The Political Awakening of a Republican: 'I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People' | Alternet

A former Republican tells about how his experiences in post-Katrina New Orleans and then Iraq destroyed his Republican worldview.




CONTINUE READING: The Political Awakening of a Republican: 'I Had Viewed Whole Swaths of the Country and the World as Second-Class People' | Alternet

Are Your Favorite National Parks Under Threat From Drilling? Find Out | Alternet

Click to read article: Are Your Favorite National Parks Under Threat From Drilling? Find Out | Alternet

The Hex on Paul Ryan - by Frank Bruni - NYTimes.com

Bruni:
The best morsel of political advice I can offer? If you catch even the faintest whisper that you might be nominated for the vice presidency, make for the hills. Run as fast as Paul Ryan pretends to. Your reputation depends on it. Maybe your sanity, too....(continue reading)

7 Ways Paul Ryan Wants to Betray His Fellow Generation X-ers | Alternet

The Peter Pan of American conservatism is bursting with immature, half-baked ideas for the country.....Paul Ryan, voted “Biggest Brown-Noser” in high school and born with enough money for Colorado ski trips and a surefire job at his family’s construction company, embraced libertarianism in college.....(read more)

Paul Ryan fails -- the truth - The Plum Line - The Washington Post

By Jonathan Bernstein

It was, by any reasonable standards, a staggering, staggering lie.Here’s Paul Ryan about Barack Obama:

He created a bipartisan debt commission. They came back with an urgent report.  He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.   (continue reading: Paul Ryan fails -- the truth

How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Read more about this "gotta-read" best seller!

(continue reading) How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran

Obama: "We Need to Seriously Consider" A Constitutional Amendment to Reverse Citizens United | Mother Jones

Excellent article!

Obama: "We Need to Seriously Consider" A Constitutional Amendment to Reverse Citizens United | Mother Jones

6 Big Lies By Republican National Convention Speakers, Day One | Alternet

The entire program of the convention's opening night was based on a deception wrapped up in falsehoods.


6 Big Lies By Republican National Convention Speakers, Day One | Alternet

What If Jesus Had Been A Republican? | Alternet

What If Jesus Had Been A Republican? | Alternet

"Crypto-Cultists" and "Cranks": The Video Paul Ryan Hoped Would Go Away | Alternet

"Crypto-Cultists" and "Cranks": The Video Paul Ryan Hoped Would Go Away | Alternet

Paul Ryan Obscures His Koch-Backed Agenda With a Pack of Lies in Convention Speech | Alternet

TAMPA, FLA. -- Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan may carry himself with an air of earnestness, but at his heart, he's a liar. What other determination could one make after Ryan's compendium of distortions and outright untruths, delivered Wednesday night to the Rep..........(continue reading)

John Hodgman: I LIKE WINNING ~ HUff Post

John Hodgman:  "I will reveal here that I am going to vote for Obama, and I hope he wins, and here is the reason: I LIKE WINNING.

This was not always the case. For someone who came of age as a long-haired public radio nerd in Brookline, MA in Reagan's eighties and Bush's early nineties, winning was a foreign country. A country that surrounded our northeastern patch of rent control and repertory movie houses and 100 Years of Solitude, but wanted nothing to do with us...."      (continue reading)

How Mitt Romney Got Rich Destroying American Jobs and Promoting Sweatshop Capitalism | Alternet

Romney-style capitalism means misery for working people and big money for the 1 percent.....(read more...)

Let's Declare Independence From Religious Health-Care Restrictions | Alternet

On July 4, the Catholic bishops will conclude their Fortnight for Freedom, a vigil that opened the grassroots phase of their campaign to gain official religious status for hospitals, universities, and social service agencies they neither control nor support financially. That status, as has been widely noted, would exempt these organizations from the administration’s requirement that an employer’s health insurance plan cover contraceptives, with no co-pay or other costs to the employee. But the longer-term goal is to legally shore up the contention that........(continue reading)

World Leader Wondering Why He Just Met With The Former Governor Of Massachusetts | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

A quick click revealed to me the 'ridiculosity' of Mitten's visit to Europe!  I love the picture....poster child for 'clueless'!  (Click here for today's truth! :-)

"Smile" | Psychology Today / Alex Korb, PhD.

PreFrontal Nudity

The Brain Exposed

by Alex Korb, Ph.D.

Smile

A quick tip to trick your brain into thinking you're happy.

Published on July 31, 2012 by Alex Korb, Ph.D. in PreFrontal Nudity

           I’ll cut right to the chase and you can go back to whatever you were doing: smile, relax, sit up straight. You’re welcome.

            In case you’re interested, here’s a little more context. Scientists have known for a long time that emotions are accompanied by numerous changes in the body, from elevation in the heart rate to flexion of the zygomatic major muscle (i.e. smiling). However.......(continue reading...)

"Dying Man's Wish to Leave $500 Tip Turns into Nearly $50,000 Charity" ~ Mark Memmott / NPR

Dying Man's Wish To Leave $500 Tip Turns Into Nearly $50,000 Charity

Categories: human interest, National News

01:22 pm

July 31, 2012

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by MARK MEMMOTT

This good-news story began on July 9 with a blog post simply titled "My Brother."

Aaron Collins, wrote his brother Seth, "was the type of person that took great joy in unexpected kindness." And before his July 7 death, the nearly 30-year-old Aaron had made a request:

"Leave an awesome tip (and I don't mean 25%. I mean $500 on a f***ing pizza) for a waiter or waitress."

What the young man from Kentucky didn't leave, was much money. So the family created a blog called Aaron's Wish and a Facebook page to ask for help in making his dream come true.

EnlargeFacebook.com/AaronsLastWish

Aaron Collins, who wanted to leave a big tip.

Three weeks later, the family has collected nearly $50,000 and three lucky servers have been surprised with $500 gratuities. The Collins family members are posting videos as they spread the good cheer. Fair warning: you likely will tear up if you watch them. The second in the series is particularly touching. Waitress Chelsea Powell is clearly thrilled and appreciative.

SethCollins/YouTube

The Associated Press adds that:

"Aaron Collins' death was unexpected. His brother said the family is still awaiting a final determination on the cause, but a preliminary coroner's report said strangulation contributed to the death. ...

"Seth Collins said the family has raised nearly enough money to do once-a-week tips for two years. So far he has given three big tips, and said he plans to travel outside Lexington for the next dinner. He has been thinking of other possibilities, like leaving big tips for coffee or pizza delivery."

Seth Collins has pledged, by the way, that:

"Absolutely every penny we receive will go toward nothing but this. We will pay to host the website. We will pay for the food. Absolutely 100% of the donations we receive will be given to random waiters or waitresses. Our goal is to do this once a week, for as long as you give us the opportunity."

"How Will the 99% Deal with the Psychopaths in the 1%" ~ Alternet

A lot of the world's misery can be traced to people who lack the wiring for empathy. What can we do to contain the damage they cause?

July 26, 2012  |  

Did you know that roughly one person in a hundred is clinically a  psychopath?  These individuals are either born with an emotional deficiency that keeps them from feeling bad about hurting others, or they are traumatized early in life in a manner that causes them to become this way. With more than 7 billion...(continue reading)

Denver Shooting Appears to be an Organized Operation ~ Steve Beckow

Denver Shooting Appears to be an Organized Operation

2012 JULY 26

Posted by Steve Beckow

“James Holmes”

UPDATED – July 27, 2012

I spoke with Sierra Neblina this morning, who said that MGM had offered $2 million towards the cost of patient medical services and recovery costs. MGM made the Batman movie at  which the Denver shooting took place. Two million dollars will not go far to cover those costs and is viewed as a token gesture to deflect criticism from the studio for a movie extolling violence.

The Denver hospital is rumored to have expressed a willingness to waive the costs of the medical operations.

We’re not calling it the “Aurora” shooting because of suspicions that staging the shooting at a suburb with that name is designed to burden the word “Aurora” or dawn with negative connotations.

The Batman movie apparently features a scene where a gunman opens fire on a crowd of spectators at a sporting event, which at the very least is felt to be incitement to violence. The prevailing feeling here is that the Batman movies, or “dark knight” series, are being used to habituate viewers to chaos and violence.

Stephen Cook sends along this photo from the Sydney Morning Herald which shows two “views” of the shooter. Stephen points out that the two photos show different people – different eye shapes and colour, eyebrows, ear shape, noses -  which suggests that James Holmes was not the shooter and that the shooter was a “Manchurian Candidate” substituted for the real James Holmes, whose fate is unknown. Sierra notes that it isn’t an easy matter to change an individual’s eyes in the ways these photos indicate.

Reports are that a second individual may have been involved in the massacre (see video).

Also it’s felt that the complexity of rigging Holmes’ apartment with explosives and the cost of the munitions involved would have been beyond Holmes’ means. All of this points to an organized cabal operation.

Stephen adds: July 27, 2012

There is also a story circulating via a couple of chat rooms that James Holmes’ father, Robert Holmes – who is the Senior Lead Scientist at Fair Isaac Corporation in San Diego, according to his Linked In profile – is about to testify before the US Senate inquiry into the Libor scandal. We cannot verify this post, so please read this as information only. Nevertheless the intrigue continues…

Posted by user “Ghost of Huey Long” – July 26, 2012

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021025002

“Most important to note about James Holmes, however, this report says, is that his father, Robert Holmes, was said to have been scheduled to testify within the next few weeks before a US Senate panel on the largest bank fraud scandal in world history that is currently unfolding and threatens to destabilize and destroy the Western banking system. Robert Holmes, whose “blueblood” family links go back to the Mayflower, is known throughout the global banking community as being the creator of one of the most sophisticated computer algorithms ever developed and is credited with developing predictive models for financial services; credit and fraud risk models, first and third party application fraud models and internet/online banking fraud models.

Educated at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, Robert Holmes is currently the senior lead scientist with the American credit score company FICO, which was formally known as Fair, Isaac and Company, and which every American citizen is beholden to should they need to borrow money.

Mind you I am not saying that there is any sort of conspiracy involved here, however it has to make you stop and wonder, “what are the chances that two of America’s most volatile issues — gun control and the ongoing banking and mortgage crisis and scandal — could be countenanced by a single family?”

The’ report” this poster is referring to is from a site called:http://mortgagemovies.blogspot.com/2012/07/kingcast-and-mortgage-movies-remain.html

If you go there, the video, which begins with another story, is rather ‘out there’. But it even says the information included in it cannot be verified.

http://the2012scenario.com/2012/07/denver-shooting-appears-to-be-an-organized-operation/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=denver-shooting-appears-to-be-an-organized-operation

How About This for Supporting the Troops: Help Our 55,000 Female Homeless Veterans | Alternet

There are 55,000 homeless women vets in the U.S. and that number is only getting bigger. What are we going to do about it?
(Continue reading..)