January 26, 2013

Bryan Fischer finds another deep end to go off of.....

from Right Wing Watch:



Fischer Warns of a 'Complete Sexual Meltdown' and the 'Reinstatement of the Draft' over Women in Combat Policy
Submitted by Brian Tashman on Friday, 1/25/2013 2:15 pm


Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association is now recycling the exact same talking points against allowing women the opportunity to serve in combat that he used opposing the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT).

While none of the dire predictions Fischer warned about regarding the end of DADT ever materialized, Fischer made similar warnings while speaking yesterday with Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness. Like with the DADT’s repeal, Fischer predicted that the policy will undermine readiness, cohesion, security and performance, possibly leading “to a reinstatement of the draft.”

While Donnelly avoided Fischer’s question about reinstating the draft, she claimed that women will now have to register in the selective service system and said the policy will “harm women, men, infantry battalions and the national security of the United States.” ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/fischer-warns-complete-sexual-meltdown-and-reinstatement-draft-over-women-combat-policy

January 25, 2013

Talk about adding insult to injury.........

Is that an illegal gun in your pocket or did you just shoot your penis off?

A 33-year-old security guard in Rio Claro, Trinidad And Tobago was found by police slumped behind his steering wheel on Sunday morning, according to the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian.

Police saw that the guard was bleeding from his groin and they discovered he had a .38 caliber firearm in his right front pocket. Cops determined the man had accidentally shot his penis off.

.....(snip).....

As Gawker writes, to add insult to "the worst injury imaginable," the guard will likely face charges of illegal possession of a firearm because he allegedly didn't have a valid handgun license. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/23/security-guard-shoots-penis-off_n_2534082.html?utm_hp_ref=weird-news

January 25, 2013

Gun drills and moobs

These German soldiers aren't boobs, so why are they growing them?

A new military report published in the German Medical Science journal and obtained by the German Herald finds that dozens of soldiers in the Wachbataillon unit have developed the condition because the drills they perform stimulate male mammary glands.

The director of plastic surgery at the military hospital in Berlin, Professor Bjorn Krapohl, said it's likely the repeated slapping of the soldiers' rifles on the left side of their chests during drills stimulates the glands to produce hormones, which creates the one-sided-boob effect.

At least 35 soldiers have been stricken with the condition, called one-sided gynecomastia, which has prompted German military officials to consider changing the way in which the battalion performs drills. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/german-soldiers-growing-breasts_n_2536939.html

January 25, 2013

“Free-Market” Outcomes Are Not Fair—and Not Free

from Dollars & Sense:


“Free-Market” Outcomes Are Not Fair—and Not Free
BY MARTY WOLFSON | November/December 2012


“Since 1980, the U.S. government has reduced its intervention in the U.S. economy, which has become much more of a free market. Conservatives applaud this development because they think that free-market outcomes reward talent and hard work; progressives object to the income inequality of free-market outcomes and want to use government tax and transfer policy to reduce inequality.”

Most people, whether conservative or progressive, would probably agree with this statement. This framing of the issue, however, plays into a right-wing story in which conservatives are the defenders of (free) market outcomes, including the success of the rich who have made it “on their own”; meanwhile, the “dependent poor” look to the government for handouts. This has been a basic element of the right-wing playbook for a long time. Then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney was drawing on this narrative when he complained about the 47% of the U.S. population “who are dependent upon government ... who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them.”

This view has two main themes: 1) Because the U.S. free-market economy rewards talent and hard work, the middle class should emulate the wealthy for their success, not vilify them; and 2) those who have been failures in the market want the government to take care of them by redistributing income from those who have been successful. We can see these themes play out on all sorts of political issues. They form, for example, the basis for the attacks on the Affordable Health Care Act (or “Obamacare”). Middle-class Americans, in the conservative view, are being taxed—forced to pay—to provide health insurance for those “unsuccessful” elements of the population who have not earned it themselves.

The conservative argument assumes that the outcomes we observe are the result of a free-market economy. However, the right-wing objective has not been to create a free market; it has been to rig government policy and the market so as to redistribute income towards large corporations and the wealthy. ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2012/1112wolfson.html

January 25, 2013

14th Annual Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence with Chris Hedges: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt

Published on Jan 22, 2013

The 14th Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Non-violence with Chris Hedges. Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at The Nation Institute, spent nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Central America, the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. He was part of the New York Times team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of global terrorism. He writes a weekly column for Truthdig, and has written for Harper's magazine, the New Statesman, the New York Review of Books, the Nation, Adbusters, Granta, Foreign Affairs and other publications. He is the author of the bestsellers Death of the Liberal Class, Empire of Illusion, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and, most recently, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

January 25, 2013

Geithner Never Felt Compelled To Seek Justice Against Wall Street

Now that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is close to leaving his post, he's opening up more about his role during the financial crisis.

The crisis triggered an economic collapse that threw millions of people out of work or their homes. But making sure justice was served for those Americans wasn't a top priority for Geithner, he said.

"I never felt that was my thing," the Treasury Secretary, who steps down from his post on Friday, told The New Republic in a recent interview, referring to "the understandable need people had for justice" after the financial crisis. "I had some views on the issue, but I didn't give them much weight. I thought my job was to figure out the financial parts."

The Treasury Department, to be fair, is not tasked with bringing malefactors to justice, a role that falls to the Justice Department itself. However, critics have long argued that Treasury should have attached conditions to bank bailouts that would have compelled changes in banking practices, and should have crafted its antiforeclosure programs to be more friendly to homeowners and less accommodating to major lenders. The Securities and Exchange Commission and Justice Department, rather than the Treasury Department, investigate financial fraud. .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/24/timothy-geithner-financial-crisis_n_2542642.html

January 25, 2013

Pension Panic Fueled by Anti-Worker Politics?

from In These Times:


Pension Panic Fueled by Anti-Worker Politics?
By Michelle Chen


It’s a common refrain in local papers: State faces pension funding crisis! Retiree benefits out of control! Public pensions bog down taxpayers! Pension costs seem to loom over so many state and local budget battles like a sinister sword of Damocles, a dark reminder of Big Government’s tyrannical profligacy.

Should we panic? Well, according to a new report by the Pew Center on the States, 61 cities face a collective fiscal burden of more than $210 billion, in part because consistent underfunding of benefits leaves yawning gaps in long-term cost projections. The report surveyed all U.S. cities with populations over 500,000, along with the most populous city in each state. Some cities are doing better than others in maintaining funds, but gaps persist, according to Pew’s estimates for fiscal years 2007-2010, especially in municipalities where local governments have lacked the “fiscal discipline” to keep up pension fund contributions—a situation exacerbated by the Great Recession.

But different political actors have different motives for expressing alarm over pension gaps. In some cases, dubiously calculated figures have inflated public concern.

Sometimes, politicians frame cost-cutting proposals as if “generous” benefits themselves are the problem, as opposed to officials failing to uphold the commitments they've made to civil servants.

In New Jersey, brazenly conservative Governor Chris Christie has pushed through short-term austerity measures that ostensibly shore up pensions by shifting costs onto beneficiaries, increasing employee contributions and freezing vital cost-of-living adjustments. But the long-term liabilities remained unresolved. Shortly after Christie trumpeted his pension fix, the New Jersey Star Ledger noted that liabilities would spike again after the stopgap measures petered out, warning, “because the state won’t be making full pension payments, the gap will swell again to $58 billion by 2019, according to the state’s estimates.” ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/14479/pension_panic_fueled_by_anti_worker_politics/

January 25, 2013

How to Stop the Next Pandemic: End Factory Farming

from Civil Eats:



How to Stop the Next Pandemic: End Factory Farming
By Thom Hartmann and Sam Sacks on January 22, 2013


Is our national habit of eating dead animals dragging us closer and closer to a flu pandemic that could kill tens of millions of Americans? Dr. Michael Greger believes so.

He’s the author of the new book, Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching, and he recently came on our show, The Big Picture, to ring the alarm bell.

“Up to sixty million Americans get the flu every year,” he said before asking, “What if it turned deadly?”

The question wasn’t exactly rhetorical.

We do know that the flu is already deadly. Hundreds, sometime thousands, of Americans do die every year from the regular seasonal flu, which according to the Center for Disease Control has a mortality rate of about two-tenths of one percent. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2013/01/22/how-to-stop-the-next-pandemic-end-factory-farming/

January 25, 2013

Mitch McConnell sets a new goal (cartoon)

January 25, 2013

Aussie Open (men's semis - spoiler)

It's going to be Djoker v Murray in the final -- that's become tennis' marquee rivalry. Federer's best GS chance at this stage in his career is always going to be on the green grass of SW19.