October 5, 2014

Hong Kong police deny using triads to disrupt protests

Hong Kong's assistant police commissioner denies allegations that criminal gangs were called in to disrupt protests in the city. Thugs punched and kicked pro-democracy protesters on Friday night, drawing blood as they tore down their tents and attempted to force them out. Meanwhile, tensions remain high on Saturday between pro-government and Occupy groups

http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/oct/04/hong-kong-police-deny-triads-protests-video

October 5, 2014

Can we take consolation if we lose the Senate but win key governorships?

In the past few years all of our progressive gains from marriage equity to higher minimum wages have come from the states. If things hold up, we stand poised to take seat in Maine, Pennsylvania, Florida, Kansas and things are tight in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan. If we can take them as well some state legislative chambers, we might yet be able to advance our agenda on the state levels, even if we lose the Senate.

October 5, 2014

California Faces A Record-Breaking October Heat Wave

California finds itself in yet another heat wave, with record-breaking temperatures reported in several cities and hotter-than-usual temperatures across the state. The National Weather Service has put the San Francisco Bay area and San Diego under a heat advisory and has issued a hazardous weather outlook for the Los Angeles area.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles Unified School District cancelled outside activities and sports for the rest of the week due to the heat. This is the second time this school year that LAUSD has had to cancel activities because of high temperatures. All schools in the Long Beach School District had shortened days on Thursday and today because of the hot weather; about 70 percent of schools in the district do not have air conditioning.

On Thursday, downtown Los Angeles reached 92 degrees by noon. The average October temperature for Los Angeles is 79 degrees. Several cities in Southern California broke record temperatures. Oxnard reached 98 degrees on Thursday, breaking an almost 70 year old record, while Santa Barbara saw a new high of 94 degrees. Inland temperatures are expected to be as high as 106 over the weekend. The record high temperature for the Los Angeles area is 108 degrees, which occurred in 1987.

And it’s not just high temperatures that Californians are facing. Fire warnings have been put place throughout the Los Angeles area, thanks to the high heat and winds that could reach 50 miles an hour. The Los Angeles Fire Department has pre-deployed firefighters in high risk areas, including the University of California Los Angeles campus. The Los Angeles county fire inspector Randy Wright said that people should be prepared to evacuate. Earlier in the fall, the King fire in Eldorado National Forest in Northern California burned over 97,000 acres and required over 8,000 firefighters to combat it.


http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/10/03/3575725/california-october-heat-wave/

October 5, 2014

Eric Burden and the Animals - San Franciscan Nights (VIDEO)

October 5, 2014

Chinese Billionaire: If You Are Poor At 35, You Deserve It

For many who at 35 still blame their poverty state on family, friends or any other thing, famous Chinese billionaire, Jack Ma, says they are mistaking. According to him, “you are poor, because you have no ambition.”

In an article published by Cambridge Entrepreneur Academy - a World Wide Online Entrepreneur Training Academy and Incubator for Adults and Kids – Jack Ma spotlights on how he became a billionaire by creating Alibaba Group, a family of highly successful Internet-based businesses in China where he serves as the Executive Chairman.

“Before I founded Alibaba,” he said, “I invited 24 friends to my house to discuss the business opportunity. After discussing for a full two hours, they were still confused — I have to say that I may not have put myself across in a clear manner then. The verdict: 23 out of the 24 people in the room told me to drop the idea, for a multitude of reasons, such as: ‘you do not know anything about the internet, and more prominently, you do not have the start-up capital for this’ etc.”

He continued, “There was only one friend (who was working in a bank then) who told me, “If you want to do it, just try it. If things don’t work out the way you expected it to, you can always revert back to what you were doing before.” I pondered upon this for one night, and by the next morning, I decided I would do it anyway, even if all of the 24 people opposed the idea.”

http://www.cameroon-info.net/stories/0,63124,@,chinese-billionaire-if-you-are-poor-at-35-you-deserve-it.html

October 4, 2014

Election site project Dem pickups for Gov. in FL, GA and KS.

I never saw this site before, but I sure hope they're right.



http://www.electionprojection.com/2014-elections/2014-governor-elections.php

October 4, 2014

Forget about Ebola. Look what the anti-vaxxers are doing to California

Almost 8,000 cases of pertussis, better known as whooping cough, have been reported to California's Public Health Department so far this year. More than 250 patients have been hospitalized, nearly all of them infants and young children, and 58 have required intensive care. Why is this preventable respiratory infection making a comeback? In no small part thanks to low vaccination rates, as a story earlier this month in the Hollywood Reporter pointed out.

Who is choosing not to vaccinate? The answer is surprising. The area with the most cases of whooping cough in California is Los Angeles County, and no group within that county has lower immunization rates than residents living between Malibu and Marina Del Rey, home to some of the wealthiest and most exclusive suburbs in the country. At the Kabbalah Children's Academy in Beverly Hills, 57% of children are unvaccinated. At the Waldorf Early Childhood Center in Santa Monica, it's 68%, according to the Hollywood Reporter's analysis of public-health data.

These are the kind of immunization rates that can be found in Chad or South Sudan. But parents in Beverly Hills and Santa Monica see vaccines as unnatural—something that conflicts with their healthy lifestyle. And they have no problem finding fringe pediatricians willing to cater to their irrational beliefs.

These parents are almost uniformly highly educated, but they are making an uneducated choice. It's also a dangerous choice: Children not vaccinated against whooping cough are 24 times more likely to catch the disease. Furthermore, about 500,000 people in the U.S. can't be vaccinated, either because they are receiving chemotherapy for cancer or immune-suppressive therapies for chronic diseases, or because they are too young. They depend on those around them to be vaccinated. Otherwise, they are often the first to suffer. And because no vaccine is 100% effective, everyone, even those who are vaccinated, is at some risk.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/paul-a-offit-the-anti-vaccination-epidemic-1411598408

October 4, 2014

538 calls the Michigan Senate race pretty much over.

In every Senate forecast FiveThirtyEight has published this year, Republicans have been slightly favored to take back the chamber. That hasn’t changed with our latest model run: Republicans are a 58 percent favorite.

On Thursday, three surveys confirmed the trend. EPIC-MRA and Lake Research (in a poll for the liberal group Progress Michigan) found Democrat Gary Peters ahead of Republican Terri Lynn Land by 9 percentage points. Mitchell Research put Peters’s advantage at 13 points. Additionally, a Target-Insyght poll this week found Peters up by 10 percentage points. On average, Peters was ahead in these polls by a little over 10 percentage points.

The FiveThirtyEight forecast isn’t ready to put Peters ahead by that much; it projects him to win by 6 percentage points, with an 89 percent chance of winning in November. That’s up from 70 percent at the beginning of September. More impressively, it’s way up from the 55 percent chance FiveThirtyEight gave Peters in its March outlook.

Ten other races are now rated as more competitive than Michigan.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/senate-update-democrats-wrapping-up-in-michigan/

October 4, 2014

David Perdue: ‘I spent most of my career’ outsourcing

David Perdue has run aggressively as a “job creator,” touting his record as a top executive with Fortune 500 companies as the chief selling point in his Georgia Senate campaign.

Yet during a controversial chapter in his record — a nine-month stint in 2002-03 as CEO of failed North Carolina textile manufacturer Pillowtex Corp. — Perdue said he was hired, at least in part, to cut costs by outsourcing manufacturing operations overseas. Perdue specialized throughout his career in finding low-cost manufacturing facilities and labor, usually in Asia.

During a July 2005 deposition, a transcript of which was provided to POLITICO, Perdue spoke at length about his role in Pillowtex’s collapse, which led to the loss of more than 7,600 jobs. Perdue was asked about his “experience with outsourcing,” and his response was blunt.

“Yeah, I spent most of my career doing that,” Perdue said, according to the 186-page transcript of his sworn testimony.


http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/david-perdue-georgia-senate-race-2014-111589.html#ixzz3FDBcvkBy

October 4, 2014

Two Officials Resign Over Pennsylvania Porn Scandal

NOTE: This is a bigger issue than the porn. When you spend time using state resources (such as computers) to mess around like this, it can be consdered a form of theft.


HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The Pennsylvania Capitol is gripped by a widening scandal over the exchange of emails containing pornography by former members of the attorney general's office.

Gov. Tom Corbett was attorney general when the emails were exchanged by members of his staff, forcing him to defend his management as he campaigns for a second term. Pennsylvania's state Supreme Court chief justice demanded information on whether any judges were part of the exchanges.

Last week, Attorney General Kathleen Kane's office identified eight ex-employees who sent or received hundreds of pornographic images or videos in emails that were discovered during Kane's review of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse prosecution.

Four of those officials followed Corbett from the attorney general's office into his gubernatorial administration. On Thursday, two of them resigned. And Corbett said Friday that his review indicated that another of the four — state police Commissioner Frank Noonan — did not open, originate, forward or reply to any of the emails.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2-officials-resign-porn-scandal