Insecure, Frustrated Bully With Something To Prove Considering Career In Law Enforcement

RALEIGH, NC—Calling it his lifelong dream, local man Brendan Lockhart, an insecure and perpetually frustrated bully who believes he has something to prove to the world, told reporters Thursday that he is seriously considering a career in law enforcement.

Lockhart, a recent high-school graduate who sources confirmed is plagued by resentment, self-doubt, unexpected fits of rage, and has always had a penchant for tormenting those who are smaller and weaker than him, explained that he feels he is well suited to serve as a police officer.

“I’ve always wanted to be a cop,” said Lockhart, whose paranoia and inferiority complex constantly haunt him, leading him to lash out at others in order to convince them he is in control. “I know it’s a tough line of work, but I think I’ve got what it takes to earn my shield and get out there and keep the peace.”

Friends and family confirmed that Lockhart, an unpredictable, petty individual who frequently loses his temper when he feels he is being threatened or disrespected, has in recent months been inquiring into joining the ranks of the Raleigh Police Department. In this role, the man with a massive chip on his shoulder and no visible sense of empathy would be tasked with peacefully resolving disputes and evenhandedly administering justice to members of the community over whom he would have official power.

More: http://www.theonion.com/articles/insecure-frustrated-bully-with-something-to-prove,33427/

Any reason why General Discussion has been down for 3 hours?

Kan. proof-of-citizenship law targeting fraud puts voting rights in limbo for 15,000 residents

Source: AP

TOPEKA, Kan. — A few weeks after moving to suburban Kansas City from the Seattle area, Aaron Belenky went online to register to vote but ended up joining thousands of other Kansas residents whose voting rights are in legal limbo because of the state’s new proof-of-citizenship rule.

Starting this year, new voters aren’t legally registered in Kansas until they’ve presented a birth certificate, passport or other document demonstrating U.S. citizenship. Kansas is among a handful of GOP-dominated states enacting such a rule to keep noncitizens from voting, but the most visible result so far is a growing pool of nearly 15,000 residents who’ve filled out registration forms but can’t legally cast ballots yet.

Critics of the law point out that the number of people whose registrations aren’t yet validated — and who are blocked from voting — far outpaces the few hundred ballots over the last 15 years that Kansas officials have reported as potentially tainted by irregularities. Preventing election fraud was often cited as the reason for enacting the law.

Belenky, a 39-year-old computer programmer, has his birth certificate and a passport but said he’d have to open and rifle through boxes in his Overland Park apartment to find them and comply with a rule that doesn’t exist across most of the rest of the nation. And now, the prospective Kansas Democrat is irritated enough that he is ready to join a legal challenge.

Read more: http://m.washingtonpost.com/national/kan-proof-of-citizenship-law-targeting-fraud-puts-voting-rights-in-limbo-for-15000-residents/2013/08/15/e3d082c8-057a-11e3-bfc5-406b928603b2_story.htmlLink to source

Protest all you want, fools: Corporate executives spend billions to protest CBS deal gone bad

So I'm standing in Times Square smoking a cigarette at 5:00 AM before I head down into the subway to catch the A Train to Harlem to meet my boss.

Every 10 seconds is an ad complaining about the CBS deal gone bad. Do you know how much that costs? Does this tell you how little a corporate executive riding to work in a limousine cares about you holding a sign?

While I'm seeing this I'm thinking about a mother working two jobs to feed her children. This country is now sick with a long term illness.

Most of our leaders work for these fat cats. They take turns doing the bidding for corporations and then pretend to care about us. But most are bought and they'll stay bought.

Larry Summers Helped Torpedo Elizabeth Warren CFPB Nomination

Former Obama administration economic adviser Larry Summers helped torpedo a bid from current Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the summer of 2010.

The Summers-Warren conflict was reported by The Boston Globe and confirmed to The Huffington Post by two former Obama administration officials.

The Globe story builds on reporting from Ron Suskind's book on the Obama administration's economic management, Confidence Men, revealing that while Summers publicly praised Warren as an excellent candidate to head the CFPB in July, he in fact opposed appointing to her director of the new regulatory agency when he served as director of the president's National Economic Council. Although Summers had been an early advocate of Warren's idea to establish a consumer regulator to deal with abusive lending, he was rankled by the support she received from other administration officials, particularly Christina Romer, who chaired Obama's Council of Economic Advisers. Summers and Romer repeatedly clashed on policy matters, with Summers infamously blocking Romer from presenting an analysis to Obama, revealing an economic need for a stimulus package much larger than $800 billion.

Although a coalition of consumer advocates and progressive interest groups supported Warren's nomination as CFPB director with a full five-year term, Obama instead named her to a temporary post running the new agency.

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/07/larry-summers-elizabeth-warren_n_3720533.html

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From the Boston Globe article:

-snip-

On the Fed pick, Obama and White House officials are said to be leaning toward Summers, who helped guide Obama out of the depths of the 2008 recession. But the appointment is far from secured, given the enthusiastic support some Democratic senators, Warren among them, are generating for Yellen.

Both Summers and Warren declined requests for an interview. At the root of their disagreements is a fundamental difference in approach to economic regulation, with Warren placing far more emphasis on everyday taxpayers. Summers has maintained stronger Wall Street ties and has worked as a paid consultant at Citigroup since 2012, the banking company confirmed last month.

As treasury secretary under President Clinton, Summers worked to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, dismantling the wall between commercial banks and many investment activities. Warren and many other observers contend the repeal contributed to the 2008 financial collapse and now, as senator, she is spearheading legislation for a new version of Glass-Steagall.

“She just tends to see things through Main Street and he sees things through Wall Street,” Sheila Bair, a former FDIC chairwoman, said.

“Elizabeth is wary of large institutions and their financial power, and Larry views them as necessary,” she added. “She fears that their market power [risks hurting] the economy.”

More http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2013/08/06/battle-over-fed-chairmanship-adds-new-complexity-relationship-larry-summers-and-elizabeth-warren/bX36xfpxP4YkTLCE1PCRkN/story.html

Exclusive: FBI allowed informants to commit 5,600 crimes

Source: USA Today

WASHINGTON — The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single year, according to newly disclosed documents that show just how often the nation's top law enforcement agency enlists criminals to help it battle crime.

The U.S. Justice Department ordered the FBI to begin tracking crimes by its informants more than a decade ago, after the agency admitted that its agents had allowed Boston mobster James "Whitey" Bulger to operate a brutal crime ring in exchange for information about the Mafia. The FBI submits that tally to top Justice Department officials each year, but has never before made it public.

Agents authorized 15 crimes a day, on average, including everything from buying and selling illegal drugs to bribing government officials and plotting robberies. FBI officials have said in the past that permitting their informants — who are often criminals themselves — to break the law is an indispensable, if sometimes distasteful, part of investigating criminal organizations.

"It sounds like a lot, but you have to keep it in context," said Shawn Henry, who supervised criminal investigations for the FBI until he retired last year. "This is not done in a vacuum. It's not done randomly. It's not taken lightly."

Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-informant-crimes-report/2613305/

Climate Changing 10 Times Faster than in Past 65 Million Years

Stanford University climate researchers warn that the likely rate of climate change over the next century will be 10 times faster than the rate of any climate shift in the past 65 million years, meaning the planet will undergo one of the largest changes in climate since the dinosaurs went extinct.

Noah Diffenbaugh, an associate professor of environmental Earth system science, and Chris Field, a professor of biology and of environmental Earth system science at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, report in the journal Science that if the climate change trend continues at the current pace, it will place stress on terrestrial ecosystems around the world and that adaptation to a world with a new climate will be necessary many species to survive.

Earth has gone through periods of global warming and cooling in the past, but most current climate research fingers anthropogenic factors in facilitating greater climate change.

"There are two key differences for ecosystems in the coming decades compared with the geologic past," Diffenbaugh said in a statement. "One is the rapid pace of modern climate change. The other is that today there are multiple human stressors that were not present 55 million years ago, such as urbanization and air and water pollution."

More: http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/3294/20130801/climate-changing-10-times-faster-past-65-million-years.htm

Senate Panel Presses N.S.A. on Phone Logs

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — Senators of both parties on Wednesday sharply challenged the National Security Agency’s collection of records of all domestic phone calls, even as the latest leaked N.S.A. document provided new details on the way the agency monitors Web browsing around the world.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the chairman, Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, accused Obama administration officials of overstating the success of the domestic call log program. He said he had been shown a classified list of “terrorist events” detected through surveillance, and it did not show that “dozens or even several terrorist plots” had been thwarted by the domestic program.

“If this program is not effective it has to end. So far, I’m not convinced by what I’ve seen,” Mr. Leahy said, citing the “massive privacy implications” of keeping records of every American’s domestic calls.

At the start of the hearing, the Obama administration released previously classified documents outlining the rules for how the domestic phone records may be accessed and used by intelligence analysts. And as senators debated the program, The Guardian published on its Web site a still-classified 32-page presentation, apparently downloaded by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, that describes a separate surveillance activity by the agency.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/01/us/nsa-surveillance.html

It's that face again

Because of this: