World News Korner

Judge Eric Smith, the gentleman sitting in the middle.

According to Court View the judge appointed to this case, Kari Kristiansen, has now been replaced by Judge Eric Smith, a Tony Knowles appointee.

Does this help Levi?

Well it certainly can't hurt to have a judge that does not owe their position to the mother of the defendant.

By the way, as of this post, Bristol has still refused to return to the state with Tripp, despite there being a motion of contempt filed for her refusal to do so.




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Apparently this is Palin's new "thing." Impulsively calling into talk shows in order to gain some notice, and keep her name out there.

She did the same thing last week.

This time it is so unexpected that the guy who screens calls simply refuses to believe that Palin has become so inconsequential that she no longer has a staff persona arranging interviews and instead calls into insignificant local radio programs on a whim.

Of course once they establish that it really IS Palin (At the 1:45 mark), and that takes a while, they become all fan girl and start to gush over her.

Palin claims to be in Scottsdale visiting Bristol, and that she listens to the show on her way home form "hot yoga." (Personally I think she is confusing hot yoga with the hot flashes she gets while struggling to put on her shoes.)

Palin claims that she understand their reticence in believing it was her, because she has been punked a number of times herself. (Ahh, the memories.)

When asked how often she gets to Arizona (3.35 mark) Palin says she gets to "zip in" when she is headed to a speech or event, because it is a "jumping point" for her to use before heading out to other states. (Of course we know that is bullshit, and that she has a house down in Scottsdale and spends the majority of her time there these days. Woman lies about EVERYTHING.)

Palin is also asked about her new streaming program (4:16) which she describes as "an app" and that the information leaked about it was not completely accurate. She claims that the app will provide unfiltered access to her message and help with distributing endorsements to candidates. (Because you know having a service that only a handful of people will be willing to pay for, is going to be SO much better at getting out her message than Facebook or Fox News, where millions can see it for free.)

Palin also uses this as an opportunity to pimp her new "huntin" show on the Sportsman Channel (5:14) which she claims she is filming in a Phoenix studio. (What? No location shooting for the "Queen of the Outdoors?")

The host then asks the obligatory question about whether she is running for office again (6:05). She of course responds with her usual song and dance about not being sure, and that she continues to support certain candidates. Like Ted Cruz, who is the only one that she mentions by name.

Ultimately this is nothing but fluff, which is really all Palin offers anymore, along with the red meat she occasionally throws out to feed the ravenous Right Wing.

However what I learned is that Palin is now essentially a full time resident of Arizona, as evidenced by the fact she is now as familiar with THEIR conservative talk shows as she once was with Alaska's conservative talk shows such as Bob and Mark on KWHL. A show she used to call into with some regularity, even while Governor of the state.

I also learned that Palin is essentially adrift for the most part without the SarahPAC paid staff helping her make decisions about who she should talk to, and when she should talk to them.

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Courtesy of The Friendly Atheist:

Susanne Atanus, the 55-year-old Republican who told a local newspaper that God put autism and dementia on Earth as punishment for marriage equality and abortion, just won her primary for a seat in the House of representatives. She will face off against incumbent Democrat Rep. Jan Schakowsky this November:

Voters in the Republican primary will have two very different candidates to choose from in the 9th Congressional District, as David Earl Williams III and Susanne Atanus vie for the right to face Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the fall… “I am a conservative Republican and I believe in God first,” Atanus said. She said she believes God controls the weather and has put tornadoes and diseases such as autism and dementia on earth as punishment for gay rights and legalized abortions.

Apparently Illinois party leaders tried to get Atanus to drop out, but nope, she was on a mission. And apparently that mission is to hand the Illinois 9th District House seat back to Jan Schakowsky.

For once the Democratic agenda matches well with the agenda of the Republican fringe.

This morning I listened to Reince Priebus on MSNBC telling Chuck Todd that the party cannot be held for every strange thing uttered by a Republican.

But what he fails to understand is that these comments are not outliers among the Republicans, THIS is how a great number of them see the world.

These elections are now increasingly defined as between the rational and the irrational.

For the sake of America's future let's hope that the majority of the country sits on the side of the rational.




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Pretty impressive wasn't it?

I'm a huge Superman fan so that kind of blew my mind.

If you want to destroy the fantasy and find out how they really pulled this off just click here.

That is the problem with possessing critical thinking skills, we can never simply accept that a man can fly.

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Courtesy of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

As the same-sex marriage debate rages, one person says he won’t be weighing in on the subject anymore: Dan Cathy, CEO and president of Chick-fil-A.

Almost two years after he made headlines by throwing his support behind traditional marriage and later decried a pair of Supreme Court decisions that favored same-sex unions, Cathy hasn’t changed his mind. But he said Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A has no place in the culture wars and regrets making the company a symbol in the marriage debate.

“Every leader goes through different phases of maturity, growth and development and it helps by (recognizing) the mistakes that you make,” Cathy said. “And you learn from those mistakes. If not, you’re just a fool. I’m thankful that I lived through it and I learned a lot from it."

Yeah okay.

He may have decided to keep his homophobia on the down low, but it will be a long time before he can live down things like this.

I don't care how good your chicken is, this kind of stomach churning stench can last for decades.

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Courtesy of Star Tribune:

Wyoming is the first state to block a new set of national science standards, but a week after Gov. Matt Mead signed off on the change, education advocates are still digesting what the action means for the state.

Some say the provision, which came through a last-minute budget footnote, blocks the state from considering any part of the Next Generation Science Standards, a set of K-12 standards developed by national science education groups and representatives from 26 states. Others, including the provision's author, say it prevents the wholesale adoption of the standards as they are written.

And why do Wyoming lawmakers have a problem with the new science standards which were introduced to upgrade the old standards that were over fifteen years old and terribly outdated?

Religious objections to he teaching of evolution?

Concern over instruction about the Big Bang that some Fundamentalists consider an affront to their belief system?

Nope.

One of lawmakers' big concerns with the Next Generation Science Standards is an expectation that students will understand humans have significantly altered the Earth's biosphere. In other words, the standards say global warming is real.

That's a problem for some Wyoming lawmakers.

"[The standards] handle global warming as settled science," said Rep. Matt Teeters, a Republican from Lingle who was one of the footnote's authors. "There's all kind of social implications involved in that that I don't think would be good for Wyoming."

Teeters said teaching global warming as fact would wreck Wyoming's economy, as the state is the nation's largest energy exporter, and cause other unwanted political ramifications.

Micheli, the state board of education chairman, agreed.

"I don't accept, personally, that [climate change] is a fact," Micheli said. "[The standards are] very prejudiced in my opinion against fossil-fuel development."

To be clear this is a decision based solely on a fear that teaching that climate change is both real, and impacted by the actions of mankind, will have political repercussions and a short term financial impact.

One could perhaps understand the argument against evolution, based on fear that it will undermine religious belief, but this one is based solely on the fact that the politicians fear that children learning about climate change will grow up to be too informed to support oil drilling and fossil fuel exploitation.

It is really rare to have an argument against science education be quite this transparent.

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Courtesy of Americans Against the Tea Party:

Since Monday, the scientific community has been celebrating the discovery of what seems to be “smoking gun” evidence of the Big Bang. In a discovery that is touted as being on par with that of the Higgs boson in 2012, scientists now have found the first direct evidence of the Big Bang.

About 14 billion years ago, when the Big Bang created our universe, it produced gravitational waves and, of course expanded at about the same rate at which advertisers are fleeing Rush Limbaugh.

Data from the BICEP project, which deployed a special telescope in the south pole between 2005-2008 previously said that reading “strongly hinted” at inflation, but were “not sufficient to rule out other models of the early universe.” Something was missing.

If you guessed that it is the detection of the gravity wave background–something that could only result from inflation–you are correct!

This is exciting news! In fact, it was so exciting that FOX News actually reported it!

Apparently now that the Fox network is broadcasting the new Cosmos series, which is already freaking out the science deniers, they figured they might as well go all in with reporting on scientific breakthroughs.

Now if you think that the Fox News viewers are now suddenly enlightened and ready to accept the scientific explanation for the origin of the universe, well you don't know Fox News viewers now do you?


There are many more at the AATP link I posted at the top, and every one seems crazier than the last.

Let's face it science is moving forward at an increasingly rapid pace, but these people are hanging onto the door frame of religion and refusing to budge beyond their superstitious foundations.

P.S. If you want to see something both historic and heartwarming here is the video of Professor Andrei Linde, who first formulated the inflation theory, learning that he has been proven correct.

This is an incredible discovery, and it moves us much closer to understanding how we all got here, and how everything around us came into existence.

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