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[Slowpurr]

Dumb luck? That is called training.

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

Well standing motionless with your hands by your side is certainly dangerous to others. It was just dumb luck those cops weren't hurt.

[Okiebug61]

Same-sex Oklahoma couple marries legally under tribal law
First-of-its-kind marriage in Oklahoma

Published 8:12 PM CDT Oct 21, 2013



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Okla. gay couple legally married in Okla., which doesn’t recognize gay marriage

SHOW TRANSCRIPT
OKLAHOMA CITY —It is the first of its kind in Oklahoma, a legal same-sex marriage in a state that doesn’t even recognize it.

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For years, the state of Oklahoma made it clear where they stand on the issue. In 2004, 76 percent of voters defined marriage as between a man and a woman, but for one local couple, a recent Supreme Court decision opens a little known door.

It's the photo Jason Pickel still can't believe, the moment capturing a marriage -- he thought would never happen.

“That's the biggest trip I've had so far,” said Pickel. “I'm not even sure how to even react. I'm very excited about getting married. It's been eight and a half years."

For the past five years, Jason's wanted to marry boyfriend Darren Black Bear. The two even planned a trip to Iowa, a state that recognizes same-sex marriage. But when the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act last June, Pickel had an idea. He called the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe's courthouse and asked a simple question.

"I was really expecting a big no,” said Pickel. “I thought we're on our way to Iowa, but I called the tribe and they said, 'Yeah come on down, it's twenty bucks.'"

Twenty dollars for what no amount of money could buy in Oklahoma -- a marriage license made legal by the tribal code. Its requirements, both people be of Native American descent and live within the tribe's jurisdiction. Nowhere does it specify gender.

“I do know at the end of the day the state offices won't recognize it, but they kind of have to,” said Pickel.

That's because on sovereign Indian land, state laws don't apply, making Jason and Darren the first publicly married same-sex couple in Oklahoma, a milestone, he hopes is followed.

“When we have equality in all 50 states and all U.S. territories that is when we'll have true equality,” said Pickel. “That's when I will be truly, truly happy.”

Due to Pickel and Black Bear’s marriage, the couple is allowed to file for federal tax credits benefiting couples. They plan on holding an open wedding celebration on Halloween.







Copyright 2013 by KOCO.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Tags Same-Sex Marriage Oklahoma City


Read more: http://www.koco.com/news/oklahomanew...#ixzz2iPuBydad

[Okiebug61]

Please email or phone this legislature and let him know what you think!

http://www.okhouse.gov/District.aspx?District=60

http://www.koco.com/news/oklahomanew...f/-/index.html

[Cin]

Idaho Cops Kill Dog In Front of Two-Year-Old Boy
The owners of the animal dispute the police's claims that they were threatened by the dog.

Full article here:http://www.alternet.org/idaho-cops-k...o-year-old-boy

Idaho police shot and killed a dog over the weekend in front of a two-year-old boy. While the cops from Boise, Idaho say they felt threatened by the dog, named Kita, the owners of the dog dispute those claims, according to a report by Idaho media outlet KTVB.

On Sunday, two officers were investigating a theft in the area where Kita and the Stropkai family lived.

Gabrielle Stropkai said the cops quickly decided to shoot Kita. “In about five seconds he pulled his weapon, asked whose dog it was, and shot her in the back of the head,” she told KTVB. This was all done in front of her two-year-old son named Hayden.



It's certainly not surprising it only took cops five seconds to shoot the dog. Here's a video of a cop shooting a guy just standing with his arms by his side within about ten seconds of the police arriving on the scene.



Here's a cartoon that just about covers it:


http://www.alternet.org/comics/matt-...olice-violence

[Cin]

Apparently shopping while black is as dangerous as driving while black.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...n_4148490.html


Here's an article about a black woman getting fired for having blond highlights.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...ef=mostpopular

[Cin]

Social Security, Medicare and Veteran's Benefits are facing cuts this fall. Those veterans that are so well loved that the thought of a veteran facing a gate at a monument on Veteran's Day was horrific beyond belief apparently can have their benefits slashed without issue. Ah GOP love, it's so conditional.

Now that there is an unholy alliance between the far-right Arnold Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trust it is no wonder that the Pew Foundation is spreading the lie that social security is in trouble. The only danger for SSI is coming from Obama and the GOP who want to gut it. Despite claims it will run out of money in 20 years, Social Security has a surplus of more than $2 trillion. Allowing for normal economic growth rates there is no reason that SSI money would not last indefinitely/forever. However, given the fact that the obscenely wealthy, who are really the ones who take advantage of government hand outs and constantly suck on the public tit, can't take their greedy eyes off of Federal and State Social Security money, I doubt it will last even until 2030.

A couple of interesting articles:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert...b_3040226.html

http://www.alternet.org/economy/nine...uts?page=0%2C1

[Cin]

It’s not the 1% anymore.

Globally, 0.7 percent of the people control 41 percent of the world’s wealth.

The wealth of this net group approaches $99 trillion dollars.

Global Wealth Reaches All-Time High. (For the .7 anyway. It’s working out so well for the rich let’s be sure to continue with those austerity measures)

The recent explosion of U.S. wealth means the richest Americans dominate the global rich. (Yay. Let’s cut social security, medicare and Veteran’s Benefits)

Below the .7% is the 7.7% who hold around 42% of the global wealth.

The remaining 91.6 percent of humanity splits around 17 percent of the wealth.

U.S. Congress is poised to begin a historic debate on cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. That debate starts with the assumption that there’s not enough money around for social safety nets.

Which is a lie. There is plenty of money for social safety nets. And Social Security is not going to run out of money. It is solvent.

But if you really believe it is not then make it solvent by lifting the cap and making all income, not just income under $86,000/year, subject to FICA taxes. Because as it has been determined those who make under $86,000 a year hold only 17% of the wealth. Shouldn't some help come from the segment of the population who owns 83% of the money?

Or cut farm subsidies to rich farmers.

Eliminate tax cuts for the rich and zero taxes for 40% of Corporations.

Or cut the pentagon budget for the $163 billion you say you need. Buy 2190 planes instead of 2457, cutting 247 planes gives you $163 billion. Don’t force millions of seniors into an insecure old age.

Why take the money from the segment of the population who splits only 17% of the wealth as it is?

The richest Americans are doing quite well, thank you, and with trillions of new wealth added to the U.S. economy since 2008’s market collapse, it’s not unreasonable for Congress to ask them to shore up safety nets for the rest of their country.

Here is an article about the new name for the millionaires club - point seveners. http://www.alternet.org/economy/poin...lub?page=0%2C0

[Cin]

10 Jaw-dropping Absurdities Brought to You By the Right Wing

1. Kevin Swanson is begging you not to buy those lesbian Girl Scout cookies

2. Men’s Righter, Paul Elam: It’s okay not to care about female rape victims

3. N.C. Republican official doesn’t want those lazy blacks voting

4. N.C. (yes, again) State Rep. Larry Pittman: Obama not a traitor (to Kenya, where he was born, of course)

5. Sherman Adelson: Nuke Iran

6. Joe the former Plumber: Democrats are the lynchers

7. Coach Daubenmire: Christians are being bullied into not bullying gays

8. Bradlee Dean, President Obama is both secretly pushing Shariah law, and secretly gay

9. Group of Christians refuse to tip waiter, but are nice enough to leave a note explaining his “homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God”

10. Texas Rep. Steve Stockman: Ted Cruz is a brilliant, heroic, visionary leader


How you might ask can a cookie be a lesbian? Yes, how indeed.
For a more detailed description of each absurdity:
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-an...ing?page=0%2C0

[*Anya*]

Texas’ voter ID law that could disenfranchise women voters targets trans voters in general
By JOS |

Published: OCTOBER 22, 2013


Apparently it’s Blog About “Show Us Your Papers” Laws Day at Feministing. Get it together America.

Over the past few days, publications have jumped on the story of a Texas voter ID law, which recently went into effect after initially being blocked by the courts. Texas voters are required to provide an ID that matches their most up-to-date legal name. This may seem like a minor issue to some, but name changes can be time consuming, complicated, and expensive. Every article I’ve seen about this issue focuses on married women who’ve changed their names. The thinking is that Wendy Davis and other pro-rights, anti-bigotry politicians would be hurt most by keeping women from the polls.

A lot of my concern is about lady voters being disenfranchised, too. But I’m not just thinking about recently married women – I’m thinking about trans women (married or not), as well as trans folks in general who could be blocked from voting.

As is often the case, this law may prove more successful at keeping voters from the polls by making them think they won’t be able to vote, rather than them actually being excluded by the rule. Poll workers get to use discretion when checking people’s IDs. Unfortunately, this could end up being worse for trans folks because of widespread transphobia, whereas a majority of people think married women should change their last name, so that name change is generally viewed positively in our culture. When trans folks have been targeted this way our whole lives, it can suck to walk into a situation where we know we could be misgendered and excluded again.

The Williams Institute published a report in 2012 outlining how voter ID laws could keep trans voters from the polls:

According to the new Williams Institute report, 41 percent of transgender citizens who have transitioned reported not having an updated driver’s license and 74 percent did not have an updated U.S. passport. Moreover, 27 percent of transgender citizens who have transitioned reported that they had no identity documents or records that list their current gender. People of color, youth, students, those with low incomes, and respondents with disabilities are likely to be disproportionately impacted.

This study was covered by a couple great publications, but it didn’t blow up in nearly the way this story did when it focused on married women (who could be trans too, but who, let’s face it, most of us will assume are cis, cause that’s the culturally enforced norm).

I’ve written before about how it hurts to read feminist critique of sexism that polices the boundaries of “woman” and excludes trans women, and not see a trans critique even come up. It means that, for whatever reason, transphobia and transmisogyny aren’t issues authors and editors are thinking about when they analyze sexism. When they’re thinking about who gets targeted, they’re not thinking of me. Whereas when I see an issue that’s about name changes and legal documents, I instantly think about how it will impact trans folks, because that’s my life experience and because I know it’s a common way we get marginalized.

There’s this unfortunately too common thing that happens when a trans woman tells a cis woman about an experience of sexism and the response is, “Welcome to being a woman!” However unintentional, it’s an incredibly hurtful thing to say to a woman who’s experienced the sexism that says she’s not the right kind of woman. Cases like this almost make me want to turn that response around. Not that I’d actually treat anyone’s experience this way, especially because defining “woman” by the sexism we experience let’s the bigots define who we are. And of course, this kind of bigotry doesn’t just target women, as it can disenfranchise trans voters generally. But this sort of targeting is so central to my experience of gendered bigotry that I have a bit of a “Welcome to my bullshit” moment. So it’s notable to me when these ID rules get highlighted by feminists without acknowledgement of how they hurt trans folks.

It’s possible the Texas GOP meant to stop the votes of married women with this law. Many transphobes are so stuck on the “man in a dress” stereotype that they probably don’t know enough about our real lives to successfully, intentionally attack us like this. However, trans folks are demonized by the right with increasing frequency, and have been directly targeted with voter suppression tactics, so this could very well be aimed at us as well. Trans folks may be a marginalized minority, but there’s also a badass trans organizing community in Texas that the right certainly knows about. Regardless of intent, this law has potential to keep trans folks from exercising our right to vote, and that’s something we should be talking about as well.

Jos Truitt has been a woman who experiences sexism this whole time.

http://feministing.com/2013/10/22/te...rs-in-general/

[Cin]

Macy's Also Gets Slapped With Racial Discrimination Lawsuit By Black Shopper

“It’s an epidemic. It’s unbelievable,” Nicholas Elefterakis, Brown's attorney, told The Post.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...ef=mostpopular

Barney's hires a civil rights pro to show them how not to harass black shoppers. Go figure it's that difficult a concept for them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/1...ef=mostpopular

[Cin]

Meet 3 Master Manipulators of America’s Oligarchy
Financiers Stanley Druckenmiller, Pete Peterson and John Arnold form a trifecta of treachery.

Ideas are costly, especially bogus ones. And a growing class of billionaires is more than willing to pay.

Whether they’re ginning up deficit hysteria to cut Social Security or blaming teachers and firefighters for state budget crises, these 1 percenters pose as defenders of your interests while arranging things so that they can plunder America and leave hard-working people with scraps. They fully understand mechanisms of manipulating public opinion, and they can pay off pundits and politicians to subscribe to whatever ideas best justify their greed and abuse.

It’s not enough that we now have the widest divide between rich and poor in living memory. These men are determined to crack open that gulf even wider.

We bring you profiles of three financiers who never made a useful thing in their lives, including one who helped bring you the Enron disaster. They are united in their efforts to blame ordinary people for Wall Street-driven economic woes and carve out another pound of your flesh for the rich. Money is no object in their quest.

Here’s a look at how these three made their money, how they’re conning the public, and what they don’t want you to know.

1. Stanley Druckenmiller

His stash: $2.9 billion, made from hedge funds.

His con: Turn young people against seniors by scapegoating Social Security and Medicare.

Stanley Druckenmiller is the most insidious kind of capitalist charlatan—a rapacious wolf of an oligarch hiding in sheep’s clothing. “I just want what’s best for young people!” he cries. But his fangs are so long and sharp that only a fool could overlook them.

Druckenmiller, long a funder of right-wing causes and politicians, has lately been popping up on college campuses promoting economic nonsense in an effort to convince young people that greedy grandparents are to blame for America’s weak economy. Yep, that’s right. He sells the notion that instead of student debt, shitty jobs with few protections, and the hangover from a Wall Street-driven financial crisis, Social Security is what’s hurting today’s youth. Seriously.

Druckenmiller tarts himself up as a generational and class warrior who wants to save young people from their elders by slashing the social insurance programs that keep them out of poverty. Never mind that these young people will one day reach an age where they will need these programs even more than the current generation of retirees because they will likely have no pensions and will have saved into disastrous 401(k) plans—that is, when they can actually find jobs that have any kind of retirement plan at all.

Druckenmiller plays on the psychological tendencies of young people to get pissed off at older folks. He manipulates that habit in order to deflect blame from those who are actually hampering and destabilizing the economy, such as greedy financiers like himself. He cleverly tosses in enough populist-sounding tidbits, like raising taxes on capital gains, to pretend that he’s really on the side of the regular folks.

Which is bullsh*t.

The truth is that we ought to be expanding the social safety net because we’ve got a retirement train wreck coming and a political system that’s transferring wealth from working people to the rich. Taking money out of the pockets of seniors actually stalls economic growth by decreasing the demand for goods and services, as anyone who has taken Econ 101 is aware. Programs like Social Security actually save America money because they are inexpensive to run, and unlike private plans, don’t gouge citizens with high fees. By the standards of advanced countries, our programs are pretty paltry to begin with, and cuts bring us closer to the Dickensian world that is no doubt what greed-blossoms like Druckenmiller dream about at night.

Despite the destructive stupidity of his ideas, Druckenmiller knows how to get the media to carry his poison. His nonsense was recently championed by Tom Friedman in the New York Times and James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal.

As Robert Kuttner has recently explained, it takes a lot of freaking nerve for an oligarch to argue that the “income distribution problem is somehow generational and that he, as a billionaire, has anything whatever in common with most college students or most recipients of Social Security.”

Druckenmiller has that nerve, and then some. Where are the pitchforks?

2. Peter G. Peterson

His stash: $1.5 billion, made from private equity.

His con: Stoke deficit hysteria in order to shrink the government and let the wild horses of capitalism trample the masses.

Pete Peterson is the ultimate phony patriot. He has served as commerce secretary under President Richard Nixon, made billions on Wall Street buying companies in order to loot them, and has been tireless in his campaign to blame all of America's ills on a federal budget deficit — you know, the one that is actually declining. Through his Peter G. Peterson Foundation, this elder statesman of the oligarchy has spent about a billion dollars of his own stash to get us to buy the idea that America is broke, despite the fact that it is the richest country in the world. And guess who must open their wallet? You!

There is nothing Peterson will not buy to further his agenda: school curricula, think tanks across the political spectrum, seminars, TV ads, politicians—hell, he even bought his own newspaper, the Fiscal Times, where propagandists calling themselves reporters spread his deficit hysteria and promote Peterson’s fondest wish, which is to kill Social Security and Medicare.

Though the public repeatedly rejects his nonsense, Peterson is able to pay influential politicians to sing his tune, including Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who have been trotting out their discredited reports on the deficit ever since Obama appointed them to his fiscal commission in 2010.

Peterson is the oligarch behind the “Fix the Debt” campaign, a consortium of corporate honchos and wealthy individuals who have made it their mission to bring deficit scare-mongering to D.C. in order to achieve cuts to essential programs and secretly push through their main goal, which is lowering taxes on the wealthy.

Over and over, Peterson & Co. will try to gin up artificial crises so they can force Congress to do their bidding. Whenever you hear the phrase “grand bargain,” somewhere out there a Peterson crony is smacking his chops. And the tasty treat is your pocketbook.

3. John Arnold

His stash: $2.8 billion, courtesy of Enron.

His con: Enrich Wall Street by blaming state budget crises on teachers, firefighters and other public workers.

If you were writing a movie script about unbridled capitalism, you could do no better than John Arnold as your villain.

Young, clean-cut and soft-spoken, Arnold looks like he just wants what’s best for America. But that would be his America, not yours.

For starters, Arnold made his fortune at Enron, where he worked with a gang of criminal fraudsters to wreck, among other things, California’s economy. Now he is actually using a front group to loot California’s pension system.

The 39-year-old Arnold left his work as an energy trader in 2012 to style himself as a new breed of philanthropist who will change the course of history—in favor of the 1 percent.

As David Sirota and Matt Taibbi have explained, Arnold’s game is promoting a “pension reform” movement designed to channel billions of dollars in public pensions to hedge funds and Wall Street players who can charge exorbitant fees while mismanaging public money and hiding their shenanigans from the citizenry.

Arnold disguises his agenda by doing things like donating to the federal Head Start program—purportedly to help it through the government shutdown.

But don’t be fooled. He’s been very busy behind the scenes with other activities. He joined forces with Pew Charitable Trusts to create a campaign to cut pensions and he has tirelessly spewed impressive-sounding actuarial nonsense at elected officials and members of the media to get governments to transfer wealth from public workers to Wall Street. Gina Raimondo, the Rhode Island state treasurer, is an Arnold-acolyte and has allowed the state’s pensions to fall victim to a Wall Street coup that will let financiers to fatten their wallets at the expense of people whose only crime was to get up in the morning and go to work serving their communities.

The reasons state and municipal budgets are having troubles has little to do with the fact that teachers and other workers will end up with pensions that average around $25,000 a year (and many of them won’t get Social Security). They are hurting because Wall Street has been ripping them off for decades, and then socked them with a horrific financial crisis which killed revenue streams. That plus the plague of unscrupulous politicians who have been shoveling money meant for pensions into their pet projects is why states are suffering and pensions are dealing with shortfalls — though usually not the hysterical crises Arnold and his cohorts would have you believe. Robbing teachers and firefighters will not solve these problems. Reining in financial criminals and crooked politicians will.

Enron’s collapse already wiped out 401(k) plans and gutted pension benefits that many workers counted on for retirement. But somehow that blow to society did not satisfy Arnold. He’d like to bring more retirement disasters to a neighborhood near you.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/stan...age=1#bookmark

[Cin]

Noam Chomsky: How the U.S.-Mexico Border Is Cruel by Design
“The US-Mexican border, like most borders, was established by violence — and its architecture is the architecture of violence.”
October 28, 2013 |

In order to understand the rationale behind the fortification of the border and the physical form it has taken in recent years, it is necessary to go back a little first. The US-Mexican border, like most borders, was established by violence – and its architecture is the architecture of violence. The US basically invaded Mexico in a pretty brutal war back in the 1840s. The war was described by President-General Ulysses S. Grant, as “the most wicked war in history”. [9*] That may be an exaggeration, but it was a pretty wicked war. It was based on deeply racist ideas. First of all, it started with the annexation of Texas, which was called the re-annexation of Texas on the grounds that it was “really ours all along” […], that they stole it from us, and now we have to re-annex it. That took Texas away from Mexico. The rest of the war, and the later historical period, basically involved additional land grabs.

In order to understand it, you should read the progressive writers like Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others. The position was, as Whitman put it eloquently, that “backward Mexico had to be annexed as part of bringing civilization to the world”—which the US was seen as leading. [10]Emerson said it in more flowery language along the lines of, “it really doesn’t matter by what means Mexico is taken, as it contributes to the mission of ‘civilizing the world’ and, in the long run, it will be forgotten”. [11] Of course, that’s why we have names like San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Fe all over the southwest and the west of the United States. We should really call it Occupied Mexico.

Like many borders around the world, it is artificially imposed and, like those many other borders imposed by external powers, it bears no relationship to the interests or the concerns of the people of the country—and it has a history of horrible conflict and strife. Take the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, for example. The British imposed the borderline. They partitioned the overall area nearly in half and arbitrarily divided the land. No Afghan government has ever accepted it, and nor should they. This has happened all across Africa as well, of course, and so the Mexican border is no exception.

After the war of the 1840s the US-Mexican border remained fairly open. Basically the same people lived on the same sides of it, so people would cross to visit relatives or to engage in commerce, or something else. [12] It was pretty much an open border until the early 1990’s. In 1994, the Clinton administration initiated the program of militarizing the border, and that was extended greatly under George W. Bush in the 2000s—largely under the guise of safety and defence from terrorism. [13]The two key pieces of legislation were called “The Border Protection, Anti-terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act of 2005” and the “Secure Fence Act of 2006″. [14] That was interesting, and revealing, because the warnings from the security services were that the dangerous border, with regard the possible incursion of terrorists into the US, was the Canadian border. If you take a look, you can see why. The Canadian border is so porous that you and I can cross it in some forested areas. If you were worried about terrorism, you would fortify the Canadian border. Instead, they fortified the Mexican border where there is no threat of terrorism; it was, clearly, for other reasons.

The rest:
http://www.alternet.org/economy/noam...r-cruel-design

[Corkey]

ALOHA! Hawaii passed marriage equality!

[MsTinkerbelly]

Originally Posted by Corkey

ALOHA! Hawaii passed marriage equality!

It passed the State Legislature, and will go to the House of Representives tomorrow. It should be ready to sign next week if it passes.

[Cin]

This kid should be governor of NC.

http://www.alternet.org/civil-libert...s-restrictions

Watch: 12-Year-Old Nails N.C. Governor on Voting Rights Restrictions
Modern day suffragette Madison Kimrey: "The match has been lit and my fire burns bright."

12-year-old Madison Madison Kimrey, founder of NC Youth Rocks, gave a rousing speech at a recent NAACP event, taking on Governor Pat McCrory, and the state's recent highly restrictive Voter I.D. laws. Being 12, her particular concern was the elimination of the state's pre-registration for 16 and 17-year-olds through schools and the state's DMV that enables them to automatically be added to the voting rolls when they turn 18.

She completely nails Gov. McCrory, who refused to meet with her, calling her "ridiculous" and a "liberal prop." Her response: "I am not a prop. I am part of a new generation of sufragettes."

Gov. McCrory also said, according to Kimrey: "He had not read that part of the bill."

In the words of Alicia Keyes: "This girl is on fire."

[*Anya*]

Instead of freedom, Marissa Alexander gets new trial date

By MAYA | Published: OCTOBER 31, 2013

Marissa Alexander, the black Florida mother who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for firing a warning shot against her abusive husband, will get a new trial this spring. But her supporters were calling for the charges to be dropped altogether.

As we’ve previously covered, Alexander had a restraining order against her husband when he yelled, “Bitch, I will kill you!” and charged toward her during the incident in 2010. She fired a single shot into the ceiling, and no one was hurt. The sentence Alexander received would seem absurdly harsh in general, but especially since we’re talking about Florida here, where the right to “stand your ground” apparently applies to aggressors “threatened” by a bag of Skittles, but not to abused black women.

Last month, a court overturned Alexander’s original guilty verdict, and activists have called for the charges to be dropped. Instead the state is going to prosecute her once again. Alexander, who has already been in jail for three years while this all plays out, will find out next week whether she will be released on bail. The Free Marissa Now campaign will be fundraising to cover her legal costs for the new trial in March. The goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the year, and you can help here.

While today’s hearing is a huge disappointment, it’s inspiring to see such powerful grassroots mobilization around this case. The Free Marissa Now effort, as well as the #31forMARISSA letter writing campaign that Mychal covered recently, has worked tirelessly to not only free Alexander but also raise awareness more generally about how women–especially black women and other marginalized groups–are likely to be criminalized for fighting back against domestic violence. As Mariame Kaba of the restorative justice organization Project NIA explained at Colorlines recently:

Marissa is a black woman, and we need to be really clear about that in this case. We’re not seen as potentially violable, we’re not seen as people who can be victimized too often. We’re always seen by everybody—including sometimes even in our own communities—as not being able to feel pain or be abused, and not being real “victims.” What we’re trying to do here, with Marissa, is asserting very clearly and specifically her humanity. We want to make it clear that we do feel pain. Making it clear that the continuing criminalization of black women is completely unacceptable, immoral and despicable.

My own personal sense of heartbreak has been around the notion, in this case, that Marissa couldn’t be afraid, that she couldn’t feel fear, and that the jury couldn’t believe that she was afraid. That’s deep. And that’s why having another trial feels to me like a recipe for disaster—because I don’t think her humanity is taken into account. I don’t think people think that black women can feel scared, or that we have the ability to feel pain.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.

http://feministing.com/2013/10/31/in...ew-trial-date/

"[Feministing] is head and shoulders above almost any writing on women's issues in mainstream media." -Columbia Journalism Review

[MsTinkerbelly]

LAX Airport shooting.

I'm watching all the news, and at least 3 people have been shot, at least one dead. The suspect is in custody, and the Airport is shutdown to all new departing flights, and all flights not already in the air from other places.

A witness described the shooter as a white male, approximately 18 years old.

***side note, my Kasey was supposed to leave today for England, but the trip was canceled due to my health. Thank you God for keeping her out of harms way.

[MsTinkerbelly]

Originally Posted by MsTinkerbelly

LAX Airport shooting.

I'm watching all the news, and at least 3 people have been shot, at least one dead. The suspect is in custody, and the Airport is shutdown to all new departing flights, and all flights not already in the air from other places.

A witness described the shooter as a white male, approximately 18 years old.

***side note, my Kasey was supposed to leave today for England, but the trip was canceled due to my health. Thank you God for keeping her out of harms way.

7 people shot or injured by falling down the escalator (he was shooting down the escalator), 1 dead.

Sad day for a lot of people.

[*Anya*]

Los Angeles (CNN) -- A man armed with what police say was an assault rifle and carrying materials expressing anti-government sentiment opened fire Friday morning at Los Angeles International Airport, killing one person before being chased down himself, authorities said.
Eyewitnesses said the suspect asked people, "Hey, are you TSA?" -- the acronym for the Transportation Security Administration -- according to a federal law enforcement official. If they said "no," he would move on.
In the aftermath of the shooting, investigators found information on the suspect expressing not just anti-federal government sentiment but also anger at the TSA specifically, according to the federal law enforcement official.
By then, a TSA officer was dead -- the first employee of that relatively new agency to be killed in the line of duty, according to American Federation of Government Employees president J. David Cox.
Two others were also shot, FBI special agent in charge David Bowdich said. At least one of them was a TSA employee who was shot in the leg, according to a former Los Angeles Police Department ranking officer who was briefed by investigators.
The suspected gunman himself was detained after being shot in the chest multiple times, according to an intelligence source briefed by Los Angeles police.
He was identified later by the FBI as Paul Anthony Ciancia, a 23-year-old from Los Angeles. Law enforcement sources told CNN that, in addition to the southern California city, the suspect also had an address in New Jersey.
Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center said that, hours after the incident, it received three male victims -- one in critical condition and two in fair condition. One of the two in fair condition suffered gunshot wounds, another suffered an unspecified injury, said Dr. Lynne McCullough, an emergency physician at the Los Angeles hospital.
Two patients were transported to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, said David Klurad, a trauma surgeon there.
One was what Klurad described as a "middle-aged" person with minor injuries from being shot in the shoulder. The other had no signs of life when he arrived at the hospital, the surgeon added. It wasn't known if this person was the slain TSA officer.
TSA: Number of guns discovered in airports rising
The episode caused what airport police Chief Patrick Gannon, who had said the shooter used an "assault rifle," described as a "large amount of chaos." People ran for their lives and took shelter wherever they could as authorities pursued the gunman.
Chuck Ocheret was among those in the busy airport when he heard two "loud pops."
"Then I heard this mad rush of people, and there was a stampede of people coming from this direction," Ocheret told CNN. "Nobody really knew what was going on."
Still, by Friday afternoon, authorities believes the worst was over. Gannon noted it is believed there was only one shooter.
Source: Gunman had 3 magazines for weapon
An otherwise normal day in the airport's Terminal 3 turned upside down around 9:20 a.m. (12:20 p.m. ET), as the suspect approached a checkpoint.
There, he "pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and began to open fire," Gannon said.
The suspect didn't stop there. Equipped with three magazines for his weapon, according to the intelligence source briefed by Los Angeles police, he began running down Terminal 3.
Traveler Vernon Cardenas was sitting at one end of the terminal, when he heard noise and saw a mass of people running toward him. He and others bolted through a kicked-open exit door and ran onto the tarmac -- believing then it was safer there -- even with then still-arriving and departing jetliners -- than in the concourse above.
The circular area where Cardenas had been is where the bloodshed finally ended with the gunman's shooting by law enforcement, according to the intelligence source.
Actor Tim Daly said that when he was eventually led out of the the Virgin America first-class lounge, he saw where the incident came to a head around Gates 35 and 36. After being told not to step on any blood or glass, Daly spotted a high-powered rifle on the ground along with three magazines, a pair of black shoes and several bags strewn across the floor.
The episode soon rendered one of the world's busiest airports a ghost town. Large portions were evacuated as authorities ordered a "ground stop" for arriving places, said police and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Almost every flight scheduled to leave the airport on Friday will be "significantly late," said Gina Marie Lindsay, executive director of Los Angeles World Airports.
The area around the airport was jammed with cars as police shut down access to the airport.
The airport was still accepting incoming flights, but doing so at less than half the normal rate as a few were rerouted, Lindsay said. Some flights that did arrive sat on the tarmac as the investigation continued.
Police at Los Angeles International Airport announced around 2 p.m. Pacific time over a loudspeaker that they were going to start allowing workers back into the airport so operations such as processing incoming and outbound flights could resume.

[Cin]

America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom
Why do we put up with such injustices?


There are 16.4 million American children living in poverty. That's nearly one quarter (22.6%) of all of our children. More alarming is that the percentage of poor children has climbed by 4.5 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. And poor means poor. For a family of three with one child under 18, the poverty line is $18,400.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming. Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms are making tens of billions of dollars again, while the luxury housing and goods markets are skyrocketing.

Most amazing of all is the fact that 95 percent of the so-called "recovery" has gone to the top 1 percent who have seen their incomes rise by 34%. For the 99 percent there's been an undeclared wage freeze: the average wage has climbed by only 0.4 percent.

To add to the misery, Washington has decided that the best way to tackle childhood poverty is to have poor kids eat less. Both parties already have agreed to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). Starting this November 1, payments are scheduled to drop from $668 a month to $632 for more than 47 million lower-income people -- 1 in 7 Americans, most of them children. (Three incredible graphs that visualize the issues in this story are at the bottom of this article.)

And more cuts are coming. The Tea Party House passed a bill to cut food stamps by $4 billion a year, while the Senate calls for $400 million in cuts. How humane! And since it will be part of the omnibus Farm Bill, President Obama will sign it. (I wonder how our former community organizer will explain this to the poor children he once tried to help in Chicago.)

But that's just the start. More austerity is coming in the form of cuts to Social Security as well as a host of other social programs. When times get tough, you've got to suck it up and take more from the poor.

Rewarding Billionaires Who Increase Poverty?

It gets even more revolting when we realize that the financial billionaires who are profiting so handsomely from the recovery are the very same who took down the economy in the first place. They were the ones who created and pedaled the toxic securities that puffed up and then burst the housing bubble. Those financial plutocrats caused 8 million workers to lose their jobs in a matter of months. Those bankers, hedge fund honchos and fund managers are directly responsible for the rise in child poverty rates. Washington bailed out those billionaires and is now asking the poor and the middle class to pay for the ensuing deficits with further cuts in social programs at every level of government.

Why do we put up with such injustices?

Washington Is in Wall Street's Pocket

Before we entirely succumb to financial amnesia, let's recall how we got here. Since the late 1970s, the financial sector has been on a crusade to remove any and all financial regulations. The goal was to undo all the controls put in place during the Great Depression that so effectively curtailed financial speculation and outright gambling. Once deregulated Wall Street engineered a Ponzi-like housing bubble that netted it astronomical sums. By the time it burst in 2007, 40% of all corporate profits flowed into the financial sector. Wall Street wages grew by leaps and bounds.

As the crash hit, all the largest Wall Street firms, not just Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were in serious trouble. Had AIG gone under, so would nearly every major bank and investment house, along with thousands of hedge funds that depended on AIG to ensure its toxic bets. So Wall Street's Washington cadre engineered a $13 trillion bailout consisting of cash, no interest loans and a program by which the Federal Reserve would buy up Wall Street's toxic waste at par value. To produce a financial recovery, the Fed also drove down bond interest rates which in turn drove money into the stock market, sending it to new heights.

Here's the best of all. After getting $480 billion in bailout cash, the top financiers in the country paid themselves more than $150 billion in bonus money for a job well done. Is this a great country or what?

What didn't happen is this: Mortgages were not written down in mass to assist underwater home owners and those who suffered from predatory loans. No lasting jobs programs were created to put the unemployed back to work. No lasting penalties were paid by the individuals who took down the economy. And there was no serious effort at all to cap financial wages and bonuses in the name of justice.

All in all, you could not have designed a more perfect program to enrich the rich and do absolutely nothing for the 99 percent -- and as a result, sink ever more children into poverty.

Waiting for the Recovery That Will Never Come

We are constantly told that the recovery is just around the corner. Liberals say we need more stimulus. Conservatives call for more austerity and cuts in regulations. But all agree that sooner or later more growth will benefit the 99 percent. Unfortunately, it's not happening and it won't happen. Here's why.

First of all, they assume that trickledown actually works, that there is something mechanical within our heavily financialized economy that will bring renewed prosperity to the 99 percent. They look back at previous recessions and recoveries and continue to believe that slumps are followed by renewed growth and income gains for all.

But as financialization has spread throughout the economy, new mechanisms are in place that siphon off wealth into financial gains for the very few. Productive enterprises are turned into financial enterprises that are loaded up with debt and then carved and slaughtered so that wealth can be extracted for hedge funds and private equity firms. In our brave new financialized economy renewed growth turns into renewed incomes primarily for the investment class. The stock market will rise but jobs and incomes won't. The traditional capitalist slump-recovery process died more than a decade ago. Adam Smith's invisible hand no longer produces shared prosperity -- instead it picks our pockets.

Waiting for the Political Pendulum to Swing

Second, we are told how America is essentially a moderate country -- how there's a kind of invisible political pendulum that swings from the extremes back to the sensible center. When the left or the Tea Party gets too wild, the center supposedly pulls them back and common sense economics prevails. But this consoling media meme obscures the fact that our politics are moving ever more rightward. Moderate Democrats and Republicans today are to the right of Eisenhower, Nixon and even Herbert Hoover. They have already agreed to cut the very entitlements that are needed to help alleviate poverty. In fact, they have agreed it's quite OK for America to have 442 billionaires and also have 22.6% of its children living in poverty. The sensible center now sees its role as forging a "compromise" on how much to cut food stamps and other supports for the poor.

Obviously, both political parties lose little sleep worrying about economic injustices. Even most Democrats no longer have a serious game plan to eradicate poverty. That's considered to be 1960s stuff that doesn't make sense in a world where politicians have to make peace with at least some players in the billionaire class in order to survive. As for the poor, alas, they will always be with us.

America Leads the World

Not a day goes by without hearing about "American exceptionalism." We are told by our leaders and pundits that we are the best, the greatest, the mightiest and the most democratic of all nations. It is our mission in life to uphold justice and freedom around the world. But as this chart shows, when it comes to child poverty, we are just about dead last.

Why is that? Because in wealthy nations, children live in poverty if and only if that nation allows it. Our nation, the richest in history, has more than enough wealth to go from the bottom of this list to the top, right next to Finland, if only we decided to act justly.

A Simple Proposal to end Child Poverty

America has 442 billionaires with an average net worth of $4.2 billion each according to Forbes. That means collectively these 442 Americans have nearly $1.9 trillion in wealth.

During the current "recovery," these 442 billions saw their wealth rise on average by over 12 percent per year. What would happened if those billionaires received only 6 percent a year and the other 6 percent were taxed away in order to pull all of our children out of poverty?

That would provide sufficient revenue so that each child now living in poverty would receive an extra $7,000 per year which would pull nearly all of their families above the poverty line. The 442 billionaires would not suffer. No one in their families would go hungry. No luxury goods or services would be out of reach. No cooks, maids, chauffeurs or pilots would have to be let go. The 442 billionaires would feel no pain at all -- not even an itch. As a result of this painless tax, America would eradicate childhood poverty overnight.

Dream on?

Of course, our simple proposal sounds insane in a world where austerity reigns supreme and where billionaires are immune from such redistributive proposals. But I wonder who is sane and who isn't. It seems utterly psychotic to live in a society that chooses to spread poverty to its young. It also seems psychotic to claim that cuts in food stamps are good for the poor while at the same time saying that it's quite OK for billionaires to pile up unearned, tax-sheltered income. The fact that we're putting up with all this should be driving us all insane.

Sooner or later, the millions of Americans who still have souls that ache for justice will take democracy into their own hands. I don't know how it will happen or when, but one day we will eradicate needless poverty and reclaim our nation from those who are robbing it blind.

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-u...age=1#bookmark