https://twitter.com/AmandaMarcotte/status/485134001951088641

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/calculator-birth-control-expensive-really-cost

THE COATHANGER FIVE
http://witchesandpagans.com/Pagan-Culture-Blogs/the-coathanger-five.html





More here:
http://witchesandpagans.com/Pagan-Culture-Blogs/the-coathanger-five.html

True patriotism isn’t simply about securing our borders from outsiders. It's about coming together for the common good. True patriotism requires taking on a fair share of the burdens of keeping America going, not finding tax loopholes and squirreling money abroad. It’s about preserving and protecting our democracy, not inundating it with big money or paralyzing it with partisanship. True patriots don’t hate the government of the United States. They’re proud of it. Generations of Americans have risked their lives to preserve it. They may not like everything it does, and they justifiably worry when special interests gain too much power over it. But true patriots work to improve the government, not destroy it. And they don't pander to divisiveness; they don't fuel racist or religious or ethnic divides; they aren't homophobic or sexist. To the contrary: True patriots seek to confirm and strengthen the “we” in “we the people of the United States.”

https://www.facebook.com/RBReich?fref=nf

OUR MOST IMPORTANT STRUGGLE REMAINS 238 YEARS LATER: "TO BE SELF EVIDENT"
By Charles P. Pierce on July 4, 2014



The greatest time bomb ever laid beneath history was laid 238 years ago today:




They knew they were doing it. They knew a lot of things, of course. They knew they were committing what the entire rest of the human history would have reckoned to be treason. They knew they were formally declaring war, although there is no declaration of war present anywhere in the document they signed, and they knew the formidable nature of the military arrayed against them. But they also knew they were committing themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, to a constant redefinition and expansion of the nature of freedom. They knew they were leaving themselves, and the nation they were seeking to form, wide open to charges that they had pronounced a cause of rebellion while guilty of the same offenses against Nature and Nature's god of which they were accusing a feckless monarch and his blundering ministers. (At his most acidic, Samuel Johnson wondered, ""How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?" The New England merchants and smugglers knew it. The Pennsylvania Quakers knew it. The slaveholders of the South knew it, and they knew it so well that they had a passage critical of the institution of slavery excised from the document that was written by one of their own. But they knew it anyway, and they were scared to the depths of their sin-wracked souls. The document was silent on slavery, but slavery was assumed in every syllable.

..................................

The explosive in that time bomb is not yet exhausted. There have been small detonations throughout our history. You can hear them every time freedom is extended and every time it changes form as it moves forward. There also have been small detonations throughout our history every time we fell short of the promise of those words, the promise that is the essential charge in the device.

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the jailers of Guantanamo, from the keepers of the black sites, from those willing to hand our inalienable rights to faceless men in the cubicles of the intelligence bureaucracy? How is that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from paymasters of torturers?

The time bomb laid beneath history 238 years ago is a time bomb of pure conundrum, and the people who put it there knew that the essential engine of democracy is paradox, noble bluffs to be called, high-minded promises in savage conflict with each other. And they knew that, too, all of them, when they piled the dirt atop the time bomb they had laid beneath history, wiped their hands daintily, and walked away.

Happy Independence Day.

.............................

MORE (just beautiful...):
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/Happy_Fourth_Of_July

Richard_thunderbay • 3 hours ago

Vladimir Putin may be a powerful and menacing leader here on Earth, but in the cosmos, he isn't getting such kind treatment. Ukrainian astronomers along with pro-Ukraine activists have gotten together to name a star "Putin-Huilo!" Huilo (sometimes spelled khulio) is a Ukrainian term which translates
loosely to a combination of "dickhead," "fucker," and "asshole." So the
name of the star translates to either "Putin is a dickhead" or "Putin is
a dipshit," depending how you read huilo.

The star was adopted through the Pale Blue Dot Project,
affiliated with the White Dwarf Research Corporation. Pale Blue Dot
allows anyone to adopt a star for just $10, and pick its name. The $10
donation goes to funding the research of astronomers seeking Earth-like
planets.


http://www.thewire.com/global/2014/07/ukrainian-astronomers-named-a-star-putin-is-a/373950/

http://www.balloon-juice.com/2014/07/04/another-june-has-gone-by/#comment-5044234

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-07/uov-dsi063014.php
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2014/07/03/most-men-would-rather-shock-themselves-than-be-alone-with-their-thoughts/?hpid=z1
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2014/7/3/154538/5799

The Journal reported that committee chair Michael Conaway (R-TX) said Thursday that the panel would reinstate the disclosure requirement.

"We will reverse that decision," Conaway said on a local radio show, according to the Journal.

The original decision, made without public announcement, had eliminated the requirement that House members disclose trips paid for by private groups on their annual financial disclosure forms. The Journal called that form the "chief document" used by journalists and watchdogs.

The trips would have still been disclosed to the House clerk's office, but a top watchdog called the change "an obvious effort to avoid responsibility."



http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/house-ethics-all-expense-trips-disclosure-reversed
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/07/03/1311507/-Outrage-Forces-House-to-Reinstate-Travel-Disclosure-Requirement