery is the first step in killing off the Postal Service. It would be easy to think that ending Saturday mail delivery is no big deal, but there are 230,000 jobs on the line. If the repugicans are successful, they will end up closing 3.700 post offices, and throwing almost a quarter million people out of work. The Postal Service has already cut its workforce by 28%, which translates to 193,000 jobs already lost.
The repugicans pushed the USPS into debt as way to kill it. The death of Saturday delivery matters because it could be the first step in the end of the USPS, and the killing of 230,000 good paying jobs.

Meet The 31 Corporations and Banks Who Dodged $128 Billion in US Taxes

Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report today directly taking on the Business Roundtable, by outing 31 banks and corporations who have dodged $128 billion in taxes.
According to the report, the 31 corporations and banks have dodged $128 billion in taxes by setting up offshore tax havens. They have received $6.5 billion in tax refunds, and $2.5 trillion in taxpayer bailout money. While stuffing their pockets with trillions of taxpayer dollars, the Business Roundtable has called for the deficit to be reduced by raising the eligibility age for Medicare and Social Security to 70, cut Social Security and veterans’ benefits, and increase taxes on working families.
The reason why congressional repugicans are adamantly opposed to generating new revenue through closing these loopholes is that doing so would force these tax dodgers to pay their fair share. For repugicans, the concept of fairness only applies to making sure the wealthy get more by doing less. One of the reasons why repugicans continue to lose elections is because they insist on protecting corporations and banks at the expense of the American people.
Instead of passing the burden of deficit reduction on to workers, seniors, the poor, and the middle class, how about we start with getting the 31 corporations and banks listed below to pay their taxes?
Here is the list:
1. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.
Number of Offshore Tax Havens in 2010? 371.
Amount of federal income taxes Bank of America would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.5 billion.
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $1.9 billion tax refund.
Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS in 2010, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? Over $1.3 trillion.
2. JP Morgan Chase CEO James Dimon
Number of Offshore Tax Havens in 2010? 83.
Amount of federal income taxes JP Morgan Chase would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.9 billion
JP Morgan Chase has stashed $21.8 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $4.9 billion in federal income taxes.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $416 billion.
3. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $278 million tax refund.
Number of offshore tax havens in 2010? 39.
In 2010, Goldman Sachs operated 39 subsidiaries in offshore tax haven countries.
Amount of federal income taxes Goldman Sachs would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $3.32 billion.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department? $824 billion.
During the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs received a total of $814 billion in virtually zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve and a $10 billion bailout from the Treasury Department.
4. General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt
Number of offshore tax havens? At least 14.
Amount of federal income taxes General Electric would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $35.7 billion.
GE has stashed $102 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $35.7 billion
more in federal income taxes.
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $3.3 billion tax refund. In 2010, not only did General Electric pay no federal income taxes, it received a $3.3 billion tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned over $5 billion in U.S.
profits.
Taxpayer Bailout from the Federal Reserve? $16 billion.During the financial crisis, the Federal Reserve provided GE with $16 billion in
financial assistance, at a time when Jeffrey Immelt was a director of the New York Federal Reserve.
Jobs Shipped Overseas? At least 25,000 since 2001.
5. Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? Zero. $705 million tax refund.
In 2010, Verizon received a $705 million refund from the IRS despite earning $11.9 billion in pre-tax U.S. profits.
Amount of federal income taxes Verizon would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $525 million.
Verizon has stashed $1.5 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S.
income taxes. Verizon would owe an estimated $525 million in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
American Jobs Cut in 2010? In 2010, Verizon announced 13,000 job cuts, the
third highest corporate layoff total that year.
6. Honeywell International CEO David Cote

Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $34 million tax refund.
From 2008 through 2010, not only did Honeywell pay no federal income taxes, it received a $34 million tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned over $4.9 billion in U.S. profits during those years.
Amount of federal income taxes Honeywell would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.835 billion.
Honeywell has stashed $8.1 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Honeywell would owe an estimated $2.835 billion in federal
income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
7. Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2009? Zero. $55 million tax refund.
In 2009, not only did Merck pay no federal income taxes, it received a $55 million tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned more than $5.7 billion in U.S. profits.
Amount of federal income taxes Merck would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $15.5 billion.
Merck has stashed $44.3 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $15.5 billion more in federal income taxes.
8. Corning CEO Wendell Weeks

Amount of federal income taxes paid from 2008-2010? Zero. $4 million tax refund. From 2008 through 2010, not only did Corning pay no federal income taxes, it received a $4 million tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned nearly $2 billion in U.S. profits during those years.
Amount of federal income taxes Corning would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $3.78 billion. Corning has stashed $10.8 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Corning would owe an estimated $3.78 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
9. Boeing CEO James McNerney, Jr.
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2010? None. $124 million tax refund.
Boeing, which received a $30 billion contract from the Pentagon to build 179 airborne tankers, got a $124 million refund from the IRS in 2010.
Amount of federal income taxes Boeing would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $66 million.
Boeing would owe an estimated $66 million more in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
American Jobs Shipped overseas? Over 57,000. Since 1994, more than 57,000 Americans lost their jobs at Boeing as a result of overseas outsourcing or rising imports.
Amount of Corporate Welfare? At least $58 billion.
10. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer
Amount of federal income taxes Microsoft would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $19.4 billion.
Microsoft has stashed over $60 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid 19.4 billion more in federal income taxes.
11. Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs
Amount of federal income taxes Qualcomm would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $5.8 billion.
Qualcomm has stashed $16.4 billion in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $5.8
billion more in federal income taxes.
12. Caterpillar CEO Douglas Oberhelman
Amount of federal income taxes Caterpillar would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $4.55 billion. Caterpillar has stashed $13 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Caterpillar would owe an estimated $4.55 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
13. Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers
Amount of federal income taxes Cisco would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $14.455 billion.
Cisco has stashed $41.3 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Cisco would owe an estimated $14.455 billion in federal income
taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
14. Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris
Amount of federal income taxes Dow Chemical would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $3.5 billion.
Dow has stashed $10 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Dow would owe an estimated $3.5 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
15. Alcoa CEO Klaus Kleinfeld

Amount of federal income taxes Alcoa would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.9 billion.
Alcoa has stashed $8.3 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income
taxes. Alcoa would owe an estimated $2.9 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
16. Stanley Black & Decker CEO John Lundgren
Amount of federal income taxes Stanley Black & Decker would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $1.26 billion.
Stanley Black & Decker has stashed $3.6 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. They would owe an estimated $1.26 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
17. Motorola Solutions CEO Greg Brown
Amount of federal income taxes Motorola Solutions would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $350 million.Motorola Solutions has stashed $1 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. They would owe an estimated $350 million in federal income
taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
18. Tenneco CEO Gregg Sherill
Amount of federal income taxes Tenneco would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $269 million.
Tenneco has stashed over $698 million in offshore tax haven countries to avoid
paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $269 million in federal income taxes.
19. Express Scripts CEO George Paz
Amount of federal income taxes Express Scripts would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $19 million.
Express Scripts has stashed over $54 million in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid $19 million in federal income taxes.
20. Caesars Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman

Amount of federal income taxes Caesars Entertainment would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $15 million.
Caesars Entertainment has stashed $42 million in offshore tax haven countries to avoid paying income taxes. If this practice was outlawed, it would have paid about $15 million more in federal income taxes.
21. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink
Amount of federal income taxes BlackRock would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $525 million.
BlackRock has stashed $1.5 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. BlackRock would owe an estimated $525 million in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
22. United Parcel Service (UPS) CEO D. Scott Davis
Amount of federal income taxes UPS would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $1.12 billion. UPS has stashed $3.2 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. UPS would owe an estimated $1.12 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
23. CA Technologies CEO William McCracken
Amount of federal income taxes CA Technologies would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $700 million.
CA Technologies has stashed nearly $2 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. CA Technologies would owe an estimated $700 million in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
24. Eaton CEO Alexander Cutler
Amount of federal income taxes Eaton would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $2.24 billion.
Eaton has stashed $6.4 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Eaton would owe an estimated $2.24 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
25. Nasdaq OMX Group CEO Robert Greifeld
Amount of federal income taxes Nasdaq OMX Group would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $21 million.
Nasdaq OMX Group has stashed $60 million in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Nasdaq OMX Group would owe an estimated $21 million in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
26. Textron CEO Scott Donnelly
Amount of federal income taxes Textron would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $165 million.
Textron has stashed $470 million in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Textron would owe an estimated $165 million in federal income
taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
27. Thermo Fisher Scientific CEO Marc Casper
Amount of federal income taxes Thermo Fisher Scientific would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $1.645 billion.Thermo Fisher Scientific has stashed $4.7 billion in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. Thermo Fisher Scientific would owe an estimated
$1.645 billion in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
28. Weyerhaeuser CEO Daniel Fulton
Amount of federal income taxes Weyerhaeuser would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $8 million.
Weyerhaeuser has stashed $22 million in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. It would owe an estimated $8 million in federal income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
29. World Fuel Services CEO Paul Stebbins
Amount of federal income taxes World Fuel Services would have owed if offshore tax havens were eliminated? $278 million.
World Fuel Services has stashed $794 million in offshore tax havens to avoid paying U.S. income taxes. It would owe an estimated $278 million in federal
income taxes if its use of offshore tax avoidance was eliminated.
30. Time Warner CEO Glenn Britt
Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $74 million tax refund.
In 2008, not only did Time Warner pay no federal income taxes, it received a $74 million tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned over $2 billion in U.S. profits.
31. R.R. Donnelly & Sons CEO Thomas Quinlan III

Amount of federal income taxes paid in 2008? Zero. $49 million tax refund. In 2008, not only did R.R. Donnelly & Sons pay no federal income taxes, it
received a $49 million tax refund from tax refund from the IRS, even though it earned $561 million in U.S. profits.

After Whining About MSNBC’s ‘Deceptive Editing’ the wingnuts Push a Fake Sandy Hook Father

Shocking news. The wingnut media misled their readers again.

That “Sandy Hook father” who was testifying on “the Hill” about his anti-gun safety legislation stance is not actually a Sandy Hook father, was not actually testifying on the Hill, and while he wrote to at least one right wing media outlet to correct their incorrect reporting, few (if any) have made the corrections.
Mark Joseph Stern at Slate reported:

On Sunday, roughly a week after Stevens spoke at the hearing and the same day the clip in question was posted, the Examiner reported matter-of-factly that Stevens’ daughter, Victoria, “attended Sandy Hook Elementary school, scene of the mass shooting in December.” The following day, Brietbart.com stated plainly that she had “survived the crime at Sandy Hook.” On Tuesday, the Daily Caller did the same, explaining that she had “survived the tragic Sandy Hook Elementary shooting.” We heard a similar story from Townhall.com, as well as from a spate of other wingnut sites.

Stern noted that several of the articles went live after the correction was made by the father. The father emailed The Examiner to ask that they correct the article so as not to be like the left (insert cognitive dissonance here). See, his daughter does not attend Sandy Hook and was not present at Sandy Hook during the tragedy.
Yet, the Breitbart writer asserted, “Stevens’ daughter Victoria attends Sandy Hook, and was there on Dec. 14 when Adam Lanza committed his heinous crime.” No corrections were made anywhere except on the Town Hall article, written by their “news editor”, who corrected where the testimony took place, but left her wildly inaccurate title, “Sandy Hook Father: ‘My Child Is Safer at Home Where I am Armed’” standing with no correction.
Stern points out that the misleading video was posted on Youtube by the same people who are pushing the Sandy Hook conspiracy theory, which should have been a clue to Breitbart et al. But they’ve never rebuffed an opportunity to climb up onto the cross of persecution.
Watch the video titled “SANDY HOOK FATHER OWNS CONGRESS”, upon which Right wing media hung what’s left of its credibility:

Let’s see. This same right wing media claimed that MSNBC deceptively edited the heckling video of an actual Sandy Hook father testifying in favor of gun control. They claimed that the person who interrupted him was responding to an “invitation” to speak (also known in the civilized world as a rhetorical question).
This meme has now become fact.

Follow me down the rabbit hole of desperate false equivalence wherein you must pretend you don’t understand what “testimony” is and also never learned to raise your hand in school. Since MSNBC can’t play the entire tape of testimony, they have to make edits. They made a choice to include the last part of the father’s testimony before he was interrupted.
Right before MSNBC begins the clip, the father says “It’s not a good feeling to look at your child lying in a casket or looking at your child with a bullet wound to the forehead. It’s a real sad thing.” Then he paused, clearly struggling, before rhetorically asking, “Is there anybody in this room that can give me one reason, or challenge this question, (and this is where MSNBC picked it up) why anybody in this room needs to have one of these assault-style weapons or military weapons.”
This is when he was so rudely interrupted. Still thinking what a great time this would be to impose NRA talking points on him? It’s obvious why the right didn’t transcribe what the father said in their claims of misleading editing, because then they would have to include the part about his child in a casket with the bullet in his head, and that wouldn’t sell the right’s attempt at painting themselves as the victim very well. Imagine if MSNBC had included that part — the accusations of politicizing the tragedy would have echoed off of the imaginary mountains of right wing persecution for months to come.
The father used the rhetorical question as a form of address. He looked around the room the way people do when testifying and wanting to make a point to all present. He was most likely referring to the testimony given by or via the presence of the anti gun safety legislation supporters in the room. You’ll have to forgive him if he wasn’t perfect at it; he’s under a bit of strain, having just lost his child in a horrific tragedy. This was not meant as an “invitation” to insensitively hurl NRA talking points at him. Really.
Apparently, had we only known that he asked if anyone in the room could explain to him why, after burying his son with a hole in his head, anyone needs an assault weapon (in the same manner as a grieving person asks god why and does not expect an answer), we would have found the behavior of the heckler acceptable.
The wingnuts say the father “invited” others to comment by asking his rhetorical question, when in fact, right after the heckler (yes, heckler) interrupted the father, the moderator made it clear that this was not the case. The moderator scolded, “Please, please, no comments while Mr. Heslin is speaking. We’ll clear the room.” This is all we need to know about whether or not it was appropriate. The devastated pain etched onto the father’s face was also a clue to human beings that he should be allowed to say his piece.
But just in case anyone is still confused, the definition of the verb to heckle is, ‘Interrupt (a public speaker) with derisive or aggressive comments or abuse” and “to harass and try to disconcert with questions, challenges, or gibes.” The second amendment “don’t tread on me” outburst was certainly an aggressive challenge to the father’s position, and could be seen as abusive given the context.
The same people who spent last week screaming about an allegedly unfair edit by MSNBC did not bother to correct their obscene attempt to use Sandy Hook for their own agenda. They incorrectly identified a man who has been lucky enough to not have to see his child’s face ripped apart as a Sandy Hook father. According to Stern, they did this in many cases after the father wrote to the Examiner with the correction. Their articles still stand days later, uncorrected.
It’s easy to go all wild west tough guy when you haven’t had to identify your child in the morgue and you’ve been spared seeing just what kind of damage bullets can do to the human body.

Virginia Foxx Compares Regulating For Profit Education to The Holocaust

Either Virginia Foxx didn’t get the memo on how the repugican cabal should stop being the party of stupid or no one bothered to read it and explain it to her.
The Congresswoman from NC, who chairs the House Sub-Committee on Higher Education often  makes comments that are simultaneously hateful and stupid. Like the time she said she has no tolerance  for graduates with high student loans to pay. Virginia Fox also suggested that the story of Matthew Shepard was a hoax during a House debate on hate crime legislation. Sheppard’s mother was in the gallery to hear Foxx say :

“I also would like to point out that there was a bill — the hate crimes bill that’s called the Matthew Shepard bill is named after a very unfortunate incident that happened where a young man was killed, but we know that that young man was killed in the commitment of a robbery. It wasn’t because he was gay. This — the bill was named for him, hate crimes bill was named for him, but it’s really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills”.

She really outdid herself when she compared regulating for profit education with the Holocaust. Inside Higher Ed reports Foxx made the following statement while criticizing private college presidents.
“They came for the for-profits, and I didn’t speak up…” Foxx said. “Nobody really spoke up like they should have.” Foxx exploited Martin Niemöller’s famous statement in which he criticized German apathy toward the Nazi persecution.
To say this is offensive to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust is an understatement not only because comparing regulating educational institutions to genocide is both repulsive and ridiculous but also because this is part of a pattern of in the repugican cabal’s Alice in Wonderland rhetoric.  Moreover, as Secretary for the House Republican Conference,  Foxx is part of the repugican cabal’s leadership.  She is also considered a possible candidate for the Senate in 2014. As such she is one of the faces of the repugican cabal.  The repugican cabal will have a more difficult time trying to distance itself from Foxx’s attitudes than it did with others who made the mistake of telling America the truth about the repugican cabal’s attitudes and belief system.
It isn’t a surprise that Foxx would resist regulating of for profit colleges that contributed heavily to her campaign.  Think Progress reports that Fox received $48,668 from PACs or individuals affiliated with for-profit colleges.  That would also explain her attitude toward college students.
A week ago, Think Progress  reported that Idaho Senator Sheryl Nuxoll (r) compared Obamacare to the Holocaust, under similar “logic” as Virginia Foxx.

“The insurance companies are creating their own tombs. Much like the Jews boarding the trains to concentration camps, private insurers are used by the feds to put the system in place because the federal government has no way to set up the exchange. Based on legislation and the general process that is written toward this legislation, the federal government will want nothing to do with private insurance companies. The feds will have a national system of health insurance and they will eliminate the insurance companies.”

And repugican fundraiser John Catsimatidis claimed taxing the rich is akin to Nazism in December.

“New York is for everybody; it’s for the poor, it’s for the middle-class, it’s for the wealthy. We can’t punish any one group and chase them away. We-I mean, Hitler punished the Jews. We can’t have punishing the ’2% group’ right now.”

When asked if he was suggesting that paying taxes is akin to putting people in a gas chamber, Catsimatidis  said: “No, no, I didn’t say that. I said we cannot pick any group and punish that group,”
Ok, maybe Catsimatidis did see the difference between asking the rich to pay their fair share and genocide.  However, his walk back illustrates the ignorance on which repugicans base their Holocaust analogies.  The Holocaust was not about punishing Jews. The objective was to eliminate every Jew on the planet because the Nazis believed they were genetically inferior.  They applied the same belief to Serbs, Gypsies, members of the LGBT community, people with neurological illnesses like epilepsy and mental illnesses.
To suggest that regulating for profit educational institutions, making healthcare accessible to everyone or requiring the rich to pay their share of taxes is akin to anything that Nazis did reinforces the fact repugicans are the cabal of stupid as much as they are the cabal of hate.

Website copies articles documenting scandal of disgraced cancer researcher, then uses DMCA to get the originals censored

Retraction Watch, a website that documents the retraction of scientific papers, has had a series of articles about disgraced cancer researcher Anil Potti abruptly censored by WordPress in response to a DMCA copyright complaint from a dodgy Indian website that appears to have copied all the articles to its own site, then complained to WordPress on the grounds that Retraction Watch had copied it:

One of the cases they followed was Anil Potti, a cancer researcher who, at the time, worked at Duke University. Potti first fell under scrutiny for embellishing his resume, but the investigation quickly expanded as broader questions were raised about his research. As the investigation continued, a number of Potti's papers ended up being retracted as accusations of falsified data were raised. Eventually, three clinical trials that were started based on Potti's data were stopped entirely. Although federal investigations of Potti's conduct are still in progress, he eventually resigned from Duke.
In all, Retraction Watch published 22 stories on the implosion of Potti's career. In fact, three of the top four Google results for his name all point to the Retraction Watch blog (the fourth is his Wikipedia entry). Despite the widespread attention to his misbehavior, Potti managed to get a position at the University of North Dakota (where he worked earlier in his career). Meanwhile, he hired a reputation management company, which dutifully went about creating websites with glowing things to say about the doctor.
This morning, however, 10 of the Retraction Watch posts vanished. An e-mail Oransky received explained why: an individual from "Utter [sic] Pradesh" named Narendra Chatwal claimed to be a senior editor at NewsBulet.In, "a famous news firm in India." Chatwal said the site only publishes work that is "individually researched by our reporters," yet duplicates of some of the site's material appeared on Retraction Watch. Therefore, to protect his copyright, he asked that the WordPress host pull the material. It complied.

The Ars Technica article skirts outright accusation, but makes a clear inference that a "reputation management company" committed fraud as part of a campaign to rehabilitate the reputation of Potti.
One important thing to note is that WordPress isn't obliged to respond to DMCA takedowns, but if it fails to do so, it could be jointly sued, along with its users, over the alleged infringement. In theory, though, WordPress could decide that these takedown requests don't pass the giggle test, reinstate the posts, and tell the company that sent in the notices to sue and be damned.

Site plagiarizes blog posts, then files DMCA takedown on originals

Woman's car towed away after workers painted handicapped parking markings around it

On Sunday, Tel Aviv resident Hila Ben-Baruch parked her car in a legal spot outside her residence on Yehuda Halevi street. When she returned later, she was astounded to discover that her car had been towed and that the spot had been painted to designate it for handicapped parking. She was shocked.

"I called my friend who had been with me in the car to make sure that I had not gone crazy or become senile," Ben-Baruch said. She then called the Tel Aviv municipality. A dispatcher at the municipality's call centre treated her disrespectfully and accused her of lying.

Ben-Baruch was told she would have to pay 350 shekels (around £60, $95) in towing costs and that she would also be fined an even higher amount for parking in a handicapped space. Refusing to give up, Ben-Baruch went to an office building overlooking the parking spot and obtained security camera footage.  In the footage, a pair of Tel Aviv municipal workers are seen painting the spot with Ben-Baruch's car still there.

YouTube link.

Shortly thereafter, a tow truck comes to take Ben-Baruch's car away. Ben-Baruch has said that she may take legal steps against the municipality over the injustice and anguish the incident caused her. The Tel Aviv municipality cancelled the fine against Ben-Baruch and said she would not have to pay the towing costs. The Tel Aviv municipality said the incident marked "a serious mistake" and "unacceptable incompetence."

Egyptian prime minister says women's unclean breasts cause diarrhea

Cabinet meetings usually discuss the state of economy, wars and general matters of governance. However, Egypt's Prime Minister Hisham Qandil recently utilized a meeting to talk about the dangers of “unclean” breasts.
The PhD holding prime minister who studied water resources, somehow, related the lack of clean water to the lack of clean breasts. While meeting with his cabinet members he spoke in an emotional manner as he recounted the struggle of the villagers he witnessed on his trips as a minister.

He narrated his experience as a middle-class Egyptian who traveled to the rural areas of the country where he saw the suffering of newborns having to deal with diarrhea after being breast fed.

The prime minister claimed that the reason behind the diarrhea epidemic in rural Egypt is that some female villagers are too ignorant to clean their breasts before feeding their babies.

The catholic cult enslaved 30,000 Irish women as forced unpaid labor in Magdalene Laundries until 1996

What a horrific story.  The Irish Prime Minister gave a partial apology today for the government’s role in a 74-year scandal in which, a new official government report says, over 10,000 women were forced to work without pay at commercial laundries called Magdalene Laundries, operated by the catholic cult for “crimes” as small as not paying a train ticket.
Wikipedia notes that the estimate of the number of women who were used as forced slave labor by the catholic cult in Ireland alone goes as high as 30,000 over the entire time the Magdalene laundries were in operation.
The last Magdalene laundry closed in 1996.
The women were locked in and not permitted to leave.  And if they tried to get away, the cops would catch them and bring them back. They were quite literally catholic slave labor working for the government and even Guinness, which would pay the laundries for the women’s slave labor.
Half of the girls enslaved in these catholic cult prisons were under the age of 23.  The youngest entrant was 9 years old.

Girls and women working in Catholic Church’s Magdalene Laundry in Ireland in the early 20th century. Public domain photo in the US, via Wikipedia. (PD-US-1923-ABROAD)

Singer Sinead O’Connor was forced to work in a Magdalene Laundry in Dublin:

When I was a young girl, my mother — an abusive, less-than-perfect parent — encouraged me to shoplift. After being caught once too often, I spent 18 months in An Grianán Training Centre, an institution in Dublin for girls with behavioral problems, at the recommendation of a social worker. An Grianán was one of the now-infamous church-sponsored “Magdalene laundries,” which housed pregnant teenagers and uncooperative young women. We worked in the basement, washing priests’ clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap. We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar.

Absent from any of the media reports on the scandal that I could find was an apology from the catholic cult which operated the Magdalene laundries and made handsome profits from contracts with government and hotels.  Oh, found one. It seems the catholic cult blew the women off.  I know, you’re as surprised as I am:

Victims of the child sex abuse scandals that have rocked the Irish catholic cult have received an apology and compensation, but no one has taken responsibility for what happened in the laundries. Cardinal Sean Brady, the most senior catholic cleric in Ireland, met with Justice for Magdalenes in 2010. He said “by today’s standards much of what happened at that time is difficult to comprehend” but that it was a matter for the religious orders who ran the laundries to deal with. The religious orders have declined to meet the women.

The Irish Cardinal wasn’t interested in hearing from people who were hurt and abused — if not sexually, certainly physically and mentally, by the catholic cult.  And it’s not the catholic cult’s fault. Where have we heard that story before?
The laundries were run by nuns, many of whom treated the women sent to work there as slaves:

Senator McAleese’s inquiry found that half of the girls and women put to work in the laundries were under the age of 23 and 40%, more than 4,000, spent more than a year incarcerated.
Fifteen percent spent more than five years in the laundries while the average stay was calculated at seven months.
The youngest death on record was 15, and the oldest 95, the report found.

The Irish state is also implicated in the scandal because the police would take women to the asylums after arresting them for trivial offenses and would return runaways.
The story of the Magdalene laundries shows what happens when an institution — in this case the church and the government — is considered beyond criticism. It probably isn’t a coincidence that the last of the laundries closed in 1996, shortly after the first wave of the catholic pedophile priest scandals hit Ireland.
Let me reiterate that for a moment.  The catholic cult had slaves as late as 1996.
Here are some of the testimonials of the women who served as forced catholic slaves.  You can find them in the official report:

“The only thing was I had appendicitis and asked [named nun] could I go to bed and she wouldn’t let me”.

Some, but not all women reported that their hair had been cut on entry to the laundry. Some described this as an upsetting and degrading experience.
“T’was the ultimate humiliation for you. It changed me as a person to authority, God forgive me I learned to hate people then”.

One woman said that in the Magdalene Laundry in which she was, “You could write once a month but the nun would read the letters”.

This is one is pure torture:

Another very common grievance of the women who shared their stories with the Committee – particularly those who had previously been in Industrial or Reformatory Schools – was that there was a complete lack of information about why they were there and when they would get out. None of these women were aware of the period of supervision which followed discharge from industrial or reformatory school.
Due to this lack of information and the fact that they had been placed in an institution among many older women, a large number of the women spoke of a very real fear that they would remain in the Magdalene Laundry for the rest of their lives. Even if they left the Laundries after a very short time, some women told the Committee that they were never able to fully free themselves
of this fear and uncertainty.

The victims have rejected the Prime Minster’s “apology,” which does sound somewhat lame:

“To those residents who went into the Magdalene Laundries through a variety of ways, 26pc from state intervention or state involvement, I am sorry for those people that they lived in that kind of environment,” Mr Kenny said in parliament in Dublin today.
“I want to see that those women who are still with us, anywhere between 800 and 1000 at max, that we should see that the state provides for them with the very best of facilities and supports that they need in their lives.”

Did your defense lawyer write that one up for you?
Here’s Joni Mitchell singing about the Magdalene Laundries:

Video Link

Tolerance Wins Over Hate as Sisters Leave the Westboro baptist cult

The granddaughters of Fred Phelps, Megan Phelps-Roper and her younger sister Grace Phelps-Roper, have left the hate group known as the Topeka, Kansas congregation of the Westboro baptist cult. The sisters issued a statement Wednesday in which they revealed that they recently left the WBC.
The Westboro baptist cult is infamous for their protests at the funerals of fallen soldiers’, desecrating the American flag, and threatening to protest the funeral of the Newtown Principal — all in the name of gay hate. Megan Phelps-Roper had been serving as the face of the organization over the last several years.
The sisters posted a statement on social media Wednesday titled, “Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise” in which they wrote, “We know that we’ve done and said things that hurt people. Inflicting pain on others wasn’t the goal, but it was one of the outcomes. We wish it weren’t so and regret that hurt.”
In choosing to leave the WBC, the sisters have also lost their families. They write, “They now consider us betrayers, and we are cut off from their lives, but we know they are well-intentioned. We will never not love them.”
Megan Phelps-Roper told Jeff Chu of The Guardian that the seeds of doubt over her views were sown during conversations with an Israeli web developer, in which he pointed out that Jesus wanted people to have the opportunity to repent:

“My doubts started with a conversation I had with David Abitbol,” she says. Megan met David, an Israeli web developer who’s part of the team behind the blog Jewlicious, on Twitter. “I would ask him questions about Judaism, and he would ask me questions about church doctrine. One day, he asked a specific question about one of our signs—’Death Penalty for Fags’—and I was arguing for the church’s position, that it was a Levitical punishment and as completely appropriate now as it was then. He said, ‘But Jesus said’—and I thought it was funny he was quoting Jesus—’Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ And then he connected it to another member of the church who had done something that, according to the Old Testament, was also punishable by death. I realized that if the death penalty was instituted for any sin, you completely cut off the opportunity to repent. And that’s what Jesus was talking about.”

After researching and soul searching, Megan concluded to Chu, “The idea that only WBC had the right answer seemed crazy. It just seemed impossible.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the church as a hate group, “Westboro Baptist Church (WBC) is arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America. The group is basically a family-based cult of personality built around its patriarch, Fred Phelps.”
Americans have stood together to obstruct the WBC, such as when 300 bikers rolled into Joplin, Missouri to protect the crowd from the WBC protesters.
Out here in the real world, the sisters are finding more of their old views debunked as well. Megan Phelps-Roper told The Star, “We’ve really appreciated the supportive words people have shared with us today. The environment we grew up in was very ‘us vs. them’; it’s been nice to see that the ‘them’ have been overwhelmingly kind — as we’d kind of hoped and suspected.”
This proves that there is hope for a certain segment of our population who’ve been brainwashed into hating gays, undocumented workers, minorities, women on birth control, and so much more. David Abitbol’s tolerance, patience and compassion planted the seeds that started Megan’s journey of questioning what she had been taught as the one right way.

The human spirit never ceases to amaze me; it takes great courage to be willing to endure the rejection of your entire family and it takes a lot of tolerance to continue conversing with someone whose views you might find repugnant. A head full of doubt led to a road full of promise for these two sisters.

While Trying to Silence Any Mention of Gays, repugican Calls Them the Biggest Bullies in the World

In an attempt to justify his “don’t say gay” bill, aimed at keeping anything gay related out of the school system, repugican Tennessee state Senator Stacey Campfield told his mirror TMZ that the gay rights community are the “biggest bullies in the world.”
In the call, reacting to a letter from a gay rights advocate, Campfield said the “gay rights community are the biggest bullies in the world.” The TMZ hosts asked him what he found so aggressive in the letter from a gay rights advocate, clearly not understanding that in the world view of a repugican, anyone who exercises their first amendment rights while disagreeing with said repugican is seen as a hostile enemy. Also, there seems to be a lot of fear from these far right repugicans. A whole lot of fear.
Campfield proved that this is all about his ego by swaggering, “I’m just not going to put up with it.” Indeed, sir. No one is asking you to put up with anything, unless you consider allowing others to express their point of view as egregious.
The repugican sermonized, homosexuality is “very dangerous” because, “have you ever heard of AIDS?” Had I been there I would have asked him if he had ever heard of unemployment. He then proceeded to say that Africa has a problem with AIDS because a little birdie told him that sodomy is much more prevalent there.
Campfield clarified that there’s no comparison between the civil rights movement and the gay rights movement, and any such suggestion is “insulting to the civil rights movement of the black people.” (Any takers on just how much of an advocate Campfield has been for “black people”? There’s nothing a bully likes better than to divide and conquer his prey.)
The repugican told TMZ Live, “You know, you could say the same thing about kids who are shooting heroin. We need to show them the best ways to shoot up. No, we don’t. Why do we have to hypersexualize little children? Why can’t we just let little kids be little kids for a while?”
Or, let some senators be little kids forever. But I digress.
The repugican then went full on Leave Britney Alone wail, saying he wishes the gay community would just leave the straight people alone. Campfield whined that any time they speak, they go “bazonkers”. “We don’t wanna hear about it every day. Quit trying to ram it down everybody’s throats and quit pushing it on everyone. Just leave us alone.”
Campfield went on this self-pitying rage about how the gays need to leave him alone after he bullied and insulted a self-identified gay TMZ employee. Campfield dodged all reasonable questions and insisted on moving the goal posts to suggest that anyone questioning him was advocating teaching 5-year-olds about sex. It should be noted that this is from the party who seems to have no problems with having loaded assault weapons in our homes, on our streets and in our schools.
The wounded look in the TMZ employee’s eyes makes me wish I would have been there to ask the Senator if he missed the part in the bible about not judging others. It’s always the dense projectors of the world who cause the most pain, and it’s impossible to get through the wall of defense they’ve built around their very fragile sense of self. See, Campfield thinks he can’t win if gays are allowed to exist. It’s an affront to his ego that anyone would go against his “beliefs”.
Also, as a typical bully, the Campfield type has a keen eye for the most vulnerable and enjoys kicking them around. (In his neck of the woods, the most vulnerable are the gays, minorities, and women.) What does that say about him? Paper tiger. It takes a lot more courage to stand up and say who you are than it does to kick the dog. This is how bullies prove their manhood to others – by showing that they can humiliate the less powerful.
The TMZ gang is shocked by the senator’s reaction, and this is part of the problem. There’s a large part of this country that has no idea just how rotten things are in the Southern belt. People are outraged today by an Alabama teacher who called Michelle Obama fat butt while teaching his psychology class. He peppered anti-gay hate speech into his lecture, proving my point that bullies come after those they view as beneath them and therefore vulnerable.
They hate with equal fervor the gays, women/young girls, minorities, and all Others that are not white, straight, male christians from certain European regions. Please wake up, America; these are not anomalies. This is consistent. It’s ugly and hateful, and it shames the good people in those regions. It’s easy to analyze from afar as their fear of their growing irrelevance. True as that is, that’s not helping vulnerable children in those areas today. A hatred is burning through these people, and it’s inflicting deep pain. My heart hurts for the children in that classroom, gay and straight alike. They are being bombarded with sneering hate, and directed as to where to aim their resentments.
The gays are bullying everyone, y’all! How? Well, even mentioning their rather relevant fight for civil rights is a mean spirited act of bullying because Campfield, an allegedly small-government repugican, doesn’t want to hear about it. So he’s going to use the law to silence any mention of gay rights even in an 8th grade history class. His right not to be offended supersedes everyone else’s right to liberty, which is another classic example of privilege in action. In a final, sadistic twist, the Senator’s party puts a “freedom” stamp on their efforts to steal others’ liberty.

A 9-year-old gives birth

Officials are looking for the 17-year-old father

A 9-year-old child gave birth to a baby girl on Jan. 27, 2013 at the Zoquipan hospital in Jalisco, Mexico.
At the time of pregnancy, she was eight years old and apparently the father is a 17-year- old who has not been located, according to a report from ABC on Feb. 6.
Prosecutors have began searching for the father of child that was born to the 9-year-old and authorities say this bizarre pregnancy may be a case of rape or child sexual abuse.

“Due to her young age and to the fact that her body was not ready to give birth,” says Dr. Enrique Rabago, director of Zoquipan Hospital“the medical team decided a C-Section was the best option” for both mother and child."

The baby was born healthy and both the 9-year-old mother and daughter were discharged, but the hospital said it will be closely monitoring the baby's development due to the young age of her mother.

Here's a Good Reason Not to Eat Your Vegetables: They Can Kill You!

Veggie haters, rejoice! There's finally scientific proof that your fastidious avoidance of eating leafy greens is paying off. You see, instead of being good for you, vegetables are actually dangerous and may kill you:

According to a new study by the CDC, the greatest number of foodborne illnesses in the U.S. are not caused by raw cookie dough or undercooked meat or questionable shellfish, but by leafy green vegetables.
Of the 9.6 million cases of food-borne illness reported each year, 51 percent are caused by contaminated plants; leafy greens alone contribute 23 percent of the total, more than any other commodity. All the meat and poultry commodities combined--beef, game, pork, and poultry--were responsible for 22 percent of illness, and dairy carried 17 percent.

Now, celebrate by eating a pound of bacon! More

Origins Of 8 Of The Strangest Place Names In Canada

Every country has place names that make you scratch your head and say. 'What were they thinking?' Here in the Netherlands we have place names like Doodstil (Dead Silent), Gaarkeuken (Soup Kitchen), Hongerige Wolf (Hungry Wolf) and Rectum (yes, exactly that). So, what have they been thinking when these places in Canada got their names.

Lack of Snow Affects Iditarod

Many sled dog races that are qualifiers for the annual Iditarod have been cancelled or postponed this winter due to lack of snow.

The John Beargrease sled dog race, a trek of some 400 miles in northern Minnesota, postponed its start to March 10 from Jan. 27. In Alaska, the Don Bowers Memorial 200/300, the Sheep Mountain Lodge 150 and the Knik 200 have been canceled. The Copper Basin 300 in Glennallen, Alaska, had to cut its trail for several teams by 25 miles because there was not enough snow at the finish line; the mushers finished the race with their hats and gloves off and jackets unzipped.

“That was crazy with the warm weather,” said Zack Steer, one of the race’s organizers. “It was such a drastic change from last year, but the trail at the end was dirt. It wasn’t safe.”

Blake Freking, a musher who trains Siberian huskies on the north shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota, said he planned to compete in the Beargrease race in January. “With global warming, it’s hard to deny that there are some big changes going on right now,” he said. “We’re in it. It isn’t looking good.”

During last year’s snow season, defined as July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012, Anchorage had 134.5 inches of snow, according to Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with the National Climatic Data Center. This season’s tally in Anchorage was 39.2 inches through Wednesday. North of Fairbanks, another area where mushers train, snowpack is 21 percent of average.

The cancelled qualifiers are especially hard on new mushers, who must have a certain number of race miles before tackling the Iditarod. More

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Thirty-Five Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Sudan Necropolis

At least 35 small pyramids, along with graves, have been discovered clustered closely together at a site called Sedeinga in Sudan.

Discovered between 2009 and 2012, researchers are surprised at how densely the pyramids are concentrated. In one field season alone, in 2011, the research team discovered 13 pyramids packed into  roughly 5,381 square feet (500 square meters), or  slightly larger than an NBA basketball court.

They date back around 2,000 years to a time when a kingdom named Kush flourished in Sudan. Kush shared a border with Egypt and, later on, the Roman Empire. The desire of the kingdom's people to build pyramids was apparently influenced by Egyptian funerary architecture.

At Sedeinga, researchers say, pyramid building continued for centuries. "The density of the pyramids is huge," said researcher Vincent Francigny, a research associate with the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in an interview with LiveScience. "Because it lasted for hundreds of years they built more, more, more pyramids and after centuries they started to fill all the spaces that were still available in the necropolis." [See Photos of the Newly Discovered Pyramids]

The biggest pyramids they discovered are about 22 feet (7 meters) wide at their base with the smallest example, likely constructed for the burial of a child, being only 30 inches (750 millimeters) long. The tops of the pyramids are not attached, as the passage of time and the presence of a camel caravan route resulted in damage to the monuments. Francigny said that the tops would have been decorated with a capstone depicting either a bird or a lotus flower on top of a solar orb.
The building continued until, eventually, they ran out of room to build pyramids. "They reached a point where it was so filled with people and graves that they had to reuse the oldest one," Francigny said.

Francigny is excavation director of the French Archaeological Mission to Sedeinga, the team that made the discoveries. He and team leader Claude Rilly published an article detailing the results of their 2011 field season in the most recent edition of the journal Sudan and Nubia.

The inner circle
Among the discoveries were several pyramids designed with an inner cupola (circular structure) connected to the pyramid corners through cross-braces. Rilly and Francigny noted in their paper that the pyramid design resembles a "French Formal Garden."
Only one pyramid, outside of Sedeinga, is known to have been constructed this way, and it's a mystery why the people of Sedeinga were fond of the design. It "did not add either to the solidity or to the external aspect [appearance] of the monument," Rilly and Francigny write.

A discovery made in 2012 may provide a clue, Francigny said in the interview. "What we found this year is very intriguing," he said. "A grave of a child and it was covered by only a kind of circle, almost complete, of brick." It's possible, he said, that when pyramid building came into fashion at Sedeinga it was combined with a local circle-building tradition called tumulus construction, resulting in pyramids with circles within them.

An offering for grandma?

The graves beside the pyramids had largely been plundered, possibly in antiquity, by the time archaeologists excavated them. Researchers did find skeletal remains and, in some cases, artifacts.  

One of the most interesting new finds was an offering table found by the remains of a pyramid. . It appears to depict the goddess Isis and the jackal-headed god Anubis and includes an inscription, written in Meroitic language, dedicated to a woman named "Aba-la," which may be a nickname for "grandmother," Rilly writes.

It reads in translation:

Oh Isis! Oh Osiris!

It is Aba-la.

Make her drink plentiful water;

Make her eat plentiful bread;

Make her be served a good meal.

The offering table with inscription was a final send-off for a woman, possibly a grandmother, given a pyramid burial nearly 2,000 years ago.

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35 Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Sudan

Mysteriously, the pyramids were built with circles at their center.