Fox News

Secret courts. Secret emails. Phone surveillance. Drones. The list of cloak-and-dagger tactics employed by the Obama administration — and those that preceded it — keeps growing, as NSA leaker Ed Snowden feeds classified materials to the media and other reports show the extent of the U.S. government’s more opaque dealings.

The latest was a report by The Associated Press that said the administration had military files about the Navy SEAL raid on Usama bin Laden’s hideout transferred to the CIA, where they would be harder to uncover by the press and public.     Continue reading “Transparency Troubles: Secrecy concerns mount for Obama in 2nd term”

imageWall Street Journal – by Mort Zuckerman

In recent months, Americans have heard reports out of Washington and in the media that the economy is looking up—that recovery from the Great Recession is gathering steam. If only it were true. The longest and worst recession since the end of World War II has been marked by the weakest recovery from any U.S. recession in that same period.

The jobless nature of the recovery is particularly unsettling. In June, the government’s Household Survey reported that since the start of the year, the number of people with jobs increased by 753,000—but there are jobs and then there are “jobs.” No fewer than 557,000 of these positions were only part-time. The survey also reported that in June full-time jobs declined by 240,000, while part-time jobs soared by 360,000 and have now reached an all-time high of 28,059,000—three million more part-time positions than when the recession began at the end of 2007.   Continue reading “A Jobless Recovery Is a Phony Recovery”

Liberty Blitzkrieg

This ridiculously condescending budget put out by McDonald’s in partnership with Visa has been making the rounds today. I’ll allow excerpts from the Gothamist article on it and their corresponding video do most of the explaining, but the key point I want to hammer into people is that food stamps are corporate welfare. They actually are not welfare for the workers themselves, who undoubtably don’t have wonderful lives. What ends up happening is that because the government comes in and supplements egregiously low wages with benefits like food stamps, the companies don’t have to pay living wages. So in effect, your tax money is being used to support corporate margins.Even better, many of these folks who get the food stamp benefits then turn around and spend them at the very companies which refuse to pay them decent wages. Who benefits? CEOs and shareholders. Who loses? Society.   Continue reading “McDonald’s Math: You Can’t Survive Working for Us”

Century Link – by RUSSELL CONTRERAS – Associated Press

BERNALILLO, N.M. (AP) — The month long criminal trial and all its salacious stories of law officer affairs and a blundering investigation are over, but a civil trial looms for a former Albuquerque policeman acquitted of killing his depressed wife with his department-issued gun.

After more than 10 hours of deliberations, a jury acquitted Levi Chavez, 32, of murdering of his wife, 26-year-old Tera Chavez, in 2007 and trying to make the hairdresser’s death look like a suicide.   Continue reading “Ex-police officer acquitted of murder of wife”

Panamanian officials say they found unspecified weapons, hidden in containers of brown sugar, in a North Korean-flagged ship coming from Cuba. CBC News

Panama has detained a North Korean-flagged ship coming from Cuba as it approached the Panama Canal with undeclared weapons, President Ricardo Martinelli said.

The weapons, hidden in containers of brown sugar, were detected after Panamanian authorities stopped the ship, suspecting it was carrying drugs. The vessel was pulled over near the port of Manzanillo on the Atlantic side of the canal.     Continue reading “Panama finds ‘undeclared weapons’ on North Korean ship”

Information Clearinghouse – by Nancy Hanover 

A year ago, incumbent candidate Barack Obama referred to “the defining issue of our time” as “good, middle-class jobs, so people can have confidence if they work hard, they can get ahead.” Obama was hailed, in typical fashion, by the pseudo-lefts of the Nation as “arguing eloquently for public initiatives to save the middle class and revive the American dream.”

This promise of good, middle-class jobs was among Obama’s most cruel and cynical pledges.   Continue reading “Obama’s “Just-in-time” Workforce: 17 Million Temporary Workers in America”

Gun control advocates show their true colorsExaminer – by RENEE NAL

The Brady Center to Pre­vent Gun Violence has sued the small town of Nelson, Georgia for a symbolic ordinance that requires households to own a firearm.

Kate Brumback from the Associated Press wrote yesterday that a lawyer, Jonathan Lowy, for the Brady Center called the ordinance “misguided and unconstitutional,” and basically wants to make an example of the small town, as others have similar laws on the books.   Continue reading “Brady Center sues Georgia town to “send a message” to towns with pro-gun laws”

Washington’s Blog

Anyone Who Says the Government Only Spies On Potential Bad Guys Is Sadly Uninformed

Even now – after all of the revelations by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers – spying apologists say that the reports are “exaggerated” or “overblown”, and that the government only spies on potential bad guys.

In reality, the government is spying on everyone’s digital and old-fashioned communications.   Continue reading “The Government Is Spying On ALL Americans’ Digital and Old-Fashioned Communications”

WEAU.com

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court is scheduled to rule in the case of a man convicted of shooting and injuring two Milwaukee police officers in 2009.

Julius Burton was sentenced to 80 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges related to the shooting of the officers. Burton wanted to withdraw his pleas, arguing that his former attorney and the lower court didn’t properly advise him, but a state appeals court denied his request.   Continue reading “Wis. Supreme Court to rule in police shooting”

'Bulletproof' Arizona security team rais--8050.jpgArizona Daily Star

A pair of Wisconsin legislators, among others, are up in arms over a heavily armed, Scottsdale-based private security force hired to protect a new iron-ore mine under construction in northern Wisconsin.

Mining company Gogebic Taconite hired Bulletproof Securities to secure its property following an incident during an otherwise peaceful protest in which a 26-year-old woman was charged with robbery with use of force and three other misdemeanors after allegedly wrestling a camera away from a mine worker.

Photos, including the one attached, show guards wearing camouflage and masks and sporting semi-automatic guns. Bulletproof’s website states its personnel are equipped with armor and high-tech gear and can be trained in the use of handguns, medium-sized weapons, heavy weapons, sniper rifles and edged weapons.    Continue reading “Hiring of Arizona security firm raises Wisconsin mine controversy to new heights”

The Daily Meal – by Jessica Chou

New York dirty water dogs might be a classic, but mass-produced hot dogs are actually kind of gross. How It’s Made released this video showing the makings of classic hot dogs, and it’s not pretty.

Sausage manufacturers take pork, beef, and chicken trimmings (cuts left over from larger steaks or pork chops), grind them together, add processed chicken trimmings that look particularly pink slime-y, add some food starch, bags and bags of salt and spice, and churn them all into giant vats of meat goo. Lovely.    Continue reading “Gross Video Shows You How Hot Dogs Are Mass-Produced”

Brietbart – by Brandon Darby

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently released a report, “Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean,” that identifies both Mexican cartels and street gangs as conduits for individuals from Africa and Asia entering the U.S illegally. The report identifies the Islamic terrorist haven of Somalia as being one of the nations from which the illegal U.S. bound border-crossers are originating.    Continue reading “UN Warns: Mexican Border ‘Global Pathway’ to U.S. for Illegals from Horn of Africa”

CenturyLink – by JASON DEAREN – Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The pilot at the controls of an Asiana plane that crash landed was guiding a Boeing 777 into the San Francisco airport for the first time, and tried but failed to abort the landing after coming in too slow to set down safely, aviation and airline officials said Sunday.   Continue reading “Pilot in SF crash had little experience with 777s”