Mexican-American kid sings the national anthem, ticks off racists

11 year old Mexican-American mariachi singer Sebastien De La Cruz, a San Antonio, Texas native, sang the national anthem during the NBA finals Tuesday night.And boy were the Twitter racists up in arms.

Sebastien De La Cruz, singing the national anthem at the NBA finals.

“Public Shaming,” a Tumblr page, pulled together a number of the worst examples.
They include:

So much wrong with this. First off, the kid’s American. Born and raised in San Antonio. His father was in the US Navy.  I think that qualifies are purty Amurikan.
But let’s pretend for a moment that he were an immigrant.  And?  We don’t want immigrants embracing American culture?  Really?  I thought that was one of the concerns some people had about Latino immigration in particular, that perhaps Latino immigrants weren’t learning the language and “becoming American enough.”  Well, if that’s the concern, you can’t get more American than singing the freaking Star Spangled Banner at a basketball game.  Ironically, Sebastien De La Cruz is doing exactly what these freaks want, embracing his American-ness (which isn’t very difficult because he’s, you know, American).
Sebastien was interviewed by a local San Antonio station and had this to say about the brouhaha:

“They don’t know my life,” the young singer told Fox. “My father was actually in the navy for a pretty long time, and I actually salute him today for that. I just wanna thank him and to be able to sing the national anthem. People don’t know, they just assume that I’m just Mexican. But I’m not from Mexico, I’m from San Antonio, born and raised. True San Antonio Spurs fan.”

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Hypocritical ... Again

From Daily Kos...

Hard-right fiscal hawk Tim Huelskamp finds some pork he likes

"When I say government spends too much money, I mean in other people's districts."

Sure is funny how all this "fiscal responsibility" stuff gets drop-kicked from the top of the Rotunda when the crazy sequester hawks are talking about their own districts:

    Tim Huelskamp of Kansas has been one of the most vocal tea-party-backed conservatives in the House, but his calls to shrink the size of government didn't apply when it came to bringing a new Department of Homeland Security lab to his district.

    About $404 million for construction of the lab in Manhattan, Kan., was included in the fiscal 2014 Homeland Security bill (HR 2217) that the House passed this week; Huelskamp and other Kansas Republicans fought back attempts to drop the funding from the bill and keep the veterinary research facility at a site on Long Island, N.Y.

The veterinary lab will be a windfall for his district, which is of course why he's demanding it now as he makes a name for himself elsewhere as one of the most stubborn hard-right conservatives out there; even the Paul Ryan budget wasn't cutty-stabby enough for him. Now that we're talking about researching literal pork, though, it isn't pork.

The wingnuts Get Desperate With Claim That Obamacare Will Result In Fewer Doctors

Who can forget the great (descriptor used with healthy dose of irony) health care reform debate of summer 2009? In a historic low point for American discourse, crazed tea party crackpots and others situated on the extreme right side of the political spectrum attempted to derail the eventual passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) by any means they deemed necessary.  These efforts included the sensational and oft-repeated claim that group of government drones would render service decisions that could theoretically result in the arbitrary deaths of American citizens. It is still hard to recall the death panel “conversation” without overt queasiness.
Having failed to gain traction for the propaganda outside the usual circle of tinfoil hat wearing paranoids, the right then sought to take the wind out of the act’s sails by senselessly voting for its repeal in the House no less than 37 times. These “symbolic” gestures have been an epic waste of taxpayer resources even as issues related to consistently high unemployment, infrastructure dissolution and climate change languish.
Then the repugican cabal apparatus tried a new tactic, espousing the dire warning that Obamacare would bring the country to financial ruin, ruin I say! The folks who spread this disingenuous swill would have loved us to forget that Wall Street already tied its hand at that last decade. But instead of repugican howls for accountability at the time, we received cynical claims that further deregulation was the solution. That’s just what an alcoholic needs: increased access to spirits.
And then, oops! As Obamacare began to become the law of the land, we experienced a marked slowdown in health care costs. In even worse news for right wing agenda, the reversal may be permanent if the economy continues to grow. Better get back to that middle class job killing stat! I am certain repugican cabal opposition to raising the Federal minimum wage is just a coincidence.
Having dispatched the more obvious objections to Obamacare with amazing speed in this era of legislative inertia, the right is launching a new scare tactic. Designed to divert attention away from the fact that health care reform is already working to relieve budgetary strain while increasing access to health insurance for Americans previously locked out, the wingnut media apparatus would now have us believe that a doctor shortage is the next danger.
The Wall St. Cheat Sheet ran an article this week with a rhetorical question for a headline: Does Obamacare Mean Fewer Doctors and Less Accessible Healthcare? Note to wingnut pundits: the inclusion of a question mark at the end of a provocative headline is a dead giveaway that what we are about to read is not solid analysis, but rather a rudimentary attempt to plant an idea. This is NOT journalism.
But I digress. Among the more flimsy evidence writer Meghan Foley offers is data from a “Physicians Foundation survey of 13,000 doctors [which] discovered that 60 percent of respondents would retire today if they could, an increase from 45 percent who gave the same answer before the legislation was passed.”
Here’s an idea. Perhaps those doctors who wish they could retire are among the throngs of Baby Boomers who, having lost savings, pensions, jobs and homes in the housing bubble burst and financial crash of 2008, can no longer afford to do so. How in the world is this survey direct evidence of Obamacare creating a doctor shortage? To suggest that other factors may be at play could be the understatement of my professional writing career.
I give the right’s media arm credit for Playskool Weeble-like resiliency, but the arguments and objections against implementing reform are becoming more pathetically desperate. If the repugican cabal and its voices are the “true patriots” they often claim to be, how about getting behind a law that was passed democratically and which is already demonstrating significant benefits with regard to the finances and security of the nation and its denizens. Give it up already.

Whack-job Pol

From the "You guessed it - a fucking repugican" Department:

Millionaire repugican Congressmen Are Trying to Cut $20 Billion In Food Stamps For the Poor

As 26 House Democrats take the Food Stamp Challenge, prominent millionaire repugican congressmen are poised to pass a bill that would cut $20 billion from the food stamp program.
Twenty six House Democrats are trying feed themselves on $31.50 for an entire week. Most of them realized very quickly that $1.50 per meal doesn’t go very far.
Rep. Hank Johnson (r-GA) appeared on MSNBC’s Politics Nation to discuss his experience so far.
Video:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rep. Johnson explained how little $31.50 actually bought. He detailed his diet for the week. Johnson said that he would only be eating two meals a day. His meat for the day will be bacon. He got lucky, and found a buy one get one free sale. He also will subsist on oatmeal, Ramen noodles, hot dogs, waffles, syrup, bananas, and he “splurged” on some tea.
Rep. Johnson said that repugicans would never pass these cuts if they had to live on $31.50 a week, but, “The problem is that we have so many millionaires on the other side of the aisle that they will never have to worry about where their next meal is coming from, or trying to stretch dollars so that they can eat for the period of time that they have the finances to pay for.”
According to the Fiscal Times, congressional repugicans are arguing that the food stamp program is corrupt, “But many congressional repugicans and wingnut groups believe that food stamp spending is out of control and ripe with corruption – and that it needs to be reined in to reduce the deficit. These critics say a once relatively modest social safety net has grown into a costly grab bag for down-on-their-luck middle-class Americans, college students looking for free pizza and junk food and countless others who game the system.”
This isn’t even close to the truth.
Look at who is really on food stamps:

It not college students, but children who make up the largest group of food stamp recipients.
When repugicans want to talk about social safety net programs they always fall back on some version of Ronald Reagan’s rich, black, Chicago welfare queen, but the truth is white people are the largest racial group of food stamp recipients.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that two of the House repugicans who are pushing the hardest for these cuts are millionaires Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor. Over the course of the past year, both of these men have referred to cutting food for the poor as common sense.
The repugicans like Cantor and Ryan claim to be opposed to these programs because they create a “culture of dependency,” but what they don’t tell you is that they support a different culture of dependency. The difference is that repugicans want the poor to be dependent on Wal-Mart for a job. They want to make sure that there is no safety net for anyone, so that the non-rich are serfs and servants who serve at the whim of the wealthy and corporations. The repugicans aren’t opposed to dependency. Their problem is that programs like unemployment insurance and SNAP offer people help, so that they aren’t working for pennies a day while hoping a billionaire is generous and pays them enough to feed themselves.
There is a war on the poor happening right now, and the bad news is that the poor are losing.

It's Grillin' Season

And Here's 7 Old Wives' Tales About Cooking Steak That Need To Go Away

Should you let a thick steak rest at room temperature before you cook it? Should you flip your steak only once? Can you use a fork to turn your steak? Serious Eats puts to rest seven of the most stubborn myths about grilling steaks.

Grocers allege potato group pumped up spud prices

A U.S. wholesale grocer says America's potato farmers have run an illegal price-fixing cartel for a decade, driving up spud prices while spying on farmers with satellites and aircraft fly-overs to enforce strict limits on how many tubers they can grow.

Kansas-based Associated Wholesale Grocers' lawsuit against United Potato Growers of America and two dozen other defendants was shifted this week to U.S. District Court in Idaho, America's top potato-producing state at 30 percent of the nation's supply.

The grocery group, a cooperative which supplies more than 2,000 stores including IGA, Thriftway and Price Chopper in 24 states, contends that the potato growers banded together in 2004 to illegally inflate prices in a scheme akin to the petroleum-producing OPEC cartel, reducing planting acreages and destroying potatoes, all to restrict what was available for sale.

"UPGA utilized predatory conduct and coercive conduct in ensuring compliance with the price-fixing scheme," according to the lawsuit, which charges tactics including use of "satellite imagery, fly-overs, GPS systems, and other methods to enforce its agreement to reduce potato supply."

The grocers are asking for triple damages, likely in the millions, and are focusing on growers of fresh potato varieties found in big bags in supermarket produce aisles, as well as potatoes that are processed into golden fries, tater-tots and other products and sold in freezer sections of the group's stores.

United Potato Growers of America has organized growers in 15 states —it has members in Alaska, California, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin, representing three-quarters of the nation's fresh potato production.

Dell Raybould, an owner of Raybould Farms and a Republican state representative, is a member of the co-op and has also been named in the lawsuit. He insisted on Thursday that those who set up the group in 2004 followed federal anti-trust laws.

Raybould, who grows Russet Burbanks and Norkotah Russets on 850 acres near Rexburg in Idaho's far east, paints a bleak picture of spud farming prior to 2004: A haphazard industry where farmers inevitably grew too many tubers, pushing prices into the cellar.

"I can remember when people hauled their potatoes out in the field with the manure spreader, dumped them and plowed them under," said Raybould, who has been growing potatoes since 1953. "They did try to level out production, so we didn't have the boom and bust thing all the time. And when they did the co-op, they went about this the right way. They got the best co-op attorney in the nation, and they did it right."

United Potato Growers of America's Salt Lake City-based attorney, Randon Wilson, contends that his group is shielded by the Capper-Volstead Act, the 1922 federal law that under some circumstances exempts agricultural cooperatives from antitrust regulations.

"Right from the beginning, we did everything right, to qualify for Capper-Volstead," Wilson said. "We know what you have to do to qualify for that limited exemption and we followed all those rules."

However, Associated Wholesale Grocers says the growers illegally sought to boost costs of America's most-popular vegetable.

At secret meetings in Idaho Falls, according to the complaint, big Idaho potato growers like Albert Wada and members of the Raybould family, as well as North Dakota ag-multimillionaire Ronald Offutt, worked with Wilson to hatch a far-reaching price-fixing scheme, creating a powerful agricultural juggernaut capable of squeezing customers like grocery stores.

"None of the defendants... is entitled to the limited protections found in the Capper-Volstead Act for their efforts to restrict potato supply and fix prices," wrote Patrick J. Stueve, the grocer's lawyer in Kansas City. "

Stueve didn't return phone calls, but his basic contention — that Capper-Volstead is being abused to illegally inflate potato prices — has emerged in numerous, commodity-related lawsuits in the last decade, said Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin Law School professor in Madison who focuses on antitrust cases.

"It's because there's an increasing perception that Capper-Volstead is being abused," he said.

For instance, a similar lawsuit filed in 2010 targeting potato growers is now advancing through federal court in Idaho, a case that may eventually be combined with this one.

Meanwhile, other groups including the U.S. Department of Justice have lodged antitrust complaints against mushroom growers, dairy farmers, egg producers and cranberries. Carstensen said a common gulf separates rival protagonists.

Large agricultural producers argue they're using the power of the cooperative to create a more efficient market, he said, while "the other side is saying 'No'... what you're doing is outside the scope of authorized conduct."

Federal prosecutors aren't involved in this latest litigation, but the DOJ has pushed recently to re-examine how large, modern agricultural cooperatives are using the Capper-Volstead Act, including holding workshops with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to scrutinize competition in the farming business.

How refusing a $0.50 parking validation cost a bank a $1M depositor

In 1989, a bank-teller at the Old National Bank in Spokane, WA refused to validate the $0.50 parking stub of a shabbily dressed man who'd come in to cash a check. That shabbily dressed man was John Barrier, a 30-year customer of the bank with more than $1 million on deposit; which he promptly withdrew and took to Seafirst Bank, down the street.

Real Job Opening: Court Jester

Can you play the fool and entertain royalty? A hotel in Vienna may have a job for you:

It's no joke. An Austrian hotel is advertising for a modern-day court fool, who is communicative, extroverted, musical, creative and imaginative.
Applicants are asked to bring — and play — their musical instrument during the job interview. Also welcome: creative costumes. The successful candidate will earn 1,400 euros — around $1,900 — a month.
Hotel director Melanie Franke says those interested should not think they're on a fool's errand in applying. She says the idea is to treat guests like royalty, noting that "jesters were a luxury that royal families indulged themselves in."

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THE NAVY WILL NO LONGER COMMUNICATE IN ALL CAPS

NOW HEAR THIS: THE U.S. NAVY WILL NO LONGER COMMUNICATE EXCLUSIVELY IN ALL CAPS.
THE TRADITION OF USING ALL CAPITAL LETTERS IS A LEGACY OF TELETYPE MACHINES OF 1850S THAT LACK LOWERCASE LETTERS. OFFICIAL NAVY COMMUNICATIONS AND ORDERS HAVE BEEN TYPED OUT IN ALL-CAPS SINCE THE 19TH CENTURY, BUT YOUNGER SAILORS SEE IT AS RUDE.
“WHILE THIS DECISION WAS MADE TO SAVE MONEY AND GAIN EFFICIENCIES, IF AN ANCILLARY BENEFIT IS THAT SAILORS READING MESSAGE TRAFFIC NO LONGER FEEL THEY’RE BEING SCREAMED AT…THAT’S A GOOD THING TOO,” SAID A NAVY OFFICIAL.
IRONICALLY, THE ORDER WAS - YOU GUESSED IT - WRITTEN OUT IN ALL CAPS.

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Accused bank robber wants NSA phone records for his defense

Defense lawyers for Terrance Brown, a south Florida man facing bank robbery charges, have asked for NSA mobile phone surveillance records to be supplied in order to support his claim that he was not in the vicinity of the bank at the time it was robbed. He's referring to the leaked court order revealing that the NSA requires American phone companies to turn over the complete records of all their calls, including the location data about the callers.

The prosecution had told defense attorneys that they were unable to obtain Brown's cellphone records from the period before September 2010 because his carrier, MetroPCS, had not held on to them.
Not so fast, Brown's attorney Marshall Dore Louis argued in court documents filed in Fort Lauderdale days after the National Security Agency surveillance program was revealed last week...
...Louis argued in court Wednesday that the government should be forced to turn over phone location records for two cellphones Brown may have used because it could prove he was not present for one of the attempted bank robberies, on July 26 on Federal Highway in Lighthouse Point.
"The president of the United States has recognized this program has been ongoing since 2006 … to gather the phone numbers [and related information] of everybody including my client in 2010," Louis said.

Bank robbery suspect wants NSA phone records for his defense

Police officer's flatulence led to discovery of cannabis factory

Officers from Leicestershire Police burglary team were waiting on a suspect to arrest; three members of the team were in one car at the end of a street, two in the front and one in the back.
The officer in the back enjoyed a high protein diet, and suffering with flatulence. The officers in the front seats of the car were forced to wind down the windows.

On doing so the officers smelled what they thought was cannabis. They asked their colleague in the back what he had been eating, and after fits of giggles and denials, they realized that the cannabis smell was in the air in the street outside.

All three officers’ suspicions were now raised, and they left the car to get some fresh air and find the cause of the cannabis smell. 200 meters further along the road the officers, following their noses, found a cannabis factory with a crop worth £12,000. Seven people were arrested, leading to a further seizure from another house nearby.

Saudi Arabian activists search for people behind duct taping child to wall

Saudi Arabian activists have expressed disdain over a picture that shows a young child plastered against a wall with duct tape while an adult man sleeps on a couch underneath him “smiling.”

Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Commission has urged citizens to cooperate with their search for the those behind the incident. The commission said the perpetrators should be punished for violating the child’s human rights.

Maatouq Al-Sharif, member of the commission, said: “what happened to the child is violation of his right, and this is a criminal offence.” Sharif said people need to be “deterred” so scenarios like this won’t be repeated again. “Such behaviour has an impact on the child’s personality. This also promotes the culture of violence against children.”

While the child in the picture appeared to be happy, Sharif said, “the child has no power to defend himself, and there is a penalty for such acts even if it isn’t known to Saudis that such deeds are punishable. Parents do not own their children. Children have human rights, ” he said as he stated that Saudi Arabia signed a treaty to protect the rights of children.

Chinese man arrested for making rubber alien

As proof of extraterrestrial life, one Chinese man's crudely built rubber alien, stashed in a chest freezer in his garage, was rather unconvincing. Shortly after he proudly posted photographs of his alien on the internet, the farmer, named only as Mr Li, was arrested by the police for five days for "fabrications" that "disturbed the public order".

Mr Li was forced to admit that he had indeed sought to use his model, held together with chicken wire and glue, to mislead his fellow Chinese about the existence of celestial creatures. Initially, Mr Li had posted his close encounter on a Chinese website, together with a shaggy dog story about how he had captured the alien while setting traps for rabbits.

"I was setting an electric trap for rabbits by the Yellow river when I saw a bright light," he said. "Above my bike, a UFO was floating. One by one, five aliens came down, but one of them stumbled into one of my rabbit traps and was electrocuted. The others went back into their ship and flew away."

However after his post went viral, the Chinese authorities moved quickly to limit the effect it might have on the extremely gullible. Not only was Mr Li's initial post deleted, but the police soon arrived to arrest him. "After the police interrogated me, I confessed I was a fan of UFOs and the alien was a fake. I just wanted other people to believe that aliens existed," he said.

One-Armed Woman Wins Miss Iowa Competition

23-year old Nicole Kelly is the new Miss Iowa. She was born without a left forearm, but she's never let it get in the way of her ambitions. She writes:

I was born without my left forearm. (Although, when people ask me what happened to my arm, I like to ask, "Well, what do you think happened?" My favorite explanation to date has been that it was bitten off by a shark…a perfect explanation for someone from Iowa.) As I grew older, I learned to offset the initial stares I received from people with an outgoing personality that would not give in to "No." This meant that I tried everything! From baseball, to dance to diving, there was nothing I would not try. I found my passion within a world where I was giving people permission to stare…the stage. 

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Flying bicycle makes successful test flight

Dodging buses and cars in the morning rush hour could be a thing of the past for the hard-done-by cyclist thanks to a new invention by a group of bicycle boffins.

Three companies in the Czech Republic have teamed up to make a prototype of an electric bicycle that is capable of flying. The machine is controlled remotely while in development but its designers hope to have it capable of carrying people soon.

They also hope battery technology will advance enough to improve the five-minute flights it is capable of performing and make the invention marketable.

YouTube link.

Looking like a heavy mountain bike, it has two propellers in the front, other two in the back and one on each side. Its six engines are powered by batteries. "Because the capacity of batteries doubles about every 10 years, we can expect that in the future the capacity would be enough for the bike to used for sports, tourism or similar things," said Milan Duchek, the technical director of Duratec Bicycles.

How Your Brain Completes Shapes

The human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts, suggesting the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Your brain completes shapes based on prior information. You don't see dots, you see a dog.

Are Beer Bellies A Myth?

Are beer bellies a myth? Well, beer drinkers, rejoice - yes, the beer belly is a myth. The main source of calories in any alcoholic beverage is alcohol. There's nothing magical about the alcohol in beer, it's just alcohol," says Charles Bamforth, a professor of food science and technology at the University of California Davis.

The myth might result from the notion that beer drinkers take in more calories. A bottle of beer is typically 12 ounces while a glass of wine is typically 5 ounces.

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Andromeda: My God, It's Full of Black Holes

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Toboggan Tracks on Mars?

Sledding slabs of dry ice, not seeping water, may be the cause of some very peculiar seasonal features on Mars.

The Secrets of 'Deep-Diving' Mammals

Deep-diving mammals' secret revealed

Study solves the mystery of one of the most extreme adaptations in the animal kingdom: how marine mammals store enough oxygen to hold their breath for up to an hour.

• Whale 'makes human-like sounds'
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Guide dog in training hailed a hero after alerting handlers to out of control car on sidewalk

Guide dogs are often called life changers by the visually impaired, but there is one Guide Dog for the Blind that is being called a life saver after he alerted his handlers of a potentially disastrous situation this week in San Rafael, California. A yellow Labrador named O'Neil was the first to notice a car driving backwards down a sidewalk on Monday morning.

His turn alerted trainers Todd Jurek and Danielle Alvarado of the danger and they quickly ran around the corner and were narrowly missed by the careering car. Guide Dogs said Jurek and Alvarado were assessing O'Neil to see if he was ready to be assigned to a blind person. "So I think O’Neil heard the wheels come upon the kerb, so he heard that before I did,” Jurek said.

Surveillance video captured the near miss. It shows the three walking down Fourth Street when the dog looks back first to see the car. That turn alerted the group who quickly ran around the corner. They just made it safety ahead of the out of control car. The driver continued across the street and crashed into a storefront. Luckily no one was hurt. Police said the driver was a 93-year-old woman who appears to have had a major parking mishap.

YouTube link. Raw multi-camera video.

"Her driving abilities are in question, so more than likely we'll be asking that she be re-examined by the department of motor vehicles," said San Rafael Police spokeswoman Margot Rohrbacher. "It really was a miracle that nobody was injured." No doubt Jurek's quick action saved potential injuries or even death, but he credited O'Neill as well. "He kind of turned around and was in this mode of 'We got to do something!'" said Jurek. "He was going to do something, but then I interacted." Jurek said O'Neill passed his field training test with flying colors and will likely be graduating in two or three weeks before being matched with a blind client.

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Today in History

1381   The Peasant's Revolt, led by Wat Tyler, climaxes when rebels plunder and burn the Tower of London and kill the Archbishop of Canterbury.  
1642   Massachusetts passes the first compulsory education law in the colonies.
1645   Oliver Cromwell's army routs the king's army at Naseby.  
1775   The U.S. Army is founded when the Continental Congress authorizes the muster of troops.  
1777   The Continental Congress authorizes the "stars and stripes" flag for the new United States.
1789   Captain William Bligh of the HMS Bounty arrives in Timor in a small boat. He had been forced to leave his ship when his crew mutinied.
1846   A group of settlers declare California to be a republic.  
1864   At the Battle of Pine Mountain, Georgia, Confederate General Leonidas Polk is killed by a Union shell.  
1893   The city of Philadelphia observes the first Flag Day.  
1907   Women in Norway win the right to vote.  
1919   John William Alcot and Arthur Witten Brown take off from St. John's, Newfoundland, for Clifden, Ireland, on the first nonstop transatlantic flight.  
1922   President Warren G. Harding becomes the first president to speak on the radio.  
1927   Nicaraguan President Porfirio Diaz signs a treaty with the U.S. allowing American intervention in his country.  
1932   Representative Edward Eslick dies on the floor of the House of Representatives while pleading for the passage of the bonus bill.  
1940   German forces occupy Paris.  
1942   The Supreme Court rules that requiring students to salute the American flag is unconstitutional.  
1944   Boeing B-29 bombers conduct their first raid against mainland Japan. 1945   Burma is liberated by the British.  
1949   The State of Vietnam is formed.  
1951   UNIVAC, the first computer built for commercial purposes, is demonstrated in Philadelphia by Dr. John W. Mauchly and J. Prosper Eckert, Jr.  
1954   Americans take part in the first nation-wide civil defense test against atomic attack.  
1965   A military triumvirate takes control in Saigon, South Vietnam.  
1982   Argentina surrenders to the United Kingdom ending the Falkland Islands War.
 1985   Gunmen hijack a passenger jet over the Middle East.  
1989   Congressman William Gray, an African American, is elected Democratic Whip of the House of Representatives.  
1995   Chechen rebels take 2,000 people hostage in a hospital in Russia.

Non Sequitur

In Alberta, toxic waste spill may be biggest of all recent disasters in North America

A leak in Northern Alberta involving at least 9.5 million liters of toxic waste from an oil and gas operation is the third major leak in a region where "residents are now questioning whether enough is being done to maintain aging energy infrastructure." I'm gonna go with no. The spill was first detected June 1, but only Wednesday did Houston, TX-based operator Apache Corporation release an estimate of the leak's size.

“Every plant and tree died” in the area touched by the spill, said James Ahnassay, chief of the Dene Tha First Nation, whose members run traplines in an area that has seen oil and gas development since the 1950s.

Did you know ...

That Mozilla, ACLU, Greenpeace and over 80 other organizations protest u.s. surveillance programs

That Denver is the mile-high city, and we do mean high

That the NY legislature introduces bill to reinstate lever voting machines

That bank lobbyists help draft financial laws

Reality is ...

Whiny rural Colorado repugicans demand secession

From Daily Kos

Why do repugicans hate democracy?

    Weld County's bid to divorce Colorado and form its own state is a powerful rebuke of Front Range interests that no longer align with rural parts of the state, supporters of the idea say.

    "The people of rural Colorado are mad, and they have every right to be," said U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, a repugican from Yuma. "The governor and his Democrat colleagues in the statehouse have assaulted our way of life, and I don't blame these people one bit for feeling attacked and unrepresented by the leaders of our state."

    The plan to carve off the northeastern corner of the state - Weld, Morgan, Logan, Sedgwick, Phillips, Washington, Yuma and Kit Carson counties - and form the state of North Colorado was hatched at a Colorado Counties Inc. conference earlier this week, Weld County spokeswoman Jennifer Finch said.

This scheme doesn't stand a chance, obviously. It just points to what happens when conservatives don't get their way-they stomp and pout and whine, and then they start looking for ways to subvert our democracy.

List the three presidents who harmed America the most

That was easy. 

Next question ...

The repugican Myth That Rape Rarely Causes Pregnancy Comes From Nazi Experiments

by Emily Bazelon

Rep. Trent Franks

I don’t understand why repugicans continue to offer up headlines like “repugican congressman: Rate of pregnancies from rape is ‘very low.’ ” It is terrible politics for them to focus the public’s attention on their justification for the fact that they don’t support an exception to abortion bans for rape victims. The view doesn’t have anything like majority support, and they come off as heartless, ignorant scolds. If I were an anti-abortion activist, I’d want to muzzle these people. But they are irrepressible. At a congressional hearing Wednesday, Rep. Trent Franks, a repugican from Arizona, argued against an exception for rape and incest victims from a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. He said, “Before, when my friends on the left side of the aisle here tried to make rape and incest the subject—because, you know, the incidence of rape resulting in pregnancy are very low.” He is of course following in the footsteps of former Rep. Todd Akin of Missouri, who said that women can stave off pregnancy after a “legitimate rape.” (He apologized but that didn’t save him from losing his next election.)

These claims are false, of course, or as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists puts it, “medically inaccurate, offensive, and dangerous.” That is not all that’s wrong with the claims. They originate with Nazi experiments on women in concentration camps. Here’s what I wrote about this last November

“In the aftermath of Akin’s statement, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported on a 1972 essay by an obstetrician named Fred Mecklenburg, who cited a Nazi experiment in which women were told they were on their way to die in the gas chambers—and then were allowed to live, so that doctors could check whether they would still ovulate. Since few did, Mecklenburg claimed that women exposed to the emotional trauma of rape wouldn’t be able to become pregnant, either. (He also argued that rapists are infertile because they masturbate a lot.) The essay was published in a book financed by A.U.L.”

A.U.L. is Americans United for Life, a pro-life advocacy group with increasing clout because of its success in drafting model state laws to restrict abortion. The line from the Nazis to Mecklenburg to Akin and Franks runs through Jack Wilke, a doctor who is the former head of the National Right to Life Committee. He said, "What is certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma." And he stuck with this when the Los Angeles Times called to ask him about Akin last year. When I asked A.U.L. head Charmaine Yoest about the claim that rape rarely results in pregnancy, she was smarter and called it “a distraction.” Abortion opponents sure do keep bringing it up, though.

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Since repugicans are Nazis it falls to reason they'd use their own 'research' now wouldn't it!?

The truth be told

Rick Perry Using “Nonprofit Corporation” Run By Governor’s Office to Create Slush Fund

Busted!

It’s no secret that I believe for repugicans being a hypocrite is almost a required trait to be a member of the repugican cabal.
After all, these are the “small government fiscally conservative” individuals who seem to always want to expand government encroachment on the private lives of Americans, and haven’t had a president from their party balance the budget since the 1950′s.
So it was no surprise when I heard about Rick Perry using tax dollars to fund measures that seek to lure businesses to Texas.
Oh, but if you ask him he completely denies that any of the $5 million that’s been spent to lure businesses to Texas from “blue states” like Illinois, California and New York has come from tax dollars.
And we should believe him, right?  I mean, it’s not like he bragged about a balanced budget, while using 2009 stimulus funds to balance that budget—a 2009 stimulus that he publicly slammed and denounced.
Oh wait, that’s exactly what he did.
See, there’s an organization called TexasOne that collects “donations” from —well anyone—to fund Rick Perry’s trips so he can claim taxpayers aren’t footing the bill for these expenses.
Nothing quite like blatantly legalizing kickbacks from wealthy people, or big corporations, through the guise of “donations” to “build the Texas economy.”
Perry claims TexasOne is a nonprofit corporation—that just happens to be managed by the governor’s office.  The board is appointed by Perry and there’s absolutely no legislated system of checks and balances for oversight of the money that’s “donated.”
And then there’s the previously mentioned hypocrisy of Rick Perry.  While Perry claims no tax money has been used for his travels, the Houston Chronicle calculated that at least 45% of the $4.7 million collected over the last three years (or $2 million dollars) has been funded by local sales taxes.
Mr. “Small Government” Perry is using millions of taxpayer dollars to fund his extravagant trips, while bold-face lying about his use of these tax dollars.
And while he makes these hefty claims about “job creation,” what these trips essentially do is raid other states, attempting to bring jobs from their states to Texas.  Now, I know Perry isn’t the smartest guy around, but even he should understand you can’t “create” jobs that already existed.  Shifting 1,000 jobs from California to Texas doesn’t “create jobs,” it just moves them.
But none of this will matter.  The repugicans prove time and time again when they vote this guy into office that it doesn’t matter what he does, they’ll eat big spoon fulls of his bullcrap and do so with a smile.
Even if the thing he’s done is create his very own slush fund to get around state laws which prohibit corporations from directly giving him donations—a slush fund he operates and oversees.
While still using millions of dollars from taxpayers to foot the bill for the expenses his big corporate buddies didn’t cover.  It’s a scheme so corrupt, I’m willing to bet organized crime leaders wished they had come up with it.
Then again, Rick Perry might just be the biggest organized crime leader in the United States.

The repugicans love the hate

"Those who retreat into fantasy cannot be engaged in rational discussion, for fantasy is all that is left of their tattered self-esteem. When their myths are attacked as untrue it triggers not a discussion of facts and evidence but a ferocious emotional backlash." 

 Christ Hedges for Truthdig

Lawsuit Against Mississippi Prison Is the Stuff of Nightmares

From Mother Jones

In the solitary confinement unit of East Mississippi Correctional Facility, it's common for inmates to set some clothing or an old milk carton on fire to get an officer's attention when they are in desperate need of a doctor-or if, say, their cell has been flooded by a broken pipe. Otherwise, it might be days before anyone took notice, according to a class-action lawsuit filed last week by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The fires sometimes got the guards' attention, but not always in the way the inmates were hoping: At least one inmate, the suit claims, was maced by a corrections officer through his feeding slot. EMCF is a private, for-profit prison that houses seriously mentally ill patients, and the ACLU's lawsuit reads like a catalog of horrors.

Wacky Laws Named After People

You've heard of Murphy's Law, no doubt. But how about Sturgeon's Law? How about Skitt's Law? No? Then you have to read this nifty article by Chris Higgins over at mental_floss about 11 wacky "laws" named after people. For example:

1. STURGEON'S LAW

The law: "90% of everything is crap." (In some versions, "crap" is replaced with "crud.")
The story: Science fiction author Theodore Sturgeon wrote a defense of sci-fi in the March 1958 issue of the sci-fi magazine Venture. He wrote, in part (emphasis added):

I repeat Sturgeon’s Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of SF is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as trash, crud, or crap, it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. are crap. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crap is ultimately uninformative, because science fiction conforms to the same trends of quality as all other art forms.

Two trivia notes on this one. First, as you can see above, Sturgeon himself termed this "Sturgeon's Revelation," however, accidents of history (and the OED) turned it into Sturgeon's Law. There actually is a "Sturgeon's Law," and it is: "Nothing is always absolutely so." Second note — Sturgeon is the basis for Kurt Vonnegut's recurring character Kilgore Trout.

3. SKITT'S LAW

The law: "Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself."
The story: Skitt's Law is just one of many internet-themed corollaries of Muphry's Law, which itself states: "If you write anything criticizing editing or proofreading, there will be a fault of some kind in what you have written." So horribly, horribly true. (And yes, "Muphry" is an intentional misspelling referencing Murphy's Law.) Apparently the law was first coined by G. Bryan Lord, referring to a Usenet user named Skitt.

Read the rest: Here.

Absurdum

Complaint about smelly juror collapses murder trial

A murder trial has collapsed after a female juror complained that the man sitting next to her in the court smelled. A letter to the Old Bailey judge complained she could not concentrate. The trial into the death of 20-year-old Jamie Sanderson, who was stabbed in Oceana nightclub, Kingston Upon Thames, Surrey, was two days into a six week trial when Judge Wendy Joseph discharged the jury.
She said: “There is a problem. There is nothing that the poor man can do about it. I am not prepared to force him to sit in another part of the court room. Even if I were to find jurors to sit by him, it would not necessarily resolve the problem. At the end of the day they have all got to sit in the jury room together. We are two days and one hour into evidence and the prospect of many weeks ahead of us. These defendants are entitled to a trial by 12 jurors. Nobody really wants to go on with 11 jurors from a defense point of view.”

The juror in question was spoken to by the court matron about his cleanliness. While the jury were out of the court room, lawyers were told he had no health issues, regularly showered and washed his clothes. The judge considered moving him into the press box but said she felt this may ostracize him. Judge Joseph said: “He was pretty comfortable where he was in the jury box and did not wish to be put to one side. In light of that, it would be wrong of me to make him do that.

“He believes that the complaint has come from a number of jurors.” She also said it worried her that as the weather got warmer it could lead to more complaints. Prosecutor Crispin Aylett had called for the juror to be discharged and for the trial to continue but all four defense counsels disagreed. A new jury will now be sworn in ready to hear the case again from the beginning. Cases in the crown court cost an estimated £3,000 a day.

The NRA's Wet Dream

Why guns? To make men feel manly, to make women more attractive to men who like guns.

She tells us what it's really all about.

Lady wearing ski mask arrested for threatening children with chain saw

A Missouri woman is accused of trying to scare children by approaching them with a chain saw while wearing a ski mask.

The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department says Lynn Marie Herzog, 50, of Winfield, is charged with felony harassment in the Sunday incident.

Patricia Manker called the police after she saw Herzog yelling at her son and his friend and walking toward them with the mask and chain saw.

Sheriff's department spokesman Andy Binder said the chain saw was not running during the alleged incident. Herzog was jailed on $10,000 bond.

You can't patent (naturally occurring) genes

In an unanimous decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled today that companies can't patent genes, or parts of genes — at least, so long as that genetic material is identical to what occurs in nature. The lawsuit dealt specifically with Myriad Genetics, the company that isolated and has claimed a patent on BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 — genes associated with an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancers. From a practical perspective, Myriad's hold on the genes has meant that tests for genetic cancer risk are strikingly expensive — Xeni paid more than $3000 for hers. It's also meant that, if you get a positive result, there's been nowhere you could go for a second opinion.That's a big deal. Mutations in the BRCA 1 and 2 genes mean an increased risk of cancer, but there's more than one kind of mutation that can happen. In fact, BRCA 1, alone, has hundreds of known mutations. Some increase your risk of cancer. But, even if you narrow it down to just those, they don't all increase the risk by the same amount. The health choices you make could be very different depending on whether you have an 80% risk of developing breast cancer by age 90 (the worst-case scenario for BRCA 1 mutations), or something much lower. That's the kind of situation where you might really like to have more than one lab run more than one kind of test.
This ruling opens the door for that, and the competition should (theoretically) also lower the cost.
It's worth noting that the ruling does not apply to synthetically created DNA, which, based on the Myriad context, seems to apply to lab-created genes that are different from what happens in nature, as opposed to lab-created versions of natural genes (Myriad had previously cloned BRCA 1 and BRCA 2). For a little more clarity on what does not fall under the scope of this ruling, here's a quote from Justice Clarence Thomas' description of the court's decision. It's the cDNA Thomas describes here that would still be patentable.

DNA’s informational sequences and the processes that create mRNA, amino acids, and proteins occur naturally within cells. Scientists can, however, extract DNA from cells using well known laboratory methods. These methods allow scientists to isolate specific segments of DNA—for instance, a particular gene or part of a gene—which can then be further studied, manipulated, or used. It is also possible to create DNA synthetically through processes similarly well known in the field of genetics. One such method begins with an mRNA molecule and uses the natural bonding properties of nucleotides to create a new, synthetic DNA molecule. The result is the inverse of the mRNA’s inverse image of the original DNA, with one important distinction: Because the natural creation of mRNA involves splicing that removes introns, the synthetic DNA created from mRNA also contains only the exon sequences. This synthetic DNA created in the laboratory from mRNA is known as complementary DNA (cDNA).

Read More:
• The Washington Post on the Court decision
• The full Supreme Court decision itself
• Rebecca Skloot, who literally wrote the book on the ethics of genes and genes patents, is answering questions at Facebook.

Hospitals ignore regulations meant to keep medical costs lower

A new study finds that out-of-network medical bills aren't just high, they're often illegally high — with hospitals ignoring regulations meant to keep you out of debt when you get sick out of state.

First double leg-transplant patient has legs amputated

The world's first double leg-transplant patient has had his legs amputated, a Spanish hospital has confirmed. The amputation was carried out after an unrelated illness forced the man to stop taking anti-rejection drugs, according to Valencia's Hospital La Fe. The hospital said treatment of the unspecified illness was "more urgent".
The transplant was carried out in July 2011 by surgeon Pedro Cavadas, who also led a team that carried out the first double hand transplant in 2006. The man who received the double leg transplant, who was in his 20s at the time and has not been named, initially lost his legs above the knee in a road accident.

Mr Cavadas and his team of more than 50 at Hospital La Fe took more than 10 hours to attach the new legs, a procedure that included connecting nerves, blood vessels, muscles, tendons and bone structure. The patient was expected to take immuno-suppressant drugs for the rest of his life, but had to stop because the medicine was complicating the treatment of an illness he contracted, doctors said.

"In these cases the protocol is that, if the transplanted organ is not a vital organ, it should be removed from the patient so as to allow treatment of the illness that is more serious and urgent," the hospital said in a statement. Mr Cavadas is referred to as a "miracle doctor" by parts of the Spanish media for his pioneering procedures.

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