Fertility Clinics Destroy Embryos All the Time. Why Aren't Conservatives after Them?
This has been other episode of simple answers to simple questions.
If being in NATO means protecting Erdogan in this situation, either he shouldn’t be in NATO or we shouldn’t.When Dana f%$#ing Rohrbacher is the voice of reason on anything something is seriously wrong in our Nation's Capital.—Congressman Dana Rohrabacher – Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe
Donald Blankenship, former President of Massey Energy, was convicted of only a misdemeanor for his role in the deaths of miners in a mine explosion:
Donald L. Blankenship, whose leadership of the Massey Energy Company was widely criticized after 29 workers were killed in the Upper Big Branch mine in 2010, was convicted Thursday of conspiring to violate federal safety standards, becoming the most prominent American coal executive ever convicted of a crime related to mining deaths.I hope that the judge sentences him to the full year, but somehow I doubt it.
But in a substantial defeat for the Justice Department, the verdict, announced in Federal District Court here, exonerated Mr. Blankenship, Massey’s former chief executive, of three felony charges that could have led to a prison term of 30 years. Instead, after a protracted and complex trial that began on Oct. 1, jurors convicted Mr. Blankenship only of a single misdemeanor charge that carried a maximum of a year in prison.
“We are disappointed, but not as disappointed as we could have been,” said William W. Taylor III, a defense lawyer for Mr. Blankenship, who will appeal the conviction and is expected to be sentenced next spring.
Mr. Blankenship was not tried on any charges that accused him of direct responsibility for the deaths at Upper Big Branch, which investigators said exploded because of improper ventilation that allowed gases to accumulate. But prosecutors argued that Mr. Blankenship’s leadership had laid the groundwork for a catastrophe. There was not necessarily a formal conspiracy, prosecutors acknowledged, but they said that Mr. Blankenship’s example and tone had set Massey on a course that put profits ahead of lives.
Their cover is magnificent:
The lede, "God isn't fixing this: As latest batch of innocent Americans are left lying in pools of blood, cowards who could truly end scourge continue to hide behind meaningless platitudes:
Prayers aren’t working.In addition to the Daily News' magnificent statement on Republicans resort to religious hypocrisy as an alternative to action.
White House hopefuls on the Democratic side of the aisle called for stricter gun laws in the wake of the shooting in San Bernardino that left at least 14 dead.
But after yet another mass shooting in America, GOP presidential contenders were conspicuously silent on the issue of gun control.
Instead, the Republicans were preaching about prayer.
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Democrats — even those not running for office — slammed the GOP presidential candidates for offering prayers instead of action.
“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn) posted on Twitter. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing — again.”
Some critics accused Murphy of religious insensitivity, but he didn’t waver in a statement later Wednesday.
“My heart aches for the people of San Bernardino,” he said. “I cannot express the profound sadness I feel each time a new community grieves and endures the same pain that brought Newtown to its knees three years ago this month.”
The head of the Chicago Police Department was fired Tuesday amid widespread criticism over how authorities responded to the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a white police officer last year.What is clear now that the video has been released, is that there has been an aggressive attempt to sweep everyting under the rug.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) said he formally asked Garry F. McCarthy, the Chicago police superintendent, for his resignation on Tuesday morning, a week after video footage of the shooting was released and the officer was charged with murder.
“He has become an issue, rather than dealing with the issue, and a distraction,” Emanuel said. He added that while he is loyal to McCarthy, whom he praised for his leadership of the department, the needs of the city are more important.
Even as the embattled Emanuel dismissed his police superintendent and made other vows of increased police accountability, announcing a task force to review police oversight, another Illinois official suggested that federal intervention was needed for the Chicago police. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote a letter Tuesday asking the Justice Department to investigate possible civil rights violations by the Chicago Police Department.
Anger has erupted in Chicago since authorities released footage of Jason Van Dyke, a city police officer, shooting Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old, last year. In the video, Van Dyke is seen firing a volley of shots at McDonald, many of them after the teenager had already fallen to the ground.
The cover-up that began 13 months ago when a Chicago police officer executed 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on a busy street might well have included highly ranked officials who ordered subordinates to conceal information. But the conspiracy of concealment exposed last week when the city, under court order, finally released a video of the shooting could also be seen as a kind of autonomic response from a historically corrupt law enforcement agency that is well versed in the art of hiding misconduct, brutality — and even torture.I hope that this is a death knell for Emanuel's political career, he is a cancer on Democratic Party politics, but the next election is 3 years down the road, and that is a long time in politics.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel demonstrated a willful ignorance when he talked about the murder charges against the police officer who shot Mr. McDonald, seeking to depict the cop as a rogue officer. He showed a complete lack of comprehension on Tuesday when he explained that he had decided to fire his increasingly unpopular police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, not because he failed in his leadership role, but because he had become “a distraction.”
Mr. Emanuel’s announcement that he had appointed a task force that will review the Police Department’s accountability procedures is too little, too late. The fact is, his administration, the Police Department and the prosecutor’s office have lost credibility on this case. Officials must have known what was on that video more than a year ago, and yet they saw no reason to seek a sweeping review of the police procedures until this week.
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Justice Department officials, however, said on Tuesday that the department did not ask the city to withhold the video from the public because of its investigation. That makes this whole episode look like an attempt by the city, the police and prosecutors to keep the video under wraps, knowing the political problems it would most likely create.
And now it appears that Russia and Israel will be expanding military coordination in Syria:
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday praised bilateral efforts to prevent unintended clashes of their air forces operating in Syria and pledged to broaden so-called deconfliction measures to include forces operating from the ground as well.The policy makes good sense, but I cannot but conclude that its public announcement was intended as an enormous f%$# you to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Meeting in Paris less than a week after the Turkish Air Force downed a Russian fighter that had allegedly entered Turkish airspace for a brief period of time, Putin characterized measures first proposed by Netanyahu as efficient and said both leaders were “satisfied with the progress of bilateral” ties.
“The mechanism ... [that] presupposes contacts between the militaries to prevent incidents due to the dramatic developments in the region has been efficient,” Putin told Netanyahu.
Referencing Ankara’s downing of the Russian fighter, Netanyahu said to Putin: “The events of recent days prove the importance of our coordination, our deconfliction mechanisms, our attempts to cooperate with each other to prevent unnecessary accidents and tragedies, and I believe that we’ve been successful. It’s important.
“I hope that Israel and Russia can see eye to eye on all the strategic matter, but I want to assure you that we believe that it’s within our powers to have very good coordination on the ground and in the air so that we do not create the kind of problems that we’ve been experiencing,” Netanyahu said.
My brother, AKA the Bear Who Swims, is fond of winter.
In fact, my brother has frequently expressed a sense of loss at not experiencing Minneapolis weather now that he lives in Seattle.
Well, Bear Who Swims, have you considered Norway?
I rather imagine that as he reads this, my brother is thinking wistfully of the thought of sub-zero evenings and the Northern Lights.
Residents of Norway view their long dark winters as something to celebrate. How it's possible to be cheerful for the next four months.
As the days get darker and colder in much of the northern hemisphere, it’s easy to indulge in gloom. For the next few months, you’ll be shivering. You’ll be battling foul weather. Thanks to daylight saving time there will be no chance to see the sun after work.
The gloom leads to a common question: What can I do to cope with the dark and cold?
If you truly want to be happy during winter, though, this is the wrong approach to the season. Changing your mindset can do more than distracting yourself from the weather.
That’s the takeaway from research done by Kari Leibowitz, currently a PhD student at Stanford University, who spent August 2014 to June 2015 on a Fulbright scholarship in Tromsø in northern Norway. Tromsø is so far north that from late November to late January, the sun never climbs above the horizon. Leibowitz went to study the residents’ overall mental health, because rates of seasonal depression were lower than one might expect.
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It turns out that in northern Norway, "people view winter as something to be enjoyed, not something to be endured," says Leibowitz, and that makes all the difference.
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And finally, people are enamored with the sheer beauty of the season. Leibowitz grew up near the Jersey shore, and "I just took it as a fact that everyone likes summer the best." But deep in the winter in Norway, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon, multiple hours a day can still look like sunrise and sunset, and against the snow, "the colors are incredibly beautiful," she says. "The light is very soft and indirect."
