January 21, 2014

Arizona bill allows businesses to discriminate against unmarried women, non-Christians

Experts are warning that a bill making its way through the Arizona legislature would allow businesses to discriminate against LGBT people, unmarried women or even non-Christians.

Republican state Sen. Steve Yarbrough has said that he introduced Senate Bill 1062 because a “modest clarification” was needed in the state’s religious-freedom law, according to The Arizona Republic.

Among other things, the bill would expand those protected by the religious-freedom law for religious assemblies and institutions to “any individual, association, partnership, corporation, church, religious assembly or institution, estate, trust, foundation or other legal entity.”


The conservative advocacy group Center for Arizona Policy has been pushing the measure as a way to protect photographers and bakers from having to provide services for same-sex weddings, which are not even legal in Arizona.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/20/arizona-bill-allows-businesses-to-discriminate-against-unmarried-women-non-christians/

January 21, 2014

Elderly man beaten bloody by police during New York City jaywalking arrest

An elderly man was hospitalized Sunday evening after he was beaten by police who stopped him for jaywalking.

The New York Post reported that 84-year-old Kang Wong crossed 96th Street against the light about 5 p.m. as he walked north on Broadway, and an officer ordered him to stop.

But Wong, who lives a block away, didn’t seem to understand the officer, according to witnesses.


“The guy didn’t seem to speak English,” said witness Ian King, 24, a Fordham University law student.

“(The officer) stood him up against the wall and was trying to write him a ticket,” King said. “The man didn’t seem to understand, and he started walking away. The cop tried to pull him back, and that’s when he began to struggle with the cop. As soon as he pushed the cop, it was like cops started running in from everywhere.”

Wong was bleeding and dazed after the struggle, witnesses said, and had cuts on his face.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/20/elderly-man-beaten-bloody-by-police-during-new-york-city-jaywalking-arrest/

January 20, 2014

Diarrhea Dance: Learning English In Japan

January 19, 2014

Hello Captain Trips: The risk is real: ‘We have already run out of antibiotics’ according to experts

Humans face the very real risk of a future without antibiotics, a world of plummeting life expectancy where people die from diseases easily treatable today, scientists say.

Experts tracking the rise of drug resistance say years of health gains could be rolled back by mutating microbes that make illnesses more difficult and expensive to cure and carry a higher risk of death.

Some say the threat to wellbeing is on the scale of global warming or terrorism — yet resistance is being allowed to spread through an entirely preventable means — improper use of antibiotics.


“It is a major public health problem,” Patrice Courvalin, who heads the Antibacterial Agents Unit of France’s Pasteur Institute, told AFP.

“It is about more than not being able to treat a disease. It will erase much progress made in the last 20-30 years.”

Without antibiotics to tackle opportunistic bacteria that pose a particular risk for people who are very ill, major surgery, organ transplants or cancer and leukaemia treatment may become impossible, he explained.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/19/the-risk-is-real-we-have-already-run-out-of-antibiotics-according-to-experts/

January 19, 2014

Burlesque beauties of the 1890s: Stunning vintage photos of 'loose women in tights' who perfected..

...art of the tease

By modern standards, the burlesque dancers of the 1890s are barely deserve notice for their attire - tights covering their legs from foot to waist, many wore long sleeves to cover their arms and nary a spot of cleavage to be found.
But in their time, these women were positively scandalous. Their form-fitting clothes showed off the shapes of their legs and thighs. Their corsets accentuated their bosoms. And everywhere they performed men threw themselves into frenzies of erotic desire.
Vintage photos collected by Charles H. McCaghy, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, reveal just how different beauty was 120 years ago than it is today.


Burlesque began in the United States when Lydia Thompson brought her troupe, the British Blondes, to New York City stages in 1868.
They were independent, confident women who performed on stage and defied most of the social and cultural mores of women of the day. And they were as wildly popular as they were reviled.
Most people in 'proper' society viewed these ladies as being in the same category as common street prostitutes -- selling their bodies for sex.

But men adored them. Their acts were considered 'low brow,' but that simply made them more approachable for the common man.
It was said some men were willing to kill themselves in fits of lustful passion after seeing Ms Thompson's shows. The veracity of these stories, however, was somewhat dubious.
The secret of burlesque dancers' sexual appeal was not that they revealed skin and sensitive body parts -- like modern-day strippers. Burlesque was so scandalous because women showed off their feminine shapes.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114487/Photos-reveal-scandalous-burlesque-dancers-1890s.html#ixzz2qqjgK2Vj

January 19, 2014

Marijuana Legalization Makes Police Poorer

January 19, 2014

Hunger striker against Utah marriage equality mulls move to Russia to avoid our gay Nazi ovens

The mind of Trestin Meacham, the put-upon Mormon who went on a hunger strike over Utah marriage equality, must be a very dark and frightening place. Meacham found his 15 minutes of fame last month by refusing to eat until Utah reinstated its ban on marriage equality. Apparently this bigot has found the spotlight addictive and has decided to outdo himself with a new Facebook rant that is so completely over the top and irrational it will serve as a shining beacon of delusional hatred for years to come.

"I'm seriously considering moving to Russia in a few years. They have far more economic freedom. And are the only developed nation that actually promotes and fights for traditional values. America has become one of the most oppressive countries on earth. Yes, it has really come to that, I'm considering leaving America for Russia to get away from a Marxist government. Oh how far we have fallen since I was a child. Only if Putin stays in power, because he is the only leader I've seen with the guts to stand up to homo-fascist movement. Anything would be better than what the gay movement is doing in America. If I stay here they will have me jailed and drudged for the rest of my life. They won't stop. I don't think you get how hard it is to be a Mormon in gay America. They simply will not let us breath. We are to their movement what the Jews were to the Nazis, and in time they will be trying to march us into ovens. And if you don't believe me, I have hundreds of message from them to back up that claim. You just don't get it. Try dealing with them for one day, like we do. It really is becoming like Nazi Germany for us. I know Russia has problems, I do, but it and the Muslim countries are about the only place to escape the homosexuals."

Wow, there's a lot to unpack in there. It takes a mighty feverish imagination to take our struggle to be treated as equal citizens of our free country and afforded all the rights it has to offer, and turn it into a pogrom against, well, anyone.

Something tells me the man hasn't traveled far beyond the borders of Utah or even his own backyard to declare with a straight face that America has turned into one of the most oppressive countries on earth. That he imagines Russia to be a free economic and religious utopia tells me the man couldn't find Russia on a globe.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/18/1270714/-Hunger-striker-against-Utah-marriage-equality-mulls-move-to-Russia-to-avoid-our-gay-Nazi-ovens?

January 18, 2014

Horrific Wall Street Allegations Reveal Junior Bankers Forced To Survive On $6,800 Per Week

January 17, 2014

Sheriff rejects popcorn killer’s ‘stand your ground’ defense: ‘Why didn’t he move seats?’

The sheriff who’s investigating the fatal shooting of a moviegoer this week in Florida said the state’s “stand your ground” defense doesn’t apply in this case, but an attorney said it likely does.

“What most people don’t understand is, the law is not concerned with what started your argument; the law is not concerned about how petty it is,” attorney Stephen Romine told First Coast News. “The law is concerned about the acts between two people — the person who died and the person who did the shooting.”

Retired police captain Curtis Reeves was charged with second-degree murder after he shot 43-year-old Chad Oulson to death Monday afternoon because he refused to stop sending a text message to his 2-year-old daughter’s day care provider.


Reeves told investigators that he feared for his safety when he was struck in the face with an object that investigators determined was popcorn, but his attorney suggested may have been a more dangerous object.

(Likely I suspect it was transfat butters in the popcorn, which have been proven to be more dangerous)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/17/sheriff-rejects-popcorn-killers-stand-your-ground-defense-why-didnt-he-move-seats/

January 17, 2014

Pope Francis sets out vision for more gay people and women in 'new' church

Pope Francis gives wide-ranging interview to Italian journal and urges Catholics to show 'audacity and courage' in drive for reform


Pope Francis has set out his desire to find a "new balance" in the Catholic church, calling for greater involvement of women in key decisions and a less condemnatory approach towards gay people, divorcees and women who have had an abortion.

In a wide-ranging interview with an Italian Jesuit journal, the Pope calls for the Catholic church, the world's largest Christian church with 1.2bn members, to face up to the need for reform. Offering a dramatic contrast to the traditional conservative approach of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, Francis says the first reform must be one of "attitude", adding that unless a new balance is found, "the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards".

The Pope urges Catholics to show "audacity and courage" in their approach to people who, in the past, have been given short shrift by the church, including those who "do not attend mass, who have quit or are indifferent".

Asked how he would respond to Catholics who are divorced or remarried or gay, he replies: "I used to receive letters from homosexual persons who are 'socially wounded', because they tell me that they feel like the church has always condemned them. But the church does not want to do this."

He goes on: "A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: 'Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?' We must always consider the person … In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/19/pope-francis-vision-new-catholic-church

(me personally I was indifferent and a lapsed catholic. I was done with the church under Pope Ratzo.

I had grown up in the Navy(Joined when I was 17) and had a highly intolerant, militarist attitude towards gays.

I became a gay rights proponent when I found out my cousin (and my only family) was gay.

Hence, if my views can evolve, I see no reason why the Churches can't. This pope is encouraging, even if it is in small steps, it's better than no steps at all.)