Monday, December 16, 2013
When the Republicans talk about the good old days.
By the way, here are 36 ways that unions have made ALL of our lives better:
- Weekends
- All Breaks at Work, including your Lunch Breaks
- Paid Vacation
- FMLA
- Sick Leave
- Social Security
- Minimum Wage
- Civil Rights
- Act/Title VII (Prohibits Employer Discrimination)
- 8-Hour Work Day
- Overtime Pay
- Child Labor Laws
- Occupational Safety & Health Act (OSHA)
- 40 Hour Work Week
- Worker's Compensation (Worker's Comp)
- Unemployment Insurance
- Pensions
- Workplace Safety Standards and Regulations
- Employer Health Care Insurance
- Collective Bargaining Rights for Employees
- Wrongful Termination Laws
- Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967
- Whistleblower Protection Laws
- Employee Polygraph Protect Act (Prohibits Employer from using a lie detector test on an employee)
- Veteran's Employment and Training Services (VETS)
- Compensation increases and Evaluations (Raises)
- Sexual Harassment Laws
- Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA)
- Holiday Pay
- Employer Dental, Life, and Vision Insurance
- Privacy Rights
- Pregnancy and Parental Leave
- Military Leave
- The Right to Strike
- Public Education for Children
- Equal Pay Acts of 1963 & 2011 (Requires employers pay men and women equally for the same amount of work)
- Laws Ending Sweatshops in the United States
And do you know which political group stood in opposition to almost all of these changes? Of course you do.
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National Review's Mark Steyn: Why I Never Dismissed Obama Birther Stuff
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| - image credit: hrhero - |
National Review's Mark Steyn: Why I
Never Dismissed Obama Birther Stuff
Excerpt via NRO's Mark Steyn: Peter O’Toole, RIP
Peter O’Toole died in London yesterday. He was one of the few actors I was happy to watch in any role. He improved almost anything he was in, although I wish there had been more late-career stuff after his charming turn in My Favorite Year.
I have a very tenuous six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon connection to him, in that his ex-wife, Siân Phillips, and I share the same pianist, Kevin Amos. But, that aside, it’s because of Peter O’Toole that I never dismissed the Obama birther stuff out of hand. O’Toole had two valid, government-issued birth certificates – one stating he was born in Connemara in Ireland in June 1932, the other stating he was born in Leeds in England in August 1932. He had no idea which one was correct, but, being in showbiz, chose to celebrate his birthday on the later date.
[...] More @ National Review Online. Hat tip Guest...
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South Africa buries Mandela
The coffin of former South African President Nelson Mandela is seen draped in a South African national flag during his funeral in his ancestral village of Qunu in the Eastern Cape province.
Britain's Prince Charles and former Zimbabwean prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai were among dignitaries attending Nelson Mandela's funeral in Qunu, South Africa.
QUNU, South Africa — Nelson Mandela was buried Sunday in the African ground he loved after a funeral ceremony that included a 21-gun salute and fly-overs by military aircraft as well as a eulogy by a traditional leader wearing an animal skin.
Mandela's casket was lowered into the earth after military pallbearers carried it to the family gravesite in the rolling hills of Qunu, the rural village in eastern South Africa which was the childhood home of the anti-apartheid leader who became the country's first democratically-elected president.
Banyanda Nyengule, head of the Nelson Mandela Museum in Mthatha and Qunu, was one of the eyewitnesses to the private burial and said it hit him hard.
"I realized that the old man is no more, no more with us you know," Nyengule said. "The moment when the coffin went down into the ground I felt too ... emotional."
South African television showed Mandela's casket at the family gravesite, but the broadcast went to a different scene just before the coffin was lowered at the request of the Mandela family.
It was South Africa's final goodbye to the man who reconciled the country in its most volatile period.
Several hundred people attended the burial. Earlier, more than 4,000, some singing and dancing, gathered for a funeral service in a huge tent at the family compound of Mandela, who died Dec. 5 at the age of 95 after a long illness. They sang the national anthem in an emotional rendition in which some mourners placed fists over their chests.
South Africa buries MandelaReuters: SABC via Reuters TV Graca Machel, the widow of former South African President Nelson Mandela
Mandela's portrait looked over the assembly in the white marquee from behind a bank of 95 candles representing each year of his remarkable life. His casket, draped in the national flag, was placed on a carpet of cow skins below a lectern where speakers delivered eulogies.
"A great tree has fallen, he is now going home to rest with his forefathers," said Chief Ngangomhlaba Matanzima, a representative of Mandela's family. "We thank them for lending us such an icon."
The tent ceremony was broadcast on big screens in the area, including at one spot on a hill overlooking Mandela's property. Several hundred people gathered there, some wearing the black, yellow and green colors of the African National Congress — the liberation movement-turned political party that Mandela had led — and occasionally breaking into song.
Nandi Mandela said her grandfather went barefoot to school in Qunu when he was boy and eventually became president and a figure of global import.
"It is to each of us to achieve anything you want in life," she said, recalling kind gestures by Mandela "that made all those around him also want to do good."
In the Xhosa language, she referred to her grandfather by his clan name: "Go well, Madiba. go well to the land of our ancestors, you have run your race."
Ahmed Kathrada, an anti-apartheid activist who was jailed on Robben Island with Mandela, remembered his old friend's "abundant reserves" of love, patience and tolerance. He said it was painful when he saw Mandela for the last time, months ago in his hospital bed.
"He tightly held my hand, it was profoundly heartbreaking," Kathrada said, his voice breaking at times. "How I wish I never had to confront what I saw. I first met him 67 years ago and I recall the tall, healthy strong man, the boxer, the prisoner who easily wielded the pick and shovel when we couldn't do so."
Some mourners wiped away tears as Kathrada spoke, his voice trembling with emotion.
Mandela's widow, Grace Machel, and his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, were dressed in black Xhosa headwraps and dresses. Guests included veterans of the military wing of the African National Congress as well as United States Ambassador Patrick Gaspard and other foreign envoys.
Britain's Prince Charles, Monaco's Prince Albert II, U.S. television personality Oprah Winfrey, billionaire businessman Richard Branson and former Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai were also there.
South Africa buries Mandela British entrepreneur Richard Branson, right, and TV host Oprah Winfrey, center, attend the funeral ceremony for former South African President Nelson Mandela
South African honor guards from the army, navy and air force marched in formation amid rolling green hills dotted with small dwellings and neatly demarcated plots of farmland. Clouds cast shadows over the landscape.
Read Full Article Source here
Author:
By Christopher Torchia of Associated Press
China's moon rover leaves traces on lunar soil
China's first moon rover "Jade Rabbit" touches the lunar surface Sunday, Dec. 15, 2013.
Images show that "Jade Rabbit," China's first moon rover, left deep tracks on the lunar soil following the first soft landing on the moon in four decades.
BEIJING — China's first moon rover has touched the lunar surface and left deep traces on its loose soil, state media reported Sunday, several hours after the country successfully carried out the world's first soft landing of a space probe on the moon in nearly four decades.
The 140-kilogram (300-pound) "Jade Rabbit" rover separated from the much larger landing vehicle early Sunday, around seven hours after the unmanned Chang'e 3 space probe touched down on a fairly flat, Earth-facing part of the moon.
State broadcaster China Central Television showed images taken from the lander's camera of the rover and its shadow moving down a sloping ladder and touching the surface, setting off applause in the Beijing control center. It said the lander and rover, both bearing Chinese flags, would take photos of each other Sunday evening.
Later, the six-wheeled rover will survey the moon's geological structure and surface and look for natural resources for three months, while the lander will carry out scientific explorations at the landing site for one year.
The mission marks the next stage in an ambitious space program that aims to eventually put a Chinese astronaut on the moon. China's space program is an enormous source of pride for the country, the third to carry out a lunar soft landing — which does not damage the craft and the equipment it carries — after the United States and the former Soviet Union. The last one was by the Soviet Union in 1976.
"It's still a significant technological challenge to land on another world," said Peter Bond, consultant editor for Jane's Space Systems and Industry. "Especially somewhere like the moon, which doesn't have an atmosphere so you can't use parachutes or anything like that. You have to use rocket motors for the descent and you have to make sure you go down at the right angle and the right rate of descent and you don't end up in a crater on top of a large rock."
On Saturday evening, CCTV showed a computer-generated image of the Chang'e 3 lander's path as it approached the surface of the moon, saying that during the landing period it needed to have no contact with Earth. As it was just hundreds of meters (yards) away, the lander's camera broadcast images of the moon's surface.
Read Full Article Source here
Author:
By Louise Watt of Associated Press
Frank Schaeffer on the "Slow Motion Lynching of President Obama."
Frank Schaeffer on the "Slow Motion Lynching of President Obama."
We’ve been watching a slow motion lynching of a moderate brilliant family man, a father, and faithful loving husband. The Republicans in Congress are so dedicated to lynching the President they’ve been willing to shut down our government and risk the future of our economy.
Evangelical “Christians” have been so stuck on putting a rope around this black man’s neck they have denied their faith and been the backbone of the lying Tea Party who spawned the so-called “birthers” and the rest of the white trash driving our news cycle.
Roman Catholic bishops have denied their tradition of helping the poor and been so eager to destroy this president they aligned themselves with white Evangelical bigots and tried to stop health care reform, all because the President wants to give women a fair shake. The bishops even called him “anti-religious” because the president wants insurers to pay for contraception.
This is a slow motion lynching of a black man who is so moderate and centrist that he favored Wall Street enough so that the Left is all over his case. He’s so “radical” and “leftist” and “hates America” so much, and “coddles our enemies” so much, that he killed bin Laden and used drones to kill our enemies. He’s such a “socialist” that he presided over the revival of our economy from the worst recession since the Great Depression, and led us to the present day stock market boom.
President Obama is such a “Marxist” that he tried to give insurance – not socialized medicine – to all Americans. President Obama never answered back to the disgusting southern right wing rubes from the former slave states that have tried to belittle, mock and stymie his presidency shouting “You lie” in a million ways, while actually meaning “You lie, nigger!”
And did the “enlightened” Left have President Obama’s back? No. They carp about his “failure” because a website was slow to get running! The white privileged “progressive” few were too busy blaming him for getting lynched and telling him how to craft policy while a rope was put around his neck again and again and tightened with each filibuster, each lie told on the radio, each self-defeating scorched earth action to stop him from succeeding, even if it meant taking us all down too.
Not a lot to add here except for "Right on Frank Schaeffer!"
I'm glad I'm not the only one who has been yelling at my TV as "liberal" pundit, after "liberal" pundit takes a giant dump on the President they supposedly support due to a slow website and a short attention span.
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Gun Owners of America head says they will not be satisfied until we get rid of all of the gun laws in America. Blames recent killings on "gun free zones."
Courtesy of HuffPo:
Guns don't kill people. Gun laws kill people, argued Larry Pratt, head of Gun Owners of America, on Fox News Sunday.
Host Chris Wallace asked Pratt if the complete inability of Congress to pass any gun safety legislation in the year since the Newtown massacre counted as a victory for the gun lobby.
"We're not really going to be able to talk about a victory until we get rid of the laws that prohibit people from having guns to protect themselves in schools and in other places," Pratt said. "Every one of our mass murders in our country has occurred in places where guns were prohibited."
Wallace seemed a bit surprised at the answer, which was delivered after he aired an emotional interview with Carlee Soto, whose older sister Vicki was murdered while shielding her students at Sandy Hook Elementary School, ultimately saving 11 of their lives. Wallace asked Pratt if he was saying that the gun lobby planned to go on offense and press for repeal of laws currently in place.
"That is correct, Chris. The legislation that is on the books is lethal. It is killing people. All of these gun free zones are murder magnets. We've simply got to get rid of them. It's an illusion that somehow we're going to be safer in a particular area because you can't have a gun, because the bad guy is going to have a gun," he said.
If that does not make you sick to your stomach you may not be human.
The canard that if you make owning guns illegal only criminals will have guns is complete and utter bullshit. The fact is that illegal guns are often stolen from gun owners who purchased them legally and then used on innocent people.
Simple math tells you that more guns equals more gun violence, and the idea that increasing the number of guns and making access to them easier, as a deterrent against gun violence is the thinking of a madman.
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Pope says he is not offended by being called a Marxist. Oh the Right Wing is going to poop themselves over this one!
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| Sticks and stones bitchez! |
Pope Francis responded to critics who call his stance on capitalism Marxist, saying in a new interview that the political and economic philosophy is flat "wrong."
"Marxist ideology is wrong," the Pope told the Italian newspaper La Stampa in an interview published on Saturday. "But I have met many Marxists in my life who are good people, so I don’t feel offended.”
Earlier this month, the conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh blasted the pontiff, calling his latest major writing, an apostolic exhortation called Evangelii Gaudium, "pure Marxism."
"It's sad because this Pope makes it very clear he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth," Limbaugh said.
Pope Francis told La Stampa that, “there is nothing in the Exhortation that cannot be found in the social Doctrine of the Church.”
The 50,000-word statement calls for church reform and castigates elements of modern capitalism.
I swear that Pope Francis is going to cause Rush Limbaughs heart to give out if he keeps making these statements. (And if he does by the way I will be one of the first to call for naming him a saint once he passes. I know, right?)
Do you know who must be secretly digging what this Pope is saying like probably no other person on the planet?
This guy.
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Sarah Palin claims she cannot be sued for copyright infringement because the defendant lives in the wrong place. Wait, what?
The Fox News contributor and former Alaska Governor says a copyright infringement lawsuit against her for use of an iconic photo of the U.S. flag being raised at Ground Zero on September 11 should be tossed out. “A New Jersey Sarah Palin Signs Copies Of Her New Book "Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas"newspaper has chosen New York as the forum to sue defendants located in distant states, based on conduct with no particular connection to this District besides the subject matter of the photograph — a consideration that is irrelevant for purposes of venue,” lawyers for Sarah Palin wrote yesterday (read it here) in a filing in NYC District Court. “Defendants therefore seek dismissal…on the ground of improper venue or, in the alternative, for transfer of this action to an appropriate forum,” the motion memo adds.
Okay I am not a lawyer so I am not completely clear on how the place in which a lawsuit is filed has any impact on the fact that Palin used a copyrighted photo of firefighters raising the American flag on the ruins of the World Trade Cente, slapped a SarahPAC logo on it, and then posted it to her Facebook page to make money, has any bearing on the fact that she illegally used their product to make money?
Here are the papers that SarahPAC filed, which falsely claim that Palin is a resident of Alaska by the way, so perhaps one of you legal eagles can explain how her argument holds any water.
Palin, as we know, is incredibly slippery when it comes to lawsuits, having wriggled her way out of several in the last five years, so it would be no surprise to see her slither away from this own as well.
P.S. Okay having looked a little harder at the document, it appears that the problem is that the company may have filed the lawsuit in a district in which the company does not have a physical presence. In other words the lawsuit itself is not being addressed, only the legality of where they filed it.
So this is a delaying tactic that SarahPAC hopes will drain the company of resources and convince them to drop the suit, because it appears to me that they have a pretty good case.
I hope that if the court agrees with the venue argument that the North Jersey Media Group refiles and pushes forward. Because SOMEBODY needs to hold this woman accountable for SOMETHING.
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Good news brown people! The Mormons just decided that your pigment is not a punishment from God. And by "just" I mean this month.
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| "Wait. If the darkies are not cursed by god anymore, does that mean we have to like them?" |
As of Friday, Dec. 6, the Mormon Church has officially renounced the doctrine that brown skin is a punishment from God.
In the “Book of Mormon,” (not the musical but the actual sacred text) dark skin is a sign of God’s curse, while white skin is a sign of his blessing. The book tells of a conflict between two lost tribes of Israel, the Lamanites and Nephites, who journeyed to the New World and made their home in Mesoamerica. The Lamanites sinned against God, and “because of their iniquity. …the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them” (2 Nephi 5:21). Later, when Lamanites became Christians, “their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites” (3 Nephi 2:15).
These verses were thought to explain the dark skin of Native Americans. In 1960, Church apostle Spencer W. Kimball suggested at the general conference that Native Americans who converted to Mormonism were gradually becoming lighter skinned:
"I saw a striking contrast in the progress of the Indian people today… The day of the Lamanites is nigh. For years they have been growing delightsome, and they are now becoming white and delightsome, as they were promised. In this picture of the twenty Lamanite missionaries, fifteen of the twenty were as light as Anglos, five were darker but equally delightsome. The children in the home placement program in Utah are often lighter than their brothers and sisters in the hogans on the reservation. At one meeting a father and mother and their sixteen-year-old daughter we represent, the little member girl—sixteen—sitting between the dark father and mother, and it was evident she was several shades lighter than her parents—on the same reservation, in the same hogan, subject to the same sun and wind and weather… These young members of the Church are changing to whiteness and to delightsomeness."
The blackness of Africans derived from an even more ancient stain, Cain's murder of his brother Abel in the Genesis story. Joseph Smith taught that black people are cursed as “sons of Cain” but also could be saved.
Brigham Young, his successor, was harsher: “Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so”
Well clearly "always be so" was an exaggeration, since I haven't seen any pasty white guys, with bad ties and pocket protectors, shooting Negroes for looking at their women recently. I'm not saying they don't want to, I'm just saying they haven't done it for awhile.
Can you believe they just changed this incredibly racist doctrine nine days ago? Gee I simply cannot understand WHY Mitt Romney had so much trouble attracting the black vote? Can you?
Religion, without that how would you know who you are supposed to feel superior to?
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17 years ago a science icon died. But before he did he provided a warning that resonates today more than ever.
The interview was with Charlie Rose from 1996.
Just take a moment to listen to his warning, and then think just how prescient it was considering the blatant attacks on education and science that we are witnessing today.
We need more Carl Sagan's today to protect our children from the never ending attempts to keep them ignorant, ill prepared, and easily manipulated by those who use fear and superstition to take advantage of them.
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