Monday, June 29, 2015

Super Cheap Not-for-profit Supermarket In America; Novel Idea!

Providing everyone with food, shelter and healthcare are the hallmarks of civilized societies. And, if this idea takes hold the US will be taking another step toward that goal. 


A new not-for-profit grocery store called theDaily Table opened in Dorchester, Mass. The new store is notable for two main reasons: 1) It’s the baby of Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe’s, which was recently named amongAmerica’s favorite supermarkets; and 2) The prices of many items are incredibly affordable.

Here is a sampling of expected prices at Daily Table, according to the trade publication Supermarket News:

8-ounce frozen okra: 29¢
8-ounce frozen corn: 39¢
Can of tuna: 55¢
Box of cereal: 70¢
Dozen eggs: $1.19

In a story last month in the Boston Globe, Rauch explained what his new venture is all about, and why the focus has been on inexpensive, healthy food rather than profits. “Our job at Daily Table is to provide healthy meals that are no more expensive than what people are already buying,” Rauch said. “We’re trying to reach a segment of the population that is hard to reach. It’s the working poor who are out buying food, but who can’t afford the food they should be eating.”

THE DUMP TRUMP STORM

President Lincoln is credited in saying;

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt."




It looks like the Donald didn't follow Abe's advice and my guess is that he wished he did.



NBCUniversal delivered a message to Donald Trump over his recent remarks regarding immigrants: "You're fired."

In a statement issued Monday, the company said it is severing ties with the real estate mogul and reality TV star who is pursuing the 2016 Republican nomination for president. He will no longer be a part of the reality competition "Celebrity Apprentice" and his two beauty pageants, Miss USA and Miss Universe, will no longer air on NBC.

"At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values," the statement said. "Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump."


Thursday, June 25, 2015

THE ENEMY WITHIN

While Republicans who pander to the MIC would like you to believe we have to go over there before they come over here it seems that they are here already; homegrown right-wing terrorists. They wear T-Shirts emblazoned with Swastikas and Confederate flags and ramble on about how the US is being overrun by foreign invaders who want to take their guns. They are white, young and angry and probably don't even know how to spell jihad.


Even though these misguided zealots do present a threat the greater threat is the indifference and/or ignorance a large number of Americans suffer from by buying into the scare mongering about dark skinned, bearded foreigners who speak in strange tongues and blow themselves up.



As the nation reels from last week’s mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, which left nine churchgoers dead, data show that since 9/11, there have been more deadly attacks in the U.S. carried out by right-wing assailants than by “jihadists.” What’s more, right-wing attacks have killed almost twice as many Americans

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

IT'S NOT THE FLAG STUPID!

Prohibition is a fools game.

Banning a flag, much like bans on almost everything else known to man, is like putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound.

The flag is a symptom, not the disease. For most people it is an historic artifact of times past when Americans chose sides on political and social issues that included (but not exclusively) slavery. Racists fought under the colors of both the Confederate and Union flags. The KKK has active chapters on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.

Racism is a disease that afflicts almost everyone in a society comprised of mixed races. How people act on it is dependent on a myriad of social/economic factors. And, in many "developed" societies these issues are addressed and resolved without resorting to violence as what we see in America.

Just as president Obama clearly noted in a recent interview;

"Racism, we are not cured of it," the president said. "And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public."


Lowering/removing  a flag over a state house, or banning it's sale in Walmart is not addressing the issue facing us. And, in fact, these fool-hardy measures (just like prohibition of alcohol)  tend to only throw more gas on fire that burns in the hearts of those whose hatred of those different than them drives them to act out violently. 

The root cause is ignorance and the more educated (informed) people become the less they tend to resort to violence; as is borne out in looking at other developed countries. 

Hiding the flag, not using the "N" word, and pretending that racism doesn't exist because of it promotes ignorance at worst, and is childish at best.

People can start by educating themselves on just what this flag is all about; here's at least 8 things you should know about the Confederate flag.

Monday, June 22, 2015

OBAMA CALLS OUT THE RACISTS!





The President is not buying the Supreme Courts declaration that racism is no longer a problem in this country.




"Racism, we are not cured of it," the president said. "And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say nigger in public."

In the interview, Mr Obama also lamented Congress' lack of will to enact stricter gun controls.

"It's not just a matter of overt discrimination," he told comedian Marc Maron in a podcast. "Societies don't, overnight, completely erase everything that happened 200 to 300 years prior."

The president acknowledged that attitudes about race in the US have improved since his childhood, but he said that America's history of enslaving black people "casts a long shadow and that's still part of our DNA that's passed on".

Sunday, June 21, 2015

A COUNTRY IN DENIAL

When the Supreme Court declared that racism is no longer a problem in the US it was obvious that this country is populated by a large number of people who live in "denial" (Denial can involve a flat out rejection of the existence of a fact or reality) which results in what has been a rash of race-related acts of violence as not seen anywhere else in the civilized world.



We reinforce this by conveniently (with the help of the media) labeling these massacres as the work of "lone wolves"; isolated events completely unrelated to broader society. Nothing could be further from the truth.



First off let's get real about wolves. They run in packs.  Hate mongering racists run in packs and there are plenty of them to go around; the KKK is one example. Another are white supremacist/ neo Nazis gangs. Then there are the much larger packs of closeted racists who are by far more dangerous because they stay in the shadows and insidiously spread the hatred by looking the other way when one of their pack goes astray.




Authorities said Saturday that the man accused of killing nine African Americans in a venerable Charleston, S.C., church left a racist manifesto targeting blacks, Jews and Hispanics on his Web site, a white supremacist broadside that also appears to offer a rationale for the shootings.

The lengthy declaration, loaded with offensive racial characterizations of blacks and others, includes the conclusion that “someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”

But the vast majority of the rant, which displays some unusually sophisticated language if all of it was written by Roof, a ninth-grade dropout, reveals a deep hatred of minorities — particularly blacks — and a strong belief in racist stereotypes.

“Negroes have lower IQ's, lower impulse control, and higher testosterone levels in generals,” the manifesto declares. “These three things alone are a recipe for violent behavior.”

The manifesto also condemns whites who have moved to the suburbs in search of better schools and neighborhoods, which, it declares “is just a way to escape [blacks] and other minorities.” That passage used an epithet for African Americans.

“I hate with a passion the whole idea of the suburbs. To me it represents nothing but scared White people running. Running because they are too weak, scared and brainwashed to fight,” the manifesto states. It also spurns patriotism as “people pretending like they have something to be proud while White people are being murdered daily in the streets.”

OBAMA PLAYS GOLF (FIDDLES) WHILE CALIFORNIA BURNS

Fires are burning out of control all over drought ridden California while the President plays golf on courses that suck up millions of gallons of water to soak massive patches of lawn that are purely used for this silly form of entertainment. What does that say about where our priorities lie?



Saturday, June 20, 2015

Dylann Roof’s Judge; A 5TH KIND OF PEOPLE

They are racists. Like the judge that made this stupid comment in court.



“There are four kinds of people in this world—black people, white people, red necks, and n---rs,” Gosnell advised a black defendant in a November 6, 2003 bond reduction hearing.

Friday, June 19, 2015

BEING BLACK IN AMERICA IS DANGEROUS

Racism and guns are a bad mix and there's plenty of both in America.


Police described the attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as a "hate crime".
They issued surveillance images of the suspect and said he had sat in the church for an hour before opening fire.


President Barack Obama stood righteous, angry and powerless on Thursday as he responded to yet another mass killing by a gunman in America.

“I have had to make statements like this too many times,” Obama said, pausing with emotion, referring to similar statements of grief following at least 14 mass killings during his presidency, according to a tally by CBS’s Mark Knoller. Those include shootings in Aurora, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona, and Newtown, Connecticut. Once again, he said, “someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.”

Obama described the frequency of the type of gun violence seen in the killings of nine people at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday evening as unique to the United States among advanced countries.

“Let’s be clear,” Obama said, as Vice President Joe Biden, standing beside him at the front of the White House briefing room, nodded. “At some point we as a country have to reckon with the fact that this type of violence does not happen in other advanced countries.” Read more:

Obama is right: gun violence is way more common in the US than in its developed peers — and it's not even close. This chart, compiled using United Nations data collected by the Guardian's Simon Rogers, shows that America far and away leads Canada, Japan, and several European counterparts in gun homicides:

But why does the US have so many more gun homicides than other advanced countries? One possible explanation: Americans are much more likely to own guns than their peers around the world. And the empirical research shows places with more guns have more homicides.

33,636 Americans died of injuries caused by guns in 2013. Here's what we know about what's behind that problem, and about the effects of guns on society more broadly.
Here are some of the reasons why the US stands out from the rest of the developed world when it comes to gun violence;

There's roughly one gun for every person in America

It's pretty hard to count up all the guns in the United States, especially given how varied different states' licensing and registration policies are. A 2012 Congressional Research Service report estimated that there were 310 million civilian guns in 2009: 114 million handguns, 110 million rifles, and 86 million shotguns. The Small Arms Survey, which measures gun prevalence internationally, estimated that there were 270 million in 2007. The latter estimate suggests there were 88.8 guns for every 100 people in the US in 2007; there were about 307 million people in the US in 2009, which would mean the CRS estimated there were more guns than people in America.

Gun crime is more prevalent in the US than in other rich countries

In 2012, Max Fisher compared gun homicide rates in wealthy countries, using UN data. The US was far ahead of the non-Mexico members of the OECD, with only Chile anywhere close:


Places with more guns have more homicides

Protestations of gun rights supporters aside, public health researchers who study firearms generally agree that increased firearm ownership rates are associated with higher rates of homicide. The Harvard School of Public Health's Injury Control Research Center is a great resource here. It notes that a wide variety of methodologies show guns as a risk factor for homicide in the US and other high-income countries. Developed countries with more guns generally have more homicide; states within the US with more guns have more homicide; people with access to guns — particularly women — are more likely to be victims of homicide than those without access.


There are more gun suicides than gun homicides in America

Gun homicides get far more attention in the popular press, but most gun deaths are the result of suicide. In 2013, the last year for which the CDC providesnumbers, 21,175 people committed suicide by firearm, while 11,208 people died in gun homicides. Historical data shows it's been this way for a while:

Suicide is more common in places with more guns

The relationship between gun prevalence and suicide is stronger than the relationship between guns and homicide, as the Harvard Injury Control Research Center's Means Matter project shows. People who die from suicide are likelier to live in homes with guns than people who merely attempted suicide, and states with higher rates of gun ownership have higher rates of gun suicide.

Living in a house with a gun increases your odds of death

Guns can kill you in three ways: homicide, suicide, and by accident. Owning a gun or having one readily accessible makes all three more likely. A recent meta-analysis "found strong evidence for increased odds of suicide among persons with access to firearms compared with those without access and moderate evidence for an attenuated increased odds of homicide victimization when persons with and without access to firearms were compared." The latter finding is stronger for women, a reminder that guns are also a risk factor for domestic violence.
Guns contribute to domestic violence

While everyone is at a greater risk of dying by homicide if they have access to a gun, the connection is stronger for women. In a survey of battered women, 71.4 percent of respondents reported that guns had been used against them, usually to threaten to kill them. A study comparing abused women who survived with those killed by their abuser found that 51 percent of women who were killed had a gun in the house. By contrast, only 16 percent of women who survived lived in homes with guns.

Jacquelyn Campbell, a Johns Hopkins professor responsible for much of what we know about guns and domestic violence (and domestic violence in general), developed a set of screening questions to ask abused women to determine who's at the most risk of being killed by their abuser. Among the questions in the screen, which has been adopted by Maryland police and appears to be working, are a couple about the abuser's access to guns, emphasizing that gun access is a risk factor for homicide in abusive relationships.

For more, read this piece by CityLab's Evan DeFilippis explaining the evidence on guns and domestic violence.

A tiny fraction of gun violence is committed by the mentally ill

In discussions of mass shootings, the topic of mental illness regularly comes up, often paired with pleas to improve mental health services instead of or in addition to gun control measures. While the mental health care system in the United States is abysmal and in desperate need of more funding, this is a bit of misleading connection to draw.

For one thing, mass shootings are a tiny percentage of the overall homicide problem and should not be blown out of proportion. But more importantly, our violent crime problem really has little to do with mental illness. Columbia's Paul Appelbaum and Duke's Jeffrey Swanson concluded that "only 3%-5% of violent acts are attributable to serious mental illness, and most do not involve guns." Similarly, a study in Sweden found that only 5.2 percent of violent crimes were committed by people with serious mental illness.

That doesn't mean that certain types of mental illness aren't risk factors for violence. A National Institute of Mental Health study found that 16 percent of people with serious mental illness (such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder) commit a serious act of violence in their lifetime, compared with 7 percent of the general population. But anxiety disorders didn't increase one's risk of committing violence at all.

Much more important as a factor is drug and alcohol abuse; Cornell psychiatrist Richard Friedman notes that the same NIMH study found that "people with no mental disorder who abused alcohol or drugs were nearly seven times as likely as those without substance abuse to commit violent acts." A Mayors Against Illegal Drugs analysis of mass shootings found a much stronger connection to domestic violence than to mental illness.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Pope Francis: "our home, is an immense pile of filth."

The Pope put it bluntly;



In one particularly blunt passage, Francis writes: "The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish. ... Frequently no measures are taken until after people's health has been irreversibly affected."



Tuesday, June 16, 2015

THE PROBLEM WITH RICH WACKOS!

They fill up a lot of media space with pure unadulterated nonsense that only serves as a trough for comedians like Jon and John Stewart and Oliver





After years of head fakes about running for the White House, The Donald promised his two-decade game of pretend is over: “I am officially running for president of the United States. And we are going to make our country great again.”

 The rambling, hour-long stream-of-consciousness speech was online catnip, from the soundtrack (pure schmaltz, featuring piece from the “Phantom of the Opera” and “Cats”) to the entrance, as Trump descended the escalator to the marble basement of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue with wife Melania, who was clad in stiletto heels and a strapless white dress.

So far he’s not “in in.” Federal Elections Commission records show Trump has yet to file any paperwork making his candidacy official. He has 15 days to do so.

And he’s spent years flirting heavily with political office, only to back away. Trump entertained the idea of a presidential run in 1988, mulled it over in 2000, seriously considered it in 2004. In 2014, he threatened, very briefly, to run for Governor of New York.

 

Thursday, June 4, 2015

BRAIN DEAD - FREE RANGE - LAZE FAIRE PARENTS

There are parents who think that children should be allowed to roam free without supervision because they believe the world is safe and their kids need to experience being in the real world on their own.



What that translates to in the real world is that these parents are just too preoccupied with themselves to take the time to be involved in protecting their children from the unpredictable real world. It also means that these parents want to devote even less time to parenting and spend less money on baby sitters, nanny's, and the like.



Hiding behind catchy phrases like "free range parenting" will not  excuse them from their responsibilities to parent (protect) their children. These uninformed/naive parents argue that the world is safer today than in previous generations so what's the big deal?



Maybe they should take a little bit of their free time to educate themselves;


Every 40 seconds in the United States, a child becomes missing or is abducted.
In 2001, 840,279 people (adults and children) were reported missing to the FBI's National Crime Information Center (NCIC). The FBI estimates that 85 to 90 percent of those (roughly 750,000 people or 2,000 per day) reported missing were children. The vast majority of these cases are resolved within hours.

Based on the identity of the perpetrator, there are three distinct types of kidnapping: kidnapping by a relative of the victim or "family kidnapping" (49 percent), kidnapping by an acquaintance of the victim or "acquaintance kidnapping" (27 percent), and kidnapping by a stranger to the victim or "stranger kidnapping" (24 percent).
 
Stranger kidnapping victimizes more females than males, occurs primarily at outdoor locations, victimizes both teenagers and school-age children, is associated with sexual assaults in the case of girl victims and robberies in the case of boy victims (although not exclusively so), and is the type of kidnapping most likely to involve the use of a firearm.

Only about one child out of each 10,000 missing children reported to the local police is not found alive. However, about 20 percent of the children reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in nonfamily abductions are not found alive.

In 80 percent of abductions by strangers, the first contact between the child and the abductor occurs within a quarter mile of the child's home.

Most potential abductors grab their victims on the street or try to lure them into their vehicles.
About 74 percent of the victims of nonfamily child abduction are girls.

Acting quickly is critical. Seventy-four percent of abducted children who are ultimately murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction.


THE DUGGARS; HEAR - SPEAK- SEE NO EVIL

This family just doesn't get it.   It's not that one of their kids got a little carried away when his raging teen-hormones got out of control. That's understandable and not as uncommon as one would like to believe.  It's not the bad deed but the cover up.



The problem with the Duggars; especially the parents, is that they hid their shortcomings to protect their money-making TV franchise which portrays them as "all goodie, goodie, God fearing Christians who are better than those the "fallen" audience they pander to.



Fox News and the Duggars reach a disgusting new low: The twisted persecution complex in last night’s insane interview


Megyn Kelly, avenger, swooped in to get an interview with the victims in the Duggar family molestation case. The victims being parents Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, of course. In the span of an hour Wednesday night, Fox News transformed the disturbing Duggar family into culture war martyrs, targets of the most vicious liberal attacks since the War on Christmas.

The Duggars delivered a stunning display of deflection, the longest exercise in self-absolution since Gov. Chris Christie’s two-hour pity party when Bridgegate was revealed. The right wing Christian activists and LGBT antagonists found unbelievably creative ways to minimize what son Josh did when he molested four of his sisters, and a baby sitter, in seven separate incidents.

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

FEED HUNGRY CHILDREN; LOSE YOUR JOB

In the richest country in the world the question that needs to be answered is; Why are public schools charging children for food? Why are meals not included in the curriculum?

North American Food Waste Facts
In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions
In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month
More facts

According to a recent report by UNEP and the World Resources Institute (WRI), about one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems. When this figure is converted to calories, this means that about 1 in 4 calories intended for consumption is never actually eaten. In a world full of hunger, volatile food prices , and social unrest, these statistics are more than just shocking: they are environmentally, morally and economically outrageous.

Let’s start with some basic statistics about food waste in North America and around the world.


Worldwide Food Waste Facts
Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons)
The amount of food lost and wasted every year is equal to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crops (2.3 billion tons in 2009/10)
More facts

She fed a few hungry children, and this Colorado elementary school kitchen manager was fired for her kindness.

Della Curry was dismissed from Dakota Valley Elementary School in Aurora on Friday after being caught feeding kids whose parents couldn't afford to pay for their food, reports CBS Denver.

Students who don't qualify for the free or reduced lunch program should only get a slice of cheese on a burger bun and a small drink of milk, Cherry Creek School District rules say.

Curry, however, doesn't believe that is enough.

"I had a first grader in front of me, crying, because she doesn't have enough money for lunch. Yes, I gave her lunch," she told CBS Denver.

For free lunches in the district, a family of four has to have a household income of less than $31,000. For reduced meals, the threshold is below $45,000.

Tuesday, June 2, 2015

CUTTING OFF THE HEAD OF FIFA

It looks like the "sponsors" (though they are not going to admit it) gave Sepp a thumbs down and an implied message to not let the door hit him in the ass as he voids his own re-election to this corruption soaked organization. The smell was just too bad to ignore it. 



Amid a bribery scandal involving top executives of world soccer's governing body, FIFA President Sepp Blatter is resigning.

Blatter made the announcement on Tuesday during a press conference, just days after he easily won an election to a fifth term. Blatter will stay on as president until his successor is elected.

Last month, U.S. authorities indicted a group of senior FIFA officials on corruption charges. Media reports on Monday said Blatter's top lieutenant, secretary general Jerome Valcke, had transferred $10 million to an account controlled by formerCONCACAF President Jack Warner. That payment was allegedly part of a bribe to help South Africa secure the right to host the 2010 World Cup.

Neither Valcke nor Blatter has been formally accused of wrongdoing, but the development brought the investigation very close to FIFA's top leadership.

Blatter said that even though members of FIFA gave him a new mandate through his re-election last week, he did not feel that vote was enough for "the fans, the players, the clubs, the people who live, breathe and love football as much as we all do at FIFA."

"That election is over but FIFA's challenges are not," Blatter said. "FIFA needs a profound overhaul."