Undernews

Meanwhile, furrthermore & on the other hand

2013-05-25T12:45:00.002-04:00

Federal government hiding pot research

The power of a sane voice and at times of violence

CEOs invading Washington

Action notes

UC medical workers strike

Progress report: Unions & cooperatives

Quotes

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. - Sir Barnett Cocks

A committee is a gathering of important people who singly can do nothing but together can decide that nothing can be done. - Fred Allen

Pocket paradigm

Global dumbing involves the virtually imperceptible but steady deterioration of the aggregate human mind -- as well as of its institutions -- much as the temperature of the earth is apparently rising at a rate so minuscule that scientists will be still be debating its escalation even as the waters of the Atlantic Ocean lap at the potted plants in the lobby of the Trump Plaza. In fact, global warming and global dumbing are intimately connected. Without the latter, something actually might be done before that portion of Washington below the fall line of the Potomac is totally submerged. And like global warming, global dumbing concerns itself with losses incurred by energy transfers and nature's ceaseless quest for the random equilibrium of chaos. It is, in short, the entropy of the human spirit and of the systems it has created. - Sam Smith

67,000 bridges require significant maintenance or repairs

2013-05-25T12:30:00.000-04:00

Stateline - A bridge rated “functionally obsolete” does not meet current design standards for such things as lane width, often because current traffic volumes exceed what was expected when the bridge was built. In other cases, design standards have changed since construction. There are 84,748 bridges functionally obsolete bridges in the country, according to Federal Highway Administration data. Deficient Bridges States with the most structurally deficient bridges:

Pennsylvania, 26.5 percent Oklahoma, 22 percent Iowa, 21.7 percent Rhode Island, 21.6 South Dakota, 20.3

But another federal rating of bridges, “structurally deficient,” is worse. They are not necessarily unsafe, but are “characterized by deteriorated conditions of significant bridge elements and potentially reduced load carrying capacity,” according to the FHA. There are 66,749 of them in the country, and they require significant maintenance and repair to stay in service.

Recovered history: A young JFK admired Hitler

2013-05-25T12:26:00.003-04:00

Haaretz, Israel - John F. Kennedy admired Hitler as a young man and felt fascism was right for Germany, according to a new book in German that mines the future president's diaries.

According to Spiegel Online's article on the book, the 20-year-old Kennedy pondered on August 3, 1937: What are the evils of fascism compared to communism? On August 21 he added that the Germans had been ganged up on.

The book is "John F. Kennedy Unter Deutschen" ("John F. Kennedy Among the Germans") – featuring travel diaries and letters between 1937 and 1945. The work, edited by Oliver Lubrich, documents three visits by Kennedy to Germany – in 1937, 1939 and 1945. “At first glance, one could get the impression that Kennedy endorsed fascism and even admired Hitler,” Spiegel writes.

The book quotes Kennedy as saying that the Nordic peoples appeared superior to their southern neighbors. Meanwhile, he called Germany's highways, built by the Nazis, the best in the world.

Even after the war in Europe, Kennedy reportedly had positive things to say about Hitler. According to Spiegel, on August 1, 1945, he wrote that anyone visiting places like Hitler’s residence in the Bavarian Alps could imagine how Hitler would be recognized as one of the most important people who ever lived. Another time, he wrote that there was something mysterious about Hitler – that he was made of the stuff of legends.

Kennedy fought in World War II and was highly decorated while serving in the navy in the Pacific. His older brother Joseph Jr., a navy aviator, died while on a highly risky mission over Europe. According to Spiegel Online, John Kennedy's reports on the Germans "swing between attraction and repulsion …. He admired their technological achievements."

Things to do about Monsanto

2013-05-25T12:18:00.001-04:00

From the Green Party's Shadow Cabinet:

Immediate moratorium on development and certification of new pesticides and genetically engineered crops.
A long-overdue, thorough, science-based examination of GMO and pesticide safety, by scientists not tainted by the revolving door or financial ties to agribusiness industry giants and all research, past and present, must be available to the public.
An urgent phase out of existing GMOs and pesticides not demonstrated to be safe for people and the environment.This would begin immediately, targeting highest risk GMOs/pesticides first.
Clear labeling of all foods containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
Immediate creation of economic and agricultural supports to expedite conversion from toxic industrial agriculture to sustainable, organic farming - which is healthy for people, the environment and our economy.
Urgent public investment in crop breeding to increase the supply of a broad diversity of traditional seeds to meet our agricultural needs.
Public investment in research and education on agro-ecological (organic) farming practices.
Monsanto must pay for cleanup of the environment, the remediation of the supply of traditional seeds, remuneration to farmers whom they have adversely affected and the ongoing costs of health effects caused by their products
End production of ethanol for fuel until it can be done in a way that does not adversely affect access to food and does not consume more energy than is produced.
End Monsanto’s influence over government agencies. As a start, FDA Deputy Commissioner for Foods Michael Taylor must resign from his position, and the Monsanto Protection Act must be repealed.

Entropy update: Remembering our veterans in the Hamptons

2013-05-25T12:11:00.002-04:00

NY Post - As the Memorial Day weekend kicks off the Hamptons party season, clubs on the East End have come up with increasingly innovative ways to serve boatloads of booze.

Pricey champagne at up to $30,000 a pop will be flowing, including one bottle that’s so high-end, it’s chilled during a 10,000-foot free-fall and served by a skydiver.

Derek and Daniel Koch’s Day & Night brunch at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk is offering the sky service for $25,000. Sources said that one poor member of the brothers’ Dual Groupe hospitality firm will skydive 13,500 feet to deliver a magnum of Dom Pérignon Rosé Luminous. According to Day & Night, the bubbly will be “chilled” by the death-defying plunge and then, “delivered to your table by parachute.”

Personal to all those writing about Obama's speech on terror war

2013-05-25T11:12:00.001-04:00

The only way to really understand what Obama means when he says something is to watch what he does. - Sam Smith

Thank God, there's always Jersey politics to keep our spirits up

2013-05-25T10:58:00.002-04:00

Daily Mail, UK - It was supposed to be a day about celebrating the Jersey Shore coming back together after the devastating impact of Superstorm Sandy.

However, while the buildings and boardwalk of Seaside Heights can be repaired, it seems the relationship between New Jersey's governor and the area's most famous celebrities - the cast of MTV's The Jersey Shore - cannot.

The smallest member of the reality cast Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi went head to head with Governor Chris Christie on Friday at the reopening of the Seaside Heights' boardwalk, which featured heavily in the reality series.

The pair had just filmed separate segments on the Today show when backstage the 25-year-old stopped the Governor to address why he has been critical about the show's influence on the area in the past.

According to Snooki the politician had made his feelings clear.

'Getting told why we are bad for jersey. Amazing,' the star tweeted.

Nicole can be heard asking the much larger man to step back from her as they talk.

'Why are you standing so close to me,' the mother of one asks.

Leaning comically even closer to Nicole, Christie says: 'You asked for my opinion.'

Trying to subdue the situation cast mate Deena Cortese, flanked by Jennifer 'JWoww' Farley, tells the politician she is from Jersey.

'I know you are, I was talking about her,' the governor curtly replies.

Still trying to calm things down Denna said: 'And guess what? I thought you did a good job with the hurricane.'

With the situation not getting any better, Snooki explains: 'I just wanted to meet you, and just, hope you start to like us.'

Story includes some neat photos

The downside of decriminalizng pot: it mainly helps young whites and drags out the drug war

2013-05-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

Observer, UK - The award-winning creator of The Wire, David Simon, has emerged as a critic of the 'racial bias' in the US debate on the war on drugs

When Simon brought that heresy to London last week – to take part in a debate hosted by the Observer – he was inevitably asked about what reformers celebrate as recent "successes" – votes in Colorado and Washington to legalise marijuana.

"I'm against it," Simon told his stunned audience at the Royal Institution. "The last thing I want to do is rationalize the easiest, the most benign end of this. The whole concept needs to be changed, the debate reframed.

"I want the thing to fall as one complete edifice. If they manage to let a few white middle-class people off the hook, that's very dangerous. If they can find a way for white kids in middle-class suburbia to get high without them going to jail," he continued, "and getting them to think that what they do is a million miles away from black kids taking crack, that is what politicians would do."

If marijuana were exempted from the war on drugs, he insisted, "it'd be another 10 or 40 years of assigning people of color to this dystopia."

NY AG says mounting evidence banks are not living up to settlement agreement

2013-05-25T10:19:00.003-04:00

Reuters - New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said there is mounting evidence that Bank of America, Wells Fargo and other banks violated the terms of a settlement designed to end mortgage servicing abuses.

Schneiderman - who has said he plans to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for failing to live up to their obligations under the deal - said other states had found similar problems.

"Several other states have identified similar recurring deficiencies by the participating servicers," Schneiderman said in a letter dated May 23 to the monitor for the settlement, former North Carolina Banking Commissioner Joseph Smith. The letter was obtained by Reuters on Friday.

World running out of water

2013-05-25T10:13:00.002-04:00

A conference of 500 leading water scientists from around the world has issued a stark warning that, without major reforms, "in the short span of one or two generations, the majority of the 9 billion people on Earth will be living under the handicap of severe pressure on fresh water, an absolutely essential natural resource for which there is no substitute. This handicap will be self-inflicted and is, we believe, entirely avoidable."

From the statement:

After years of observations and a decade of integrative research convened under the Earth System Science Partnership and other initiatives, water scientists are more than ever convinced that fresh water systems across the planet are in a precarious state.

Mismanagement, overuse and climate change pose long-term threats to human well-being, and evaluating and responding to those threats constitutes a major challenge to water researchers and managers alike. Countless millions of individual local human actions add up and reverberate into larger regional, continental and global changes that have drastically changed water flows and storage, impaired water quality, and damaged aquatic ecosystems.

Human activity thus plays a central role in the behavior of the global water system.

Humans typically achieve water security through short-term and often costly engineering solutions, which can create long-lived impacts on social-ecological systems. Faced with a choice of water for short-term economic gain or for the more general health of aquatic ecosystems, society overwhelmingly chooses development, often with deleterious consequences on the very water systems that provide the resource.

Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand

2013-05-24T13:33:00.001-04:00

Questions & answers concerning the killing of Tamerlan Tsarnaev's would-be accomplice

The future of labor unions and community coalitions

759 bridges in Washington State have a worse rating than the one that collapsed

Infrequently asked questions

Concerning Barrack Obama's speech on drones, isn't he the same guy who said he was going to close Guantanamo?

PEOPLES BOYCOTT
Quotes

Trade is a social act. Whoever undertakes to sell any description of any goods to the public, does what affects the interest of other persons, and of society in general; and thus his conduct, in principal, comes within the jurisdiction of society. - John Stuart Mill

Pocket paradigm

The difference between being intelligent and being smart is that the former only requires data, the latter requires judgment in how you use it. The capital is full of intelligent people but short on smart ones.- Sam Smith

Textbook for the war on education

Food brands using Monsanto seeds

From 1999-2010, the total U.S. prison population rose 18 percent, an increase largely reflected by the "drug war" and stringent sentencing guidelines, such as three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences. However, total private prison populations exploded fivefold during this same time period, with federal private prison populations rising by 784 percent

The 16-year-old honor student expelled from her high school after igniting a chemical explosion receives a full scholarship to U.S. Space Academy, courtesy of a NASA vet who, as a teen, was accused of starting a forest fire during a science experiment

Holder signed off on Fox News reporter's search warrant

Amazing woman who talked to the Woolwich killers

Chicago school closings largest in history

2013-05-24T12:38:00.001-04:00

Diana Ravitch - Never in U.S. history has a local school board - or any other board, appointed or elected - chosen to close 49 public schools.

That's what the Chicago Public Schools did.

Thousands of parents, students, and teachers objected, but Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his puppet board didn't care.

Yesterday was a day of infamy in Chicago and in the history of American education.

School boards exist to protect, improve, and support public schools, not to kill them.

Rahm Emanuel is ... is wantonly destroying public education. He is punishing the teachers' union for daring to strike last fall. He will open more charter schools, staffed by non-union teachers, to pick up the kids who lost their neighborhood schools. Some of them will be named for the equity investors who fund his campaigns.

Rahm and his friends will laugh about the way he displaced 40,000 kids.

Police blotter

2013-05-24T10:37:00.001-04:00

Gawker - An eastern Pennsylvania woman was found guilty of first degree murder for stabbing her fiance to death just hours before their wedding last summer.

Na Cola Franklin, 32, stabbed her fiance, Billy Brewster, 36, several times last August 11 at approximately 2 a.m., eight hours before their scheduled wedding, reportedly after Brewster came home drunk from an unplanned bachelor party.

According to NBC Philadelphia, Franklin didn't realize she'd killed Brewster until later in the day; when she was arraigned that night, she reportedly told the judge, "You got to check again!" when she was informed of her fiance's death.

The gruesome scene was discovered by the pastor who was to marry the couple that morning. Throughout the day, wedding guests in suits and dresses reportedly showed up at Franklin's home.

Entropy update: Detroit dictator wants to sell off city's art

2013-05-24T10:32:00.000-04:00

Detroit Free Press - Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr is considering whether the multibillion-dollar collection at the Detroit Institute of Arts should be considered city assets that potentially could be sold to cover about $15 billion in debt.

Even the possibility has set off a sharp reaction. The DIA hired a bankruptcy lawyer to advise it, and philanthropist and DIA patron A. Alfred Taubman said this evening that “it would be a crime” to sell any of the DIA’s collection to satisfy city creditors.

Liquidating DIA art to pay down debt likely would be a monstrously complicated, controversial and contentious process never before tested on such a large scale and with no certain outcome. The DIA is unusual among major civic museums in that the city retains ownership of the building and collection while daily operations, including fund-raising, are overseen by a nonprofit institution.

As emergency manager, Orr has great latitude in selling city assets to satisfy debt. But the scope of that power to sell off city jewels, such as the DIA collection, Belle Isle or the city’s water department, for example, has yet to be exercised and likely would be tested in court.

Under Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code, neither a judge nor creditors can force the city to liquidate its assets. But bankruptcy experts say the judge and creditors can push for a sale of assets and that the pressure could be hard to resist under some circumstances.

Rebuilding America: Create a counterculture

2013-05-24T10:19:00.000-04:00

Another in our series on rebuilding America

Sam Smith - Sane and decent America is acting like gays in the closet. Having been convinced by the corporate media and our leaders - either by being ignored or dismissed – that its views have no status or power, it accepts the unacceptability that has been assigned to it.

What is missing is not just organization but the multitudinous confluences that create a culture – yes, organization, but also music, spirit, values, gatherings, habits. . .

To be sure we have grisly imitations all around us: coffee shop culture replaced by Starbucks, “hip” apparel determined by multinational corporations; a presidential candidate promising “hope” and “change” but providing neither, teens learning to scream at music rather than listen to it in preparation for lifetime service as loyal consumers. Whether it’s Facebook, Abercrombie & Fitch or Barack Obama, our task is to buy it and shut up.

When, if ever, we think of counterculture, pot, love beads, and Joan Baez may come to mind. Or bongo drums and berets. Or freedom schools and singing We Shall Overcome.

While they are just examples from particular times, they are instructive because they reveal something our intellect easily forgets: change is an act of art and music and theater as much as of organization; of symbols as much as substance, of informal dress on a bar stool as much as formal addresses on a podium.

And above all, positive change doesn’t need a mission statement, strategic plan, or table of organization; it requires the creation of a community of common dreams and values and a meaningful way to express them.

So you’re lonely, but you also cling to the faith that at some point millions who also feel lonely, angry and sad will come out of their cautious closets and discover each other - not just for a protest, not just for a piece of legislation, not just for one cause, but for the sum of what a better America might be like- and to follow the advice of Alan Watts: “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

Every time I see a young child wearing a T shirt with a peace symbol, the irony hits home. That half century old sign still has more power than anything describing our present condition.

Countercultures are about everything beyond our specific agendas. In the Sixties for example, the peace, anti-poverty and civil right movements shared alternative space because there was so much more behind what they were up to than just their chosen priorities.

Today, our various causes share too little beyond isolation and lack of common ground with others. The Green Party and labor unions don’t know each others. Nor the prison reformers and the anti-war activists. What will bring us together is not our agendas but our spirits and our souls.

And remember: people only get involved in politics in large numbers when it becomes more than politics, when it is more than a logical, thoughtful and well constructed process, when it is more even than a ideology. They get involved when politics becomes a normal, convivial, exciting and satisfying part of their social existence.

Facebook generation losing enthusiasm for Facebook

2013-05-24T10:06:00.000-04:00

Huffington Post - The Facebook generation is fed up with Facebook.

That's according to a report by the Pew Research Center, which surveyed 802 teens between the ages of 12 and 17 last September.

Pew's findings suggest teens' enthusiasm for Facebook is waning, lending credence to concerns, raised by the company's investors and others that the social network may be losing a crucial demographic that has long fueled its success.

Facebook has become a "social burden" for teens, write the authors of the Pew report. "While Facebook is still deeply integrated in teens’ everyday lives, it is sometimes seen as a utility and an obligation rather than an exciting new platform that teens can claim as their own."

Teen's aren't abandoning Facebook -- deactivating their accounts would mean missing out on the crucial social intrigues that transpire online -- and 94 percent of teenage social media users still have profiles on the site, Pew's report notes. But they're simultaneously migrating to Twitter and Instagram, which teens say offer a parent-free place where they can better express themselves. Eleven percent of teens surveyed had Instagram accounts, while the number of teen Twitter users climbed from 16 percent in 2011 to 24 percent in 2012. Facebook, teens say, has been overrun by parents, fuels unnecessary social "drama" and gives a mouthpiece to annoying oversharers who drone on about inane events in their lives.

“Honestly, Facebook at this point, I'm on it constantly but I hate it so much,” one 15 year-old girl told Pew during a focus group.

Some three-quarters of Facebook users have purged friends on Facebook, 58 percent have edited or deleted content they’ve shared and 26 percent have tried to protect their privacy by sharing false information. Among all teens online (not just Facebook users), 39 percent have lied about their age. The report also notes, "Girls are more likely than boys to delete friends from their network (82 percent vs. 66 percent) and block people (67 percent vs. 48 percent)."

FBI wants to trash the Fourth Amendment

2013-05-24T09:41:00.002-04:00

Electronic Frontier Foundation - According to the New York Times, President Obama is "on the verge of backing" a proposal by the FBI to introduce legislation dramatically expanding the reach of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. CALEA forces telephone companies to provide back doors to the government so that it can spy on users after obtaining court approval, and was expanded in 2006 to reach Internet technologies like VoIP. The new proposal reportedly allows the FBI to listen in on any conversation online, regardless of the technology used, by mandating engineers build "back doors" into communications software.

The rumored proposal is a tremendous blow to security and privacy and is based on the FBI's complaint that it is "Going Dark," or unable to listen in on Internet users' communications. But the FBI has offered few concrete examples and no significant numbers of situations where it has been stymied by communications technology like encryption. To the contrary, with the growth of digital communications, the FBI has an unprecedented level of access to our communications and personal data; access which it regularly uses. In an age where the government claims to want to beef up Internet security, any back doors into our communications makes our infrastructure weaker.

Rioting in Sweden

2013-05-24T09:35:00.003-04:00

Guardian, UK - Police in Stockholm are to seek reinforcements after youths set cars ablaze and threw stones at police for a fifth night running, officials said.

About 30 cars were set on fire in poorer districts in north-western and south-western parts of the Swedish capital on Thursday night, with rioters causing widespread damage to property, including schools. However, a police spokesman said the overnight violence was less intense than in previous nights.

Despite Sweden's reputation for equality, the rioting has exposed a fault line between a well-off majority and a minority, often young people with immigrant backgrounds, who cannot find work, lack education and feel marginalized.

... One recent government study showed that up to a third of young people aged 16 to 29 in some of the most-deprived areas of Sweden's big cities neither study nor have a job.

The gap between rich and poor in Sweden is growing faster than in any other major nation, according to the OECD, although absolute poverty remains uncommon.

Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand

2013-05-23T23:55:00.001-04:00

Textbook for the war on education

Food brands using Monsanto seeds

From 1999-2010, the total U.S. prison population rose 18 percent, an increase largely reflected by the "drug war" and stringent sentencing guidelines, such as three strikes laws and mandatory minimum sentences. However, total private prison populations exploded fivefold during this same time period, with federal private prison populations rising by 784 percent

The 16-year-old honor student expelled from her high school after igniting a chemical explosion receives a full scholarship to U.S. Space Academy, courtesy of a NASA vet who, as a teen, was accused of starting a forest fire during a science experiment

Holder signed off on Fox News reporter's search warrant

Amazing woman whotalked to the Woolwich killers

Oklahoma's underground problems

Los Angeles votes overwhelmingly against corporate personhood

Capital Bikeshares has lost less than one percent of its bikes

School camper punished for having Swiss Army knife

Only a quarter of adults report being truly satisfied with their friendships. And almost two-thirds lack confidence in even their closest friends. Facing this, most Americans — by more than 2 to 1 — say they’d prefer to have deeper friendships than more friends.

Green Party surging in Germany

Most windows 8 users rarely use any windows 8 apps

Police arrest high schoolers for water balloons

A different sort of eviction story

70% of American adults say global warming should be a priority for the nation’s leaders

Quotes

Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes. - Henry David Thoreau

Pocket paradigm

Empires and cultures are not permanent and while thinking about the possibility that ours is collapsing may seem a dismal exercise it is far less so than enduring the dangerous frustrations and failures involved in having one's contrary myth constantly butt up against reality like a boozer who insists he is not drunk attempting to drive home. Instead of defending the non-existent we could turn our energies instead towards devising a new and saner existence - Sam Smith

Action notes
Yale workers and community activists join in New Haven
Philly students protest school closures
March on Monsanto May 25

Police blotter

2013-05-23T23:34:00.002-04:00

Smoking Gun - A North Carolina mother had her son arrested this week for taking her Pop-Tarts without permission, police report.

The child was busted on a larceny charge, according to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, whose officers were summoned Monday night to a Charlotte home by Latasha Renee Love, the accused juvenile’s 37-year-old mother.

A police report notes that “the known suspect stole Pop-tarts belonging to his mother at their home at 530 Goldstaff Ln. The suspect was juvenile arrested at the time of the offence.”

Cops described the stolen goods as “Foodstuffs” valued at $5.

Love, who reportedly has had discipline issues with her child, apparently decided to have him arrested as some kind of a lesson.

How lobbying pays off big time

2013-05-23T22:39:00.004-04:00

Tom Edsall, NY Times - According to statistics United Republic assembled, the prescription drug industry spent $116 million lobbying for legislation to prevent Medicare from bargaining down drug prices — legislation that enabled drug companies to make an additional $90 billion annually. That amounts to an extraordinary 77,500 percent return on investment. Oil companies, in turn, had a return on investment of 5,900 percent, and multinational companies, 22,000 percent.

How the police spy on social media

2013-05-23T22:34:00.001-04:00

IT News, Australia - A dedicated team of British police officers are monitoring social media around the clock in the wake of last night’s fatal attack on a soldier in the south-east of London, in order to gauge sentiment and be ready to respond.

Umut Ertogral, who runs the Opensource Intelligence Unit for London’s Metropolitan Police Service, today told the AusCERT information security conference a team of 17 staff were working seven days a week to track social media feedback and monitor community tension.

“There’s a lot of work we’re doing to analyze the language and how people are talking on Twitter,” Ertogral said.

The department, which has been mobilized around other major events such as the G20 conference, London student riots and London Olympics, is using Radian 6 and RepKnight software to explore trends, sentiment and association of social media users.

Ertogral said the unit was using Radian 6 as a listening tool, for trend analysis and to gauge public mood, and RepKnight to identify geolocation hotspots where activity is taking place based on keywords.

The unit is also conducting what Ertogral called “strategic horizon scanning”.

“For the Olympics we looked at events five days in advance so we could make a prediction to say what was going to happen.”

The unit monitored some 32 million social media articles during the Olympics, with 10,300 tweets being posted every second during the opening ceremony.

“Companies will tell your that sentiment analysis from a piece of software is about 56 percent accurate … we would say it's lower, because it doesn’t pick up humor or slang,” Ertogral said.

In addition to looking at trends, he said the unit was also exploring association to establish influencers, particularly for protest movements.

“So we’re trying to build friend lists on Facebook, who’s connected to who, who are the influencers out there etc.”

Great moments with Hillary Clinton

2013-05-23T22:16:00.003-04:00

1999 Mrs. Clinton is mentioned 36 times in the fraud indictment against Webster Hubbell. Writes the AP's Peter Yost: "Starr alleges Hubbell concealed his own and Mrs. Clinton's work during the 1980s on a failed Arkansas land deal, known as Castle Grande, that federal regulators say was riddled with 'insider dealing, fictitious sales and land flips.'" Yost notes the criminal contempt trial of Susan McDougal: "The indictment against Mrs. McDougal details a series of grand jury questions about Mrs. Clinton and Castle Grande that Mrs. McDougal refused to answer." The Castle Grande project involved a baroque set of deals aimed at least in part in shoring up the McDougal's failing savings and loan.

Not until the immaculate reconception of Mrs. Clinton's billing records in 1996 did her extensive role in the matter come to light. Billing records documenting HRC's work on the Castle Grande development scam were discovered in the family quarters of the White House. HRC said she has no idea how they got there.

She also claimed that she could not remember her work on the project nor 15 conversations with Hubbell's wheeler-dealer father-in-law, Seth Ward. In the end, Castle Grande cost the S&L nearly $4 million in unpaid principal and interest.

Great moments in school discipline: camper punished for having Swiss Army knife

2013-05-23T11:30:00.002-04:00

Daily Caller - A fifth-grader in Cupertino, California was suspended and threatened with expulsion for bringing a small Swiss Army knife on a school-sponsored, science-oriented camping trip.

In early April, Braden Bandermann’s class set off on Garden Gate Elementary School’s annual, week-long pilgrimage for fifth-graders to the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco.

Before leaving, Braden did what any Silicon Valley 10-year-old faced with the perils of nature might do: He packed his trusty Swiss Army knife. As any camper knows, the multi-tool device is nothing if not versatile. Braden’s particular model contains a can opener, tweezers, a toothpick, a nail file, a tiny pair of scissors and a small blade. Ads by Google

“They called me,” explained Tony Bandermann, Braden’s father. “They said, ‘You have to come and get him. He has a weapon. He needs to be suspended or possibly expelled.’”

At the time, the elder Bandermann was on a business trip in Sacramento, roughly 100 miles away. His wife, Braden’s stepmother, was at the camp with Braden, but they had arrived by bus and had no private transportation. (Braden’s mother was also unable to go to the camp so that he could serve a suspension.)

The school principal, Brandi Hucko, allegedly wanted Bandermann to rush to the site of the science camp, pick Braden up for a one-day suspension and then deliver him back to camp.

Bandermann told The Daily Caller that he was frustrated over Hucko’s insistence “that I risk my job and go get him out of the program for a one-day suspension all over a Swiss Army knife.”

The multi-tool instrument did not present a threat, Bandermann believes.

“I went to the very same trip when I was a child at the same school, and I had a very similar Swiss Army knife,” he said. “In fact, most of the kids did.”

Principal Hucko disagreed. According to Bandermann, she was adamant that punishment must be swift and severe.

Consequently, Bandermann told The DC, school officials forced Braden to serve a one-day suspension at camp. He was allegedly isolated in a teacher’s lounge area from all the other children. He was forced to eat meals by himself. He was forced to sleep in an area separate from all the other children. He missed an entire day of activities.

The Cupertino Union School District would not respond to questions from The Daily Caller. School district representative Jeremy Nishihara said answering questions would violate Braden’s privacy.

NBC Washington - A seven-year-old Virginia boy was suspended for pretending a pencil was a gun at his Suffolk school.

Christopher Marshall apologized for the incident, but the school has a zero tolerance policy when it comes to weapons or threats of weapons.

The boy's father is furious.

"Enough is enough. I mean, where will we draw the line?" said Paul Marshall. " I mean, a pencil. Was it sharpened? Was it not? Was it a No. 2? What's the big deal?"

The school said that they stand by their policy.

"A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made," said Bethanne Bradshaw of Suffolk Public Schools.

Shop Talk: It's lead, not lede

2013-05-23T10:58:00.002-04:00

Sam Smith - One of the true joys in life is to discover that something you thought was true or false but couldn't prove turns out to be what you thought. For example, I could never understand why journalists were starting to spell lead as lede.Journalist Howard Owens has come to my rescue.

Howard Owens - Early in my career somebody I obviously respected — can’t remember who now — told me the correct newspaper spelling of the opening of a newspaper story is “lede.”...

When Billie and I were first dating, the shared knowledge that the word is correctly spelled “lede” was just one more way we bonded.

But we were wrong.

The other thing that Billie and I shared was a love of old journalism books. Before we met, with both collected them. Today, our collection exceeds 400 titles. About 100 of the best of them are sitting at the moment immediately to my left.

Some years ago, researching the evolution of “objective journalism,” I cracked open many of these old books, and something struck me — in none of these old books did any author spell the word “lede.” They all spell it “lead.”

It was then I realized, there is no historic basis for the spelling of a lead as “lede.” “Lede” is an invention of linotype romanticists, not something used in newsrooms of the linotype era.

I can’t find the definitive first reference to “lede” but it doesn’t start appearing in journalism books until the 1980s...

The explanation for “lede” was offered up as an alternate spelling for “lead” (pronounced “led” as in “hot lead” or “hot type.”) of the linotype era.

However, journalists working in the linotype era (which started in 1896) never spelled it “lede.” It was always “lead,” as in “news lead.”

It wasn’t until linotype was disappearing from newsrooms across the nation (late 1970s and into the 1980s), that we start seeing the spelling “lede.”

The safest conclusion, then, is that “lede” is a romantic fiction invented by those who were nostalgic for the passing of the linotype era.

Amphibian creatures disappearing faster than thought

2013-05-23T10:34:00.002-04:00

Baltimore Sun - A new study finds frogs, toads and salamanders disappearing at an alarming rate across the United States.

In what they say is the first analysis of its kind, scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey and a couple of universities report that declines in environmentally sensitive amphibians are more widespread and more severe than previously thought. Even the most common critters, such as the spring peepers that make Maryland marshes ring with their mating cries, appear to be losing ground.

What's more, they also seem to be vanishing from ponds, streams, wetlands and other supposedly protected habitat in national parks and wildlife refuges.

If the trend continues, the researchers say, some of the rarer amphibians could disappear in as few as six years from roughly half the sites where they're now found, while the more common species could see similar declines in 26 years.

Researchers have known for some time that some frog, toad and salamander species were in trouble, but until now they hadn't developed a broad national picture of how fast they were disappearing.

Judge sentenced to 28 years for kickbacks for sending kids to private prisons

2013-05-22T23:08:00.001-04:00

Black News - Mark Ciavarella Jr, a 61-year old former judge in Pennsylvania, has been sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison for literally selling young juveniles for cash. He was convicted of accepting money in exchange for incarcerating thousands of adults and children into a prison facility owned by a developer who was paying him under the table. The kickbacks amounted to more than $1 million.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has overturned some 4,000 convictions issued by him between 2003 and 2008, claiming he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles – including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea. Some of the juveniles he sentenced were as young as 10-years old.

2013-05-22T23:04:00.001-04:00

Meanwhile, furthermore & on the other hand

2013-05-22T15:10:00.003-04:00

33% work more than 40 hours a week

Jews & secularists are best tippers The payoff for being on a reality show

Apple has $30 billion tax free in Irish accounts

18 big corporations that keep huge amounts of money overseas

Stereotype buster of the day

Quotes

A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. - Mark Twain

Pocket paradigm
Unfortunately, complex failing systems have little capacity to save themselves. In part this is because the solutions come from the same source as the problem. The public rarely questions the common provenance; official Washington and the media honor it. Even a failure as miserable as that of Vietnam had little effect on the careers of its major protagonists, those men who not only were wrong but were wrong at the cost of 50,000 American lives. They remained quoted copiously, cited as experts and transmogrified into statesmen.- Sam Smith

Action notes

How a group of nuns shook up the Vatican

Freedom University teaches the unregistered immigrants George doesn't want taught

Hundreds of low wage workers go on strike in DC

March on Monsanto May 25

Rebuilding America: Concentrate on specific issues

2013-05-22T15:06:00.001-04:00

Another in our series on Rebuilding America

Sam Smith - I learned this secret many years ago when I first became involved in activism. The issue then was an unwanted fare increase by DC Transit. The organizer was the heavily black and young Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee but the participants came from all over including 100,000 riders who stayed off the buses. Then we went on to stop a Los Angeles like freeway system planned for the capital with an alliance that included old leftists, preservationists, SNCC, and black and white middle class homeowners threatened with removal.

Over and over, the best causes of the sixties and seventies - from ending the Vietnam War to the young environmental movement - found their strength in issues that could attract people who might not agree on everything but did on those issues. Just like Saul Alinksky, the god father of issue based activism, told us.