Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Final thought of the day.
Christian homeschoolers receive maximum sentence for death of child.
In Washington state a Christian homeschooling couple received maximum prison sentences allowable under the law after being found guilty of beating and starving their adopted daughter to death in accord with Biblical based parenting techniques.
Superior Court Judge Susan Cook showed no mercy to Larry and Carri Williams, found guilty of causing the tragic death of their adopted daughter, Hana, by using Biblical based parenting techniques found in the controversial child-rearing book, To Train up a Child, by Michael and Debi Pearl.
Cook sentenced Carri Williams to 37 years in prison. Her husband Larry, convicted of lesser charges, was sentenced to just under 28 years. Both terms are well above the standard sentencing range.
Cook said, “I feel the punishment should match the outrage felt by this community. I am at a complete loss. I think at some point in this trial each and every one of us sat stunned and speechless without the slightest hope of making any sense of this whatsoever.”
What these animals did to this child in the name of religion and superstition is repulsive.
Hana’s death was consistent with a corporal punishment style advocated by many Christian extremists, and memorialized in the controversial book, To Train Up A Child. According to reports, Hana was beaten and starved as part of a regimen of corporal punishment subscribed to by many Christian homeschoolers and other Christian fundamentalists.
The New York Times reports that the couple's abusive parenting tactics mimicked instructions from the Christian parenting book. Evidence presented at trial indicated Carri Williams had repeatedly beaten Hana with a plastic tube - a device recommended in the book.
To Train Up A Child advocates using a plumbing tool to beat children with starting at age one. The book also advocates giving children cold water baths, putting children outside in cold weather, and forcing them to miss meals, as well as beating them; all of which exemplifies the abuse investigators said Hana endured.
The book is also linked to the deaths of at least two other children, four-year-old Sean Paddock of North Carolina and seven year-old Lydia Schatz of California. In each case, punishment techniques advocated by the controversial Christian parenting manual were used.
Just in case anybody wants to ask me once again what I find so upsetting about religion and its impact on society, I think you can look at this post and figure that out for yourself.
Prejudice, sexism, child abuse, all if it goes down so much smoother when hidden within the elixir of religion.
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Supreme Court refuses Oklahoma case that looked to limit access to RU-486, the so-called abortion pill.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left intact a state court decision invalidating an Oklahoma law that effectively banned the so-called abortion pill RU-486, with the justices deciding to sidestep a potentially contentious case.
The high court had been waiting for the Oklahoma Supreme Court to clarify a December 2012 ruling that had voided the law before deciding on whether to rule on the case. Last week, the state court issued a new opinion explaining its reasoning in more detail.
The U.S. high court's latest action means the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling is final. The state court said the effect of the law would have been a ban on all abortions by medications, and as a result "restricts the long-respected medical discretion of physicians" who decide that method is safer for some patients than surgical abortion.
That ruling invalidated a state law it said had the effect of banning abortion-inducing drugs altogether.
This is good news for the pro-choice movement, and kind of makes me feel a little better about the next one headed their direction from Texas.
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Rand Paul's plagiarism-a-palooza also included huge sections of his book. Gonna be awful busy fighting duels if this keeps up.
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| "Okay that's it! My hair is challenging all of ya'll to a duel. Dandruff specks and fifty paces!" |
Rand Paul's plagiarism-a-palooza also included huge sections of his book. Gonna be awful busy fighting duels if this keeps up.
Courtesy of Buzzfeed:An entire section of Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 2013 book Government Bullies was copied wholesale from a 2003 case study by the Heritage Foundation, BuzzFeed has learned. The copied section, 1,318 words, is by far the most significant instance reported so far of Paul borrowing language from other published material.
The new cut-and-paste job follows reports by BuzzFeed, Politico, and MSNBC that Paul had plagiarized speeches either from Wikipedia or news reports. The book was published in August 2013 by Center Street, a division of Hachette Book Group.
In this case, Paul included a link to the Heritage case study in the book’s footnotes, though he made no effort to indicate that not just the source, but the words themselves, had been taken from Heritage.
A Paul aide defended the senator, saying he makes clear in the book’s “notes and sources” that he didn’t individually research each case.
“In the book Government Bullies all the information… was sourced by end notes. In the two cases described, the end notes clearly define the sourcing for the book. In no case has the Senator used information without attribution,” said Doug Stafford, an advisor to Sen. Paul who co-wrote the book. “There were 150 endnotes and cites including The Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute. This is a witch hunt and grasping at straws.”
Yes pointing out that a nationally known politician with aspirations fro the White House has engaged in cutting and pasting huge portions of text from an online site or has taken entire blocks of information, verbatim, from a case study without making it perfectly clear that they have done so is NOT grasping at straws. It is a little thing called reporting the the facts.
Very, very troubling facts.
I have it on good authority that Paul's hair is not original to him as well, and may in fact have been manufactured elsewhere and then passed off as his own. Truly there is nothing about the man that can be believed.
Is anybody else looking forward to watching Rachel tonight as much as I am ?
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Was LAX shooter inspired to kill TSA agents by hate mongers warning of a "New World Order" like Glenn Beck and Alex Jones? Judge for yourself.
The 23-year-old man who allegedly killed a TSA official at Los Angeles International Airport yesterday was carrying a one-page “manifesto” that included references to the “New World Order,” the Federal Reserve and “fiat currency,” according to a knowledgeable source with ranking law enforcement contacts.
Paul Anthony Ciancia, who allegedly wounded three other TSA workers before being shot and critically wounded himself, also expressed antagonism toward the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its chief until she resigned in August, Janet Napolitano, the source said. Ciancia’s note called former Secretary Napolitano a “bull dyke” and contained the phrase “FU Janet Napolitano,” the source said.
Ciancia’s language and references seemed to put him squarely in the conspiracy-minded world of the antigovernment “Patriot” movement. The New World Order refers to a longstanding conspiracy theory that today, in its most popular iteration, claims that global elites are plotting to form a socialistic “one-world government” that would crush American freedoms. Often, the root of the alleged conspiracy is traced to the 1913 creation of the Federal Reserve and the adoption of fiat currency — paper money that is not backed by gold, as it was once was in the U.S.
So-called Patriots also increasingly see the DHS, which produces intelligence assessments of extremists that are distributed to other law enforcement agencies, as an enemy and even a collaborator in the New World Order conspiracy. Many believe DHS has targeted their movement and is somehow connected to the alleged construction of concentration camps by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The purported camps are thought to be meant for those Americans who resist a coming national seizure of all weapons from U.S. citizens.
If you are wondering where you have heard of the "Patriot" movement and references to the "New World Order" before well it just might have been right here among multiple posts about Alex Jones or Glenn Beck, who warn about the encroachment of government into all of our lives with an evangelical fervor, and who believe that we are moving to a one world government that will dictate European laws to American citizens.
However it is not only the fringe who embrace this point of view, the Tea Party itself is very enmeshed with that kind of thinking, as well as both Ron Paul and his son Rand Paul.
You know if you think about it, constantly screaming that America is under attack by communists and socialists, while advocating the ownership of guns while also warning that the government is working to restrict your access, can really only have one result ultimately.
This is domestic terrorism, one of the shooter's notes found in a bag said that he wanted to "instill fear in your traitorous minds." If this were a Muslim who had done this we would know immediately who had inspired him, or who gave him his instructions to kill.
But since this seems to have been inspired by our own Right Wing terror network it, so far, appears that the media is hesitant to make the connections.
That is not only bad journalism, but it also puts Americans at risk.
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"I'd been hiding this for over a decade. I wasn't out." Rebecca Vitsmun talks about the day she came out as an Atheist on national television after surviving the Oklahoma tornado.
I know this is a little long, but at the 8:28 portion Rebecca starts to tell the story of her interview with Wolf Blitzer. However it is around the 9:40 mark that she tells what it is like to be put in a position that every Atheist living in the Bible Belt fears.
Her emotion is so raw, and so honest, that it may serve to explain to those who are religious what it is like for those of us living in America who are not.
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New voting restrictions in Texas so tight they result in former House Speaker's request for voter ID card to be rejected.
Just how tough are new voter identification requirements in Texas? Apparently tough enough that former U.S. House speaker Jim Wright reportedly was denied a voter ID card on Saturday.
"Nobody was ugly to us, but they insisted that they wouldn't give me an ID," Wright, a Democrat who resigned from Congress in 1989, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in a story about his experience at a Texas Department of Public Safety office.
The 90-year-old told the newspaper he realized last week that he didn't have a valid ID to vote in Tuesday's elections. He was refused a voter ID card because his driver's license expired in 2010 and his faculty identification from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he teaches, doesn't meet requirements under the state law enacted in 2011.
Well look at that, in their attempt to reduce the number of voters for Wendy Davis they have stopped an elderly white guy as well.
They disenfranchise enough to THEM and it will be the republicans who will find their voter ranks trimmed down to the bone.
And by the way this is, once again, a solution without a legitimate problem.
This from Politifact who looked into voter fraud in Texas:
Abbott spokeswoman Lauren Bean emailed us records showing that from August 2002 through September 2012, the office received 616 allegations of election-code violations and recorded 78 election-code prosecutions.
By our count, 46 of the prosecutions ended with a conviction, guilty plea, no-contest plea or guilty plea as part of deferred adjudication. Of those, 18 cases appeared to involve fraud committed by individual voters: 12 cases with ineligible voters, five cases of voter impersonation and one case of voting more than once.
So, by our reading of the attorney general’s records, 18 instances of voter fraud have been confirmed in Texas since 2002.
18 instances of somebody voting using somebody else's name in ten years.
And THAT was enough of a reason to disenfranchise thousands of potential voters, and one former Speaker of the House?
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First century references to Jesus, "Zero! Zip!"
At the time I lacked the resources to argue against his assertions effectively, however in the years since my findings are much like those expressed by Dr. Ehrman.
Kind of seems odd for a man who supposedly had such an incredible impact on the century in whihc he lived, don't you think?
P.S. I am aware that there are some of you who will disagree with this, but if you do please cite your sources so they can be verified.
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NBC Drops Bomb: Obama Found Birth Certificate April 14, 2011; Why Order One?
NBC Drops Bomb: Obama Found Birth Certificate April 14, 2011; Why Order One?
The following is absolutely unbelievable. NBC News' Today Show book section published excerpts from the soon-to-be released book 'Double Down' written by "journalists/politicalhacks/mediabigwigs" Mark Halperin and John Heilemann. They report Obama found his birth certificate, with footprints on it, at his house in Chicago on April 14th, 2011, while rummaging through some old boxes. Halperin and Heilemann also write Obama's mother died 7 years earlier even though Ann Dunham reportedly died in 1995. They write Obama was furious over the birther issue.
Excerpts: 'Double Down': How Obama beat the birthers in 2012
Mark Halperin and John Heilemann | TODAY books
Obama had contended with birtherism since the previous campaign, when rumors surfaced that there was no record of his birth in Hawaii. The fringe theorists had grown distractingly shrill and increasingly insistent; after he won the nomination in June 2008, his team deemed it necessary to post his short-form birth certificate on the Web. The charge was lunacy, Obama thought. Simply mental. But it wouldn't go away. A recent New YorkTimes poll had found that 45 percent of Republicans and 25 percent of voters overall believed he was foreign born. And with Trump serving as a human bullhorn, the faux controversy had escaped the confines of Fox News and conservative talk radio, reverberating in the mainstream media. Just that morning, before Obama departed for Chicago, ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos had asked him about it in an interview, specifically citing Trump—twice.
As Obama made his fund-raising rounds that night, he avoided mentioning Trump, yet the issue remained much on his mind. What confounded him about the problem, beyond its absurdity, was that there was no ready solution. Although Trump was braying for his original long-form birth certificate, officials in Obama’s home state were legally prohibited from releasing it on their own, and the president had no earthly idea where his family’s copy was. All he could do was joke about the topic, as he did at his final event of the night: “I grew up here in Chicago,” Obama told the crowd at Navy Pier, then added awkwardly, “I wasn't born here—just want to be clear. I was born in Hawaii.”
Obama was looking forward to spending the night at his house in Kenwood, on the city’s South Side—the redbrick Georgian Revival pile that he and Michelle and their daughters left behind when they took up residence in the White House. He arrived fairly late, after 10:00 p.m., but then stayed up even later, intrigued by some old boxes that had belonged to his late mother, Ann Dunham.
Dunham had died seven years earlier, but Obama hadn't sorted through all her things. Now, alone in his old house for just the third night since he’d become president, he started rummaging through the boxes, digging, digging, until suddenly he found it: a small, four-paneled paper booklet the world had never seen before. On the front was an ink drawing of Kapi‘olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital, in Honolulu. On the back was a picture of a Hawaiian queen. On one inside page were his name, his mother’s name, and his date of birth; on the other were his infant footprints.
The next morning, Marty Nesbitt came over to have breakfast with Obama. The CEO of an airport parking-lot company, Nesbitt was part of a tiny circle of Chicago friends on whom the president relied to keep him anchored in a reality outside the Washington funhouse. The two men had bonded playing pickup basketball two decades earlier; their relationship was still firmly rooted in sports, talking smack, and all around regular-guyness. After chatting for a while at the kitchen table, Obama went upstairs and came back down, wearing a cat-who-ate-a-whole-flock-of-canaries grin, waving the booklet in the air, and then placing it in front of Nesbitt.
“Now, that’s some funny s__t,” Nesbitt said, and burst out laughing.
Clambering into his heavily armored SUV, Obama headed back north to the InterContinental hotel, where he had an interview scheduled with the Associated Press. He pulled aside his senior adviser David Plouffe and press secretary Jay Carney, and eagerly showed them his discovery.
Plouffe studied the thing, befuddled and wary: Is that the birth certificate? he thought.
Carney was bewildered, too, but excited: This is the birth certificate? Awesome.
Obama didn't know what to think, but he flew back to Washington hoping that maybe, just maybe, he now had a stake to drive through the heart of birtherism, killing it once and for all—and slaying Trump in the bargain. Striding into a meeting with his senior advisers in the Oval Office the next Monday morning, he reached into his suit pocket and whipped out the booklet, infinitely pleased with himself. [...] Continued/Video @ Today Show.
So, April 14th, 2011, Obama found his actual birth documentation with his actual footprints on it yet on April 22nd, 2011, he had his attorney send a letter to Hawaii requesting two copies of his birth certificate. He then publishes a manipulated pdf of a purported birth certificate on the Internet.
Question is; Why order/create one when you purportedly have the one with PRINTS on it?
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Brilliant: Man Wearing Albert Einstein Mask Robs Florida Bank
A man wearing an Albert Einstein mask robbed a Florida bank Saturday afternoon, according to police.
The suspect left a Wells Fargo branch in Venice with an “undisclosed amount of money” and maced a customer who sought to follow him from the bank. He did not show a weapon to bank personnel (or claim to be carrying).
The robber, seen in the above surveillance photo, fled in a red sedan being driven by an accomplice.
Sarasota County Sheriff's Office deputies are seeking the public’s help in identifying the man who posed as the German physicist during the post-Halloween heist.
Read Full Article Source here
Author: thesmokinggun.com
Levi Johnston files new custody suit against Bristol. Everything old is new again.
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| Courtesy of Levi's Facebook page. |
Snowbilly sperm donor Levi Johnston, that paragon of Alaskan manhood, filed a civil custody suit in Alaska against Bristol Palin on October 19. The Alaska judicial website doesn’t provide any details (dumb privacy laws), but presumably the suit will attempt to resolve the custody issues left hanging when the former couple’s previous case was dismissed for “lack of activity” in 2012. We hope that the two estranged/very strange parents can come to a workable agreement that includes a trust fund to cover all the counseling poor Tripp is going to need. As the social workers in Family Court sometimes say, this is one of those cases where you wish there was an option for a court order to have the child raised by wolves.
I have to admit that it is hard to get too excited about this as we have been through all of this before.
I think the majority of us (Excluding of course the Palin-troll) are in agreement that Bristol is possible one of the worst mothers imaginable, and Tripp seems to do much better when he is with his dad.
Levi is by no means perfect, but he has a good heart and he was raised by two parents who loved him unconditionally and did not use him as political prop or force him to spout some mythologized version of his life for public consumption.
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Former Australian politician Bob Carr LOVES Fox News, but not for the reason you might imagine.
Recently departed Labor foreign minister Bob Carr, a close student of American politics, has declared himself "delighted" with Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel.
Not, however, for the normal reasons that a person might support the predominantly right-leaning US cable channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch.
"I am delighted because it is a textbook experiment in how to make the Republican Party unelectable," Mr Carr told the Public Knowledge forum on Monday, an event hosted by Sydney University's US Studies Centre.
"If you are running as a candidate for the Republicans, you must do Fox News and you must pander to the table thumpers. By the time the general election comes around the candidate is too right wing to get elected. I think it is delightful," he said.
I can't say I agree with all of Carr's political viewpoints, but on THIS we are in 100% agreement.
And considering that Rupert Murdoch got his start in Australia this guy would certainly know what he is talking about.
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This may be the saddest advertisement for women's clothing that I have ever seen.
Courtesy of Slate:
AR Wear is for you, the woman who’s “ever been out walking alone, wishing you could feel safer.” But it’s also for that other “you—parents and friends,” who have spent nights “worried about a loved one” walking alone. AR wear will give you, “women and girls, additional power to control” your bodies “when things go wrong.” But they’ll also give you, parents and friends, a pointed, yet elegant, holiday gift for the women in your lives whose bodies need safety locks.
“Rape is about as wrong as it gets,” the two New York women behind AR Wear note in their Indiegogo campaign, which has raised a little over half of its $50,000 goal for finalizing production-ready prototypes of the design. “The only one responsible for a rape is the rapist and AR Wear will not solve the fundamental problem that rape exists in our world. Only by raising awareness and education, as well as bringing rapists to justice, can we all hope to eventually accomplish the goal of eliminating rape as a threat to both women and men. Meanwhile, as long as sexual predators continue to populate our world, AR Wear would like to provide products to women and girls that will offer better protection against some attempted rapes while the work of changing society's rape culture moves forward.”
I am sorry but this is a bad idea no matter how you look at it.
Rape is NOT about sex, it is about power, and if a rapist finds himself stymied by uncooperative clothing it does not mean that the woman is suddenly safe. In fact in my experience that only increases the chances of the attack becoming more aggressive and more dangerous for the victim.
Look I trained women in rape prevention techniques and self defense, and I think I speak from a place of experience and knowledge.
The best prevention is to instruct young women in how to avoid putting themselves in a vulnerable position, but the second is to treat rape seriously, and to prosecute rapists, and put them in jail for as long as the law will allow.
Having said that I think it is disgusting that women have to feel such fear for their personal safety and consider taking such drastic precautions.
How about all of us, especially those of us raising boys, simply make it our job to teach our kids that it is simply not okay to rape? I mean how fucking hard is that really?
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“That’s the closest I’ve come to getting into a fist fight with a head of state”. Yet another reason to love Jimmy Carter.
“The first time I came here to Cape Town I almost got in a fight with the president of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, because he was refusing to let Aids be treated,” Carter told the Sunday Times newspaper.
He said at the time, then-health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was standing with Mbeki.
“That’s the closest I’ve come to getting into a fist fight with a head of state”.
Carter said he and Bill Gates senior were trying to convince Mbeki to at least provide antiretroviral treatment to pregnant women with Aids, “but Mbeki was against that”.
Well over eighty years old and still willing to knock a mofo out if he does not help prevent AIDS.
I will ALWAYS be a fan of Jimmy Carter's.
He was the first presidential candidate for whom voted. Sadly he lost to Ronald Reagan, a loss that still pisses me off to this day.
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Obama Fraud: Constitutional Storm and Crisis Of Horrendous Ramifications Coming
A Constitutional Storm and Crisis of Horrendous
Ramifications is Coming – Congress Must Act to Prevent
Further Damage to the Rule of Law and the U.S. Constitution Beyond What Obama Has Done Already!
By CDR Charles Kerchner (Ret)
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| Click on image for more information about how this storm formed. Action must be taken to correct this grave wrong. Crimes have been committed. |
Watch this short two minute video for an overview of the issues via this YouTube video: http://youtu.be/BFmhS2f_UV8
Visit AZ Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Cold Case Posse website to learn more about the evidence that Obama’s ID documents are forgeries. Donate to help their efforts: http://www.mcsoccp.org/joomla
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| What Has Happened to our Constitution and the Rule of Law Under Obama? Get the Facts and Evidence. Click on Image to Learn More About Obama’s Crimes. |
Visit the BirtherReport.com website for that latest news regarding Obama’s criminal identity fraud activities and constitutional ineligibility.
WorldNetDaily online newspaper (WND.com) coverage of Sheriff Arpaio’s news conferences and appeals to Congress to investigate the overwhelming evidence that Obama’s identity documents are backdated and forged: http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/sheriff-joe-to-congress-investigate-obamas-eligibility/print
Visit and subscribe to ThePost&Email online newspaper which is also covering the Obama fraud and ineligibility issue: http://www.thepostemail.com
UPDATE — WheresObamasBirthCertificate teams headed by Mike Volin to personally deliver “Sheriff’s Kits” to members of Congress in Washington DC: http://www.birtherreport.com/2013/11/wobc-heads-to-dc-to-put-officials-back.html
CDR Charles Kerchner, P.E. (Retired)
Lehigh Valley PA USA
http://www.protectourliberty.org
http://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com
http://www.scribd.com/protectourliberty/collections
P.S. Regarding the Article II presidential eligibility clause in the U.S. Constitution, read this essay regarding the legal term of art “natural born Citizen” and basic logic, i.e., trees are plants but not all plants are trees. Natural born Citizens are a subset of “born Citizens (citizens at birth)” but not all “born Citizens (citizens at birth)” are “natural born Citizens”: http://cdrkerchner.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/of-natural-born-citizens-and-citizens-at-birth-and-basic-logic-trees-are-plants-but-not-all-plants-are-trees-natural-born-citizens-nbc-are-citizens-at-birth-cab-but-not-all-cab/ … AND … http://www.art2superpac.com/issues.html
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Must See TV: Calling You Out; Obama Fired Up Ready To Lie
Must See TV: Calling You Out; Obama Fired Up Ready To Lie
VIDEO HERE:
( Video )
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| - Image Credit: Free Republic - |
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Eminem takes top honor at YouTube music awards
New York City (AFP) - YouTube's first-ever music awards thrilled and spilled, with Eminem named Artist of the Year though most winners were lesser known acts who featured in an eclectic show filled with stunts.
Sunday's webcast was kicked off by indie rockers Arcade Fire performing their new song "Afterlife" in a live video performance featuring a chorus of young girl singers in Pier 36, a sprawling indoor events space in New York.
Up next was a crying Lady Gaga, minus her trademark peroxide blonde hair and make-up, dressed in a tomboyish baseball cap marked "Dope," for a first performance of an eponymous song that she delivered in a haunting, melancholic tone while playing the piano.
Pictures later showed the enigmatic artist, well-known for unpredictable behavior, scantily clad and in an apparently distressed state on stage, with fans reaching up to touch her.
Hosted by actor Jason Schwartzman and musician-comedian Reggie Watts, the show's creative director Spike Jonze said before the event that he wanted to stay true to the video-sharing website's experimental origins.
The 90-minute affair may have split the Internet audience down the middle, judging by comments posted on Twitter, in which some people complained of censorship, when the show's live stream stopped several times.
The Breakthrough Act award, however, seemed to stay loyal to Jonze's aim, as it was taken home by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, whose featured video was shot for $5,000 and placed on YouTube, leading to great success.
The inaugural YouTube Music Awards joins a variety of industry events such as the Grammys, MTV Video Music Awards and American Music Awards, entering the fray at a time when people increasingly turn to the Internet for streaming and on-demand programming.
Unlike the established awards ceremonies, YouTube's event organizers said the nominees and winners were tallied in a distinctly Internet-age manner, based on "viewership, subscriber, and/or engagement metrics."
