July 19, 2012

50 Cent Defends Frank Ocean, Supports Marriage Equality

Rapper 50 Cent sounded supportive of same-sex marriage and of out singer Frank Ocean in an interview with MTV UK, warning the market that Ocean's success or failure could be a turning point for hip-hop.

"Obama is for same-sex marriage," he said. "If the president is saying that, then who am I to go the other way?" 50 Cent followed Jay-Z, Will Smith, and T.I. in saying they support the president's stance.

And 50 Cent had tough words for anyone who has a problem with Ocean, whose new album, Channel Orange, has had a stellar debut. It opened at No. 2 on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart.
"Anyone that has an issue with Frank Ocean is an idiot," 50 Cent said in the interview. "I think Frank Ocean is a talented artist, I think he's created material that made me know his name, that impressed me, with things he said on a song like 'Novacane.'"

50 Cent said Ocean's decision to come out before his album dropped could be "revolutionary." But he was cautious about what might happen next.

"The results of how popular the music becomes now would say how cool or uncool it is to being open," he said, "so I'm sure the gay community will go out and support Frank Ocean. They have to. Because the more successful that project is now is going to leave people in a position to say, look, I'm gay."
http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/music/2012/07/19/50-cent-defends-frank-ocean-and-supports-marriage-equality

Well, this is a positive development.

July 19, 2012

SC Legislators overturn vetoes of funds for teacher pay hike and rape crisis centers Read more

Forty state employees at two agencies will return to work today after lawmakers overturned Gov. Nikki Haley’s veto of the budgets of the S.C. Arts Commission and the Sea Grant Consortium.
<snip>
• $954,680 for a variety of private health charities, including the National Kidney Foundation, the James R. Clark Memorial Sickle Cell Foundation and the state’s 15 rape-crisis centers.
<snip>
Read more here: http://www.thestate.com/2012/07/19/2359833/arts-coastal-agencies-back-in.html#.UAhs9W72bi4#storylink=cpy

I think they heard a LOT from the peeps.

July 19, 2012

Father blocks 4-year-old's Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World-Follow up posted.Donations make her wish

Whitney Hughes and her daughter, McKenna May, are seen at their home in Haskins, Ohio.

The father of a 4-year-old Ohio leukemia patient has refused to allow her to take a long-sought Make-A-Wish trip to Disney World, saying the money should be spent on kids who are still terminally ill, the Sentinel-Journal reports.

McKenna May was all set to go after completing two years of leukemia treatment, reports the newspaper in Bowling Green, Ohio. But her father, William May, of Toledo, has refused to give his permission. "Spend the money on a child who this might be their last memory," May says. "Kids who are only going to live a year or six months."
<snip>
The issue appears to be caught up in a domestic dispute. McKenna's parents never married or lived together. Her grandmother says the father only recently received visitation privileges, the Associated Press reports.

The Sentinel-Tribune's Jan Larson McLaughlin writes that McKenna was diagnosed with leukemia in April 2010 and underwent her last treatment last month.

The two-year ordeal has included 15 spinal taps, multiple chemotherapy treatments, and steroid injections. She won't be ruled "cancer free" for five more years.
<snip>
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/07/father-blocks-4-year-olds-make-a-wish-trip-to-disney-world/1#.UAhYX2t5mK1

I hope the karma train runs over his sorry ass soon!
They grant wishes to kids who are terminal, but they also grant them to kids who have had some rough years of treatment. When they are healthy again, it is a real treat after all that pain.

She's TWO-freaking-years old and has had 15 spinal taps. She should be able to go anywhere she wants.

July 19, 2012

Mark Twain - 'Advice To Little Girls' (LOL-subversive)

Good little girls ought not to make mouths at their teachers for
every trifling offense. This retaliation should only be resorted
to under peculiarly aggravated circumstances.

If you have nothing but a rag-doll stuffed with sawdust, while one
of your more fortunate little playmates has a costly China one,
you should treat her with a show of kindness nevertheless.
And you ought not to attempt to make a forcible swap with her unless
your conscience would justify you in it, and you know you are able
to do it.

You ought never to take your little brother's "chewing-gum" away
from him by main force; it is better to rope him in with the promise
of the first two dollars and a half you find floating down the
river on a grindstone. In the artless simplicity natural to this
time of life, he will regard it as a perfectly fair transaction.
In all ages of the world this eminently plausible fiction has lured
the obtuse infant to financial ruin and disaster.

If at any time you find it necessary to correct your brother,
do not correct him with mud--never, on any account, throw mud at him,
because it will spoil his clothes. It is better to scald him a little,
for then you obtain desirable results. You secure his immediate
attention to the lessons you are inculcating, and at the same time
your hot water will have a tendency to move impurities from his person,
and possibly the skin, in spots.

If your mother tells you to do a thing, it is wrong to reply
that you won't. It is better and more becoming to intimate
that you will do as she bids you, and then afterward act quietly
in the matter according to the dictates of your best judgment.

You should ever bear in mind that it is to your kind parents that you
are indebted for your food, and for the privilege of staying home
from school when you let on that you are sick. Therefore you ought
to respect their little prejudices, and humor their little whims,
and put up with their little foibles until they get to crowding you
too much.

Good little girls always show marked deference for the aged.
You ought never to "sass" old people unless they "sass" you first.
http://www.mtwain.com/Advice_To_Little_Girls/0.html

Subversive 'Advice To Little Girls'
Heh!

July 18, 2012

Lawd have mercy! Look at this pic of thunderstorm over NYC:

http://tinyurl.com/6rzo5op
(Taken by Dhani Jones. It was over Queens while his plane circled LaGuardia)

I don't know exactly what weather formation that is, but I don't like it.

July 18, 2012

"Mission Accomplished"

http://juanitajean.com/

Oh snap!

July 18, 2012

13 Heartwarming Reunions Between Animals and People (VIDEOS) (PHOTOS)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/17/13-videos-and-photos-of-h_n_1672083.html

If one of these doesn't get a lot of dust in your eyes, you have a harder heart than mine.

July 18, 2012

Penn St. leaders refused to enact reform in 2004

<snip>
That same month in 2004, seven members of Penn State's board of trustees proposed sweeping reforms that would have strengthened the board's oversight power of Spanier and other campus leaders, including Paterno, according to documents obtained this week by "Outside the Lines." The group told the full board, "Decisions scrutinized with the benefit of hindsight need to withstand the test of being informed decisions."

But the board never took a vote on the proposal. Spanier and then-board chairwoman Cynthia Baldwin considered the reforms -- and, just as Paterno had done, said no, three current trustees say.
<snip>
Two trustees said Freeh's investigators had asked them and other trustees about the 2004 good-governance proposal and appeared determined to find out why it had not been adopted. One trustee also said Freeh's investigators told them they had obtained emails between Spanier and Baldwin and others discussing the merits of the trustees' proposal. The trustee also said Freeh's investigators said that the emails showed "Spanier and Baldwin put a stop" to the good-governance proposal. "They didn't want the added scrutiny," the trustee said.
<snip>
In 2004, a group of trustees became concerned the board was nothing more than a group that rubber-stamped decisions made by Spanier and his lieutenants, three trustees said. They became concerned that Spanier appeared to be keeping them in the dark on important matters, they said.

Several new trustees who joined the board back then also became alarmed that there was not a subcommittee to deal with financial matters. In March 2004, the board approved an audit subcommittee.
<snip>
More: http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/8175462/jerry-sandusky-scandal-penn-state-nittany-lions-trustees-passed-reform-2004

Add Baldwin to the Gang of Four. She appears to be up to her neck in the Sandusky mess.

July 17, 2012

SC Bureaucratic “Lion King” Love Letters - Accidentally Released Infidelity Emails

You would think that of all people an information technology specialist with nearly 15 years of experience in state government would be the last person to inadvertently spill their marital infidelity all over a publicly-accessible email.

That’s apparently not the case in S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley’s cabinet …

According to emails obtained by FITS, the former director of strategic development and information technology at Haley’s Department of Probation Parole and Pardon Services (SCDPPPS) appears to have mistakenly responded to one of his lover’s emails from a state government address — using taxpayer-provided resources.

The result?  One of the most hilarious email exchanges we’ve ever read — a veritable treasure trove of comedy gold that features the illicit lovers’ pet names for each other, graphic sexual references, professions of their undying love for each other and concerns over the possibility of getting caught by their respective spouses (both were married at the time the emails were sent a little over a year ago).

The best part of all this?  The employee’s state government email signature repeatedly pops up amidst the flurry of exchanges between “Simba” and “Nala” (the pair are apparently big fans of the 1994 Disney movie The Lion King, and use the names of the cartoon’s protagonists as their pet names for each other).

Ready to get your “cheese on?”
Read the emails here: http://www.fitsnews.com/2012/07/17/bureaucratic-love-letters/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

Keep it on App Trail folks.
Open Ring Four. We have more clowns.

July 17, 2012

In 1979, a prominent Dem booster took a kid he abused to Second Mile fundraiser.

<snip>
Bucceroni says he accompanied Edward Savitz, a well-known Philadelphia businessman, Democratic political booster and advocate for at-risk children, to a fund-raiser “somewhere past Harrisburg.”

The event was to raise money for the recently established Second Mile foundation, and Bucceroni says he remembers meeting the man everyone referred to as “The Coach,” Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky, who founded Second Mile in 1977. Bucceroni says Savitz and Sandusky knew each other through The Second Mile and political fund-raising events.
<snip>
Bucceroni’s story was a twisted, tortured one in the three years leading up to his brief interaction with Sandusky. The Philadelphia native, who now works as a police officer in the city’s public school system, says he was sexually abused by Savitz starting in 1977. Like Sandusky, Savitz met and groomed many of his alleged victims through his work with at-risk youths.
<snip>
Bucceroni says he told police in 1980 about his abuse at the hands of Savitz, but that no charges were filed then; Savitz was finally arrested in March 1992, charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, sex abuse of children, indecent assault and corrupting the morals of a minor. He died of AIDS in a hospice days before his trial was to begin in April 1993.
<snip>
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-team/sex-abuse-victim-recalls-horrid-encounter-edward-savitz-associate-jerry-sandusky-article-1.1115909#ixzz20sLs3tKF

Hmmmmmm........