Blue_Tires
Blue_Tires's JournalEveryone's mother *will* win Super Bowl XLIX -- Bank on it...
any disputes with that bold prediction??
Black teens who commit a few crimes go to jail as often as white teens who commit dozens
Boys are less likely to commit crimes but they are more likely to be placed in a correctional facility than they were three decades ago, according to a new study that shows the justice system for juvenile offenders has become much more punitive. The trends are particularly pronounced among boys from racial minorities, according to the paper by Tia Stevens Andersen of the University of South Carolina and Michigan State University's Merry Morash.
Although there were negligible differences among the racial groups in how frequently boys committed crimes, white boys were less likely to spend time in a facility than black and Hispanic boys who said they'd committed crimes just as frequently, as shown in the chart above. A black boy who told pollsters he had committed just five crimes in the past year was as likely to have been placed in a facility as a white boy who said he'd committed 40.
More recent statistics from the Department of Justice show that the juvenile justice system has continued to treat black boys more harshly. Although the overall number of cases in juvenile court has declined sharply since 2008, blacks still account for a third of cases in juvenile court, far more than their share of the population.
Advocates for children have long protested against what they describe as a "school-to-prison pipeline," in which strict discipline and arrests in classrooms damage children's long-term prospects, making them less likely to succeed in life and more likely to run afoul of the law in the future. A year ago, the Obama administration urged schools to reconsider zero-tolerance policies, which Attorney General Eric Holder said "have significant and lasting negative effects on the long-term well-being of our young people, increasing their likelihood of future contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems."
"Education and our prison system are very much connected, unfortunately," said Thena Robinson-Mock, an attorney who has represented children in juvenile proceedings.
The study provides new detail on how that pipeline evolved, showing that the disparities cannot be explained by different rates of criminality among racial and ethnic groups.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/30/black-teens-who-commit-a-few-crimes-go-to-jail-as-often-as-white-teens-who-commit-dozens/
Gwyneth Paltrow Endorses 'Steam Douche'
Oh, goop! Gwyneth Paltrow has yet another shocking beauty treatment to share.
The woman who once toasted "hairless vaginas," is now offering up a "next level" beauty tip for those who can afford the Los Angeles-based Tikkun Spa. On her lifestyle website Goop, the 42-year-old actress boasts about the Korean spa and their "golden ticket" treatment, the Mugworth V-Steam.
"You sit on what is essentially a mini-throne, and a combination of infrared and mugwort steam cleanses your uterus, et al," Paltrow explains. "It is an energetic release -- not just a steam douche -- that balances female hormone levels."
The actress adds of the eyebrow-raising procedure, "If you're in LA, you have to do it."
Sounds pretty "LA" to us!
The vagina steam clean comes at a price. A single treatment goes for $50, while a five-pack costs about $200. Tikkun Spa offers five different v-steams on their website -- the signature, the slimming, the infertility, the post-partum and a men's signature v-steam.
https://tv.yahoo.com/news/gwyneth-paltrow-endorses-steam-douche-152200895.html
One of these days, the Lounge is going to have to explain to me this mythical place called 'California', which seems to exist on a plane unrestrained by logic or reason...
(While we're at it, someone can explain Portland to me as well)
Ebony Selling Photo Archive, The 'African American Getty,' Worth $40 Million
CHICAGO, Jan 27 (Reuters) - A climate-controlled archive in Chicago holds 5 million images of what could be called the African American experience since 1942, including exceptional, intimate photographs of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., singer Billie Holiday and boxer Muhammad Ali.
Now Johnson Publishing, parent company of struggling Ebony and Jet magazines, is seeking a buyer for the archive, which it estimates is worth more than $40 million.
"Nothing exists like it. It's almost like an African American Getty," Johnson Publishing Chief Executive Desiree Rogers told Reuters, referring to the renowned Getty Images photojournalism archive.
"We are still the curators of the African American experience. That's the mantle the editors wear," she said.
Among archival experts who are advising Johnson in its search for a buyer is Mark Lubell, executive director of the International Center of Photography in New York.
Rogers would not comment on potential buyers or whether commercial or historical archives had expressed interest.
The company spent 18 months organizing the images but has digitized only about 6,000 of the millions of photographs and videos, said Rogers, President Barack Obama's former White House social secretary. Johnson Publishing makes little money off the rights to the images, she said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/29/ebony-photo-archive_n_6567114.html
The Forgiveness Boost
On New Year’s Eve in 1995, Frances McNeill, a 78-year-old woman who lived alone in Knoxville, Tennessee, went to bed early. Outside, someone watched the house lights flick off. Figuring its inhabitants were gone for the night, he made his move.
McNeill awoke to the sound of the intruder rummaging through her bookshelves and drawers. She walked out of her bedroom and crept up behind him. He swiveled around, raised his crowbar high above his head, and bludgeoned McNeill to death. Afterward, he raped her with a wine bottle.
The next morning, McNeill’s son, Mike, discovered her body on the blood-stained carpet. Mike frantically called his older brother, Everett Worthington, who drove over to the house right away.
For the next 24 hours, the brothers seethed with rage.
“It was a traumatic scene and terrible to walk through the house I was raised and see the evidence of all this violence,” said Worthington, who recalled the incident recently. “At one point, I pointed to a baseball bat and thought, 'I wish that guy was here so I could beat his brains out.'”
Worthington, who was (and remains) a professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University, had at that point been actively researching the psychology of forgiveness for several years. He was studying how people forgive and how forgiveness can work alongside justice.
"I thought, ‘Oh man, here is a guy who has written a book about forgiveness, has taught about this,’” Worthington said of himself. Surely, he thought, an expert on forgiveness could find a way to make peace with even the most heinous perpetrator.
He decided he was going to try to forgive the killer...
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/01/the-forgiveness-boost/384796/
Jeff Roorda physically assaults a black woman in public meeting
http://3chicspolitico.com/2015/01/28/jeff-roorda-physically-assaults-a-black-woman-in-public-meeting/This sounds like a challenge?
Rand Paul: I'd shoot a drone out of the skySen. Rand Paul told CNN on Wednesday that if a drone flies over his house, “they better beware, because I’ve got a shotgun.”
Referring to a drone found Monday on the White House lawn, CNN’s Ashley Codianni asked the Kentucky Republican whether all drones should be banned outright. “Drones should only be used according to the Constitution,” Paul responded, before warning anyone who plans to fly a drone into his neighborhood.
When asked whether he’d like to occupy the White House after 2016, Paul responded, “maybe.” He then added, “They may have to make the fence and guard the fence a little bit better than they have been doing lately.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/rand-paul-id-have-shot-that-drone-out-of-the-sky-114679.html#ixzz3QBAfEsiX
Mexico investigates local mayor after journalist murdered
Source: Reuters
(Reuters) - Mexican prosecutors are investigating a small-town mayor in connection with the murder of a journalist in the Mexican Gulf coast state of Veracruz, whose brutalized body was found over the weekend, a state official said on Monday.
A local drug gang member confessed to kidnapping and killing journalist Moises Sanchez, in league with five accomplices, Veracruz state prosecutor Luis Bravo said. The accused said he was given orders by a local police official and the bodyguard of Medellin de Bravo Mayor Omar Cruz,
There was also evidence of a dispute between Cruz and the slain reporter, Bravo added. Cruz could not immediately be reached for comment. Bravo told Reuters he will ask state lawmakers on Monday to strip the mayor of his immunity from prosecution, a privilege that elected officials have in Mexico.
"It would be irresponsible not to proceed and ask for his immunity to be lifted so that we can investigate the mayor," Bravo said.
The death is the latest in a series of grisly gangland killings to blight Mexico, where more than 100,000 people have been killed in gang-related violence since 2007. Sanchez, who was the editor of the local newspaper La Union, had been missing since Jan 2. He is the 11th journalist killed in Veracruz in the past four years, according to Article 19, a group that advocates for freedom of expression.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/01/26/us-mexico-violence-idUSKBN0KZ2FQ20150126
Fleeing To Dismal Swamp, Slaves And Outcasts Found Freedom
Most Americans know about the Underground Railroad, the route that allowed Southern slaves to escape North. Some slaves found freedom by hiding closer to home, however — in Great Dismal Swamp.
The swamp is a vast wetland in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. In George Washington's time, it was a million acres of trees, dark water, bears, bobcats, snakes and stinging insects. British settlers, who first arrived in 1607, believed the swamp was haunted.
By 1620, some of their slaves may have overcome that fear to find freedom there.
Hidden Islands Of Resistance Communities
Daniel Sayers has been working for more than a decade in Great Dismal Swamp; here, in 2011, he displays a fire-cracked rock from a dig site. His new book pieces together the stories of those who once lived in settlements scattered on patches of dry land in the swamp. i
Daniel Sayers has been working for more than a decade in Great Dismal Swamp; here, in 2011, he displays a fire-cracked rock from a dig site. His new book pieces together the stories of those who once lived in settlements scattered on patches of dry land in the swamp.
Steve Helber/AP
Today, 112,000 acres of swamp remain, and archaeologist Daniel Sayers has explored many of them. He's found large islands where escaped slaves settled.
"When you're walking through a thousand feet of the briars and the water, the mosquitoes are eating you alive, sweating bullets, and you're almost exhausted, and then suddenly your foot's no longer squishing in the peat but now it's walking on dry ground and crunchy leaves — it blows your mind," Sayers says. "You can't imagine people not living there."
He's now written about life on these islands in a new book, A Desolate Place for a Defiant People. He believes 10 generations of escaped slaves lived here, along with Native Americans who'd been driven off their land and whites who were shunned by mainstream society.
Since 2003, he's found thousands of artifacts during Great Dismal Swamp digs. In his laboratory at American University, he unwraps several: bits of clay tobacco pipes, nails and traces of at least a dozen cabins, along with what could have been an arsenal — a place where Sayers found gun flints and lead shot.
"Make no mistake about it. These were resistance communities. They weren't going out there because they loved swamps," he says. "They were going out there because they were living in a very brutal and oppressive world of enslavement and colonialism."
http://www.npr.org/2014/12/28/373519521/fleeing-to-dismal-swamp-slaves-and-outcasts-found-freedom
Russian riot police raid Crimean Tatar TV channel
Source: Agence France-Presse via Yahoo
Moscow (AFP) - Masked Russian riot police on Monday raided the office of a television channel serving Crimean Tatars, a minority ethnic group in Crimea that opposed Moscow's seizure of the peninsula from Ukraine last year. In a move the Organization for Security and Cooperation slammed as "intrusion" against the freedom of the media, dozens of armed masked men searched the headquarters of the ATR channel in the regional centre Simferopol, seizing servers and other equipments.
"This is the first such raid," deputy general director of the channel, Lilya Budzhurova, told AFP.
Budzhurova, who also reports for Agence France-Presse, said police and investigators had left in the afternoon, taking "a significant portion of our video archive" with them. The Moscow-based Investigative Committee said the raid was to probe the deaths of two activists after a rally in February last year outside the local legislative assembly. The rally involved thousands of Crimean Tatars as well as pro-Russian activists, the committee said, adding that the channel had video footage that can help the investigation.
Nearly half of Crimean Tatars, a Muslim people native to the Black Sea peninsula, were wiped out when they were accused by Stalin of collaborating with Nazi Germany and deported to Central Asia in 1944. Survivors and descendants were only able to return to their lands in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Most of the 300,000-strong group oppose Russian rule over Crimea and boycotted a disputed referendum last March in which voters, most of them from the Russian-speaking majority, were officially reported to have chosen to split from Ukraine.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/russian-riot-police-raid-crimean-tatar-tv-channel-203912481.html;_ylt=AwrBJSB2tsZU_wkAtMvQtDMD
Remember boys and girls: When the Russians want information from a news outlet, there's no warrants, no subpoenas, no court injunctions, etc...They just show up with guns and take whatever they want, Honey Badger-style...
Anybody out there want to try and defend *this* one?
EDIT: For those who can't read between the lines, this raid has nothing to do with probing a couple of stampede deaths; this is to identify and hunt down Tartar activists using the video footage
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