How can we take it back?

[Skarekrow]

American Pastor Who Helped Uganda Create
‘Kill The Gays’ Law Will Be Tried For Crimes Against Humanity

Most of us go our entire lives without ever standing trial for crimes against humanity.
Then again, most of us aren’t notorious bigot Pastor Scott Lively, whose life work seems to be to ask the question: “How can I make gay people miserable across the world?”

In the United States Lively’s homophobic messages are largely ignored, and in recent years he has had to endure various setbacks at the state and federal level as equality makes historic gains.

Undeterred, Lively has sought out foreign lands where his particular brand of ruthless anti-gay ideas are more accepted.
In Uganda, he found a home away from home.

During a Christian “workshop” in the African nation he managed to become one of the principal architects behind some of the most retrograde anti-gay legislation on the planet.

Officially titled the “Anti-Homosexuality Act” and more commonly known as the “Kill the Gays” bill, Lively’s vision was nothing less than a roadmap for the total persecution and eradication of homosexuals from Uganda.

In Lively’s original design, anyone caught engaging in homosexuality would be executed.
A newer bill softened that stance slightly after worldwide condemnation — in the latest version, homosexuals would only be sentenced to life in prison.

Unfortunately for Lively, orchestrating genocide in another country is kind of frowned upon, and in 2012 a lawsuit was filed against Lively in federal court in Massachusetts for crimes against humanity.

This week, the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied Lively’s final request to have it dismissed because, well, the whole genocide thing.

During his lengthy appeals process, one would think that Lively would lay low and avoid saying anything that suggests he isn’t at all sorry for helping Uganda try to kill its gay population.

Instead, Lively has continued to double down on his efforts to spread as much homophobia as possible.
It’s gotten so bad that the watchdog group Human Rights Campaign dedicated September to chronicle the various ways Lively and his anti-gay ministry were “exporters of hate.”

Scott Lively is the head of Abiding Truths Ministry in Springfield, Massachusetts and is known around the world for his notorious work successfully advocating for anti-LGBT laws in Uganda that could send LGBT people to prison for life.

In fact, Lively has traveled the world over presenting himself as an expert on LGBT issues, urging lawmakers to crack down on LGBT rights and the right of free expression.

In 2007, Lively wrote in “Letter to the Russian People,” “Homosexuality is a personality disorder that involves various often dangerous sexual addictions and aggressive anti-social impulses.”

​

And this week, while he awaited his fate at his crimes against humanity trial, Lively told Trunews that homosexuality should be considered “more offensive” than mass killings, because gay people caused the Great Flood that wiped out the human race (technically, God did, and technically there is no evidence of that actually occurring, but who’s counting?).

“Homosexuality is not just another sin,” he said according to Right Wing Watch, “it is the sin that defines rebellion against God, the outer edge of rebellion against God and it is the harbinger of God’s wrath, that’s why the Scripture gives the warning, ‘as in the days of Noah.’”

​

In a way it makes sense that Lively would be adamant that homosexuality was worse than mass murder, considering that the mass murder of gay people is what he stands accused of trying to achieve.

Lively currently lives in Springfield, Massachusetts, and hopefully soon will have a permanent residency behind bars.

 

[Skarekrow]

Walmart's CEO has announced the company will boost wages so that no worker is paid the minimum wage starting next year.
This is a huge victory for Walmart workers and a clear demonstration that when we unite, we can overcome any obstacle.
Let's carry this momentum forward as we Fight for $15/hr and full-time!​

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Skarekrow]

Congressional budget welcomes big bank bailouts once more despite White House opposition

Small budget provision, which repeals part of Dodd-Frank, allows banks to back their riskiest activities with the savings accounts of regular Americans

​

Congress has agreed to use federal deposit insurance, which was designed to protect the savings accounts of consumers, to cover risky trading by the nation’s biggest banks.
In a small provision in the budget bill, Congress agreed to allow banks to house their trading of swaps and derivatives alongside customer deposits, which are insured by the federal government against losses.

The budget move repeals a portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform act and, some say, lays the groundwork for future bailouts of banks who make irresponsibly risky trades.
“It’s both a stealth move and indefensible,” said Dennis Kelleher, the head of Better Markets, a group that argues for great oversight of banks.

In a note to clients, he later called it “a sneaky, midnight repeal”.
The White House said on Wednesday it “strongly opposes” the provision.

“The main purpose...is to reauthorize the Terrorism Risk Insurance Program; this bill should not be used as a vehicle to add entirely unrelated financial regulatory provisions,” the White House said.

“If Wall Street gets the upside in big bonuses from its high-risk derivatives deals, then it should also have to pay the downside for any losses,” Kelleher wrote.
Richard Trumka, the head of labor union AFL-CIO, said his organizations also objected to the budget provision.

“Dodd-Frank forced too-big-to-fail banks to move potentially toxic speculation in derivatives out of their government-insured banks,” Trumka said in a statement. “Wall Street’s friends in Congress are trying to once again put the public on the hook for the most dangerous aspects of the financial system.”

Banks make their money primarily through two activities: lending out deposits to people or companies, and speculating on the markets. Laws like the defunct Glass-Steagall act were designed to separate the two activities. The Dodd-Frank rule recaptured a small part of that separation.

​

​

The budget provision, however, retracts the rule, which has been a thorn in the paw of giant banks like JP Morgan and Citigroup.
That rule, passed in 2010 and called the “swaps pushout rule”, dictated that banks had to keep certain arcane, risk-taking businesses away from customer deposits: swaps in stocks, commodities, and similar businesses.

Other derivatives, however, could still sit in the section of the banks protected by government backing.
The derivatives business is a lucrative and concentrated one: 95% of the trading in derivatives in the US are done by the five biggest banks, Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. The banks have made more money in derivatives because they have government backing for deposits, Kelleher said.

That’s no longer in place.
“The swaps pushout provision was saying US taxpayers should not be paying for risky trading activities,” said Kelleher.

Customer deposits — including the savings accounts of most Americans — are heavily regulated in size and scope by the federal government.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) provides a guarantee that, even if a bank goes under, customers can’t lose all of their money.

The FDIC was created in response to worries about “runs on the bank” in the 1920s and 1930s as stock market speculation, then the Great Depression, caused financial panic and destabilized the financial system.

Lobbyists for banks including Citigroup had previously tried to rewrite the provision, drafting as many as 70 of the 85 lines in one 2012 update.
The budget provision is a success for lobbyists and the banks they work for, but a loss to Americans who will have to foot the bill again if banks take too much risk, said Kelleher.

Derivatives, particularly in mortgages, were at the center of the 2008 financial crisis as insurers like AIG nearly collapsed under the weight of their risk.
Excess exposure to derivatives created a restructuring of the financial system as investment banks like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went out of business due to fear over their financial exposure.

Others fared better, but went through intense fear in the fall of 2008: Merrill Lynch had to be sold to Bank of America to survive, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley had to forge new identities as commercial banks, which allowed the Fed to protect them.

The new budget provision once again acts as a promise that taxpayers will foot the bill for risky trading and speculation, Kelleher said.
“If things go wrong, [the banks] get to run to the Fed for bailouts.

That’s incredibly valuable to them,” he said.
The surprise in the budget move is that everyone but banks considered the matter already settled.

The Dodd-Frank rule dictated that banks would have to find new homes for their risk-taking unit to prevent them from taking risks with customer deposits.
Even so, mistakes occurred.

A notable example of a bank making a spectacular failing bet with customer money came in 2012, when JP Morgan used its $350bn chief investment office to make the infamous ‘London Whale’ trade, which led the bank to lose at least $6bn and led to a round of congressional hearings.

JP Morgan increased its risk so much on the initial trade that the trader who initiated the bet called it “idiotic”.
Swaps and derivatives are financial instruments that allow speculators to make bets on the future prices of stocks, bonds and commodities.

Banks and companies also use these swaps and derivatives to hedge against price rises in corn, oil, and other commodities they use regularly; airlines, for instance, regularly use derivatives to hedge the price of fuel, and McDonald’s, among others, has hedges on the price of corn.

Since the passage of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in 2009, banks and their lobbyists have not given up hope in pushing back regulation.
“Since the beginning of the financial crisis, the political world has buffeted the financial services sector with waves of new regulation in an attempt to punish the wicked and to make sure a similar crisis ‘never happens again’,” wrote Brian Gardner, Washington analyst for Keefe Bruyette & Woods.

Gardner said such efforts have been met with resistance from the financial services industry: “Ever since the law was passed in 2010, industry and observers (us included) have been waiting for a ‘technical corrections’ bill to fix mistakes in the law,”

Gardner, however, estimated the chances of that happening at under 60% due to “populism” that still exists in Congress, putting the largest banks “in the political doghouse”, he wrote.

“We think Senate Republicans will be wary about being seen as too close to Wall Street, and will avoid making changes to Dodd-Frank that may expose them to attacks.”
But Gardner echoed the hopes of many in the financial industry that yet more of Dodd-Frank’s reforms could be pulled back:

“With the major pieces of the Dodd-Frank Act mostly in place and with a change in control of the Senate, we think 2015 offers the sector the first legitimate prospect for policymakers to reiew some of the new regulatory landscape and see what works and what they got wrong.”

 

[Skarekrow]

This is a pretty awesome idea!!



Guerrilla Grafters Secretly Graft Fruit-Bearing Branches onto San Francisco Trees

Read more: Guerrilla Grafters Secretly Graft Fruit-Bearing Branches onto San Francisco Trees | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

​

We’ve heard of guerrilla gardening, and we’ve heard of grafting plants – but guerrilla grafting?
That’s new to us. For the past two years, a group that calls themselves Guerrilla Grafters have been secretly grafting fruit-bearing scions onto ornamental, non-fruiting trees in San Francisco.

City officials contend that Guerrilla Grafters are breaking the law, but their actions have been celebrated by proponents of urban agriculture.
And they have been included in the US pavilion’s Spontaneous Interventions exhibit at the Venice Biennale.

​

The streets of San Francisco are lined with pear, plum and apple trees, but out of fear that the fruit would make a mess and attract rodents, the city intentionally planted sterile trees that don’t bear fruit.

By grafting fruit-bearing branches on those trees, Guerrilla Grafters make fruit free and accessible to anyone who picks it.
The group was started by Tara Hui, who started grafting fruit-bearing branches onto city trees a few years ago.

To graft a branch onto a fruit tree, all you have to do is make a slit with a knife in a brach on the host tree; insert a branch from a fruit-bearing tree, and secure it with tape. “Once it heals, it connects,” Hui told the LA Times. “Basically the branch becomes part of the tree.”

Guerrilla Grafters use color-coded electrical tape to mark their handiwork, but they won’t disclose the location of their interventions to the press out of fear that the city will remove them.

With “undoing civilization one branch at a time” as their motto, Guerrilla Grafters consider what they do to be a radical act – and it is.
Although it doesn’t solve problems of food scarcity, it’s a symbolic move towards making fresh food free and accessible to all.

As the group explains, it’s one step closer to creating “a habitat that sustains us.”

 

[Kgal]

This is a pretty awesome idea!!



Guerrilla Grafters Secretly Graft Fruit-Bearing Branches onto San Francisco Trees

Read more: Guerrilla Grafters Secretly Graft Fruit-Bearing Branches onto San Francisco Trees | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

​

We’ve heard of guerrilla gardening, and we’ve heard of grafting plants — but guerrilla grafting?
That’s new to us. For the past two years, a group that calls themselves Guerrilla Grafters have been secretly grafting fruit-bearing scions onto ornamental, non-fruiting trees in San Francisco.

City officials contend that Guerrilla Grafters are breaking the law, but their actions have been celebrated by proponents of urban agriculture.
And they have been included in the US pavilion’s Spontaneous Interventions exhibit at the Venice Biennale.

​

The streets of San Francisco are lined with pear, plum and apple trees, but out of fear that the fruit would make a mess and attract rodents, the city intentionally planted sterile trees that don’t bear fruit.

By grafting fruit-bearing branches on those trees, Guerrilla Grafters make fruit free and accessible to anyone who picks it.
The group was started by Tara Hui, who started grafting fruit-bearing branches onto city trees a few years ago.

To graft a branch onto a fruit tree, all you have to do is make a slit with a knife in a brach on the host tree; insert a branch from a fruit-bearing tree, and secure it with tape. “Once it heals, it connects,” Hui told the LA Times. “Basically the branch becomes part of the tree.”

Guerrilla Grafters use color-coded electrical tape to mark their handiwork, but they won’t disclose the location of their interventions to the press out of fear that the city will remove them.

With “undoing civilization one branch at a time” as their motto, Guerrilla Grafters consider what they do to be a radical act — and it is.
Although it doesn’t solve problems of food scarcity, it’s a symbolic move towards making fresh food free and accessible to all.

As the group explains, it’s one step closer to creating “a habitat that sustains us.”

This is awesome!
I love their motto "Undoing civilization one branch at a time". :bounce:

 

[Skarekrow]

Another victory!!!

Congress quietly ends federal government's ban on medical marijuana

Under a provision in the spending bill passed by Congress over the weekend, states where medical marijuana is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations. Agents would be prohibited from doing so.

​

Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy.

The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates.
It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana.

Under the provision, states where medical pot is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations.
Agents would be prohibited from doing so.

The war on medical marijuana is over.
Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana.
- Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance

The Obama administration has largely followed that rule since last year as a matter of policy.
But the measure approved as part of the spending bill, which President Obama plans to sign this week, will codify it as a matter of law.

Pot advocates had lobbied Congress to embrace the administration's policy, which they warned was vulnerable to revision under a less tolerant future administration.

More important, from the standpoint of activists, Congress' action marked the emergence of a new alliance in marijuana politics:
Republicans are taking a prominent role in backing states' right to allow use of a drug the federal government still officially classifies as more dangerous than cocaine.

​

"This is a victory for so many," said the measure's coauthor, Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa.
The measure's approval, he said, represents "the first time in decades that the federal government has curtailed its oppressive prohibition of marijuana."

By now, 32 states and the District of Columbia have legalized pot or its ingredients to treat ailments, a movement that began in the 1990s.
Even back then, some states had been approving broader decriminalization measures for two decades.

​

The medical marijuana movement has picked up considerable momentum in recent years.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, however, continues to place marijuana in the most dangerous category of narcotics, with no accepted medical use.

Congress for years had resisted calls to allow states to chart their own path on pot.
The marijuana measure, which forbids the federal government from using any of its resources to impede state medical marijuana laws, was previously rejected half a dozen times.

When Washington, D.C., voters approved medical marijuana in 1998, Congress used its authority over the city's affairs to block the law from taking effect for 11 years.


Even as Congress has shifted ground on medical marijuana, lawmakers remain uneasy about full legalization.
A separate amendment to the spending package, tacked on at the behest of anti-marijuana crusader Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), will jeopardize the legalization of recreational pot in Washington, D.C., which voters approved last month.

Marijuana proponents nonetheless said they felt more confident than ever that Congress was drifting toward their point of view.
"The war on medical marijuana is over," said Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance, who called the move historic.

"Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana," he said. "This is the strongest signal we have received from Congress [that] the politics have really shifted. ... Congress has been slow to catch up with the states and American people, but it is catching up."

The measure, which Rohrabacher championed with Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from Carmel, had the support of large numbers of Democrats for years.
Enough Republicans joined them this year to put it over the top.

When the House first passed the measure earlier this year, 49 Republicans voted aye.
Some Republicans are pivoting off their traditional anti-drug platform at a time when most voters live in states where medical marijuana is legal, in many cases as a result of ballot measures.

Polls show that while Republican voters are far less likely than the broader public to support outright legalization, they favor allowing marijuana for medical use by a commanding majority.

Legalization also has great appeal to millennials, a demographic group with which Republicans are aggressively trying to make inroads.
Approval of the pot measure comes after the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors last year to stop enforcing drug laws that contradict state marijuana policies.

Since then, federal raids of marijuana merchants and growers who are operating legally in their states have been limited to those accused of other violations, such as money laundering.

"The federal government should never get in between patients and their medicine," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

 

[Skarekrow]

Dick Cheney's Grotesque Legacy

He was an unpopular VP, whom history won't remember kindly. But this is Dick Cheney's real contribution to America.

​

As many of us wade through the horror of the Senate torture report, it’s hard not to think back to a time when the man who ran the country explained to us in plain language what he was doing.

I’m talking about Vice President Dick Cheney, of course, the official who smoothly seized the reins of power after 9/11 and guided national security policy throughout his eight years in office.

He was one of the most adept bureaucratic players American politics has ever produced and it’s his doctrine, not the Bush Doctrine, that spurred government actions from the very beginning.

It was called the One Percent Doctrine and according to author Ron Suskind it went like this:

If there’s a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis … It’s about our response.

​

Or put another way: “It’s time to take the gloves off.”
This was the philosophy that propelled the U.S. government to abandon any pretense of following the post-WWII international consensus about preventive war and inhumane tactics.

Despite the fact that the U.S. had lived under a real existential nuclear threat for decades, they persuaded the people that this terrorist threat was so much greater that any rules and norms in place before 9/11 were no longer operative.

If even a 1 percent chance existed that we might suffer an attack, we had to do whatever was in our capability, including torture, to stop it.
That this also facilitated the long-term goals of Dick Cheney and other neocons was purely coincidence.

He used the One Percent Doctrine most effectively to con the nation into backing an inexplicable invasion of a nation that had nothing to do with the attacks on America.

And he was able to rationalize it with many people who knew better by evoking his doctrine:
if there was only a 1 percent chance that Saddam had nuclear weapons or a 1 percent chance that he was in league with al-Qaida, we had to react.

And so we did.
And that kind of thinking permeated the U.S. government, particularly the intelligence services.

The analytical side was bullied into providing intelligence conclusions that weren’t based in fact.
The covert agents simply went over to the dark side.

The military wasn’t immune.
The torture regimes of Guantánamo and the treatment of prisoners in Iraq are on them.

And let’s not forget the cowardice and abdication of duty among most elected officials of both parties and the media who were eager to believe whatever propaganda served the One Percent Doctrine.

Yes, they were lied to.
And the fact is that for the most part they were grateful for it.

Even if there was only a 1 percent chance that something terrible could happen, the political risk was too great for them to speak out in anything but the most tepid terms.

If they didn’t know the truth it was because they wanted it that way.
It must be acknowledged that members of the media were among the first to call for torture.

And long before John Yoo developed his sociopathic view that anything short of causing pain “equal to that of organ failure” was not torture, highly respected legal scholars were openly calling for torture to be legalized, even offering up tips like using “sterilized needles under fingernails.”

In fact, the idea to jettison the taboo on torture became part of the conversation after 9/11 almost instantaneously.
So much so that it’s clear it was more a reflexive desire to punish than any need for intelligence.

And that desire to punish was perhaps best articulated by the experienced cheerleader President Bush when he famously stood atop the rubble of the World Trade Center and said, “I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people – and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”

But even though the excuses these days are all about how the chaos of the early days and the pain of the attacks led the government to “make mistakes,” that’s really no excuse.

A thirst for revenge is human.
Anger and anguish are natural responses to the horrors of 9/11.

But we assume that our leaders are going to rise above those human emotions to deal with a crisis.
That’s what you have leaders for.

And, frankly, that’s what Dick Cheney did.
While everyone else was running around in circles, Cheney was back in Washington taking advantage of the hysteria to do what he had set out to do back in the 1970s when he had served first in Nixon’s White House and then under Donald Rumsfeld in Gerald Ford’s administration after the ignominious departure of President Richard Nixon.

He had been appalled that Nixon’s overreach had resulted in an erosion of presidential power and repulsed by what he saw as a retreat from the world during the post-Vietnam years.

He happened to have been the White House liaison on intelligence matters when the first round of CIA abuses was revealed and he learned that the agencies could ride them out.

When his friend George Bush was tapped to run the CIA he knew there would be no further reprisals.
Another lesson well learned.

He and Rumsfeld engineered a number of internal bureaucratic coups resulting in one of the first neoconservative triumphs, the creation of Team B and an alternative intelligence analysis of the Soviet threat that showed that U.S. national security was in grave danger.

He learned how useful such intelligence could be.
It was widely discredited in later years but it succeeded in helping get Ronald Reagan elected and proved to be extremely helpful in restoring presidential national security prerogatives.

But even the Reagan years weren’t enough to appease him, what with what he saw as continued usurpation of the executive with congressional interference in foreign policy and silly scandals like Iran-Contra.

The highlight of his time in government came as secretary of defense during the first Gulf War, a triumph of American imperial power.
It was short-lived, of course, as President George Bush was drummed out of office and a Democrat took the helm.

It was at that point that he and the neoconservative claque that had first formed around Team B became a fully formed rival government in exile and began to plot a return to Iraq to “finish the job.” He got his chance on September 11, 2001, with plans they had at the ready just waiting for a pretext.

But 9/11 opened a new door for Cheney as well.
The One Percent Doctrine not only presented him with a perfect chance to restore presidential authority to its full power, he could enlist members of the opposing party, the press and a large number of the American people in his goal to exempt the U.S. military empire from all obligations to international law and norms.

It was not considered a problem if America had to go it alone.
In fact, in many ways it was preferable. (It’s the logic of Winner Take All Politics, writ large.)

It was American Exceptionalism to the 10th power:
No matter how infinitesimal the threat we may act, and act with brutal force.

We’ve got your new world order for you, right here.
By capitalizing on the fear and anger among Americans after 9/11, and even more important, leveraging the political cowardice of his opponents, Dick Cheney deftly manipulated an atmosphere of chaos to his desired ends: an imperial presidency, a permanent war footing and an even more powerful national security apparatus that operates with impunity.

As we all wring our hands and rend our garments over an official report that reveals what we already knew, the system he put in place remains intact and operating at full steam.

The president washes his hands of the past, the Congress declares its innocence and then averts its eyes, the CIA says it was only following orders, and the press clutches its collective pearls unable to even use the word “torture” when questioning the head of the agency about horrors it perpetrated.

On Thursday, John Brennan, the head of the CIA, wouldn’t rule out using torture in the future.
On Sunday, the program’s most energetic enthusiast, Cheney, went on national television and when asked by Chuck Todd whether the fact that 25% of the prisoners who were tortured were found to be innocent should have any bearing on the decision to do it, he replied:

I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective.
And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States.

I was prepared and we did. We got authorizing from the president and authorization from the Justice Department to go forward with the program.
It worked.

It worked now for 13 years.
We’ve avoided another mass casualty attack against the United States.

And we did capture Bin Laden.
We did capture an awful lot of the senior guys at Al Qaeda who were responsible for that attack on 9/11.

I’d do it again in a minute.

​

Basically he put the whole world on notice that the world’s only superpower would use any means it chooses without limit or restriction to obtain its objectives.
Dick Cheney must be very proud of his life’s work this week.

The brother of the unrepentant president who ordered torture is today considered the most serious Republican candidate for the White House and there can be no doubt that he would continue those practices.

The opposition will do little more than make tepid complaints and, if history is any guide, even Democratic presidents of the future who object to such tactics will feel compelled to protect them after the fact.

He accomplished exactly what he set out to do all those decades ago.
If a White House can get away with ordering torture and bragging about it, it can get away with anything.

His cruel legacy is complete.

Heather Digby Parton is a writer also known as Digby. Her political and cultural observations can be found at www.digbysblog.blogspot.com.

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Kgal]

Another victory!!!

Congress quietly ends federal government's ban on medical marijuana

Under a provision in the spending bill passed by Congress over the weekend, states where medical marijuana is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations. Agents would be prohibited from doing so.

​

Tucked deep inside the 1,603-page federal spending measure is a provision that effectively ends the federal government's prohibition on medical marijuana and signals a major shift in drug policy.

The bill's passage over the weekend marks the first time Congress has approved nationally significant legislation backed by legalization advocates.
It brings almost to a close two decades of tension between the states and Washington over medical use of marijuana.

Under the provision, states where medical pot is legal would no longer need to worry about federal drug agents raiding retail operations.
Agents would be prohibited from doing so.

The war on medical marijuana is over.
Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana.
- Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance

The Obama administration has largely followed that rule since last year as a matter of policy.
But the measure approved as part of the spending bill, which President Obama plans to sign this week, will codify it as a matter of law.

Pot advocates had lobbied Congress to embrace the administration's policy, which they warned was vulnerable to revision under a less tolerant future administration.

More important, from the standpoint of activists, Congress' action marked the emergence of a new alliance in marijuana politics:
Republicans are taking a prominent role in backing states' right to allow use of a drug the federal government still officially classifies as more dangerous than cocaine.

​

"This is a victory for so many," said the measure's coauthor, Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Costa Mesa.
The measure's approval, he said, represents "the first time in decades that the federal government has curtailed its oppressive prohibition of marijuana."

By now, 32 states and the District of Columbia have legalized pot or its ingredients to treat ailments, a movement that began in the 1990s.
Even back then, some states had been approving broader decriminalization measures for two decades.

​

The medical marijuana movement has picked up considerable momentum in recent years.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, however, continues to place marijuana in the most dangerous category of narcotics, with no accepted medical use.

Congress for years had resisted calls to allow states to chart their own path on pot.
The marijuana measure, which forbids the federal government from using any of its resources to impede state medical marijuana laws, was previously rejected half a dozen times.

When Washington, D.C., voters approved medical marijuana in 1998, Congress used its authority over the city's affairs to block the law from taking effect for 11 years.


Even as Congress has shifted ground on medical marijuana, lawmakers remain uneasy about full legalization.
A separate amendment to the spending package, tacked on at the behest of anti-marijuana crusader Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), will jeopardize the legalization of recreational pot in Washington, D.C., which voters approved last month.

Marijuana proponents nonetheless said they felt more confident than ever that Congress was drifting toward their point of view.
"The war on medical marijuana is over," said Bill Piper, a lobbyist with the Drug Policy Alliance, who called the move historic.

"Now the fight moves on to legalization of all marijuana," he said. "This is the strongest signal we have received from Congress [that] the politics have really shifted. ... Congress has been slow to catch up with the states and American people, but it is catching up."

The measure, which Rohrabacher championed with Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from Carmel, had the support of large numbers of Democrats for years.
Enough Republicans joined them this year to put it over the top.

When the House first passed the measure earlier this year, 49 Republicans voted aye.
Some Republicans are pivoting off their traditional anti-drug platform at a time when most voters live in states where medical marijuana is legal, in many cases as a result of ballot measures.

Polls show that while Republican voters are far less likely than the broader public to support outright legalization, they favor allowing marijuana for medical use by a commanding majority.

Legalization also has great appeal to millennials, a demographic group with which Republicans are aggressively trying to make inroads.
Approval of the pot measure comes after the Obama administration directed federal prosecutors last year to stop enforcing drug laws that contradict state marijuana policies.

Since then, federal raids of marijuana merchants and growers who are operating legally in their states have been limited to those accused of other violations, such as money laundering.

"The federal government should never get in between patients and their medicine," said Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland).

This so frikken awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Kgal]

Dick Cheney's Grotesque Legacy

He was an unpopular VP, whom history won't remember kindly. But this is Dick Cheney's real contribution to America.

​

As many of us wade through the horror of the Senate torture report, it’s hard not to think back to a time when the man who ran the country explained to us in plain language what he was doing.

I’m talking about Vice President Dick Cheney, of course, the official who smoothly seized the reins of power after 9/11 and guided national security policy throughout his eight years in office.

If there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that Cheney is of the Elite and was part of a mastermind to rule the world - surely now there can be none?

Just look at his face. Look at the eyes. Open up to your intuition about him. He's an architect of the current nightmare we're living. Think about that and then twist your head around in whiplash when you consider the fact Jeb Bush is considering the White House for his next home....

 

[Rcs6r]

Another Bush presidency in 2016? Time to party like it's 2002.

 

[Skarekrow]

If there was ever any doubt in anyone's mind that Cheney is of the Elite and was part of a mastermind to rule the world - surely now there can be none?

Just look at his face. Look at the eyes. Open up to your intuition about him. He's an architect of the current nightmare we're living. Think about that and then twist your head around in whiplash when you consider the fact Jeb Bush is considering the White House for his next home....

Another Bush presidency in 2016? Time to party like it's 2002.

I really honestly feel that Dick Cheney should be put to death.
There are very few humans who I would pass such a judgement on…he is there.
God save us all if we end up with another Bush in the WH.

 

[Kgal]

I really honestly feel that Dick Cheney should be put to death.
There are very few humans who I would pass such a judgement on…he is there.
God save us all if we end up with another Bush in the WH.

I understand you....as I used to feel the same way about Cheney. Yet we are being urged to move into a place of neutrality when it comes to him and others like him. All souls are being offered the chance to stand in the Light - including those who sought to enslave the masses.
So I try to reach an understanding within myself that he is under the same delusion of Fear energy as I am - or once was - before I woke up to the fact there is only Love energy that powers the universe. I have heard several versions of what will happen to him and the others of his ilk. No matter the way....they are leaving the game. It's over. It's just going to take some time to wind down. It is still being said Fall of 2016 everything will change. I hope I live to see it.....and it includes seeing him in handcuffs and chains around his ankles dressed in orange.

Hahahahahaha.....oh wow....that would be awesome to witness.

 

[Kgal]

Do you know I can't find one picture or meme showing Dick Cheney being arrested or in handcuffs or anything? I find that weird. I thought there would be plenty to choose from....but all I found was this:

 

[Skarekrow]

Do you know I can't find one picture or meme showing Dick Cheney being arrested or in handcuffs or anything? I find that weird. I thought there would be plenty to choose from....but all I found was this:

There are surprisingly few to choose from...

 

[Kgal]

There are surprisingly few to choose from...

Oh My GAWD! That picture reeeeeeks of him doesn't it??? I especially grok the puppet on the finger symbolism.... Yep.... this is truth. I tried telling a coworker the fact He was the "real" power behind the Shrub....and this co-worker couldn't accept it....yet.....but she will one day....she will.

 

[Skarekrow]

Clearly Wall Street thinks people will bail them out twice? They are writing laws to put the taxpaying Americans’ on the hook.

Citigroup Becomes Its Own Self-Serving Lawmaker

Congress, which has long been so tied up in a partisan knot by right-wing extremists that it has been unable to move, suddenly sprang loose at the end of the year and put on a phenomenal show of acrobatic lawmaking.

In one big, bipartisan spending bill, our legislative gymnasts pulled off a breathtaking, flat-footed backflip for Wall Street, and then set a dizzying new height record for the amount of money deep-pocketed donors can give to the two major political parties. It was the best scratch-my-back performance you never saw.

You and I didn’t see it – because it happened in secret.

The favor was huge – allowing Wall Street’s most reckless speculators to have their losses on risky derivative deals insured by us taxpayers.
Yes, such losses were a central cause of the 2008 financial crash and subsequent unholy bank bailout, which led to passage of the Dodd-Frank reform law, including a provision sparing taxpayers from covering future losses.

But with one, compact, 85-line provision inserted deep inside the 1,600-page, trillion-dollar spending bill, Congress did a dazzling flip-flop on that regulation, putting us taxpayers back on the hook for the banksters’ high-risk speculation.

In this same spending bill, Congress also used its legislative athleticism to free rich donors (such as Wall Street bankers) from a limit of under $100,000 on the donation that any one of them can give to political parties.

In a spectacular gravity-defying stunt, lawmakers flung the limit on these donations to a record-setting 15 times higher than before.
So now bankers who are grateful to either party for being able to make a killing on taxpayer-backed deals can give $1.5 million each to the parties.

Perhaps you recall from your high school civics class that neat, one-page flow chart showing the perfectly logical, beautifully democratic process that Congress must go through to pass our laws.

What a bunch of kidders those chart makers were!
To see how the sausage is really made, let’s take a look at that trillion-dollar budget bill that Congress squeezed out just before Christmas.

It was crammed with special corporate favors, such as: reinstating a Bush rule allowing mining giants to explode the tops off ancient Appalachian mountains and then bulldoze the rubble down into the valley below, destroying pristine mountain streams; another letting long-haul trucking outfits require their drivers to be on the road more than 11 hours a day and up to 82 hours per week, filling our highways with highballing, sleep-deprived truckers; and cutting $60 billion from the Environmental Protection Agency, freeing up polluters to go unpunished for polluting.

None of these favors had anything to do with that “how a bill becomes law” flow chart in our civics textbook.
No bill was filed, no public hearings, no debate, no vote.

Just – BAM! – there they were, a thicket of benefits secretly slipped into the 1,600-page budget bill by … well, by whom?
Largely by corporate lobbyists, though they get one of their for-hire congresscritters to do the actual dirty deed.

The taxpayer subsidy for Wall Street, for example, was written by Citigroup.
The bank’s lobbyists then handed the provision to Kansas Republican Kevin Yoder, who slipped it into the bill.

Thus, the Wall Street conglomerate that took a $50 billion bailout from us taxpayers just seven years ago to save itself from its own bad deals essentially was allowed to become an unelected, self-serving, do-it-yourself, backroom “lawmaker” to make sure that your and my tax dollars will be there to cover its next mess-up.

And that, boys and girls, is the real flow chart for making our laws.
It’s always an amazing sight when Wall Street and Congress get together – especially when they get together out of sight.

 

[Skarekrow]

50 Numbers From 2014 That Sound Fake But That Are Actually Real

http://endoftheamericandream.com/ar...14-that-sound-fake-but-that-are-actually-real​

2014 was quite a bizarre year, wasn’t it?
The past 12 months brought us MH370, Ebola, civil war in Ukraine, civil unrest in Ferguson, the rise of ISIS and the fall of the Democrats in the midterm elections.

Our world is becoming crazier and more unstable with each passing day, and I have a feeling that things are going to accelerate greatly in 2015. But for the moment things are relatively quiet as much of the world stops to celebrate the holiday season, so now is a good time to look back and see where we have been over the past year.

The facts that I am about to share with you sound false, but they are all quite true.
If you doubt any of these facts, just click the link on the number to find the source.

It has been said that truth is stranger than fiction, and that was definitely the case during the past 12 months.

In no particular order, the following are 50 numbers from 2014 that sound fake but that are actually real…

2.5 — Researchers have discovered that characters in cartoons for children are 2.5 times more likely to die than characters in adult dramas.
But as long as those characters look cute and make funny noises it must be okay.

$4.20 — The price of ground beef just hit a brand new record high of $4.20 a pound. Exactly 10 years ago, it was just $2.21 a pound.
What do you think Clara Peller would say about this?

19.8 percent — This holiday season, nearly 20 percent of all American families are on food stamps.
But since the stock market is soaring, most of the rest of the country doesn’t seem to care.

$20 — If you want to “lock down that new man for Christmas”, you can buy a positive pregnancy test on Craigslist for just 20 dollars.

29.0 years — The average age when a man in America first gets married has reached an all-time high of 29.0 years.
Thus the need for the fake pregnancy tests.

31.1 percent — An astounding 31.1 percent of all U.S. young adults in the 18 to 34-year-old age bracket are currently living with their parents.
But the good news is that demand for tacky basement decor is at an all-time high.

33 percent — According to the Wall Street Journal, close to one-third of all Americans have a file in the FBI’s master criminal database.

34.6 percent — According to the CDC, 34.6 percent of all men in America officially meet the criteria for being obese.

36 — At this point only 36 percent of the U.S. population can name all three branches of government.

43 — The new EPA regulations issued while Barack Obama has been president are 43 times as long as the entire Bible.

45 percent — One survey discovered that 45 percent of all Americans “dread” the Christmas season.

48 percent — Only 48 percent of Americans can immediately come up with $400 in emergency cash without borrowing it or selling something.

50 — An MIT research scientist is warning that if current trends continue 50 percent of all children in America will be autistic by the year 2025.

50 percent — Half of all college graduates in America are still financially dependent on their parents when they are two years out of college.

52 percent — According to a survey that was conducted earlier this year, 52 percent of all Americans cannot even afford the house that they are
currently living in right now.

54 percent — For the first time ever, more than half of all U.S. doctors support the legalization of assisted suicide.

57 percent — A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 57 percent of all Americans consider race relations in America to be “bad”. That is the worst number in 20 years.

59 percent — One very disturbing recent poll discovered that 59 percent of Americans are in favor of torturing our prisoners.

60 percent — In the United States today, 60 percent of all bachelor’s degrees are earned by women.

64 percent — It would be a great understatement to say that pornography is popular with men in America.
This is true even among men that are supposed to be religious.
For example, one survey discovered that 64 percent of all Christian men ages 31 to 49 look at porn at least monthly.

65 percent — One shocking new poll found that 65 percent of Americans believe that the government is “broken”.
The shocking part of the survey was that it was only 65 percent.

65 percent — According to a Census Bureau report that was released in December, 65 percent of all children in America are living in a home that receives some form of aid from the federal government.

70 percent — Right now, about 70 percent of all government spending goes toward dependence-creating programs.

78 percent — According to a Pew Research Center study that was released earlier this year, 78 percent of U.S. women “want a spouse with a steady job”.
Apparently the other 22 percent want an unemployed bum that stays home all day playing video games.

85 percent — 85 percent of all artificial Christmas trees are now made in China, and there is a rumor that Santa and his elves are considering a permanent move to the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

1979 — The United States has become the nation of the “permanent emergency”.
In fact, there has been at least one “state of emergency” in effect in this country since 1979.

7,500 — The worldwide Ebola death toll has surpassed 7,500 for the first time, but most Americans seem to believe that the crisis is over.
The truth is that it may just be beginning.

20,000 — Right now McDonald’s has 14,267 locations in the United States, but payday lenders have more than 20,000.

$30,000 — According to the Social Security Administration, 52 percent of all American workers made less than $30,000 last year.

80,000 — Back in 1980, there were only about 3,000 SWAT raids conducted in the United States.
But today, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year in this country.

100,000 — It is estimated that there are at least 100,000 underage sex workers in the United States.
In case you were wondering, yes that means that we are a very sick nation.

$1,000,000 — We are supposed to be a government “of the people, by the people and for the people”, but at this point more than half the members of Congress are millionaires.

1,400,000 — Thanks in large part to unchecked illegal immigration, there are now 1.4 million members of criminal gangs living in our cities.

2,400,000 — There are currently more than 2.4 million people behind bars in America, and since 1980 the number of people incarcerated in our prisons has quadrupled.

2,500,000 — According to the National Center on Family Homelessness, there are now 2.5 million homeless children in the United States.

4,000,000 — Right now there are more than 4 million adult websites on the Internet, and they get more traffic than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined.

9,700,000 — Almost 10 million more Americans have enrolled in Medicaid since Obamacare first launched.

15,000,000 — More than 15 million Americans have cosmetic procedures done each year, and Christmas is the busiest season of the year for plastic surgeons.

30,000,000 — In America today, more than 30 million Americans are taking antidepressants.
And keep in mind that antidepressants are only one class of pharmaceutical drug.
Overall, nearly 70 percent of all Americans are currently on at least one prescription drug according to the Mayo Clinic.

$40,000,000 — More than 40 million dollars has been spent just on vacations for Barack Obama and his family since he has been in the White House.

49,000,000 — An astounding 49 million Americans are considered to be facing food insecurity at this point.

110,000,000 — Approximately one-third of the entire population of the United States (110 million people) currently has a sexually transmitted disease according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

156,600,000 — The population of Bangladesh (156,600,000) is actually larger than the population of Russia (143,500,00).
But nobody is scared of Bangladesh.

3,000,000,000 — For the first time ever, there are now more than 3 billion people on the Internet around the globe.
I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

$600,000,000,000 — Americans will spend more than 600 billion dollars this Christmas season.
That is an amount of money greater than the entire GDP of Sweden.

$1,200,000,000,000 — Student loan debt has hit a grand total of 1.2 trillion dollars in the United States.
That number has grown by about 84 percent just since 2008.

$2,000,000,000,000 — The war in Iraq cost U.S. taxpayers more than 2 trillion dollars, but now a radical jihadist terror organization known as ISIS controls nearly a third of the entire country.

5,000,000,000,000 — There are now 5 trillion little pieces of plastic floating around in the oceans of the world, and lots more plastic is being dumped into our oceans every single day.

$18,031,021,541,347.52 — The current size of the U.S. national debt.
It increased by more than a trillion dollars during the fiscal year that ended a few months ago, and it is on pace to approximately double during Obama’s eight years in the White House.

$40,000,000,000,000 — There are five “too big to fail” banks in the United States that eac have more than 40 TRILLION dollars worth of exposure to derivatives.
This is a “sword of Damocles” that could destroy our financial system and our entire economy at any time.
Let’s just hope that it does not happen in 2015.