Ten repugicans Who Cheered on Batkid, Want to Revoke His Obamacare

These assholes have been crusading to repeal the Affordable Care Act  

Leukemia survivor Miles, 5, dressed as BatKid, runs the bases as part of a Make-A-Wish foundation fulfillment at AT&T Park November 15th, 2013 in San Francisco, California

by Tim Dickinson

On Friday, a sick child in San Francisco stole the Twittersphere's heart after the Make-a-Wish Foundation helped him don superhero garb and "fight crime" on the streets of San Francisco as "Batkid." Even repugican politicians in Washington couldn't resist rooting him on. Ironically, these assholes – in particular Ted Cruz and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor – have been crusading for Obamacare's repeal, which would again make it legal for insurers to deny coverage to children like Batkid with preexisting conditions.
 1. Ted Cruz
The Texas ass-hat forced a government shutdown to fight the president's healthcare law and believes "we must repeal every word of Obamacare."

2.  Eric Cantor
The House majority leader calls Obamacare an "atrocity."
3. Justin Amash
The Michigan lunatic has taken to the House floor to demand that congress "repeal this unconstitutional law."

4. Darrell Issa
The California whack-job has declared that "ObamaCare is bad for all Americans."

5. Paul Cook
The California repugican wrote in October: "I remain opposed to Obamacare and continue to support its repeal."

6. Randy Webber
 The Texas repugican wants to "permanently delay" Obamacare.

7. Martha Roby
The Alabama two-bit whore brags of voting more than two dozen times to "completely repeal President Obama's health care law."

8. Jeff Duncan
The South Carolina repugican has vowed to "continue to fight until this horrible law is completely repealed."

9. Sean Duffy
During the government shutdown fight, the Wisconsin reptile was so hardcore he questioned Ted Cruz' commitment to battle to defund Obamacare.

10. Trey Radel
 The Florida freshman complained in April that House repugican newcomers had not been given a chance to vote for Obamacare's repeal. "I want a chance as a freshman to do that," Radel said, "even if it’s just symbolic."

It's the insurers not the Healthcare law

Unscrupulous insurers using Obamacare confusion to sell junk insurance

Democrats should not be panicking over the relatively tiny number of people losing their junk health insurance plans. They should be loudly and continuously beating up on the insurance companies using Obamacare to trick people into buying new ones. Case in point: USHealth Group.

The Affordable Care Act was designed to make sure all Americans had a certain level of insurance. But TPM has learned that USHealth Group is actively telling consumers that they don't need that minimum level. In fact, company representatives are telling people they'd be better off without it. And the company may be just one player in a larger industry trend, where companies see non-ACA compliant plans, like the so-called fixed benefit coverage marketed by USHealth Group, as a business opportunity.

Health care industry analysts have long derided the kinds of non-insurance health care coverage products the company is selling as "junk insurance."

"They were not intended to be health insurance," Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University, told TPM, speaking about fixed benefit plans. "They were intended to be what are called income replacement policies. ...

But over the years, these things have kind of morphed. And for many people, unfortunately, mainly because they come with a cheaper sticker price, they are marketed as and treated as health insurance. Even though the coverage is really crappy."

USHealth Group's pitch is three-fold, according to accounts provided to TPM by Mortimer and another prospective customer. First, it says, it is a misconception that everyone needs ACA-compliant insurance. Second, USHealth Group plans are cheaper than ACA-compliant policies, even after customers pay the tax penalty for failing to comply with the ACA's individual mandate. Third, Obamacare is scary.

What USHealth Group isn't telling would-be customers, what they are lying to them about, is that these fixed benefit coverage plans, in which the company reimburses customers a fixed amount of money for medical services, don't comply with the law.

Crimminal Profit

Who said crime doesn't pay

Thousands Sentenced to Life Without Parole for Nonviolent Offenses

by Diane Sweet

At least 3,728 prisoners in the United States will spend the rest of their lives in prison for non-violent offenses according to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) study published on Wednesday.

The study, “A Living Death,” features key statistics about these prisoners, an analysis of the laws that produced their sentences, and case studies of 110 men and women serving these sentences. Of the 3,278 prisoners, 79 percent were convicted of nonviolent, drug-related crimes such as possession or distribution, and 20 percent of nonviolent property crimes like theft.

Also revealed was a stark racial disparity: The ACLU estimates that, of the 3,278 serving life without parole for nonviolent offenses, 65 percent are Black, 18 percent are white, and 16 percent are Latino, evidence of extreme racial disparities. Of the 3,278, most were sentenced under mandatory sentencing policies, including mandatory minimums and habitual offender laws that required them to be incarcerated until they die.

Blacks, for example, make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but comprise roughly 45 percent of the state and federal prison population, according to statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Spanish environmental pie-hurlers could face lengthy jail terms

Four environmental activists who threw pies at Navarre’s regional president in 2011 are due to appear before a Madrid court on Monday in a case their lawyer has compared to the Spanish Inquisition.

The four men are members of Mugitu, a group formed to fight against the development of a high-speed train network which would run through forestland in the Pyrenees. They stand accused of "energetically hurling pies in the face of Yolanda Barcina Angulo", president of the north-eastern Spanish region of Navarre.

YouTube link.

The wingnut Popular Party leader was attending a public meeting in Toulouse (France) in October 2011 when group leader Gorka Ovejero approached her with a pie concealed in a file. Spain’s Public Ministry reported Barcina was left “dazed and disoriented” when first Ovejero pummeled her in “an energetic fashion” and then the three attackers covered her face and clothes with white cream pies.

"This case reveals the very worst side of the Spanish judicial system and its total lack of contact with reality,” defense lawyer Gonzalo Boye told The Guardian. “It shows a corrupt judicial and political class prepared to use public resources to try people that have done nothing more than demonstrate their opposition to the destruction of the forest. If these people are convicted, the court will look like a tribunal during the Inquisition rather than a modern court of law."

Pick axe-wielding thieves smashed way into store twice in a week to steal beef jerky

A store in Weber County, Utah, has suffered two smash-and-grab burglaries in the past week, and deputies are trying to track down the two people responsible. The damage from the burglaries cost the owner of Sinclair Country Corner in Warren more than the actual items stolen, deputies said.

Hippodrome Casino advertises for Door Dwarfs

The Hippodrome Casino in London has some vacancies for Door Dwarfs.
The advert says: "The Hippodrome is seeking to create a team of Britain's smallest bouncers - Door Dwarfs - for its new entrance in Cranbourn Street, Leicester Square. Duties include door control and customer relations. We welcome applications from those under 4ft 10 inches."

They hope to have their Door Dwarf team in place by December. Hippodrome Casino owner Simon Thomas said: "We wanted to add some extra spectacle to Leicester Square.

"The Hippodrome is a building with a rich tradition of theatrical innovation with a history of dwarf acts appearing here. It fits perfectly with the way we do things here – differently, with a lot of fun involved, and we think they will be very effective on the door."

Ziggy

Florida spring yields 'amazing' artifacts

To the untrained eye, many of the hundreds of artifacts pulled in recent months from a Florida spring in the Chassahowitzka River look like stuff nobody wanted to buy at a yard sale: old bottles, an antler, broken pieces of a plate, a toy cap gun, a bowl, a fishhook, pins.

The oldest of the stone tools recovered was a Suwannee projectile point. Dating from the Paleo-Indian period (10,000 - 8,000 BC), Suwannee points are lanceolate in shape and measure between 7.5-12 cm on average. Although found across much of Florida, Suwannee points are most commonly found in the Ichetucknee and Santa Fe Rivers [Credit: CNN]

But to archaeologist Michael Arbuthnot, who oversaw a five-month project that pulled hundreds of such items from a 2 1/2-acre field of muck as deep as 25 feet below the surface of the spring, they are much more.

"We found an amazing array of artifacts that basically represent every period of human occupation in Florida," he told CNN in a telephone interview.

The finds were a side benefit of a project funded by the state to clean the spring -- located 90 minutes north of Tampa -- and thereby improve its flow and water quality.

The spring in the Chassahowitzka, which is Seminole for "place of the hanging pumpkins," attracts tourists, canoeists and fans of fishing.

But over the years, it has also attracted gunk -- from septic tank effluent to runoff from the surrounding watershed -- that contributed to algal growth that made it less attractive.

Bone pins were used for clothing, hair and body jewelry, and, as may be the case
at the springs, spearing fish [Credit: CNN]

"This thick organic deposit was basically choking out the spring," said Philip Rhinesmith, senior environmental scientist with the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

"All around the vent are these accumulated organics," said Arbuthnot, who oversaw the salvage effort for SEARCH, a cultural resources management company. "As the divers were basically scooping it into their 6-inch dredge, they were keeping their eyes peeled for artifacts that might show up."

He described as "phenomenal" the preservation of the finds, whose location as many as 5 feet deep in oxygen-free sediment had protected them from decay.

They include a Suwannee projectile point -- a spear point -- whose estimated age of 10,000 years puts it "right at the cusp of the end of the Ice Age," Arbuthnot said. The person who lost it may have been hunting a mammoth.

A fish hook made of bone dates back centuries B.C. and also could have been used to catch alligators, he said.

Bone fishhooks were used from the Archaic period until
European contact [Credit: CNN]

A variety of bone pins -- used for piercings, fish hooks, awls and fastening clothing -- was also unearthed.

In the dredging operation, which began last May and ended in September, the underwater archeologists vacuumed up the sediment on the floor of the basin, put their finds into a floating screen platform and then picked through the clutter, Arbuthnot said.

It wasn't always clear what was worth a second look. For example, the bowl didn't look like anything special when it was spotted. "Divers first thought it was a coconut, because it was upside down," he said.

But the coconut turned out to be the bottom of a bowl, stained black by years of exposure to tannins in the water. It proved to be a 2,000-year-old, intact ceramic bowl with an earthen brown interior -- in good condition. "That's a big surprise," he said. "They're extraordinarily rare."

The discovery of fragments of a 17th century plate -- a Spanish ceramic -- also surprised the investigators, given that Citrus County is far from the nearest Spanish colonial settlement.

Pasco Plain pottery appears in the Woodland through Mississippian periods. This one is the only known fully intact Pasco Plain bowl to be recovered in Florida. The Woodland period is characterized by a mixed subsistence pattern consisting of hunting, fishing and collecting wild resources. Mississippian period subsistence consisted largely of estuarine fish and shellfish. Artifacts from both periods include pottery, stone tools and bone tools [Credit: CNN]

"I'm guessing that it was probably either intentionally dumped there or accidentally dropped in some sort of a trade route with the Native Americans." A more remote possibility is that a Spanish explorer may have visited the area and traded it to Native Americans there, he said.

The plate, which would have been nearly 14 inches in diameter when it was intact, "has an exquisite, painted decoration on the surface of it." Years under water had stained blue its original vibrant colors, he said.

Arbuthnot said a shard of brushed pottery dated to the 1700s and showed that the Seminole Indians were connected to the spring.

The antler was probably used by Native Americans to help fashion stone tools, he said.

The cap gun -- a Hubley Long Barrel Texan Jr. from the mid-1900s -- was made when gun manufacturers were transitioning from cast-iron to die-cast cap guns and, like all Hubley toys, it was hand-painted.

As cleanup crews were restoring this Florida spring to pristine condition, underwater archeologists sifting through the detritus that was pulled from the depths discovered artifacts that track the history of humans in the state [Credit: CNN]

That there would be finds under the surface was not a surprise. "We know from past experiences that there's generally a treasure trove of artifacts to be found" in the muck around springs, said Arbuthnot, whose underwater work includes an expedition to the Titanic in 2005. "It was pretty obvious from the start that this was going to be a hot spot."

But it was also full of plain, old-fashioned, modern trash -- Budweiser bottles, old car parts. Anything younger than 50 years does not meet Florida's definition of an artifact and was not saved.

The salvage part of the cleanup cost Florida taxpayers $180,000. "What that paid for was having a certified marine archeologist on the job when that dredging was happening," Rhinesmith said.

That meant the cleanup project didn't have to stop every time an artifact was found, which sped its completion. Time was an important factor, he said, because the work had to be completed between May 1 and September 30, when the region's water temperatures begin to drop and West Indian manatees -- a federally protected species -- seek out the warmer waters of the spring, he said.

Because the finds were made on state-owned land, they belong to Florida. Some of the finds are to be displayed at the Old Courthouse Heritage Museum in Inverness. For now, they're neatly labeled on racks in a laboratory in Gainesville -- a cornucopia of history.

Oldest Mayan 'fresco' mural found in Guatemala

Guatemalan and Spanish archaeologists have discovered the earliest Mayan mural fresco was discovered in northern Guatemala, near the Mexican border.

The Mayan mural painted with 'affresco' technique that dates back to the 8th century
from the La Blanca archaeological site [Credit: AFP/Guatemala
Ministry of Culture]

The mural is executed in the painting technique called 'fresco' which involves painting on a freshly laid lime plaster coat before it has dried said Cristina Vidal, Scientific Director of the archaeological site La Blanca, where the painting was discovered.

All hitherto known Mayan murals were done with secco or 'dry' mural painting techniques, said the archaeologist.

The mural, which was found in a Mayan palace built in the Late Classic period (600-900 AD), depicts a ceremonial offering gifts to an important person. We see many male characters, women, children and servants, with a band of hieroglyphs.

Vidal acknowledged the novelty of the discovery, but does not rule out that further findings in the older unexplored areas of the region could unearth more lost treasures of the Mayan civilization.

The Ward Charcoal Ovens Of Nevada

Ward Charcoal Ovens are a collection of six 30 feet high, beehive-shaped charcoal ovens located inside the Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park in the Egan Mountain Range in Nevada, USA.

Between 1876 and 1879, the Charcoal Ovens were built to produce charcoal from pinyon pine and juniper. After their function as charcoal ovens ended, they served diverse purposes, such as sheltering stockmen and prospectors during foul weather and even serving as a hideout for stagecoach bandits. Today they're the main attraction in Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park.

What Is the Farthest One Human Being Has Ever Been from Another?

Randall Munroe, the roboticist and artist behind the webcomic xkcd, operates the blog “What If?” In it, he responds to strange scientific queries by readers. Most recently, reader Bryan J. McCarter asked Mr. Munroe:

What is the furthest one human being has ever been from every other living person? Were they lonely?

Mr. Munroe suspects that it was either Mike Collins, Dick Gordon, Stu Roosa, Al Worden, Ken Mattingly or Ron Evans. These are astronauts who stayed in the Apollo command module in lunar orbit while other astronauts landed on the surface of the moon. While on the opposite side of the moon, these men would have been 3,585 kilometers from any other human.
But, Mr. Munroe explains, there are also other possible candidates. An individual Polynesian during the migration of those peoples across the Pacific Ocean might have become isolated at a great distance from other human beings. A hypothetical shipwrecked sailor in the Eighteenth Century south Atlantic Ocean might also qualify.
But these are speculations. We can be sure about only the isolation of Apollo astronauts.
Were they lonely? Probably not. Mike Collins from the Apollo 11 mission described his experience:

Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface ... I don't mean to deny a feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact with the Earth abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon.
I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus who knows what on this side.

Physics is not interested in your delusions of grandeur

It's impossible to dive in front of a bullet and play the hero. Likewise, you can't really dodge a bullet either (unless you get a big lead on the fact that it's heading towards you). Kyle Hill explains why the stuff that looks fancy and flashy on TV doesn't work in the real world. 

The Worst Jobs In Science

The things scientists do range from accepting a Nobel Prize to schilling for corporations to collecting samples in the field. Every generation of newly-minted Phds clamor for the available positions, even when they are unpleasant because, hey, it's science! PopSci lists some of those jobs that you may find yourself in, such as collecting data in dangerous places, poking through roadkill, or analyzing biological waste products.
Just remember, if you pay your dues, you might eventually supervise other young scientists, put your name on papers in which they did the hard work, and someday that Nobel Prize could be yours! To cleanse the palate, PopSci has included three really awesome science jobs as well as the awful ones in this slideshow.

The Bizarre History of Our Obsession with Unicorns

The oldest description we've found of a unicorn was in 398 BCE, when the Greek Ctesius wrote about an animal from India, which he only knew from reading Persian accounts. Many early references to unicorn-like animals were products of accounts passed along until they were complete nonsense, like the game of telephone. Even the Bible suffered from this confusion, when a unicorn was inserted into places in which an animal unknown to the translators was mentioned. Out of these accounts, a mythology grew up around the nonexistent unicorn. And to this day, we cannot get enough of unicorns. Read more about the history of unicorns, or at least unicorns in myth and literature, at io9.

Daily Comic Relief

Glass sound barrier proves fatal for flock of Swedish birds

Eighty birds flew into a glass sound barrier in western Sweden on Sunday, in a mishap that proved fatal for the vast majority of the flock. "It was awful and tragic," Kirsten Ekholm of the Bird Center in Partille said. "It's sad because it's so unnecessary. We know how to avoid this." Ekholm was at the Bird Center, an organization near Gothenburg which rehabilitates injured wild birds, when a couple came in with several shaken Bohemian Waxwings. Ekholm accompanied them back to a glass sound barrier near a highway, where she was shocked to see nearly eighty bird bodies strewn about.

"We have never seen so many at one time," Ekholm recounted. "And most of them were very young birds. It was a terrible sight." Ekholm spent her Sunday gathering the bodies and examining the dead. Seventy-two of the birds were already dead when she arrived, and one died of its injuries during the night. Seven were still alive on Monday morning, but she said there was no guarantee they would make it. "It's difficult to say if they will live. Many of them have internal bleeding, and one had its eye completely smashed," Ekholm said. Bohemian Waxwings, which are common in the northern parts of Sweden, Finland, and Russia, desert their nests in the winter to seek berries further south.

This flock landed in a group of trees near the sound barrier to enjoy rowan berries, one of the species' favorite foods, and then proceeded to fly straight into the glass wall separating a bike path from a highway. "This is nothing new," said Ekholm. "We’ve known about this for years. Birds can’t see the glass and fly to their deaths. And if you build glass walls and then plant fruit trees there, you’re just luring them to a deathtrap." Tommy Järås, who runs the Bird Center in Partille, agrees. "It’s a massive problem," Järås said. "This many at a time is unusual, but birds fly into glass every day. We’re talking about millions of birds in Sweden every year."

If cities must build with glass, Ekholm said, there are ways to make it less fatal for birds. Glass walls can be patterned, featuring squares or lines that discourage birds from flying into them. Otherwise cities can simply use other materials. "It can’t be the most economical or environmentally-friendly choice to build with glass," she mused. "It’s expensive and often needs to be cooled in summer and heated in winter. People just think it’s prettier." But aesthetics take a toll, and the price is high. "This glass wall runs along a bike path, and there have been so many dead birds there that no wants to bike there anymore," Ekholm remarked. "So is it in even worth it to build with glass? It’s a question of if the public really wants this."

Tongues aren't just for smelling

After you spent all that time in grade school conditioning yourself to know that snakes stick out their tongues in order to smell things, it turns out that those tricky animals were also tasting with their tongues, all along. 

Worms in Wendy's BLT salad forced nauseous woman to go to hospital

A South Florida woman said she found worms in the BLT salad she and her boyfriend ordered at a Wendy’s – but the restaurant manager brushed off the nauseating find. The customer, who only wanted to give her first name of Ivette, said she immediately regretted making a drive-thru run at the Wendy's on Hollywood Boulevard on Nov. 7. She and her boyfriend Ahmed said they ordered the salad to share on their ride home, but she could only get through one bite.

The catch of a 900-pound sunfish creates stir in Jamaica

'At first I thought it was an alien, and I was somewhat frightened,' Desmond Phillips says of bizarre-looking catch, which lured dozens to the beach

by Pete Thomas

Desmond Phillips (left) and Michael Grant pose with giant sunfish.

The massive sunfish was so bizarre looking that Desmond Phillips, one of two Jamaican fishermen who caught the estimated 900-pound behemoth on Sunday, thought it was from another world.
“At first I thought it was an alien, and I was somewhat frightened,” Phillips told the Jamaica Gleaner. “It was difficult to bring the fish to the surface, and even more challenging to get the monster into the boat.
“When I realized what it was that we had caught, I said to my partner, Michael Grant, who is the boat captain, maybe we should release it.”
The two fishermen hooked the sunfish off Boston Bay and after a battle that lasted nearly two hours, Capt. Grant was determined not to let the unusual catch get away.

Fishermen pose with giant sunfish

However, they were aboard a small boat and getting the enormous fish to shore proved to be more difficult than reeling it in.
They decided to tie it to the boat and motor to shore, but the boat could hardly progress because of the weight of the fish.
So they decided that the sunfish had to be brought on board.
“And after a lengthy period, and with water flooding into the boat, we finally brought it into the boat and set sail for Bryans Bay,” Phillips said.
Sunfish range throughout the world’s oceans, but they are not commonly encountered in Jamaican waters. And they’re quite the sight, roundish and blob-like, with truncated bodies, huge faces, and tiny mouths.
According to the Gleaner, word quickly spread of an “alien-fish” having been captured, and that lured dozens of curious people to the beach at Bryans Bay.
Many would eventually learn that these ocean sunfish, or Mola molas, can reach weights of 5,000 pounds, but are harmless omnivores that feed on sea jellies and other invertebrates.
“There is no need to fear it,” said Andre Kong of Jamaica’s Fisheries Division. “They are very docile and you can dive with them.”
For Phillips, according to the Jamaica Observer, it was his most exciting moment at sea since his catch of a 500-pound marlin two years earlier.

Animal Pictures

The Daily Drift

If the hat fits ...!

Carolina Naturally is read in 194 countries around the world daily.
 

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Today is -World Hello Day
 

Don't forget to visit our sister blog: It Is What It Is

Some of our readers today have been in:

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Today in History

1620		Leaders of the Mayflower expedition frame the "Mayflower Compact," designed to bolster unity among the settlers.
1783		Jean de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes make the first free-flight ascent in a balloon to over 500 feet in Paris.
1789		North Carolina ratifies the Constitution, becoming the 12th state to do it.
1855		Franklin Colman, a pro-slavery Missourian, guns down Charles Dow, a Free Stater from Ohio, near Lawrence, Kansas.
1864		From Georgia, Confederate General John B. Hood launches the Franklin-Nashville Campaign into Tennessee.
1904		Motorized omnibuses replace horse-drawn cars in Paris.
1906		In San Juan, President Theodore Roosevelt pledges citizenship for Puerto Rican people.
1907		Cunard liner Mauritania sets a new speed record for steamship travel, 624 nautical miles in a one day run.
1911		Suffragettes storm Parliament in London. All are arrested and all choose prison terms.
1917		German ace Rudolf von Eschwege is killed over Macedonia when he attacks a booby-trapped observation balloon packed with explosives.
1918		The last German troops leave Alsace-Lorraine, France.
1927		Police turn machine guns on striking Colorado mine workers, killing five and wounding 20.
1934		A New York court rules Gloria Vanderbilt unfit for custody of her daughter.
1934		Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes premieres at New York's Alvin Theatre.
1949		The United Nations grants Libya its independence by 1952.
1967		President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the air quality act, allotting $428 million for the fight against pollution.
1970		U.S. planes conduct widespread bombing raids in North Vietnam.
1986		The Justice Department begins an inquiry into the National Security Council into what will become known as the Iran-Contra scandal.

Non Sequitur

QI is quite factual

Selections from an article in The Telegraph, the content of which is in turn selected from a new book - 1,339 QI Facts to Make Your Jaw Drop - the contents of which is in turn selected from the massive archives of the QI Universe:

All the mountains on Saturn’s moon Titan are named after peaks in The Lord of the Rings.

Agatha Christie was a keen surfer.

Lord Kitchener had four spaniels called Shot, Bang, Miss and Damn.

At any one time, 45 million people in the world are drunk.

The Beatles classic Yesterday was originally entitled “Scrambled Eggs”.

Since 1990, more people have been killed by sandcastles than by sharks.

Wordsworth had no sense of smell.

Your eyebrows renew themselves every 64 days.

If Jane Austen hadn’t broken off her engagement, she would have been known as Mrs Harris Bigg-Wither.

Sgiomlaireachd (pronounced “scum-leerie”) is a Scots Gaelic word meaning “the kind of friend who only drops in at mealtimes”.

There is one Kalashnikov assault rifle in circulation for every 70 people on Earth.

There is only one sneeze in the Bible.

The only member of ZZ Top who doesn’t have a beard is drummer Frank Beard.

Silent letters in words such as “knife” and “psychic” are called aphthongs.

Splenda was an insecticide that became a sweetener when a lab assistant misheard an instruction to “test it” as “taste it”.

Kleargear goes into social media hiding

Remember KlearGear.com? It's the novelty company that charged a woman $3500 and ruined her credit record after she complained to ripoffreport.com about Kleargear's poor service. Since the news broke last week, KlearGear has protected its Tweets and canceled its Facebook page.
In addition, even though KlearGear has a "TRUSTe Certified Privacy" emblem on its home page, TRUSTe tweeted this morning that "@KlearGear is NOT @TRUSTe certified."
And over at Popehat.com, Ken White reports that KlearGear.com had been displaying a BBB Accredited Business logo and BBB Rating A+. The BBB says that KlearGear.com is "not a BBB accredited business and the BBB rating is not A+."
According to Inc.com, KlearGear's revenues for for 2012 were $47.5 million.

Did you know ...

That a record number of international students attend U.S. colleges

That a Wall St. user fee could relieve 1/3 of the sequester cuts

Climate change: dying by 2 degrees

That America has a mass incarceration problem

Liberals aren’t like the rest

Liberals aren’t like the rest, or so they think

Liberals tend to underestimate the amount of actual agreement among those who share their ideology, while conservatives tend to overestimate intra-group agreement, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for […]

The Truth Be Told

The repugican Food Stamp Cuts Force 47.7 Million People to Live on Less Than One Meal a Day

Over the course of human history, several holy men, humanitarians, and even a philosopher noted that “The measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members,” and it is likely that Mahatma Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, Aristotle, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were not referring to the richest country on Earth; the United States of America. Although polling reveals that a majority of Americans decry the foul  treatment of this country’s weakest members, children and senior citizens, it is still a sad fact of life that this country’s government treats its most vulnerable citizens with gross disregard and utter contempt; apparently just because they exist. A better measure of the richest nation on Earth is the federal budget and how it reflects the government’s priorities that place preservation of oil industry, defense industry, corporate, and religious organizations’ profits over the survival of its most vulnerable citizens.
In yet another damning report on the plight of children, seniors, and the poor due to repugican’s austerity, a new Pew Research report reveals that the recent food stamp cuts that went into effect on November 1^st mean that 47.7 million children, senior citizens, working Americans, and nearly a million veterans will have to get by on one less meal a day and tragically, repugicans and their supporters clamor for deeper cuts. It should be glaringly obvious that next to persecuting women and gays, repugicans have made malnutrition of the poor one of its highest priorities. Although they attempt to portray food stamps cuts as an abstract dollar amount on the government’s balance sheet, their cuts are having devastating results in human terms.
Mahatma Gandhi once said “the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.” If America’s poorest citizens ever needed protection from repugican cruelty, it is now when the true measure of repugican inhumanity is on the rise and tragically, many of their victims are their staunchest supporters. Some Americans believe cutting spending on food stamps is a legitimate means to rein in government spending, but if they were aware of the hard numbers adversely affected by withholding food, it likely would humanize the problem and put debt reduction in a different perspective.
It is important to understand that the food stamp cuts on November 1^st that mean one meal-a-day less for the poorest Americans amounted to $5 billion for fiscal 2013-2014, and includes an additional $6 billion next year. Add to that stark reality the fact that House repugicans voted an additional $39 billion in cuts in September that ballooned to $90 billion as repugicans head into bicameral budget negotiations to prevent another government shutdown in January. The repugicans still yearn for $135 billion in cuts according to the so-called “Ryan budget” they have passed in the House for three straight years.
Although the poor across the nation will have one meal less each day due to the $5 billion in cuts, it is in deep-red repugican states, particularly Southern states, where the poor are slated to feel the effects of the food stamp cuts most. In Pew Research’s Stateline interactive map, states with the highest percentage of residents dependent on food assistance are repugican strongholds. For example, in Mississippi, 22% of the population is reliant on food stamps including 307,000 children and 119,000 senior citizens, and $5 billion in cuts means 426,000 poverty-level, working poor, disabled, and senior residents will have to get by on one less meal each day. That does not include sequester cuts repugicans refuse to end that cut Head Start, Meals On Wheels, or free and reduced school lunches that are part of the SNAP cuts. The sad irony is that those most likely to go hungry every day are probably poor white people voting for repugicans who cannot wait to impose more hunger on them.
It is also ironic that those same red-state repugicans overwhelming support harsher food stamp cuts according to a new poll. Although Americans as a whole object to the November food stamp cuts, an overwhelming majority of repugican voters (67%) strongly approved of 47-million Americans going without one meal a day. It is likely that repugican voters are under the delusion that if their repugican representatives in Congress slash more SNAP funding, they will be withholding food from people of color, but as has been stated ad nauseum there are more poor white children, seniors, and disabled Americans nationwide receiving nutrition assistance than African, Hispanic, Asian, and Native Americans combined.  Still, repugicans portray food stamp recipients as minorities to garner support to cut even more and increase hunger among their white repugican supporters; particularly in southern states.
There are 47.7 million Americans who will have to survive with one less meal a day due to the $5 billion cuts in SNAP funding, and a little over 30% are working families, 32% are seniors and disabled, and 27% are children. According to the Veterans Administration, nearly one million Veterans receive food assistance in any given month, and that does not include over 5,000 active duty military personnel whose families will have to make do with one less meal every day. The idea that nearly 48 million Americans will lose one meal a day is not lost on repugicans who could not care less what damage their cuts, or inaction, are wreaking on the poor. In fact, last week when two immigrant children approached Speaker John Boehner while eating breakfast asked him, “How would you feel if you had to tell your kids at the age of 10 that you were never coming home?” He replied “That wouldn’t be good.” Boehner, and his repugican House caucus, know precisely what their food stamp cuts mean to 48 million Americans and they knew “it wouldn’t be good.”
It is time for Americans to ask repugicans dying to cut more food stamp funding ‘how they would feel if they had to tell their kids they would have to go without one meal a day,’ but it is likely they would have them arrested and escorted to jail where they would not have to make do with one less meal a day. This nation is the richest country in the history of the world, and the notion that even one child, senior citizen, Veteran, or working American has to make do without one meal a day is an abomination of epic proportion.
Sadly, losing one meal daily is predicated on $5 billion in food stamp cuts, and if repugicans have their way the figure will be well over $100 billion that means the 48 million Americans dependent on food assistance will likely starve to death. Nearly a quarter of America’s children are living in dire poverty, seniors are barely staving off perpetual hunger, and millions of Americans have no idea where their next meal is coming from, and if America was measured by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens, or how its federal budget reflects it priorities, it would be found to be exceptional in its rank brutality and cruel treatment of it weakest citizens.

Universal truths

Walmart’s Greed Exposed

They Could Pay Employees $25,000/Year Without Raising Prices

A new Demos study has revealed that the only thing stopping Walmart from paying their employees $25,000 a year without raising prices is their ridiculous level of greed.
According to Demos, here is how Walmart could afford to pay their workers $25,000 a year without raising prices,

Now as another holiday season approaches, this research brief considers one way Walmart could meet the wage target its employees are calling for— without raising prices. We find that if Walmart redirected the $7.6 billion it spends annually on repurchases of its own company stock, these funds could be used to give Walmart’s low-paid workers a raise of $5.83 an hour, more than enough to ensure that all Walmart workers are paid a wage equivalent to at least $25,000 a year for full-time work.
Curtailing share buybacks would not harm the company’s retail competitiveness or raise prices for consumers. In fact, some retail analysts have argued that by providing a substantial investment in the company’s front-line workforce, higher pay could be expected to improve employee productivity and morale while reducing Walmart’s expenses related to employee turnover.
With more money in their wallets, Walmart employees would likely spend a portion of the cash at Walmart itself, boosting the company’s sales. Sales might also increase as customers benefit from an improved shopping environment.

The other benefits of offering higher pay for Walmart would be attracting better candidates for positions, good publicity, and the potential for employees to view working at Walmart as a source of pride.
Walmart’s business model reflects the narrow minded economic views of the repglican cabal. By choosing to only share profits at the top, Walmart is calling the stockholders makers and their employees takers.
The repugican idea that a business has to raise prices if wages are raised is false. Companies like Walmart can afford to raise wages without raising prices if they choose to do so. Costco has proven both repugicans and Walmart wrong by paying a living wage and watching their profits soar. Customers have abandoned Walmart for Costco in 2013, because unlike Walmart, Costco supports raising the minimum wage.
Costco goes beyond the Democratic proposal of increasing the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. They already pay a $11.50 minimum wage, “At Costco, we know that paying employees good wages makes good sense for business,” said Craig Jelinek, Costco’s President and CEO. “We pay a starting hourly wage of $11.50 in all states where we do business, and we are still able to keep our overhead costs low. An important reason for the success of Costco’s business model is the attraction and retention of great employees. Instead of minimizing wages, we know it’s a lot more profitable in the long term to minimize employee turnover and maximize employee productivity, commitment and loyalty. We support efforts to increase the federal minimum wage.”
Walmart is being undone by their own business model, which mandates that employees are the bottom of the barrel, and labor costs must always be kept absurdly low. Walmart’s abuse and mistreatment of their employees goes beyond the poverty wages that they pay.
The greed of the Walton family is killing Walmart, and they are costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year. Customers will continue to flee as long as Walmart decides that it would rather be a modern American workhouse instead of a responsible employer.

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Walmart asks its workers to donate Thanksgiving food ... to Walmart workers

Sign attached to food donation boxes in an employees-only area of a Canton, Ohio, Walmart.

Food donation boxes are a common holiday-season sight in supermarkets. Boxes for store employees to donate food for other store employees in need? That's more of a surprise, but it's exactly what can be found in a Canton, Ohio, Walmart:

"Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner," read signs affixed to the tablecloths.

The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.

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Man buys house next to ex-wife to give her the bird

Now this is taking relationship dysfunctionality to a whole new and hilarious level.

A Michigan man has reportedly gone to Internet-ready lengths in order to troll his ex-wife with a daily reminder of his feelings towards her.
According to a person claiming to be the ex-wife’s daughter, the crazy-wealthy Bloomfield Hills man, identified only as “Alan,” allegedly purchased the house next door to his ex, and proceeded to move in with his daughter Tiffany.
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This Oct. 29 photo provided by Robert Detrich is an ischium, the back lower part of the hip bone from what is believed to be a half-grown Tyrannosaurus rex in Lusk, Wyo. Detrich, of Wichita, unearthed the fossil dubbed "Baby Bob" in a fossil-rich area in eastern Montana. The find is generating excitement because if all the preliminary data pans out, it would be among the smallest T. rex specimens ever found [Credit: AP/Todd Hoelmer]

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Baby Bob has been fully excavated, although it will take another year to clean. Detrich said the skull, which is about 75 percent complete, and most of the major skeletal elements were found strewn across a flood plain, although very few vertebra and ribs were found.

"This is so exciting," Detrich said. "I can't even tell you the importance of this dinosaur."

As a commercial fossil hunter, Detrich eventually plans to sell the fossil. He said most of his fossil finds have found homes in museums. He's hopeful the same would happen to Baby Bob.

Carr, also an associate professor of biology, said the fossil will be of little use scientifically if that doesn't happen. He said that a nearly complete T. rex named Samson that Robert and his brother, Alan, were involved in excavating two decades ago in South Dakota wound up in private hands.

"If this skeleton ends up in private hands," Carr said of Baby Bob, "it is taken away from science and science loses."

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