December 31, 2014

What "Famous" People Do You Want to Hear The LEAST About (or From) in 2015?

I've divvied mine into categories, but hey, you call 'em as you see 'em!

Foreign: Bibi Netanyahu. (I know this hope is entirely in vain, but screw it!)
Domestic: Ted Cruz. (Even more hopeless, but it's New Year's Eve, FFS!)
News: Wolf Blitzer. (RETIRE ALREADY!)
Entertainment: Donald Trump. (He's been nothing more than a bad comedian for years now!)
Organizations: AIPAC. (Arrogant Israel-firsters Pushing America into Conflicts!)
Miscellaneous: Andrea Tantaros. (Bill Kristol in a skirt, and definitely not a News person!)

What say you?

December 31, 2014

NYPD Blew

any and all respect that they had. Not even Bochko can restore it.

December 31, 2014

Ralph Peters: Obama ‘Tried to Romance Putin and He Got Date-Raped’

It appears that Ralphie Boy considers date-rape a subject for jokes.

But I find myself struck by something not said in the clip: In the late 1980s, Peters, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the US Army, wrote a novel, Red Army, about a Soviet invasion and conquest of what was then West Germany, in which the Russians were the good guys! I read the book. You can google it. You can probably still buy it.

Hypocrisy, thy name is FOX!

December 31, 2014

India, Pakistan trade fire in Kashmir; 1 dead

Source: AP

Dec. 31, 2014 7:21 AM EST

SRINAGAR, India (AP) — Indian and Pakistani troops exchanged fire Wednesday near the border that divides the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir, leaving one dead on the Indian side and two wounded on the Pakistani side, officials said.

One side blamed the other for initiating the shooting.

A senior officer with India's Border Security Force, D. Parekh, said Pakistani troops fired on an 11-member Indian patrol team and Indian soldiers retaliated. The gunbattle was ongoing late Wednesday, he said, adding that another Indian soldier was wounded.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/510cd47103b1465ab8e5eb533d77efa1/india-says-1-soldier-killed-firing-pakistani-soldiers

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Are four paragraphs really necessary to convey how potentially dangerous this "skirmish" is?

December 31, 2014

Merkel tells Germans not to attend anti-Islam rallies

Source: AP

By KIRSTEN GRIESHABER
Dec. 31, 2014 7:21 AM EST

BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday warned the country's citizens not to participate in weekly anti-Islam rallies that have attracted growing numbers of supporters in the eastern German city of Dresden.

Merkel condemned the organizers of the protests and said they were driven by prejudices and hatred against foreigners.

The chancellor used unusually direct words in her New Year's speech on Wednesday for the rallies organized by a group calling itself Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West, or PEGIDA which have been attended by thousands.

When the protesters chant "we are the people," they actually mean to say "you don't belong — because of your religion or your skin color," Merkel said.



Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/1ef868c03205404c9d836027c7fc8be7/merkel-tells-germans-not-attend-anti-islam-rallies

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Angela,

December 31, 2014

GOP leaders look for Scalise flap to blow over

Source: AP

By CHARLES BABINGTON
Dec. 31, 2014 3:32 AM EST


WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republican leaders have been supportive of Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise since the revelation that he appeared before a white supremacist organization 12 years ago, suggesting they think the flare-up will fade, while some Democrats have been critical without calling for him to resign.

Scalise, the Republican whip in the House, said Tuesday that he regrets making the speech in 2002 and condemns the views of such groups. He said that as a state legislator he spoke to many groups at that time about a major tax issue.

"One of the many groups that I spoke to regarding this critical legislation was a group whose views I wholeheartedly condemn," the Louisiana congressman said in a statement. "It was a mistake I regret, and I emphatically oppose the divisive racial and religious views groups like these hold."

Republican leaders defended Scalise within minutes of his statement. The new Congress, in which the GOP will control both the House and the Senate, convenes next week.

Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/b15150bc562e4d0a81656f4a7aba8375/gop-leaders-look-scalise-flap-blow-over

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I'm thinking exactly what you're thinking: BENGHAZI! Time to earn your money, MSNBC! Unleash the Maddow!

December 31, 2014

Look, I'm Numerically Obsessed, Okay?

I have to get to 170 posts (more, since a few have been hidden or self-deleted) by the time I go to sleep. Otherwise, I'll wake up praising the Great Demon Reagan! AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

December 31, 2014

First Ebola boy likely infected by playing in bat tree

Source: BBC News

30 December 2014 Last updated at 09:02 ET

By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

The Ebola victim who is believed to have triggered the current outbreak - a two-year-old boy called Emile Ouamouno from Guinea - may have been infected by playing in a hollow tree housing a colony of bats, say scientists.

They made the connection on an expedition to the boy's village, Meliandou.

They took samples and chatted to locals to find out more about Ebola's source.

The team's findings are published in EMBO Molecular Medicine.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-30632453

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Bat Tree? Never heard of such!

December 31, 2014

NASA Spacecraft Approaching Dwarf Planet Ceres

Mike Wall, writing on Space.com:

December 30, 2014 07:00am ET

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(artist's conception)

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has begun approaching Ceres ahead of a historic March arrival at the mysterious dwarf planet.

Dawn has officially entered the Ceres approach phase, after recently emerging from behind the sun relative to Earth and thus coming back into reliable communication range. The probe is now about 400,000 miles (640,000 kilometers) from Ceres and is cruising toward the 590-mile-wide (950 km) object at 450 mph (725 km/h), NASA officials said.

Dawn should enter orbit around Ceres — the largest object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter — on March 6, 2015. When that happens, the spacecraft will become the first ever to orbit two different unexplored solar system bodies. (Dawn circled the protoplanet Vesta, the asteroid belt's second-largest object, from July 2011 through September 2012.)

Mission team members, and space scientists around the world, are eager to see Ceres up close.

"Ceres is almost a complete mystery to us," Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell, of UCLA, said in a statement. "Ceres, unlike Vesta, has no meteorites linked to it to help reveal its secrets. All we can predict with confidence is that we will be surprised."

Full article http://www.space.com/28122-dawn-spacecraft-dwarf-planet-ceres.html

Hey, I told you I was a space nerd!

December 31, 2014

Breathe Easily, White America

Laura Hudson, writing in Slate...

Over the weekend, the deep divide between the police and their detractors—and in some ways between white America and minorities—gained a defining image: NYPD officers turning their backs to Mayor Bill de Blasio during the funeral of a slain officer in retribution for the mayor’s “anti-police” comments. Much like the recent protests across the nation, sparked by the high-profile deaths of several unarmed black men at the hands of police, the mayor’s comparatively gentle acknowledgment of the well-documented racial disparities in the criminal justice system has been met with a troubling reaction from both the police and much of white America: that acknowledging systemic racism and asking for police accountability is unnecessary at best and treacherous—or even dangerous—at worst.

There’s a television show perfectly scripted to both cater to and reinforce this perspective: Blue Bloods, a CBS crime drama that revolves around the ruling family in New York City law enforcement. Blue Bloods is currently the most popular network television show on Friday nights—though you may be forgiven for having never heard of it, given that the median age of its viewers is older than 60.

Led by paterfamilias and NYPD Commissioner Frank Reagan (Tom Selleck), the family at the center of Blue Bloods also includes his father, Henry, a former NYPD commissioner; his detective sons Danny and Jamie; and his daughter, Erin, an assistant district attorney. Despite the fact that they are one of the most powerful families in New York—and certainly the most powerful family in the NYPD—Blue Bloods insists on depicting them as salt-of-the-earth, blue-collar types who don’t get any special privileges. They’re just regular guys, really, and they have lots of their own problems too. It’s not easy being a Reagan!

Like most of us, the Reagans think of themselves as good people, and in many ways they are: They believe deeply in the ideas of justice and equality, they always try to help people and do the right thing, and they stand up for their beliefs. But despite all their nobility and good intentions, like all white people, the Reagans exist within a system that is rigged to favor them, and to erase the problems experienced by people who don’t look like them. Because in this case the system is also a TV show, the cases that the Reagans encounter—especially the ripped-from-the-headlines ones about race and excessive force—offer constant reassurance that there are no true racial issues within the criminal justice system that can’t be solved by a speech about colorblindness or the steely resolve of Tom Selleck’s mustache.

Worse, Blue Bloods has a habit of depicting people who speak up against the police as malicious, manipulative, or deceptive—and a lot of those people happen to be minorities.

Full article http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/12/blue_bloods_starring_tom_selleck_the_nypd_white_viewers_and_black_new_yorkers.html

And no, I'm not being paid by Slate to promote their pieces!