Leave Sheriff Joe Alooone!

post from Talking Points Memo on 10 May 2012 07:00:44 PM. © Talking Points Memo

Fox News knows who the real victim is in the DOJ's lawsuit against Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio for alleged abuse of Latinos' civil rights. That would be... Sheriff Joe. Watch. [...]

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Time Channels Tina Brown, Gets Attention

post from TaylorMarsh.com on 10 May 2012 07:00:37 PM. © TaylorMarsh.com

THE TIME COVER produced a whine from Mika Brzezisnki and Gillian Tett on “Morning Joe.”

“I’ll tell you why it bothers me. It bothers me because it’s a profile of Bill Sears,” Brzezinski said, suggesting, as Tett did, that the cover was a cheap shot. [Politico]

Whoosh…

That’s the sound of the subject matter attached to the provocative picture going right over their heads.

Evidently, Brzezinski and Tett don’t care that Dr. Bill Sears is father of “attachment parenting,” that includes “extended breast-feeding,” which the Time magazine cover is meant to depict.

From the author of the piece:

For TIME?s May 21 cover story, I explored the personal history and legacy of Dr. Bill Sears, the father of a child-rearing philosophy called attachment parenting. As the author of 40-plus books on parenting and pregnancy, Sears is a familiar figure to many American mothers and fathers. Some parents subscribe to his theory that attachment parenting ? characterized by extended breast-feeding, co-sleeping and wearing your baby in a sling across your body ? is the best way to raise confident, secure children. Others think Sears is an antifeminist tyrant, or that his ideas are just totally unrealistic.

It’s hard to know how any magazine stays in business with new media’s power, but as long as the cover matches the article subject there’s no reason not to do it. What’s critical is drawing attention to subjects that matter, so if it takes a little shock value to get people to care about issues, so be it.

There is also a certain segment of women in this country who are afraid of public depiction of nudity and breasts, as well as anything provocative at all, thinking life needs to be serious and sober to be important. Politico wouldn’t even show the entire cover while writing about it! Back when I watched “Morning Joe” regularly, Brzezinski would freak out every time the boys brought up anything having to do with women scantily clothed or nude, coming off as prudish, schoolmarm or old-fashioned.

Feminism is also attached to a strict sense of female propriety where nudity is concerned, something I always equated as part of the multiple choice party of liberation. Unfortunately, many feminists have a politically correct dos and don’ts list for women that all of us are to live by. I blew past that one decades ago.

As for the philosophy of “extended breast-feeding,” it’s just plain creepy and reminds me of the shame I’ve seen through girlfriends who couldn’t breast feed no matter how hard they tried, but were made to feel guilty because they couldn’t.

I’m child-free by choice, so this story is completely out of my personal experience base, though I have interviewed women on children’s issues many times. I’ve yet to find anyone who embraces “extended breast-feeding,” though many have chosen co-sleeping, up to a certain age, and wearing their baby across their body in a sling, though these two issues are quite different from what the Time cover depicts.

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Study confirms that creepy people give us the
chills

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 10 May 2012 07:00:17 PM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

After 20+ years of work plus extensive world travel off the beaten path, I'm very sensitive to my instincts. I always go with my gut when I sense a creepy person and make it a point to move on asap. There still has to be more though, but it's a good start to learning more about why we react more to some people.A friend that I used to work with in DC had once told me a story about a man who...

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epy-people-give.html

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Police Face Charges in Beating, Tasering Death of
Mentally Ill Homeless Man

post from Crooks and Liars on 10 May 2012 07:00:05 PM. © Crooks and Liars

[Warning: This video contains graphic images..]

Manuel Ramos, a police officer from Fullerton, California, has been charged with second degree murder for allegedly beating a mentally-ill homeless person to death last year. His co-worker, Officer Jay Cicinelli, faces charges of involuntary manslaughter and excessive use of force. This video from a surveillance camera shows Kelly Thomas, the victim, pleading for his life while the officers beat him on the street.

Via:

The case has been particularly emotional for Ron Thomas, who has been forced to watch the video of his son's beating and listen to the heartbreaking pleas. At one point, Kelly Thomas cries out, "Dad, they are killing me!"
In an earlier interview, Ron Thomas said the hardest part of the video and audio "is the sounds of my son calling out."
Rackauckas presented the case himself, playing a dramatic, never-before-seen video that showed a shirtless Thomas being pummeled and held down by Fullerton police officers.
Rackauckas said Ramos "turned a routine encounter into a brutal beating death" while Cicinelli "assisted in the killing of Kelly Thomas" by "smashing his face" with the butt of a Taser stun gun and applying his own weight on Thomas' torso.
A coroner's pathologist said Thomas died of chest compression and blood from his facial wounds.

Thomas, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic, sustained neck and head injuries during his encounter with Fullerton police. He was taken to UCI Medical Center where he spent the last days of his life in a coma, until his parents made the decision to remove him from life support.

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Shortsighted Republicans Eliminate International
Climate Aid Funding. Again.

post from ThinkProgress on 10 May 2012 07:00:04 PM. © ThinkProgress

by Rebecca Lefton

The most anti-environmental House of Representatives in history is at it again.

Yesterday, the House Foreign Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee passed the 2013 foreign operations budget, which for a second year in a row cut entire programs crucial for helping developing countries address climate change impacts and advance on a low-emission economic trajectory.

The conservative belief that cutting international climate investments will solve national budget and debt problems simply makes the problem more expensive for us down the road. These cuts are bad for our national security, risk our international credibility, and endanger our planet and future generations.

So what does the House bill do?

The World Bank multilateral Climate Investment Funds that the George W. Bush administration established — consisting of the Strategic Climate Fund, the Clean Technology Fund, and the Forest Investment Program — are completely absent. That?s bad financial investment policy. The Clean Technology Fund, which helps to scale up clean energy technology in large-emitting developing countries, leverages around $8 in co-financing from multilateral development banks, governments, and the private sector for every $1 invested.
Funding for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — a body of scientists that studies the risk of human-induced climate change — is eliminated.
USAID?s operating expenses are cut 5 percent below FY 2012 enacted levels.
The Global Environment Facility, the main funder of international global warming projects, was cut to $64.7 million. In 2012 President Obama requested $143.7 million for the fund.

As the Center for American Progress has recommended, directing a mix of public and private resources to international climate finance will be a cost-effective way to fulfill our global emissions reductions pledges. The only way to achieve our goals for climate stabilization is to help developing countries grow in a more sustainable way by using lower-carbon or zero-carbon energy sources.

International climate funding also creates opportunities for investments by U.S. companies that deliver the programs that capture these pollution reductions.

These cuts put the U.S. in a dangerous position, and they reflect a paralyzing ideological divide among parties. Illinois Senator Dick Lugar — a conservative who worked across party lines to address climate change — recently lamented the way his party is attacking the issue. In a statement after his defeat to a climate-denying Tea Partier, Lugar warned:

?I don?t remember a time when so many topics have become politically unmentionable in one party or the other. Republicans cannot admit to any nuance in policy on climate change?.Our political system is losing its ability to even explore alternatives. If fealty to these pledges continues to expand, legislators may pledge their way into irrelevance. Voters will be electing a slate of inflexible positions rather than a leader.?

Senator Lugar was an original sponsor of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act supporting debt-for-nature swaps that allow developing countries to relieve debt owed to the United States by conserving and protecting forests.

Meanwhile, other countries are stepping up their international climate aid. Rather than having conversations about whether to pay for international climate aid at all, other world leaders are discussing about how to ramp up their commitments.

It’s now up to the Senate to help get the budget on the right path by restoring our international financial commitment to combating climate change.

Rebecca Lefton is a Policy Analyst with the International Climate Team at the Center for American Progress

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Romney Abolished Massachusetts LGBT Anti-Bullying
Commission

post from ThinkProgress on 10 May 2012 07:00:04 PM. © ThinkProgress

As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney refused to fund the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, ultimately abolishing it. The group was created in 1992 to address alarmingly high rates of bullying and suicide among gay and lesbian teens. In 2005, Romney vetoed a $100,000 increase in the commission’s budget, a decision overturned by the legislature. After the group lent its name to a gay pride parade in 2006, Romney threatened to end it entirely, expressing concerns about the parade’s indecency and inclusion of the transgender community. Ultimately, when Romney tried to change the focus of the group to not be LGBT-specific, the legislature created its own commission and the governor’s dissolved. Combined with evidence that Romney was an anti-gay bully in high school, it seems that there is at least one position on which he’s been consistent throughout his life: harassing the LGBT community.

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Poll: Americans Support Cuts To Military Spending

post from ThinkProgress on 10 May 2012 07:00:04 PM. © ThinkProgress

The $150 Million F-22 Raptor

The defense budget has emerged as one of the most hotly debated congressional issues this week. Disagreements over a $5 billion missile defense site — Republicans say the facility is necessary but Democrats, along with the Pentagon, report the project is unnecessary — was eventually backed by the House Armed Services Committee under Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon’s (R-CA) chairmanship. And in the presidential race, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, if elected, would increase military spending $2.1 trillion and hasn’t said how he would pay for it.

While House Republicans and the Romney campaign are eager to preserve, if not expand, the Pentagon’s budget, new polling data shows that Americans underestimate the size of the defense budget and, after seeing information on the size of defense spending, endorse defense spending cuts.

The poll, conducted by the Center for Public integrity, the Program for Public Consultation (PPC) and the Stimson Center finds that when shown the discretionary budget for national defense alongside the discretionary budgets for education, veterans’ benefits, homeland security and various other spending areas, 65 percent of respondents found Defense spending to be more than what they had expected. Overall, respondents would cut the budget by 18 percent. Republicans cut an average of 12 percent and Democrats 22 percent.

The respondents’ high support for cutting the defense budget might be explained by the presentation of discretionary defense spending alongside other budget items. “This suggests that Americans generally underestimate the size of the defense budget and that when they receive balanced information about its size they are more likely to cut it to reduce the deficit,” said Steven Kull, director of PPC.

By a large percentage, the poll showed that Americans favored cutting the budget for nuclear weapons (27 percent) but the budget for existing ground forces was picked by respondents for the biggest cuts in dollar terms, $36.2 billion in average cuts or 23 percent.

While the Romney campaign and the GOP-controlled House Armed Services Committee appear intent on protecting existing military spending and introducing new projects for funding — whether the Pentagon asks for it or not — the U.S. public is firmly opposed to the current defense spending levels.

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Arizona The Latest State To Use Foreclosure
Settlement Funds To Balance Budget

Photo by flickr user gilsonrome

Since the $25 billion foreclosure fraud settlement was forged between most of the nation’s attorneys general and the biggest banks, several states have taken a portion of the money they were allotted — which was intended to go towards housing relief — and used it for other items in their budgets.

Arizona recently became the latest state to pull such shenanigans, diverting $50 million of its share of the settlement to balance its state budget:

At issue is the decision of the Legislature and Gov. Jan Brewer to tap $50 million from the $97.7 million the state received as part of its settlement with five mortgage-lending firms. They said they needed the money from the national mortgage settlement to balance the state budget. Initially, the intent was to use the money for prison construction. [...]
The money comes from a settlement [Arizona Attorney General Tom] Horne’s office negotiated in February with five lenders, and it is intended to provide relief to people affected by the foreclosure crisis as well as to prevent poor lending practices.

“There’s a lot of pressure on the budget,” said Arizona House Speaker Andy Tobin to justify the move. But as Mark Ladov and Meghna Philip of the Brennan Center for Justice noted, that money could do a lot of good in a state that has been pounded by the housing crisis:

The final state budget sweeps $50 million from the foreclosure settlement into the state’s general fund. This is despite the fact that Arizona posted the highest foreclosure rate in the nation in March, with an astonishing one out of every 300 housing units receiving a foreclosure notice…The Arizona Housing Alliance estimates that $50 million could provide 75,000 troubled homeowners with housing counseling and 10,000 homeowners with legal assistance. That investment would more than pay for itself by strengthening communities, boosting property values and helping to restore the state’s economic health.

Instead, Arizona, like several other states, will simply siphon the money elsewhere, leaving homeowners to continue struggling on their own.

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Isnt bullying wrong whether it is done today or
40 years ago

So we have had a big push to stop bullying. We would like to stop bullying in schools and colleges. I remember as a teenager I went to the Battle of the Bands. This was a great show. Gambling. Texas Southern and other bands from historically Black colleges. It was outstanding. Great music and absolutely

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Key Case in Florida Supreme Court Could Strike a
Blow Against Banks Fraudulent Foreclosure Practices

The Florida Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an important case that could have wide-ranging implications for foreclosures in that state. The case, Roman Pino v. Bank of New York Mellon, could invalidate the ability of banks to refile documents in[...]

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