The place where the world comes together in honesty and mirth. Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.
Cicero, considered one of the greatest sons of Rome, is assassinated on the orders of Marcus Antonius.
983
Otto III takes the throne after his father's death in Italy. A power struggle between magnates ensues.
1787
Delaware becomes the first state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1808
James Madison is elected president in succession of Thomas Jefferson.
1861
USS Santiago de Cuba, under Commander Daniel B. Ridgely, halts the British schooner Eugenia Smith and captures J.W. Zacharie, a New Orleans merchant and Confederate purchasing agent.
1862
Confederate forces surprise an equal number of Union troops at the Battle of Prairie Grove, Arkansas.
1863
Outlaw George Ives, an alleged member of
an outlaw gang known as the "Innocents," robs and then kills Nick
Thiebalt in the Ruby Valley of what would become Montana.
1917
The United States declares war on Austria-Hungary with only one dissenting vote in Congress.
1918
Spartacists call for a German revolution.
1931
A report indicates that Nazis would ensure "Nordic dominance" by sterilizing certain races.
1941
Japanese planes raid Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a surprise attack, bringing the US into WWII.
1942
The U.S. Navy launches USS New Jersey, the largest battleship ever built.
1946
The president of the United Mine Workers, John L. Lewis, orders all striking miners back to work.
1949
The A.F.L. and the C.I.O. organize a non-Communist international trade union.
1970
Poland and West Germany sign a pact
renouncing the use of force to settle disputes, recognizing the
Oder-Neisse River as Poland's western frontier, and acknowledging the
transfer to Poland of 40,000 square miles of former German territory.
1972
The crew of Apollo 17, the last manned mission to the moon, lifts off at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1981
The Reagan Administration predicts a record deficit in 1982 of $109 billion.
1988
An earthquake in Armenia kills an estimated 100,000 people.
1988
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat recognizes Israel's right to exist.
1995
Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter after a 6-year journey.
1999
The Recording Industry Association of America files a copyright infringement suit against the file-sharing website Napster.
2003
A tornado in Kensal Green, North West London, damages about 150 properties.
2006
An earthquake in Armenia kills an estimated 100,000 people.
Most terribly cold it was; it snowed, and was nearly quite dark, and
evening-- the last evening of the year. In this cold and darkness there
went along the street a poor little girl, bareheaded, and with naked
feet. When she left home she had slippers on, it is true; but what was
the good of that? They were very large slippers, which her mother had
hitherto worn; so large were they; and the poor little thing lost them
as she scuffled away across the street, because of two carriages that
rolled by dreadfully fast.
One slipper was nowhere to be found;
the other had been laid hold of by an urchin, and off he ran with it; he
thought it would do capitally for a cradle when he some day or other
should have children himself. So the little maiden walked on with her
tiny naked feet, that were quite red and blue from cold. She carried a
quantity of matches in an old apron, and she held a bundle of them in
her hand. Nobody had bought anything of her the whole livelong day; no
one had given her a single farthing.
She crept along trembling with cold and hunger--a very picture of sorrow, the poor little thing!
The
flakes of snow covered her long fair hair, which fell in beautiful
curls around her neck; but of that, of course, she never once now
thought. From all the windows the candles were gleaming, and it smelt so
deliciously of roast goose, for you know it was New Year's Eve; yes, of
that she thought.
In a corner formed by two houses, of which one
advanced more than the other, she seated herself down and cowered
together. Her little feet she had drawn close up to her, but she grew
colder and colder, and to go home she did not venture, for she had not
sold any matches and could not bring a farthing of money: from her
father she would certainly get blows, and at home it was cold too, for
above her she had only the roof, through which the wind whistled, even
though the largest cracks were stopped up with straw and rags.
Her
little hands were almost numbed with cold. Oh! a match might afford her
a world of comfort, if she only dared take a single one out of the
bundle, draw it against the wall, and warm her fingers by it. She drew
one out. "Rischt!" how it blazed, how it burnt! It was a warm, bright
flame, like a candle, as she held her hands over it: it was a wonderful
light. It seemed really to the little maiden as though she were sitting
before a large iron stove, with burnished brass feet and a brass
ornament at top. The fire burned with such blessed influence; it warmed
so delightfully. The little girl had already stretched out her feet to
warm them too; but--the small flame went out, the stove vanished: she
had only the remains of the burnt-out match in her hand.
She
rubbed another against the wall: it burned brightly, and where the light
fell on the wall, there the wall became transparent like a veil, so
that she could see into the room. On the table was spread a snow-white
tablecloth; upon it was a splendid porcelain service, and the roast
goose was steaming famously with its stuffing of apple and dried plums.
And what was still more capital to behold was, the goose hopped down
from the dish, reeled about on the floor with knife and fork in its
breast, till it came up to the poor little girl; when--the match went
out and nothing but the thick, cold, damp wall was left behind. She
lighted another match. Now there she was sitting under the most
magnificent Xmas tree: it was still larger, and more decorated than
the one which she had seen through the glass door in the rich
merchant's house.
Thousands of lights were burning on the green
branches, and gaily-colored pictures, such as she had seen in the
shop-windows, looked down upon her. The little maiden stretched out her
hands towards them when--the match went out. The lights of the Xmas
tree rose higher and higher, she saw them now as stars in heaven; one
fell down and formed a long trail of fire.
"Someone is just
dead!" said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person
who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a
star falls, a soul ascends to god.
She drew another match against
the wall: it was again light, and in the luster there stood the old
grandmother, so bright and radiant, so mild, and with such an expression
of love.
"Grandmother!" cried the little one. "Oh, take me with
you! You go away when the match burns out; you vanish like the warm
stove, like the delicious roast goose, and like the magnificent Xmas tree!" And she rubbed the whole bundle of matches quickly
against the wall, for she wanted to be quite sure of keeping her
grandmother near her. And the matches gave such a brilliant light that
it was brighter than at noon-day: never formerly had the grandmother
been so beautiful and so tall. She took the little maiden, on her arm,
and both flew in brightness and in joy so high, so very high, and then
above was neither cold, nor hunger, nor anxiety--they were with god.
But
in the corner, at the cold hour of dawn, sat the poor girl, with rosy
cheeks and with a smiling mouth, leaning against the wall--frozen to
death on the last evening of the old year. Stiff and stark sat the child
there with her matches, of which one bundle had been burnt. "She wanted
to warm herself," people said. No one had the slightest suspicion of
what beautiful things she had seen; no one even dreamed of the splendor
in which, with her grandmother she had entered on the joys of a new
year.
There are many perks to spending your days at the White House, including
having the option of getting married there. In October, official White
House photographer Pete Souza tied the knot in the White House Rose
Garden and President Obama attended. And the White House has seen many
more nuptials over the years. In 1886, Grover Cleveland became the only
U.S. President to get married in the executive mansion. Cleveland, who
was 49 and had been a lifelong bachelor, married 21 year-old Frances
Folsom in the Blue Room. At the conclusion of the wedding Folsom became
First Lady – the youngest in history. Far more common is having a
wedding ceremony for the President’s children. The first documented
example of this is when Maria Monroe, daughter of President James
Monroe, got married in the White House in 1820. Ulysses Grant, Woodrow
Wilson, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon are among the other presidents
to also have their daughters married at the White House. Other
Presidential family members have gotten hitched there, too. In 1994
Hillary Clinton’s brother, Tony Rodham, married Nicole Boxer, the
daughter of Senator Barbara Boxer, in the White House Rose Garden. But
the couple split in 2000. And back in 1942, Harry Hopkins, the assistant
to President Franklin Roosevelt, got married in a simple ceremony in
the President’s second floor study. Hopkins wasn’t a family member but
he clearly knew the value of having friends in high places – a lesson
Pete Souza obviously took to heart.
Researchers have uncovered a new clue about human origins after discovering the oldest known human DNA in a legendary Spanish archeological site called Sima de los Huesos, or the "Pit of Bones."
Researchers were able to extract DNA from a leg bone that was estimated to be 400,000 years old.
After extracting the DNA from a femur bone, Matthias Meyer,
who published his findings in a study in the journal Nature, was able
to replicate the entire genome for the ancient human relative.
The genetic sequence surprised researchers, who thought it was likely that the sequence would reveal that remains were related to the Neanderthals. Instead, the genetic sequence revealed that this early human species is related to another genetic cousin of modern humans,the mysterious Denisovans.
Little is known about the Denisovans, who are thought to have been
common throughout the regions now known as Asia and Eastern Europe. This
early human species was discovered after genetic sequencing was used to
map DNA through the ancient pinkie bone of a girl in 2010.
Anthropologists and genetic experts said the findings from the Pit of
Bones could help shed light on how early human species evolved and
spread across different continents.
"This places what we have to assume from the genetic sequence is an
earlier branch of our family that goes back even further" in time, said Kenneth Kidd,
professor of genetics at the Yale University School of Medicine. Kidd
said since the DNA was from 400,000 years ago, this mysterious human
relative likely predated most Neanderthals.
Kidd explained that one reason there is little known about the
Denisovans is that "the Neanderthals may have annihilated the
Denisovans," similar to how the Neanderthals died off as modern humans became more populous.
If you're wondering if you're related to the ancient DNA, Kidd said
there is no evidence that the Denisovans provided any genetic material
for the modern human race.
Theodore Schurr,
professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, said the
findings were significant since it showed clearly how DNA mapping was
changing the field of anthropology. Schurr said solely from the skeletal
remains researchers thought the human species appeared to be related to
Neanderthals.
"This is also significant because it's the DNA coming from the oldest
remains," said Schurr. "It's interesting to compare the skeletons to the
genetics because the stories may not match up."
The ice sheet that covers Antarctica is almost two miles thick in some places. But the British Antarctic Survey is able to peek beneath the frozen surface with the help of satellites, lasers, and radar.
The likely answer is "nothing much", I'd hazard, because it's just
too cool to die. The British flag remains integrated with those of
several other independent countries, and even one U.S. State, because
it's just so goddamn sexy. But hey, the status quo is no fun!
Beyond simple color changes (Welsh green or black, for example,
as above, instead of Scots' blue), it's interesting just how fast the
suggestions become really, obviously terrible.
A part of this, I think, is that without Scotland, there really
isn't a "United Kingdom" to speak of: radical variations on the Union
flag just look silly, and slight ones a backhanded substitute. The
anxiety reflects an awareness that Scottish independence would be a
strange, slow thing for the islands, the beginning of something new
rather than the end of something old. It would at first amount to less than expected— then, in the long run, more.
If the vote is yes, for example, Scotland would not extricate
itself as completely as the United States did. It would negotiate toward
some kind of manageable arms-length quasi-federal setup, a best-of-both
worlds approach that lets everyone get on with life without too much
hassle. Such an arrangement might even interest the Irish Republic: it
has England at arms' length, of course, but The Troubles hid a basic
constitutional entanglement that was never fully unraveled. Social bonds
are friendlier than ever, too. Who else? The Faroe Islands, perhaps,
nominally Danish but autonomous since the UK took over in World War II.
It'd be fun to see taxpayers in Surrey angry at having to pay for all
that Salmiakki.
If we're going to play Science Fiction Flags, show me one for a
confederal Atlantic Archipelagos, unfurled on a desk in Lýðveldið the
day before its accession referendum.
Just as he did in his landmark 2011 speech in Osawatomie, Kansas
and throughout last year’s campaign, the president laid out why America
needs an economy built from the middle class out that works for
everyone, not just the wealthy few.
Unfortunately, as the president said today,
today’s economy is defined by “a dangerous and growing inequality and
lack of upward mobility that has jeopardized middle-class America’s
basic bargain — that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead.”
He called combating this growing inequality and lack of upward mobility
the “defining challenge of our time.”
He’s right.
Here are the facts:
Salaries for CEOs have skyrocketed in the past 50 years. In 2012, CEOS made 273 times more than the average worker.
While
the rich are getting ahead, workers are being left behind. If the
minimum wage kept up with inflation, it would be $10.74 today.
Millionaires
are making more money but paying less taxes. In the past 50 years, the
400 richest families in America actually had their tax rates fall by 60 percent.
As
union memberships fall, middle class incomes shrink. The drop in union
membership over the past 40 years is accompanied by an equally sharp drop in the middle class’ share of the nation’s income.
From
1947 to 1979, when the middle class received 54 percent of the nation’s
total income on average, the economy grew at a steady clip of 3.7
percent per year. But from 1980 to 2010, when the middle class’s share
of the nation’s total income fell to only 46 percent, growth fell by 1 percentage point to 2.7 percent.
Between 1979 and 2007, the richest top 1 percent of American households
saw their income nearly triple. On average, the wealthy saw an
increase of $973,100 per household. In contrast, the middle class saw
their incomes rise by less than 40 percent.
Despite
enacting taxes cuts for the rich and for corporations, both Reagan and
George W. Bush saw slower economic growth and job growth during their
presidency than President Clinton. In contrast to Reagan and George W.
Bush, President Clinton actually raised taxes in 1993.
The president laid out a five key action areas:
Making sure our economy is growing faster. We must “relentlessly push a pro-growth agenda,” the president said.
Making sure we empower more Americans with the skills and education they need to compete in a highly competitive global economy.
That includes making higher education affordable and reducing the
crushing burden of student loans, as well as making investments in early
childhood education.
Empowering our workers.
That means protecting union rights, ending pay discrimination against
women, and, finally, making it illegal to fire LGBT people just for who
they are. It also means raising the minimum wage to put more money into
the pockets of workers so they can buy things from businesses large and
small, which creates a virtuous circle that grows the economy.
Providing
targeted programs for the communities and workers that have been hit
hardest by economic change and the Great Recession. That means
making sure that “a child’s course in life should not be determined by
the zip code he’s born in, but by the strength of his work ethic and the
scope of his dreams.”
Revamping retirement to protect Americans in their golden years.
That means shoring up both private and public retirement programs to
make sure people can live out their golden years in dignity.
The president also took his argument straight to top Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY):
And as people in states as
different as California and Kentucky sign up every single day for health
insurance, signing up in droves, they’re proving they want that
economic security. If the Senate Republican leader still thinks
he is going to be able to repeal this someday, he might want to check
with the more than 60,000 people in his home state who are already set
to finally have coverage that frees them from the fear of financial
ruin, and lets them afford to take their kids to see a doctor. (Applause.)
And House Republican Budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), who attacked safety net programs like food stamps as unemployment benefits as “a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency”:
The point is these programs are not typically hammocks for people to just lie back and relax. These programs are almost always temporary means for hardworking people to stay afloat
while they try to find a new job or go into school to retrain
themselves for the jobs that are out there, or sometimes just to cope
with a bout of bad luck.
Finally, the president challenged
Republicans, who still have not offered an alternative to Obamacare
after relentlessly attacking it for more than four years, to put out
their own ideas:
If you still don’t like
Obamacare — and I know you don’t — (laughter) — even though it’s built
on market-based ideas of choice and competition in the private sector,
then you should explain how, exactly, you’d cut costs, and cover more
people, and make insurance more secure. You owe it to the American people to tell us what you are for, not just what you’re against.
(Applause.) That way we can have a vigorous and meaningful debate.
That’s what the American people deserve. That’s what the times demand.
It’s not enough anymore to just say we should just get our government
out of the way and let the unfettered market take care of it — for our
experience tells us that’s just not true. (Applause.)
BOTTOM LINE: While Republicans were attacking Obamacare and holding a hearing on space aliens
today, the president laid out a sweeping agenda to expand the middle
class, extend ladders of opportunity, and build an economy for the 21st
century.
A crowd of thousands cheer in support
during a speech by Rev Dr. William Barber II, president of the North
Carolina NAACP in Asheville, NC's Pack Square Park during Mountain Moral
Monday on Aug 5, 2013.
By Zachary Roth
During an appearance at The Heritage Foundation in Washington,
D.C, a key center of power for the conservative movement, North Carolina
Gov. Pat McCrony portrayed himself as a business-minded policy wonk,
earnestly extolling the benefits of infrastructure development and
government-efficiency measures. He might as well have been describing
someone else.
For the last year, McCrony has engineered a hard-right shift in North
Carolina that has crippled millions in his state. His 2012 election
gave repugicans control of all three branches of the state’s government
for the first time since Reconstruction and they took advantage of it.
In 2013 alone, North Carolina has said no to expanding Medicaid under
Obamacare, approved a tax plan that redistributes wealth from poor to
rich, cut education by half a billion dollars, instituted perhaps the
toughest voting restrictions in the country, weakened campaign-finance
laws, and passed its own version of Texas’ controversial abortion
measure.
Herbert Grant cheers in support during a
speech by Rev Dr. William Barber II, president of the North Carolina
NAACP in Asheville, NC’s Pack Square Park during Mountain Moral Monday
on Aug 5, 2013.
In short, the repugican cabal has turned America’s 10th-largest state
—traditionally known as a rare bastion of southern moderation—into a
massive testing ground for pure wingnut ideology. The hard-wingnut
lurch has already inflicted hardship on countless North Carolinians. And
it has offered a real-world glimpse of the playbook that many wingnuts—including McCrony’s hosts at Heritage—would like to use
across the country.For McCrony—and his audience at Heritage—his extreme red-state
experiment was supposed to deliver a success story that wingnuts
could be proud of. Instead, a growing backlash against the
overreach—laws affecting women, minorities and the poor—is starting to
cause real pain for the governor and his allies. His approval ratings
have declined sharply, as have those for his repugican legislators.
The pushback against McCrony’s harsh brand of governance began with
home-grown progressive protests known as “Moral Monday” events. The
campaign has been spearheaded not by state Democrats, but by a coalition
of activist groups including the NAACP, labor unions, environmental
groups, abortion-rights advocates.
A summer protest in Ashville, a lively college town in the state’s
mountainous western region, drew a passionate, racially-diverse,
overflow crowd heavy on teachers, students, volunteer activists, and
young families.
“Don’t make any mistake, America,” William Barber III, the state’s
NAACP president and Moral Monday’s most prominent spokesman, told the
crowd. “This is no momentary hyperventilation and liberal screaming
match. This is a movement. And we intend to win.” “That’s why I go every Monday and fight”
For all the attention that the state’s regressive voting law has
rightly received, it’s the cuts to the jobless benefits program that
have had perhaps the greatest human impact so far—as Terry Johnson can
attest.
Laid off last November from her customer-service job at Allstate,
Johnson relied on the $320 a week she got in unemployment benefits to
support herself and her two kids as she searched for work from her home
in Rowan County, North Carolina. But on July 1st, the state cut off
jobless benefits for nearly 70,000 struggling North Carolinians,
including Johnson.
That left her unable to afford school supplies for her 10-year-old
son, Coty, unsure if she’ll be able to pay the electric bill, and
without even enough money for gas to get to job interviews, Johnson, a
personable 41-year old with a round, open face and long brown hair, told
MSNBC as she sat at a Charlotte Starbucks. She had just interviewed for
a part-time Post Office position—only 13 hours a week, but better than
nothing—a trip for which she’d borrowed the $9 from her sister to fill
up the tank.
“It’s hard,” Johnson said, her upbeat demeanor cracking as her eyes
welled with tears. “I know that I’m going to make it somehow, because
I’m determined to. But it would make it a lot easier if they had not
taken my benefits away.”
Terry Johnson, 41 at her home in Rockwell, NC
on Aug 23, 2013. Johnson lost her unemployment in July as a result of
recent North Carolina legislation and takes part is protests and
political rallies in the area. “They took the fight to my front door”
Says Johnson.
McCrony has said the cuts were needed to help pay back more
than $2.5 billion that the system had borrowed from the federal
government in order to cover benefits during the Great Recession, when
the jobless rate went as high as 11.3% in North Carolina. But by making
the cuts, the state was knowingly rejecting over $700 million in federal
money meant to be used for extended jobless benefits, the only state in
the country to reject the federal money. That’s because that aid is
contingent on a pledge by states not to cut benefits too sharply. Some 70,000, including Johnson, were cut off at the start of July.
Another 100,000 jobless North Carolinians are likely to lose benefits by
the end of the year thanks to the state’s rejection of the federal
money, the U.S. Department of Labor has estimated. George Wentworth, a
lawyer with the National Employment Law Project, has called the move
“the harshest unemployment insurance program cuts in our nation’s
history.”
Rather than despair, Johnson has fought back. Since her benefits were
cut, she’s begun volunteering with Moral Monday—motivated in part by
the impact on Coty.
“My son gets locked out of a lot of things because I don’t have a
job, and it’s not for lack of trying or qualifications,” she said.
“That’s why I go every Monday and fight.” “Will take women’s health over cookies”
To have a real chance of reversing the repugican agenda, the Moral
Monday movement will need to unseat McCrony and the repugican cabal legislature.
That’s a long-term goal, but already the protesters have done more
damage than many expected.
Approval ratings for McCrony, who faces re-election in 2016, have
tumbled: One poll earlier this month put him at 39%—up from 35% two
months earlier, but still a decline of 8 points over the last eight
months. Tom Jensen, who runs Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling
firm based in the state, said the Moral Monday protesters have played a
big role in that decline.
“I think they have really had an impact on the governor,” Jensen told
msnbc. “What the protesters have done is really draw attention to the
fact that, yes what the legislature’s doing is bad, but also the
governor is very much complicit in it.”
In short, the repugican cabal has turned
America’s 10th-largest state —traditionally known as a rare bastion of
southern moderation—into a massive testing ground for pure wingnut
ideology.
The repugican lawmakers, too, have taken a major hit. A year before
legislative elections, PPP shows Democratic candidates with a 2-point
edge—a massive swing from 2010 when the repugican cabal retook both the Assembly and
Senate by a ten-point margin.
The state Democratic party hasn’t been at the forefront of the Moral
Monday protests—in part by design—but even they say they’re seeing a
spike in enthusiasm from their supporters.
“We have activists calling up the party wanting to know how they can
get involved,” Robert Dempsey, the state party’s executive director,
told MSNBC. “This is normally the downtime, when we’re making our plans
and coming up with our strategy. People are engaged and they’re
enraged.”
Nowhere has Moral Monday been more effective at tarnishing McCrony’s image as a reasonable guy than on the issue of abortion.
In July, pro-choice protesters angry about the strict abortion bill
McCrony had signed the day before gathered outside the governor’s
mansion demanding a meeting. The bill, quietly inserted into a
motorcycle safety measure, was as far-reaching as the Texas law that
prompted Wendy Davis’ 13-hour filibuster in June.
It mandated that health officials come up with new rules to more
strictly regulate abortion clinics. Pro-choice advocates fear that could
result in the closure of all but one of the clinics operating before
the law was passed, or force them to raise hundreds of thousands of
dollars to meet the new standards, something few will be able to do. It
also eliminated healthcare coverage for abortions for city and county
employees—affecting tens of thousands of women, advocates say—and from
North Carolina’s health insurance exchange under Obamacare.
McCrony’s signature on the bill violated a clear campaign pledge not
to support further restrictions on abortion. But instead of sitting down
with the heavily-female group of protesters, he sent them cookies—which
were promptly returned untouched with a note that read: “Will take
women’s health over cookies.”
“An overwhelming majority of voters in the state thought McCrony’s
actions were inappropriate,” said Jensen, who polled on the incident.
“Even repugicans thought he was disrespectful.” A war on voting
The movement also has done major damage to voting rights. This
summer, the repugican cabal took advantage of the Supreme Court ruling that
invalidated Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—which had covered about
half of the state’s counties—to pass a “voting reform” measure that is
breathtakingly restrictive, even by the standards of the party’s recent
all-out effort to create barriers to the ballot box.
It requires voters to show a state-issued photo ID—despite the
state’s own numbers showing that 316,000 registered voters lack such an
ID—significantly cuts back early voting, ends same-day voter
registration, and eliminates a popular program that encouraged
high-school students to pre-register to vote. The law is so strict that
it could disenfranchise a 92-year old African-American woman who
outsmarted literacy tests and braved cross-burnings to vote in North
Carolina during Jim Crow, according to a lawsuit filed by the NAACP
challenging the measure. The U.S. Justice Department has also filed
suit.
Rev. Dr. William Barber II, president of the
North Carolina NAACP speaks to a crowd of thousands gathered in
Asheville, NC’s Pack Square Park during Mountain Moral Monday on Aug 5,
2013.
The repugicans tried hard to keep the focus on the law’s voter
ID requirement, which, in North Carolina as in much of the rest of the
country, is broadly popular. But the protesters quickly turned people
against the bill by highlighting the cutbacks to early voting and the
obstacles to registration, provisions which lacked even the fig-leaf
justification of stopping voter fraud. Barber called the law “the most
comprehensive attack on the right to vote that this state has enacted
since the institution of Jim Crow.”“What the protesters did was sort of create a greater level of
awareness that they’re going well beyond voter ID now,” said Jensen.
“You might think [voter ID] is a good idea, but do you really like all
this other stuff?”
By August, when McCrony signed the bill into law, just 39% of voters
backed it, PPP found. In his Heritage Foundation appearance, McCrony
blamed the media for the law’s unpopularity, saying its impact had been
exaggerated.
In the latest sign of backlash generated by the measure, the man
charged with defending the law in court, Attorney General Roy Cooper, a
Democrat, joined the chorus of criticism. In an op-ed Cooper, a
potential challenger to McCrony in 2016, called the law part of a repugican cabal
effort to “systematically undo 50 years of progress.”
It didn’t help the law’s cause when a local repugican official was
forced last month to resign after saying of the measure, in an interview
on The Daily Show: “If it hurts a bunch of lazy blacks that want the government to give them everything, so be it.” Rejecting Obamacare
The state’s anti-Obamacare stance, and its deep cuts to education,
have been additional spurs to action for some of those left out in the
cold.
Earlier this year, McCrony announced that North Carolina, like 23
other states, would reject the expansion of Medicaid created under the
law. He cited budget concerns, though the federal government would pay
the full cost of the program for the first three years, and more than
90% of the cost through 2020.
Paula Dinga at the Mountain Moral Mondays in
downtown Asheville on Aug. 5, 2013. Dinga, a teacher, came to protest NC
budget cuts for education. She says that all of the teachers that she
knows, including herself pay for school supplies out of their own
pocket.
Bethany Dalton, an unemployed single mother of two from
Asheville, was one of 387,000 currently uninsured North Carolinians who
would have been eligible for the expansion. Because of child support
payments, Dalton makes a little over the $544-a-month limit—or just
$6,528 a year—that North Carolina currently deems too rich for Medicaid,
she told msnbc. The expansion would essentially have raised that
eligibility threshold. Without it, she’ll continue to go uninsured as
she tries to improve her prospects by going back to school. Like Terry
Johnson, Dalton is now active with the Moral Monday movement.The state’s public school teachers, too, have been mobilized. The
budget passed by repugicans this summer contained over $500 million in
cuts to public education, on top of even bigger cuts that came in 2011,
the repugican cabal’s first year in control of the legislature.
Advocates for public education say it will mean layoffs for as many
as 5,000 teachers, bigger classes, less money for school supplies and
teacher assistant jobs, and no more supplemental pay for teachers to
pursue advanced degrees.
Paula Dinga, a teacher in Asheville who attended the protest, was one
of several educators who told msnbc they’re forced to buy school
supplies for their students.
“I always spend money out of my own pocket,” Dinga said. “Everybody I
know spends money out of their pocket. I provide crayons, markers,
notebooks, folders—anything a child needs.” “The fire’s going to grow and grow”
Despite the success that the protesters have had in damaging repugicans, no one expects the repugican cabal to lose control of either house in
next year’s election. The party’s 2010 victory allowed it to control the
state’s redistricting process the following year. The result: In 2012,
North Carolina repugicans won 54% of votes cast for state Senate
candidates, but over 64% of state Senate seats, giving them
super-majorities in both houses.
“This is one of the most severely gerrymandered states in the
country,” Chris Fitzsimon, the executive director of NC Policy Watch, a
progressive group based in Raleigh, told msnbc. “So they’re taking what
is a small electoral mandate and, because of the gerrymandering, turning
it into a radical restructuring of North Carolina.”
Wingnuts also have flooded the airwaves with outside money.
Three quarters of the spending by outside groups in state races in
2010 could be traced back to Art Pope, the multi-millionaire owner of a
discount-score conglomerate who has forged a reputation as a kind of
state-level Koch Brother. Backed by Pope—who now serves as McCrony’s top
budget adviser—the repugican cabal won both houses of the legislature in that
year’s tea party wave.
But North Carolinians have had enough.
“A big part of what this movement is doing that’s different from last
time is there’s an outlet to continue that beating down on McCrony and
the legislature in a way that there wasn’t two years ago,” Jensen
said—and compared the campaign to another recent grassroots protest
movement.
“The protesters are serving kind of a similar function for Democrats
in North Carolina to what the tea party did nationally for repugicans
in 2009 and 2010,” said Jensen. “Giving people a structure outside the
Democratic party to express their unhappiness with what’s going on.”
Barber, of the NAACP, seems to understand that the challenge will be
maintaining the current intensity into next fall and beyond.
“They say the fire’s going to go out by 2014,” he told the crowd in
Asheville. “But I don’t believe that. I believe the fire’s going to grow
and grow.”
Firedoglake obtained a copy of a two-page memo
[PDF] of talking points for family and friends that the NSA sent to
employees on November 22, so that spooks could rebut skeptical relatives
around the Thanksgiving table. It's full of misleading statistics and
outright falsehoods.
Thankfully, Firedoglake's Kevin Gosztola took the time to comprehensively rebut every point in the document, with extensive links to primary sources, Congressional testimony, and other significant facts.
No one knows what Jesus would do to feed today’s poor, hungry
Americans — but Faux News host Swill O’Really is pretty sure the christian
savior wouldn’t be “down with” giving them food stamps because it’s
“their fault.”
After Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) recently said that
Jesus “didn’t charge food stamps” in response to repugican efforts to
cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Pope
Francis called income inequality immoral, O’Really tried to set the record 'straight' with a segment about the “nanny state” on Tuesday.
The Faux News host acknowledged that christ would have fed the poor,
but objected to the idea that he would have “hurt” richer Americans to
help feed them.
“The
problem I have, as I stated is that you’re helping one group by hurting
another group and a bigger group, and so I don’t know if Jesus is going
to be down with that,” O’Really told Pentecostal agitator Joshua Dubois.
“jesus would be down for the poor,” Dubois pointed out. “He would
want to make sure every single person in this country had enough food to
eat. And the bottom line is if you add up every single private
charitable dollar that feeds hungry people in this country, it’s only 10
percent of what we would need to make sure everyone has food in their
stomachs. The rest comes from the federal government.”
“You’re making a powerful argument, but there is one huge mistake in
it,” O’Reialy opined. “And that is that some of the people who don’t
have enough to eat, it’s their fault they don’t have enough to eat.
Particularly with their children.
A school district in Georgia blasted Fau News on Tuesday and said
that they had been “terrorized” after one of the network’s radio hosts
falsely reported that Xtmas cards had been “confiscated.”
In a Tuesday report,
Faux News radio host Todd Starnes turned his daily outrage to
allegations that students at Brooklet Elementary School had returned
from the Thanksgiving holiday to find that the school’s administration
had decided to “confiscate the Xmas cards” that teachers had posted
outside classrooms.
Starnes branded the schools’ actions as “Xmas card censorship.”
Brooklet Principal Marlin Baker told WSAV that the “censorship” charge was just not true and that Starnes didn’t bother checking the facts before publishing his report.
“The decision to move the poster had nothing, absolutely nothing, at
all to do with any type of religious conversation that is going on in
the county,” Martin explained.
The principal said that the Xmas card poster had been moved to a
faculty work room in order to accommodate the privacy request of one
teacher.
Hempstead Independent School District (ISD) in Texas has confirmed
that a middle school principal has been placed on leave after Hispanic
students said that she forbid the entire school from speaking Spanish.
A group of students told KHOU
that Hempstead Middle School Principal Amy Lacey announced over the
intercom on Nov. 12 that they were no longer to use their native
language in order to “prevent disruptions.”
It was over two weeks later before the superintendent sent a letter
home insisting that “neither the district or any campus has any policy
prohibiting the speaking of Spanish.”
A family argument over boxed macaroni and cheese resulted in the arrest
of a 20-year-old South Carolina man who has been jailed for allegedly
battering his father.
Brian Rossi, 54, told sheriff’s deputies that he was “trying to make
some macaroni and cheese for dinner” when he “discovered that there was
only pasta and no more cheese packets” in the box.
After throwing out the pasta, Rossi told his son Alex to “stop using all of the cheese packets,” according to a Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office report.
After exchanging a few words with his father, Alex “ran after him and
began to punch him in the face and head.” The younger Rossi “eventually
took Brian to the ground and continued to hit him.”
When deputies arrived at the pair’s home, “Brian had a fresh laceration
beneath his left eye with bruising and swelling.”
During questioning, Alex reported that he and his father “were arguing
over macaroni and cheese,” adding that he “did punch Brian in the face,
but that Brian also punched him in the face.”
Alex, who had no visible injuries, was arrested for misdemeanor assault
and battery and booked into the county jail, where he is being held in
lieu of $1097 bond.
A Florida man is accused of stealing five video games and a single Band-Aid from a store.
24-year-old Jared David McCowen of DeFuniak Springs, was spotted by a
Walmart loss prevention employee going into the electronics department,
where he picked up five Xbox games, according to a Crestview Police
Department arrest report.
He then went to the toy department where he removed some of the games
from their packaging and placed the empty boxes on shelves. He continued
to the Garden Center, where he removed the other games from their
packaging.
Next, he walked to the Pharmacy where he picked out a box of Band-Aids, removed one from the box and put it on his finger,
then threw away the others. He left the store without paying for any of
the merchandise. When he was detained the games were found in his
pants’ pocket. He was charged with grand theft, a felony, and will make a
court appearance on Dec. 10.
A self-styled prophet from Harare, Zimbabwe was last week arrested at a
roadblock on the outskirts of Gweru after he was found in possession of a
suspected goblin during a police security check.
The incident occurred when police mounting a roadblock stopped a bus, in
which the prophet, Honest Mafa (24) of Budiriro high-density suburb was traveling in, for security checks.
It was during the search that police discovered a strange creature in
Mafa’s satchel which was suspected to be a goblin. According to
eyewitnesses, the creature had a human like physical appearance wearing a
small red dress with artificial hair.
An Indian postal worker who was
accused of stealing less than $1 in 1984, has been cleared by a court
after
nearly 350 court hearings over 29 years. Umakant Mishra was suspended
from his job after being charged with fraud when
57 rupees and 60 paise (92 cents; 56 pence) went missing in his post
office. Mr Mishra said that the battle to clear his name reduced him to
penury and his family would have starved if not for his relatives.
Mr Mishra's troubles began on 23 July 1984 when he worked in a post-office in
the Harjinder Nagar area of Kanpur city in the northern state of Uttar
Pradesh. "I was given 697 rupees and 60 paise ($11.19; £6.83) which the post-office
had received as money orders and I had to distribute it. I distributed 300
rupees and in the evening deposited the rest with a senior official," Mr Mishra
says.
When the refund was checked, it was found to be short by 57 rupees and 60
paise (56 pence, 92 cents;). "I was charged with fraud. I was suspended from my services and a complaint
was lodged with the police." Mr Mishra was jailed briefly and although he was freed on bail shortly
afterwards, his long legal battle had started. "I was summoned 348 times by the court. Initially I had to sell my house in
Kanpur, then I had to sell my agricultural land in Hardoi district. I went
bankrupt."
He did various odd jobs to support his family and fight the legal battle and
says he was helped by his relatives who "helped me and provided me with
shelter". He was absolved of all charges last week after the prosecution could not
produce any witnesses in the case. "I was suspended when I was in my 30s. Now that I have been absolved, I
should be compensated. I should get all the money that is due to me," he
says.
A dog may be man's best friend but left to roam inside a car it could
turn out to be your worst enemy in a crash. Unrestrained pets or faulty
restraints are turning dogs into potential killers, say safety
researchers in Australia.
The National Roads and Motorists' Association has tested some of the most common dog car harnesses and found many don't work.
At a collision demonstration in Sydney, the motoring lobby's head
researcher Robert McDonald warned pet owners to avoid restraints with
plastic clips around the animal's chest and those that restrain by the
neck.
He said the 40 per cent of motorists surveyed who admitted to driving with an unrestrained dog were putting their pets and themselves in serious danger.
If the dog hits the back of the driver's seat, it could push you into
the steering wheel when the airbag goes off, he said. "The dog itself
could collide with the side of your head, going past the seat on the way
to the dash."
Glass has been around a long time. Naturally occurring obsidian glass
has been used in human tools since the Stone Age. The first true glass
was produced around 3,000 BC in Northern Syria. In South Asia, glasswork
was used beginning around 1730 BC.
The ancient Romans were particularly well-known for their glasswork,
which was used both domestically and industrially. They developed the
technique of glassblowing, which was used to make wine bottles. It’s no surprise, then, that the term 'glass' was first used by the Romans.
Normally, nettles are associated with that nasty sting that they give
you should you be foolhardy enough to examine them with bare hands or
unfortunate enough to have a brother or sister willful enough to want to
push you in to them.
However, they have many more uses than a tool in the escalation into
nastiness of sibling rivalry. So, what exactly can you do with nettles when you are bored?
A boy in a coma can keep his best friend - an American Staffordshire
Terrier - after Berlin authorities who said she was too dangerous to
stay at his side were hit by a huge public reaction. Loyal pet Tascha
has visited 10-year-old Dylan, who has been in a vegetative state since
birth, regularly for six years.
Her presence seems to have a calming effect on Dylan, who is kept alive
by life support machines, father Eckhard Gerzmehle says. Her family
bought her when they were living in Berlin but soon moved to Brandenburg
where the breed is considered dangerous and not allowed. Authorities
threatened to take Tascha away, which the family said would be
devastating for Dylan. The dog had bitten another dog while out on a
walk.
But a social media campaign built up momentum thanks to fireman Jürgen Töpfer who set up a Facebook group which
attracted more than 200,000 likes. Brandenburg authorities agreed to
meet the family to talk about how they might be able to keep the dog. To
get around the fact that Tascha's breed is not allowed to be kept as a
pet in Brandenburg, authorities have allowed the family to de-register her in that state and re-register her in Berlin, where Staffordshire Terriers are allowed.
She is now in the process of undergoing training as a therapy and
companion dog for disabled people. She has already had three lessons and
is doing well. “We are so happy and thankful, also for the support,”
said Dylan's parents after the meeting, referring to the hundreds of
thousands of people who showed solidarity with them online.
French dog-lovers are being warned by veterinarians that favorite Xtmas foods like foie gras, smoked salmon and dark chocolate are for
human consumption only, and can do serious damage to our four-legged
friends.
Veterinarians, have made a public call for French animal-lovers, and
dog-owners in particular, to resist the temptation to share their Xmas treats and French delicacies with their furry friends.
Foie gras, the French Xmas delicacy par excellence, should be
restricted to human consumption, said Laurent Gouardo, an emergency
veterinarian at the Maisons-Afort veterinary school near Paris.
“At Xmas, I treat a lot of pancreatitis – a large inflammation of the pancreas caused by consumption of foie gras,
but also by intoxication from garlic, onion and grapes,” he said.
Likewise, the high salt content in smoked salmon and ham – traditionally
served over Xtmas in France – means they should be kept away from
Fido, warned Gouardo.
“We decided we'll go out there and see if we can find it and kind of
report back to the people that were making all the posts,” James said.
The owners of Medcity Hovercraft,
the pair took two hovercrafts out on the partially frozen lake and soon
found three deer stranded more than a quarter mile from shore. “They
weren't actually stuck in the ice, it was just so slippery that they
just couldn't get their footing,” James said. “It looked like one of the
deer actually came closer to us. It just seemed like he knew we were
there to help."
They quickly came up with a plan. “We just tied some rope to the deer
the best way that we could without hurting them and we ended up just
dragging them to the nearest shoreline,” James said. “At that point you
could tell the deer were really exhausted. They'd been out there a
couple days." One of the deer ran off quickly while the others struggled
to regain their strength. But the Kenisons said the rescue was only
made possible because of their versatile hovercrafts, which can travel
on land, water, and of course, ice.
“They're a good tool, especially in situations like this where the ice,
you're just not sure if it's thick enough,” James said. “We basically
had the equipment so we just said why not?" Taking the daring rescue in
stride, the Kenisons said they were just happy to help.
“There’s definitely people out there that their hearts were going out
to these deer,” James said. “And just knowing that I have a hovercraft
and it would take me nothing to get out there, I just felt like I can't
do nothing."
The red squirrel population in the UK, long on the brink of complete
destruction, has shown signs of resistance to a deadly poxvirus which
has killed hundreds of thousands of them over the decades.
A study in an area of Merseyside in the North East of England has shown
that around 10 percent of the population there now carry squirrelpox
antibodies in their bloodstream. The antibodies, which enable the squirrels
and their descendants to respond to the virus also indicate that a
number of the animals have had the disease but have recovered.
Today is - National Cotton Candy Day
