World News Korner

Courtesy of the Wasilla White Walker's Facebook page:

Kings are running in Bristol Bay! These are the world's richest salmon spawning grounds, and Rainbow Bay Lodge can take you there. Todd's weathered in tonight, staying in a yurt somewhere on the water; it's guaranteed that weather dictates one’s schedule in these majestic locales accessible only by air. What a way to get away! The guys' lodge has openings in September if it's on your bucket list; you'll not catch kings that late, but so many other species await, including guides showing you where the indescribably delicious halibut are. I can't do justice describing this world class sport fishing lodge that Todd's very excited to be a part of, so here's info: www.rbrlodge.com (contact: jspippen@aol.com).

God sure dumped a bucket load of heaven-on-earth beauty and abundance up here, and we share! There's something for everyone here, especially anglers because the only other fishermen are bears.

- Sarah Palin

Holy crap! Palin has now gone from a Vice Presidential candidate whose every word was covered by the national media, to hawking her husband's fishing lodge on Facebook in a desperate attempt to make some money.

I find this interesting since just the other day Palin was openly lamenting the fact that she was having trouble luring Todd away from the fishing resort so that he would accompany her to the Teabagger's Last Stand in Tennessee, and today she is working to attract business for his business.

This makes me think that my theory that Todd's contract has run its course might have been on the money.

If Palin cannot legally compel Todd to accompany her on anymore of her political pole dancing gigs, she will have a much harder time selling her happy marriage and well adjusted family mythology.

Let's face it Todd has only been seen on the peripheral for the last several years, but at least he was usually present. Now it is beginning to appear that he is done with this shit, and just wants to ride snowmachines, fish, and avoid contact with the crazy lady.

Can't say that I blame him. If it were me the ONLY way I would spend time with Sarah Palin was if I were legally obligated to do so.

Gee I wonder if this means there will soon be an opening for the First Dude slot?

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Courtesy of Yahoo News:

Seeking to encourage social conservative activists to persevere in the fight against same-sex marriage, Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed drew parallels between the ongoing debate over marriage equality and the nation’s long struggle over slavery and civil rights for African-Americans.

Speaking to about 40 attendees at an afternoon breakout session during the organization’s annual “Road to Majority” conference in Washington, D.C. on Friday, Reed gave a speech in which he suggested the 1857 Dred Scott Supreme Court decision —which ruled that African American slaves remained the property of their owners even if they traveled to or resided in free states — held a lesson for contemporary conservative activists concerned about what they see as judicial overreach on the issue of gay marriage.

Before the abolitionists triumphed, Reed reminded, it appeared for many years that the courts would squash the hopes of human rights reformers.

“The battle looked like it was lost, but it really wasn’t,” Reed said of the immediate aftermath of the Dred Scott decision, which went on to embolden abolitionist activists. “And that’s kind of like where we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we’re losing the marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some similarities? I’m not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK? (Yes you are.) I’m just pointing out that when you have these fights, what’s interesting is that if you look at same-sex marriage, it’s now legal in 17 states.”

Continued Reed: “Only six of them, six out of those 17, six out of 50 states, had done it by referendum or by state legislature. In every other case, it was imposed by courts. Just like the courts had to impose Dred Scott. Because they couldn’t do it on the country because the country didn’t agree with it. The country, by the way, doesn’t agree with same-sex marriage.”

Seriously what part of the country is HE looking at? Just the South?

There is literally progress being made almost on a daily basis for gay Americans, and if the conservatives keep fighting against granting them rights, the Republican party will go the way of the Whigs well before 2024 when they might actually have a shot at the Presidency.

Which by the way might not be a bad thing.

And if that were not batshit crazy enough Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal seemed to be calling for an open revolt against President Obama and the White House in his speech on Saturday.

Courtesy of NBC News:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal on Saturday night accused President Barack Obama and other Democrats of waging wars against religious liberty and education and said that a rebellion is brewing in the U.S. with people ready for "a hostile takeover" of the nation's capital.

Jindal spoke at the annual conference hosted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition, a group led by longtime Christian activist Ralph Reed. Organizers said more than 1,000 evangelical leaders attended the three-day gathering. Republican officials across the political spectrum concede that evangelical voters continue to play a critical role in GOP politics.

"I can sense right now a rebellion brewing amongst these United States," Jindal said, "where people are ready for a hostile takeover of Washington, D.C., to preserve the American Dream for our children and grandchildren."

The governor said there was a "silent war" on religious liberty being fought in the U.S. — a country that he said was built on that liberty.

"I am tired of the left. They say they're for tolerance, they say they respect diversity. The reality is this: They respect everybody unless you happen to disagree with them," he said. "The left is trying to silence us and I'm tired of it, I won't take it anymore."

You know usually the domestic terrorists are more low key than this.

Exactly what does one do when the governor of a state is calling for a hostile, and I assume heavily armed, takeover of the United States government?

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Courtesy of Raw Story:

A recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry concluded that child abuse contributes to a reduction in the volume of grey matter in the brains of its victims.

According to Lena Lim, Joaquim Radua, and Katya Rubia, child abuse — or “childhood maltreatment,” as it is called in their study — leads to lifetime-long alteration in brain structure.

“Childhood maltreatment,” they write, “acts as a severe stressor that produces a cascade of physiological and neurobiological changes that lead to enduring alterations in brain structure.”

Using an imaging method that allows them to compare differences in brain anatomy between groups of individuals called “signed differential mapping,” the researchers studied structures of 331 individuals with a history of child abuse, and 362 without.

They discovered that individuals who had suffered abuse had reduced brain matter in areas of the brain related to the cognitive process of decision-making.

The most salient reduction in grey matter volume among victims of child abuse occurred in the ventrolateral prefrontal and limbic-temporal regions — areas of the brain linked to cognitive control.

I have no difficulty at all believing these findings.

I have worked with emotionally disturbed and cognitively impaired children for years, and one thing that is universal to all of the cases is abuse and some form of neglect.

I also suffered some fairly life altering abuse when I was a child.

Considering that I am fairly high functioning I am not sure how much brain matter was beaten out of me, but it certainly fucked up my ability trust or interact with people for quite a number of years.

Trust me when I tell you that no matter how extreme the behaviors might be, using violence as a behavior modification tool only creates far more problems than it appears to solve.

I have worked with kids who called me every name in the book, spit at me, pulled my hair, and even threatened to kill my whole family. In the end the techniques I utilized brought them out of crisis and put them on the path toward becoming contributing members of society.

Hell more than one of them now works with troubled kids themselves.

If you want to create loving children then love them.

If you want to create future guests of a Federal penal institution then by all means beat them into compliance.

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A little girl was bothered that her daddy worked too hard, so she wrote a letter on his behalf to his employer, who happened to be Google.

Just in case you can't read it clearly:

Dear Google Worker,

Can you please make sure when daddy goes to work, he gets one day off. Like he can get a day off on Wednesday. Because daddy only gets a day off on Saturday.

From, Katie

P.S. It is Daddy's BIRTHDAY

P.P.S. It is summer, you know

Yeah, it's summer you know.

Believe it or not, Katie's dad's boss at Google wrote back.

Wow, he got a whole week off for vacation. Nicely done Katie!

You know the only time my daughter got me out of work was when I had to use vacation days to stay home with her when she caught chicken pox.

We still kind of had fun. You know in between the itching and applications of calamine lotion.

(H/T to Business Insider.)

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It just so happened that I caught most of this as I sat down to enjoy the burger I bought for my one day a week fast food splurge.

I was literally only about two bites in when Pirro started screaming at me like an under medicated psychotic, and I stopped with my mouth full of burger and just watched wondering if her head might explode.

Not only was she completely losing her shit, but the folks over at Americans Against the Tea Party also point out that she got just about every fact wrong:

She accuses the Obama administration of working with the terrorists, citing a WorldNewsDaily piece:

“There have been reports saying ISIS was trained by US instructors at a secret base in Jordan.”

What she wants to do is attack the president, and go for the jugular. What she does, however, is prove that she can’t read, and won’t fact check, making this just another day at FOX.

She goes on to say that the president “didn’t have the balls” to try every prisoner at Gitmo. She lies about the Obama administration releasing Al-Baghdadi, and she suggests that there’s something suspicious about it taking the US two years to capture Khattala while implying that Khattala was lying about the cause for the Benghazi attack, because dreams die hard.

Her solution to the problem in the Middle East? Bomb them, and bomb them hard. She wants the bombs crashing down, just like FOX’s ratings. She closes by condemning Obama for “cutting deals with Iran,”accusing the president of “danc[ing] around with your political correctness while they sharpen their knives,” and admonishes him for playing a “very dangerous game, for which you are ill-prepared.”

She says that Americans don’t trust him “for good reason,” because they’re “not even convinced [he] know[s] who the enemy is!”

I have watched a few of Pirro's rants in the past, as they are often good for a laugh.

But it seems to me that her mental health seems to be deteriorating as time goes on.

In fact this one, especially with her talking right at the President as if he had time to listen to the rantings of a lunatic, reminded very much of somebody else we all know and loathe.

It kind of makes me wonder if pretty soon there will be a new category added to the DSM-5 labeled the Obama Derangement Syndrome?

I have to imagine that if it happened there would be plenty of people at Fox News, and in Congress, who would qualify for some spanking new medications.

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Courtesy of Freakout Nation:

Just before his arrest, Kevin Colgan’s Facebook page was inundated with references to hiring a hitman in order to have his estranged wife killed. On June 12th, the Roanoke, Virginia resident wrote, “I know it is illegal to say “I’m going to kill you”. (Hard to convict even with perjured testimony. Question: is it it also illegal to ask someone to kill? Or to say you woul like to eventually?”

Various threats were left. In May, Colgan wrote, “Gotta love the “gun show loophole”. I found a Glock. Cost me $400 but I’m no longer defenseless. I just need to learn how to use it. Thankfully I can take classes without using mine.”

One of his last Facebook posts describes his wife and references a picture of her home. He adds, “Usually works either 8-4:30 0r 9-:30. Takes about an hour for her to get to work and return so she is usually there from 6:30pm to 7:30am Need anything else just let me know the usual way. Oh and don’t forget she is armed. It is front bedroom on right of house second floor.”

One of the man's friends tries to talk some sense into him, but Colgan keeps asserting that posting about the possibility to somebody killing his wife, while also openly talking about finding a hitman, is not illegal.

And remember, thanks to that gun show loophole he could have actually killed his wife anytime he wanted to.

Colgan also posted this on June 15:

Yippee. Found someone to take care of my problem. And with the money I have reserved,. Should be done within 30 days.

That was enough for the police to Roanoke police to respond and now Mr. Colgan can spend his days fantasizing about not getting stabbed in the shower instead of having his wife killed.


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Click here to purchase.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:

As America grapples with a relentless tide of gun violence, pro-gun activists have come to rely on the Second Amendment as their trusty shield when faced with mass-shooting-induced criticism. In their interpretation, the amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms—a reading that was upheld by the Supreme Court in its 2008 ruling in District of Columbia. v. Heller. Yet most judges and scholars who debated the clause's awkwardly worded and oddly punctuated 27 words in the decades before Heller almost always arrived at the opposite conclusion, finding that the amendment protects gun ownership for purposes of military duty and collective security. It was drafted, after all, in the first years of post-colonial America, an era of scrappy citizen militias where the idea of a standing army—like that of the just-expelled British—evoked deep mistrust.

In his new book, The Second Amendment: A Biography, Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, digs into this discrepancy. What does the Second Amendment mean today, and what has it meant over time? He traces the history of the contentious clause and the legal reasoning behind it, from the Constitutional Convention to modern courtrooms.

So what exactly did Mr. Waldman discover about the history of the 2nd Amendment?

MJ: What preconceived notions about the Second Amendment did the history that you uncovered confirm or debunk?

MW: There are surprises in this book for people who support gun control, and people who are for gun rights. When the Supreme Court ruled in Heller, Justice Scalia said he was following his doctrine of originalism. But when you actually go back and look at the debate that went into drafting of the amendment, you can squint and look really hard, but there's simply no evidence of it being about individual gun ownership for self-protection or for hunting. Emphatically, the focus was on the militias. To the framers, that phrase "a well-regulated militia" was really critical. In the debates, in James Madison's notes of the Constitutional Convention, on the floor of the House of Representatives as they wrote the Second Amendment, all the focus was about the militias. Now at the same time, those militias are not the National Guard. Every adult man, and eventually every adult white man, was required to be in the militias and was required to own a gun, and to bring it from home. So it was an individual right to fulfill the duty to serve in the militias.

You know I have a friend, some of you may actually know of him, who is always going on about the fact that we really cannot make any truly effective long term gun laws until somebody in the government finds the balls to revisit the 2nd Amendment and rewrite it so that it makes sense in our modern world.

I usually get pissed at him and tell him that suggesting that is a cop out for not wanting to do anything, since there is NO way that in this political climate we could ever attempt to modernize the 2nd Amendment.

However just between you and I, he is not exactly wrong.

As long as the Amendment remains so poorly written, and open to interpretation, it will continue to interfere with our efforts to protect our citizens from senseless gun violence.

But hey, perhaps we will in the near future finally get a Supreme Court that understands the Amendment and reinterprets it to help Congress pass mandatory laws gun registration laws, ban military style weapons, and make mental health background checks a must before giving every Tom, Dick, and Dirty Harry a weapon for killing other human beings.

Justice Antony Scalia 78 years old.

Justice Anthony Kennedy 77 years old.

Justice Clarence Thomas 65 years old.

Justice Samuel Alito 64 years old

If the Democrats manage to hold on to the White House for two more terms it COULD happen!

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