Saturday, August 11th, 2018
NOOR AL-SIBAI, - Raw Story
Stephan: The low IQ and willfully ignorant Trump supporter will, apparently, believe anything. Here is the latest meme sweeping through that world. What stands out for me is these people always seem to emphasize having sex with children. Their obsession seems to be a reflection of their own minds more than anything else. The reason I cover this is that it is a trend that is having a profound effect on America in a way it did not in the past. Why? I believe because of social media, and the ability of a single twit to create something that is picked up and repeated all over the country.
Portland, Oregon’s Voodoo Donuts.
Credit: Creative Commons.
Move over, Pizzagate — Portland’s famous Voodoo Doughnut is the new home to a far-right child sex ring conspiracy theory.
Media Matters reported that the famous doughnut chain is the center of a new conspiracy theory akin to Pizzagate, another unsubstantiated far-right battle cry whose believers claimed Hillary Clinton and other Democrats used a Washington, D.C. pizzeria as a front for a pedophilia ring.
In a lengthy video published by fringe right-wing YouTuber Nathan Stolpman on August 4, a man who identified himself by the name Michael Whelan claimed he saw “signs” of sexually abused children when attending a party at Voodoo co-founder Tres Shannon‘s house in Portland.
To substantiate his claim, Whelan said he had been “eyewitness to children taken back” at Shannon’s home, reiterated that “there was abuse of children going on,” and linked Voodoo to Comet Pizza, the D.C. pizzeria at the heart of the Pizzagate conspiracy. The man also claimed people who worked at the Oregon donut chain also used to work at Comet Pizza, a cool […]
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Friday, August 10th, 2018
E.A. CRUNDEN, - Think Progress
Stephan: I don't see much difference between the Republicans in Congress, and the Executive Branch and Nazis. Read this and see what you think.
SUMMITVILLE, CO – JUNE 11: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment runs a water treatment plant at the Superfund site at Summitville Mine on June 11, 2018 in Summitville, Colorado. The state of Colorado pays millions to clean water from the mine before it is pumped back into the Wightman Fork of the Alamosa River.
Credit: RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post
Environmental and health advocates want more information about the Trump administration’s plans to house detained immigrants, including children, at two Texas military posts with a history of toxic contamination.
A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed Wednesday morning by the nonprofit legal group Earthjustice is asking the government for details about plans to keep immigrants at Fort Bliss in El Paso and Goodfellow Air Force Bases in San Angelo.
Fort Bliss is a source of particular concern for advocates — the area is listed as a Superfund, meaning that areas have been designated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a priority for cleanup due to the dangers they pose to human […]
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Friday, August 10th, 2018
Owen Jones, Columnist - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: This is a story about the U.K. but it would apply to any country. The small government austerity policies so beloved by conservatives worldwide never work, and always create distress and a degraded quality of life for the people who must live under such policies. Why, then, do conservative governments continue to implement such policies. The answer I think is that conservatives never put facts above ideology. Here's what happens. A variation is happening here.
Architects of austerity: George Osborne and David Cameron in 2015.
Credit: Ben Birchall/PA
“We got there in the end – a remarkable national effort”: that’s how former chancellor George Osborne celebrated the government meeting his deficit target on the day-to-day budget two years late. “It was the right thing to do,” was David Cameron’s smug echo.
It’s easy for the architects of the Tories’ ideologically driven austerity to be triumphalist, given they did not suffer the consequences: the worst squeeze in wages of the major industrialised countries except depression-ravaged Greece; the slashing of social security for low-paid workers and disabled people; the surging child poverty. New research suggests that austerity played a key role in the Brexit vote, which plunged Britain into national crisis, too, and which turfed both men out of office, although both continue to prosper, Cameron with his “trotters up”, as Danny Dyer so memorably put it. But there is another devastating […]
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Friday, August 10th, 2018
MICHAEL BIESECKER, - Associated Press
Stephan: More and more as American democracy is dismantled by the Trump administration while the Republican quislings in Congress sit on their hands, protecting the country has fallen to a small cadre of judges. Honorable men and women who stand up for the country when no one else will. Here is some good news as an example of how this is happening.
In my opinion, Scott Pruitt should be charged with mass murder and put on trial.
Scott Pruitt
WASHINGTON, D.C. — A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration endangered public health by keeping a widely used pesticide on the market despite extensive scientific evidence that even tiny levels of exposure can harm babies’ brains. (emphasis added)
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to remove chlorpyrifos from sale in the United States within 60 days.
A coalition of farmworkers and environmental groups sued last year after then-EPA chief Scott Pruitt reversed an Obama-era effort to ban chlorpyrifos, which is widely sprayed on citrus fruit, apples and other crops. The attorneys general for several states joined the case against EPA, including California, New York and Massachusetts.
In a split decision, the court said Thursday that Pruitt, a Republican forced to resign earlier this summer amid ethics scandals, violated federal law by ignoring the conclusions of agency scientists that chlorpyrifos is harmful.
“The panel held that there was no justification for the EPA’s decision in its 2017 order to maintain a tolerance […]
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Friday, August 10th, 2018
Stephan: Today I saw three stories reporting police thuggery; this is one of them. No one who would think it was acceptable to use a taser on an 11 year old girl should be a sworn police officer. Yet American law enforcement is filled with thousands of such low IQ bullies. On my own island the police chief was just fired for such bullying activity. What's it like where you live? Are you even paying attention to this issue?
The Cincinnati Police Department is under scrutiny for using a Taser on an 11-year-old girl.
Credit: Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post
The Cincinnati Police Department is under intense scrutiny after an off-duty police officer used a Taser on an 11-year old black girl, prompting allegations of excessive force and raising new concerns about how the department uses Tasers.
The incident happened at a local grocery store on Monday. According to local reports, off-duty police officer Kevin Brown was working as a security guard at the store and suspected 11 year-old Donesha Gowdy of shoplifting. The police department noted that she was seen placing food into a backpack and did not stop when Brown approached her as she left the store. Brown then fired his Taser, striking the girl in the back.
The girl was arrested for “theft and obstructing official business” and was taken to a local hospital for evaluation. On Wednesday evening, Cincinnati Mayor John Cranely announced that charges against the girl had been dropped.
In interviews with news outlets on […]
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