January 22, 2013

Armstrong Becomes ‘Madoff on a Bike’ as Cheating Shatters Lives

(Bloomberg) The fall of Lance Armstrong was as steep as the mountains he climbed en route to the Champs-Elysees and life as a global icon. He left a trail of destruction on the way up and on the way down.

The damage included the careers of teammates and support staff whom he verbally attacked or sued. Millions of dollars invested in cycling’s biggest star by corporate sponsors large and small are now gone. Armstrong’s Livestrong anti-cancer charity, whose yellow plastic donation bracelets were once ubiquitous, faces questions about whether it can retain support. Some former backers may have millions of dollars in legal bills as litigation over the sports fraud plays out.

“He’s Bernie Madoff on a bike,” said John Llewellyn, an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. “The level of self-absorption and mean-spiritedness with which he has defended himself and castigated others over a decade makes an impression that’s pretty bleak for the human spirit.”

His career as a dominant bicycle racer was “one big lie” built on doping, the 41-year-old Armstrong said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey aired over two nights last week. He was a “bully” to anyone who threatened his secret of cheating with performance-enhancing drugs and banned transfusions, he said. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-01-21/armstrong-becomes-madoff-on-a-bike-as-cheating-shatters-lives.html

January 21, 2013

Law School Grad Robs Bank Because He Has Giant Debt and Can't Afford Diabetes Medicine -- Says He'll

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/law-school-grad-robs-bank-because-he-has-giant-debt-and-cant-afford-diabetes


Lawyers, Guns and Money / By Paul Campos

Law School Grad Robs Bank Because He Has Giant Debt and Can't Afford Diabetes Medicine -- Says He'll Do it Again
Can you imagine graduating from a fairly high-ranked law school only to find yourself a few years later working as a janitor with a $250,000 debt?

January 21, 2013 |


Guns don’t cause crime, student loans do:

January 21, 2013

Eric Cantor's Inauguration Day Bitter Beer Face

January 21, 2013

Vandana Shiva: Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women

from YES! Magazine:


Vandana Shiva: Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women
There is a connection between the growth of unjust economic policies and the intensification of crimes against women. The Delhi gang rape has triggered a revolution—one that we must sustain.

by Vandana Shiva
posted Jan 18, 2013


Violence against women is as old as patriarchy.

Traditional patriarchy has structured our worldviews and mindsets, our social and cultural worlds, on the basis of domination over women and the denial of their full humanity and right to equality. But it has intensified and become more pervasive in the recent past. It has taken on more brutal forms, like the murder of the Delhi gang rape victim and the recent suicide of a 17-year-old rape victim in Chandigarh.

In India, rape cases and cases of violence against women have increased over the years. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reported 10,068 rape cases in 1990, which increased to 16496 in 2000. With 24,206 cases in 2011, rape cases jumped to incredible increase of 873 percent from 1971 when NCRB started to record cases of rape. And Delhi has emerged as the rape capital of India, accounting for 25 percent of cases.

The movement to stop this violence must be sustained till justice is done for every one of our daughters and sisters who has been violated. ......................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/violent-economic-reforms-and-women

January 21, 2013

Can turtles wear tinfoil hats?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) addressed supporters in a frantically toned email on Monday, warning them of a looming effort to snatch up their guns.

"You and I are literally surrounded. The gun-grabbers in the Senate are about to launch an all-out-assault on the Second Amendment. On your rights. On your freedom," reads the opening of the email, according to The Hill.

"They're coming for your guns," the email exhorts.

Last week, President Barack Obama unveiled a comprehensive set of initiatives meant to combat gun violence. Alongside 23 executive actions, Obama also announced his intention to press congressional lawmakers to introduce a set of measures, including a renewed assault weapons ban and restriction on large-capacity ammunition magazines. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/21/mitch-mcconnell-gun-control_n_2519920.html

January 21, 2013

Dan Bernstein: Manti Te’o Is A Liar

(CBS) Already, the saps are at it again.

The same people who were kicking themselves just hours ago and apologizing publicly to readers, viewers and listeners for being suckered by an impossible fairy tale have apparently failed to learn any substantive lesson from their embarrassment.

Manti Te’o admits to lying about the soul-mate he never had, using a tightly managed interview with a lone reporter, off camera, late on a Friday night, with his lawyer/PR consultant at his side. He described how he “tailored” his stories to continue perpetuating the sick myth of his living/dead/resurrected girlfriend, a clever choice of words to abstract the fact that he was lying.

Te’o lied about having met her face-to-face, added all kinds of other colorful details in an interview with Sports Illustrated, then lied about her existence multiple times even after he said he became aware of the hoax. And now we are supposed to believe him when he tries to explain exactly when he was telling the truth?

Please. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/01/20/bernstein-manti-teo-is-a-liar/

January 21, 2013

One of my favorite MLK quotes:

[font size="4"]“We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”[/font]

- from the "Beyond Vietnam" speech

January 21, 2013

Germany: CDU Loses Lower Saxony: State Defeat Heralds Tough Re-Election Fight for Merkel

from Der Spiegel:



Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a setback in Sunday's state election in Lower Saxony, where her center-right alliance was ousted by the center-left opposition. The defeat comes just eight months before the general election and indicates that her bid for a third term could be tighter than expected.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats suffered a defeat in Sunday's state election in Lower Saxony, depriving her of the boost she had been hoping for ahead of the September general election and indicating that she will have to fight harder for a third term than many had expected.

It was the 12th consecutive setback in a state vote for her party, and even though the election is still eight months away and Merkel remains highly popular, the opposition Social Democrats and Greens have smelt blood. They won a combined 46.3 percent against 45.9 percent for the center-right alliance of the CDU and the struggling pro-business Free Democratic Party. That will enable the center-left to govern with a majority of one seat in the Lower Saxony state parliament after the cliffhanger vote.

"I won't deny it, after such an emotional roller coaster such a defeat is all the more painful, so we are all sad today to some extent," Merkel told a news conference on Monday. But, matter of fact as ever, she shrugged off the implications for her re-election, saying: "We don't have a campaign for the general election, that will come later, we have a whole series of serious problems to solve, the economic situation is fragile , we want to ensure that the labor market situation remains as it is or can even improve a little, we have big tasks in Europe." ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/merkel-s-reelection-bid-suffers-setback-in-lower-saxony-election-a-878719.html

January 21, 2013

American Airlines' new look: Yea or Nay?

The new livery:




vs. the old one:

January 21, 2013

Chris Hedges: A Time for ‘Sublime Madness’

from truthdig:


A Time for ‘Sublime Madness’

Posted on Jan 20, 2013
By Chris Hedges


The planet we have assaulted will convulse with fury. The senseless greed of limitless capitalist expansion will implode the global economy. The decimation of civil liberties, carried out in the name of fighting terror, will shackle us to an interconnected security and surveillance state that stretches from Moscow to Istanbul to New York. To endure what lies ahead we will have to harness the human imagination. It was the human imagination that permitted African-Americans during slavery and the Jim Crow era to transcend their physical condition. It was the human imagination that sustained Sitting Bull and Black Elk as their land was seized and their cultures were broken. And it was the human imagination that allowed the survivors in the Nazi death camps to retain the power of the sacred.

It is the imagination that makes possible transcendence. Chants, work songs, spirituals, the blues, poetry, dance and art converged under slavery to nourish and sustain this imagination. These were the forces that, as Ralph Ellison wrote, “we had in place of freedom.” The oppressed would be the first—for they know their fate—to admit that on a rational level such a notion is absurd, but they also know that it is only through the imagination that they survive. Jewish inmates in Auschwitz reportedly put God on trial for the Holocaust and then condemned God to death. A rabbi stood after the verdict to lead the evening prayers.

African-Americans and Native Americans, for centuries, had little control over their destinies. Forces of bigotry and violence kept them subjugated by whites. Suffering, for the oppressed, was tangible. Death was a constant companion. And it was only their imagination, as William Faulkner noted at the end of “The Sound and the Fury,” that permitted them—unlike the novel’s white Compson family—to “endure.”

The theologian James H. Cone captures this in his masterpiece “The Cross and the Lynching Tree.” Cone says that for oppressed blacks the cross was a “paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world’s value system with the news that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last.” .................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_time_for_sublime_madness_20130120/