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Four years ago, countless Democratic leaders and allies pushed for passage of Barack Obama’s complex healthcare act while arguing that his entire presidency was at stake. The party hierarchy whipped the Congressional Progressive Caucus into line, while MoveOn and other loyal groups stayed in step along with many liberal pundits.
Lauding the president’s healthcare plan for its structure of “regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in July 2009 that the administration’s fate hung in the balance: “Knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse -- and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.” Such warnings were habitual until Obamacare became law eight months later.
Lauding the president’s healthcare plan for its structure of “regulation, mandates, subsidies and competition,” New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote in July 2009 that the administration’s fate hung in the balance: “Knock away any of the four main pillars of reform, and the whole thing will collapse -- and probably take the Obama presidency down with it.” Such warnings were habitual until Obamacare became law eight months later.
NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden has asked for Clemency so he can come home. The debate his revelations ignited has spawned multiple reform bills in Congress including one from Senate Intelligence committee chair Diane Fienstein. However, the White House and Feinstein continue to scream for his blood in the media. The media has failed to report that Feinstein's bill normalizes rather than reforms the NSA spying on the whole world. The media has also failed to report on the massive profits Diane Feinstien reaps from her husband’s business dealings with the intelligence community and the military.
According to Associated Press reports, Feistein responded to Snowden's clemency appeal by describing it as an "enormous disservice to our country," and declaring "I think the answer is no clemency." Only the President may grant clemency. It is that same legal theory that underpins all of the expanded powers the NSA has been granted in the last twelve years. These are the powers that Senator Feinstein's “reform” bill, the FISA Improvement Act of 2013, further regularizes and entrenches.
According to Associated Press reports, Feistein responded to Snowden's clemency appeal by describing it as an "enormous disservice to our country," and declaring "I think the answer is no clemency." Only the President may grant clemency. It is that same legal theory that underpins all of the expanded powers the NSA has been granted in the last twelve years. These are the powers that Senator Feinstein's “reform” bill, the FISA Improvement Act of 2013, further regularizes and entrenches.
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Fellow Geek Ladies, there's a sinister threat plaguing our culture: An influx of self-proclaimed geeks who come to our conventions, our message boards, even our Tumblr dashboards not to share in our love of things but to show off for our attention, trying to get us to date them. It is imperative that we drive them out before they corrupt everything we’ve worked so hard for.
That's right: I'm talking about the terrible scourge of Fake Geek Boys.
Look, if superhero stories were supposed to be for men they wouldn't be such soap operas. The X-Men comics have become as much about Cyclops and Wolverine angsting over their lost friendship as about fighting any kind of actual threats. Remember Chris Claremont’s 2004 Excalibur series where Magneto was cooking breakfast for Professor X? We all know the point of Thor: The Dark World wasn’t punching evil elves, it was the vaguely homoerotic tension between Thor and his (adopted!) brother Loki. Also there was a female love interest in there somewhere because Thor is just that good. DC Comics even had to hook Superman up with Wonder Woman to make him interesting! Superheroes are clearly not for men.
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Nov. 7-9 may have been one of the most important three days for the Ohio State University football team’s pursuit of a national championship. All Buckeyes linebacker Ryan Shazier and his teammates could do was watch.
Ohio State had the week off but got some help in the BCS rankings. Third-ranked Oregon stumbled against fifth-ranked Stanford 26-20 and fifth-ranked Baylor defeated No. 10 Oklahoma 41-12 on Nov. 7 and top-ranked Alabama easily handled No. 13 Louisiana State 38-17 and third ranked Florida State throttled Wake Forest 59-3 on Nov. 9. When the dust had settled, the Buckeyes moved up to No. 3 in the BCS rankings.
“I’m definitely going to watch,” Shazier told a group of reporters before the slew of games. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t pulling (for Stanford). I want to see how we compare with these guys. I’ve seen a little bit of both (Baylor and Oregon) but I feel with a good defense, you can stop anyone.”
“I'll be there (in front of the TV) on Thursday night and watching them,” coach Urban Meyer said. “There's some great football to watch.”
Shazier admits he may not be the best guy to kick back and watch these kinds of games with.
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For the past two years, Otterbein University junior Tabatha Piper has had only 48 hours to make the transition from playing collegiate volleyball to basketball. This year the time lapse will be even shorter with the volleyball team qualifying for the NCAA Division III tournament.
The volleyball team opened the tournament against DePauw on Nov. 14 at Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Ill. With a win, the Cardinals would play either Webster University or top-seeded Hope College in the second round on Friday, Nov. 15 with the winner advancing the regional finals on Saturday, Nov. 16. Over 220 miles away, the women’s basketball team opens its season in the Franklin College tournament in Franklin, Ind. with the Cardinals playing DePauw Nov. 15 and Denison on Nov. 16.
“It’s crazy,” says the 5-foot-11 setter, who was a first-team All-Ohio Athletic Conference selection. “The two seasons have never overlapped before but we have it all arranged.”
Piper plans to stay with the Cardinals as long as they are still alive in the volleyball tournament. If the team is eliminated on Nov.
Daniel Ellsberg, infamous for releasing the Pentagon Papers that exposed government lies and coverups during the Vietnam War, is now publicly supporting a fellow whistleblower in trouble. Ellsberg wrote a letter of support for “hackivist” Jeremy Hammond who is facing 10 years in prison for hacking into a corporation’s private security and public safety servers and releasing the garnered information to Wikileaks.
Hammond faces sentencing on November 15 after a non-cooperating plea agreement he accepted on Thursday, May 30, 2013 in a Wikileaks related hacking case. He was arrested in March 2012 for his role in the LulzSec hacking attacks. The LulzSec collective was a subset of the worldwide hacktivist group Anonymous, which was responsible for a number of high profile actions including a hacking attack on the private security corporation Stratfor. Hammond has been held in solitary confinement since January without visits from his family and will not have full visitation privileges for at least another year.
Hammond faces sentencing on November 15 after a non-cooperating plea agreement he accepted on Thursday, May 30, 2013 in a Wikileaks related hacking case. He was arrested in March 2012 for his role in the LulzSec hacking attacks. The LulzSec collective was a subset of the worldwide hacktivist group Anonymous, which was responsible for a number of high profile actions including a hacking attack on the private security corporation Stratfor. Hammond has been held in solitary confinement since January without visits from his family and will not have full visitation privileges for at least another year.
I felt the music and the fire as the civil rights movement rose from its slumber.
“Repair . . . justice!” went the call and response last week, in the basement of an old Chicago church at the corner of Ashland and Washington. “Restore . . . life! Rebuild . . . community!”
There was Gospel music and hand-clapping, passion and politics. The Reclaim Campaign launched and the Rev. Alvin Love said, “This is just the beginning. It’s going to take all of us. We’re going to leave this place mobilized, energized and activated. The work begins NOW.”
Reclaim “Chiraq.”
The kids are dying. That’s what they call Chicago: “Chiraq.” The situation has to change; the community has to rebuild.
“Why is so much violence acceptable?” high school senior Keann Mays-Lenoir asked the audience of about 300 people. “Why are adults sitting back and allowing it to happen? We’re in fear of our lives at school. We don’t know who will be shot down next. It is not OK for any child to die senselessly.
“It is not OK that my friends and I have already planned our funerals.”
“Repair . . . justice!” went the call and response last week, in the basement of an old Chicago church at the corner of Ashland and Washington. “Restore . . . life! Rebuild . . . community!”
There was Gospel music and hand-clapping, passion and politics. The Reclaim Campaign launched and the Rev. Alvin Love said, “This is just the beginning. It’s going to take all of us. We’re going to leave this place mobilized, energized and activated. The work begins NOW.”
Reclaim “Chiraq.”
The kids are dying. That’s what they call Chicago: “Chiraq.” The situation has to change; the community has to rebuild.
“Why is so much violence acceptable?” high school senior Keann Mays-Lenoir asked the audience of about 300 people. “Why are adults sitting back and allowing it to happen? We’re in fear of our lives at school. We don’t know who will be shot down next. It is not OK for any child to die senselessly.
“It is not OK that my friends and I have already planned our funerals.”
The first prophetic sign to follow CNN's irrelevant Pandora's Promise is this: the Dallas-based Luminant Power Company has cancelled two mammoth reactors.
Pandora's box score for atomic America 2013 is five announced early reactor closures, nine project cancellations and six ditched uprates. Today, 100 U.S. reactors operate where 1,000 were once promised. New orders are zilch.
Even more critical: For decades the nuclear industry said zero commercial reactors could explode. When Chernobyl blew, they blamed it on the Soviet design. Now, three General Electric reactors have exploded at Fukushima. Unfortunately, as they age and deteriorate, there may be more to come.
"Atomic energy makes global warming worse. Its truest promise is for ever more meltdowns—in health, the ecology and economy."
Pandora's box score for atomic America 2013 is five announced early reactor closures, nine project cancellations and six ditched uprates. Today, 100 U.S. reactors operate where 1,000 were once promised. New orders are zilch.
Even more critical: For decades the nuclear industry said zero commercial reactors could explode. When Chernobyl blew, they blamed it on the Soviet design. Now, three General Electric reactors have exploded at Fukushima. Unfortunately, as they age and deteriorate, there may be more to come.
"Atomic energy makes global warming worse. Its truest promise is for ever more meltdowns—in health, the ecology and economy."
“No matter what.” These three words have caused the President a tremendous political headache over the past couple weeks, and as such his credibility is ostensibly on the chopping block. We needn’t recall the campaign details from 2008 and 2012 to remember the slogan, “if you like your insurance plan you can keep it, no matter what.” The remarkable ability of Mr. Obama to condense something as complex and fluid as the insurance market to a memorable one-liner was indeed an assurance to the many Americans who supported the Affordable Care Act when it became law. As with many slogans, however, this one turned out to good to be true.
It is now understood that somewhere around five percent of Americans will be dropped from their health insurance policies and forced into the health insurance exchanges. For five percent of the country, then, ‘no matter what’ did not take effect. Millions of people will have their lives sharply interrupted, like it or not. This is a large number and should not be ducked as a detail in the grand scheme of things.
It is now understood that somewhere around five percent of Americans will be dropped from their health insurance policies and forced into the health insurance exchanges. For five percent of the country, then, ‘no matter what’ did not take effect. Millions of people will have their lives sharply interrupted, like it or not. This is a large number and should not be ducked as a detail in the grand scheme of things.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- A ten-day meeting of the World Council of
Churches (WCC) ended in South Korea after expressing support for the
world's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex community,
reunification of the war-torn Korean peninsula, African rape victims
and others.
"Some 5,000 Christians, representing more than 300 churches from more than 100 countries" gathered in Busan from October 30 to November 8 at the WCC Assembly which meets every seven years, the organization said on its Facebook page.
In the WCC's closing prayer, South Africa's Father Michael Lapsley mentioned his "Facebook friends" and said "God is not limited in the way wisdom is delivered to the human family. For example, I regularly read my NRSV Bible downloaded free on my Samsung phone."
Lapsley also expressed support for HIV-AIDS sufferers, African rape victims, and honored "the Armenian genocide" of 1915.
"Some 5,000 Christians, representing more than 300 churches from more than 100 countries" gathered in Busan from October 30 to November 8 at the WCC Assembly which meets every seven years, the organization said on its Facebook page.
In the WCC's closing prayer, South Africa's Father Michael Lapsley mentioned his "Facebook friends" and said "God is not limited in the way wisdom is delivered to the human family. For example, I regularly read my NRSV Bible downloaded free on my Samsung phone."
Lapsley also expressed support for HIV-AIDS sufferers, African rape victims, and honored "the Armenian genocide" of 1915.