Ack! More zombies shuffle among us.

 

You can bet your sweet bippie [Oooo! That's so '60's!] Gruppenführer Krugman knows zombies and Nazis all too well.

Paul Krugman's New Intra-Times Feud: Andrew Ross Sorkin's 'Zombie Ideas'

Paul Krugman didn't call out colleague Andrew Ross Sorkin by name, but when the Nobel prize winning economist and New York Times columnist dismissed a group of CNBC interviewers as having "zombie ideas" in his blog Wednesday, that group included Sorkin. Maybe Krugman is getting bored of fighting with fellow Times columnist David Brooks, and has found someone else at his paper to swipe at.

- The Atlantic Wire via Yahoo! News



The greatest economic genius ever born of woman [The Community Organizer From The High-Yellow Lagoon - emphasis on the goon] scoops out our brains, pisses in our skulls, and calls it lemonade. [Ahhhh...the mixing of the metaphors.]

From CNBC via Yahoo Malaysia News:

Signs We Are Approaching a Zombie Economy

Uncertainty about U.S. fiscal policy, Europe's sovereign crisis and slower global growth have turned the U.S. economy into what feels like a slow-moving zombie, leaving businesses and consumers hesitant and reluctant to act.

Those factors combined to hit business confidence and have led to slower activity, evident in Friday's report showing just 80,000 new jobs created in June. That follows a sluggish 77,000 payrolls in May and 68,000 in April, making the second quarter the worst quarter for jobs in two years. 

That report sparked immediate market talk of a new round of asset purchases or "quantitative easing" by the Fed, but the number was not weak enough to generate a clear consensus on when or whether the Fed would act. 

CRT Capital Senior Treasury Strategist Ian Lyngen said the economy feels zombie-like. "The risk taking animal spirits have yet to return," he said.
Europe's debt crisis and the ongoing drag of deleveraging have made the second leg of the recovery troublesome. 

"The U.S. economy has been unable to achieve escape velocity but the amount of monetary and fiscal stimulus in the system has proven adequate enough to keep it going at a 1-2 percent GDP pace. That is slow by historic recovery standards...it feels like a 'zomb'-economy," said Lyngen. 

"People are increasingly worried about a double dip," he said. 

"It feels like it's sleepwalking," Moody's Economy.com chief economist Mark Zandi said of the economy. "We're walking but not going anywhere fast. I don't think we're dead like a zombie. There is some life underneath, but we are sleepwalking. The reality is people are so nervous and shell shocked, it doesn't take much to get them to stop what they're doing." 



From PRWeb [via Yahoo News, of course] comes this terrifying tale of evil capitalists profiting at the expense of our poor zombie neighbors:

Romney or Obama: The Art of Killing Zombie Politicians in 5 Simple Steps

GetFantasized.com allows everyone to stop or join the zombie apocalypse, all you need is a camera.

Miami, Florida (PRWEB) June 21, 2012

There is proof that the zombie apocalypse is real, and now anyone can take part without sniffing bath salts or eating someone’s face. In just 5 easy steps, http://www.getfantasized.com allows zombie fans to either become a zombie or kill your most hated zombie politician in cinematic fashion, and offers custom art prints that can be shared online or displayed on a wall. Prints and digital downloads are available in 8” x11” up to to 24”x36” with prices starting at $19.95.

GetFantasized.com allows customers with a penchant for the macabre to select pre-rendered designs created by leading digital illustrators from the entertainment industry. Unlike many photo filter apps, Get Fantasized allows the user to get a professionally rendered image by a trained artist. “The quality difference is night and day, it’s like the difference between getting something that looks rendered by a computer versus an image straight out of a Hollywood studio,” remarked Get Fantasized CEO Scott Ownbey.

Each design provides an easy to use guide that instructs the user how to shoot their photo in order to be inserted into the selected design. No need to be a professional photographer as most users can upload photos taken with an iPhone 4s or any camera phone with the ability to shoot in HD. Once the photo is uploaded to the website it goes through a retouching and printing process before it is delivered on museum quality art paper or poster prints. The entire process takes 5-10 days.

“Our most popular designs allow you to slash the zombie version of popular polarizing politicians,” remarked Ownbey.

"Customers will be able to battle a zombie version of Obama, Romney, or Scott Walker and immortalize the event in a custom art print to hang on their wall or share in their favorite social media application." 

To stop or join the zombie apocalypse you need to look no further.

Visit http://www.getfantasized.com today.

And finally [Hah!] every HR drone's worst nightmare...

I Hired a Zombie 

Having a warm body fill that vacant seat in your office may seem like a better option than nothing, but beware: Your new hire could be a zombie.

- Mashable via Yahoo! News

MORE? It's a commie thing. You'll understand soon enough.

From the Boston Herald:

Cuba reports more cholera cases

The number of cholera cases confirmed in eastern Cuba jumped from 30 to 85 over the weekend but the death toll remained at three, one government official said, although independent reports put the number of deaths as high as 15.

As many as five other cases of cholera also were unofficially reported in Havana, and dissidents in Guantanamo near the eastern tip of the island reported cholera-like cases in Caimanera, a village on the edge of the U.S. naval base.

The state-owned TV station in Granma province, where the outbreak has hit hardest, suggested that residents avoid traveling outside the area, and trucks with loudspeakers urged them to boil water and wash their hands often, two residents said.

Public health officials in the British-run Cayman Islands, just south of Granma, issued a advisory against travel to Cuba, and U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., warned potential travelers that visiting the island "may put them at risk of becoming ill with cholera."

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta had not issued any special travel notices on Cuba as of Monday evening. Its Web page recommends only general vaccinations, like those for Hepatitis A and B, typhoid fever and rabies.

Cuban government epidemiologist Ana Maria Batista Gonzalez told Granma’s Telecentro TV station Saturday that 30 cholera cases had been confirmed in the province, then raised the number to 85 when she appeared again on the station Sunday, said Santiago Marquez, a doctor and dissident in the Granma town of Manzanillo.

Batista, eh? Sounds like a rightist plot to discredit the glorious People's Revolution.

A Cuban government statement July 3 — the only other official word on the outbreak — said 53 cholera cases had been confirmed and that the outbreak was "under control." There was no explanation for the conflicting numbers, although it’s possible that the number 53 referred to cases in the southeastern region, not just Granma.

Batista also noted the number of suspected cases in Granma rose from 332 to 346, and more general cases of diarrhea and vomiting rose from 3,422 to 3,998, Marquez said.

Most of the cases have been recorded in Manzanillo and the provincial capital, Bayamo, as well as nearby municipalities of Niquero, Yara and Bartolome Maso, Batista said. All are along Cuba’s southern coast, about 415 miles east of Havana.
Batista said the death toll remained at three — the same number the government reported on July 3. Bayamo dissident Yoandris Montoya said he had heard reports of five deaths and Marquez put it at about 10. Havana dissident Calixto Martinez has reported about 15.
 
Police continued a a heavy security presence at area hospitals and relatives were not allowed to visit patients with cholera, Marquez said. He was fired from his public health job after he began speaking out against the government and his wife, Tania de la Torre, became a human rights activist.

See waht happens when you get your health coverage from a government exchange? You exchange your freedom for coverage, then you die miserable and alone anyway.

I'll bet Benedict Roberts has a great health plan...

Cholera was declared eradicated in Cuba no later than the early 1900s, but an ongoing outbreak in neighboring Haiti has killed more than 7,400 people and scores of Cuban doctors have worked there. A Florida woman and others in the Dominican Republic who visited Haiti came down with cholera in 2010 but survived.

Cholera is generally not fatal but can kill in a matter of hours when the diarrhea and vomiting cause dehydration, especially among the elderly. The three dead confirmed by the Cuban government were 60 or older.

Remember when America used to be a refuge from all that Third World crap?

Michaela DePrince is lucky. She made it here before Obamastan's constitution was ratified.

From AP via Yahoo News:

Star dancer born into war grows up to inspire

Michaela DePrince was little more than a toddler when she saw her first ballerina — an image in a magazine page blown against the gate of the orphanage where she ended up during Sierra Leone's civil war.

 It showed an American ballet dancer posed on tip toe.

"All I remember is she looked really, really happy," Michaela told The Associated Press this week. She wished "to become this exact person."

From the misery of the orphanage "I saw hope in it. And I ripped the page out and I stuck it in my underwear because I didn't have any place to put it."

Remember when we were allowed to dream of a better future? You know, before the Supreme Court was invented.

Now Michaela's the one inspiring young Africans: She escaped war and suffers a skin pigmentation disorder that had her labeled "the devil's child" at the orphanage. She's an African dancer in the world of ballet that sees few leading black females. She was adopted and raised to become a ballerina in the U.S. — a country where she believed everyone walked around on tippy toes.

On July 19, Michaela performs in her first professional full ballet, dancing the part of Gulnare in Le Corsaire, as a guest artist of South Africa's two biggest dance companies, Mzansi Productions and South African Ballet Theatre.

Her ascent to stardom in the ballet world has been fast, if not typical. At 17, she's already been featured in a documentary film and has performed on TV-show "Dancing With the Stars". She just graduated from high school and the American Ballet Theatre's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, and will go on to work at Dance Theatre of Harlem. Her family recently moved from Vermont to New York City to support her dance career and her sister's acting and singing. Michaela said she has been offered many opportunities to dance with companies in Europe and in the U.S.

Her big brown eyes are framed by mascara-coated lashes to cover their whiteness stemming from the vitiligo skin disorder. Tiny wisps of white curls peek through the dark brown hair pinned into a bun. Her wide infectious grin turned strained as she chatted about her childhood.

You see, kiddies, in Race Land not all blacks are black enough. It's kind of like Clarence Thomas' situation.

"I lost both my parents, so I was there (the orphanage) for about a year and I wasn't treated very well because I had vitiligo," she said Monday. "We were ranked as numbers and number 27 was the least favorite and that was my number, so I got the least amount of food, the least amount of clothes and what not."

Michaela said she walked shoeless for miles to reach a refugee camp after word came that the orphanage would be bombed. Elaine DePrince, who adopted Michaela and two other girls, Mia and Mariel, from the orphanage, said she met the girls in Ghana in 1999. Michaela was 4.

"They came to me sick and traumatized by the war," DePrince said. "Michaela arrived with the worst case of tonsillitis, fever, mononucleosis and joints that were swollen.

Michaela said the war and her time in the orphanage affected her for years.

"It took a long time to get it out of my memory. But my mom helped me a lot and I wrote a lot of stuff down so I could recover from it," she said. "Dance helped me a lot. I had a lot of nightmares. "

Michaela, Mia and Mariel were among children whose adoptions became controversial in Sierra Leone.

In 2010, some parents of 29 children left at the Help A Needy Child International center, known as HANCI, stormed the office of Sierra Leone's social welfare minister demanding help finding their sons and daughters. They claimed many did not know their children would be adopted.

HANCI maintains the parents consented and said it arranged the adoptions through a U.S. agency that placed 29 of the children with American parents. DePrince confirmed three of her daughters were adopted through the U.S. agency.

In April, Sierra Leone police opened an investigation into the adoptions.

The adoptions took place as the West African country suffered a decade-long war that ended in 2002. Rebels burned villages, raped women and turned kidnapped children into drugged teenage fighters. Tens of thousands of civilians died. Countless others were mutilated by rebels who hacked off hands, arms or legs with machetes.

Ahhh...the delights of the end of colonialism...

Can't you just smell it?

Michaela said her father, a trader, was shot dead by rebels and her mother starved to death. It is unclear if she has family left in Sierra Leone. While Mia told her mother that many parents visited their children at the orphanage, Michaela didn't get visitors.

"I would like to say that, if she has any relatives alive in Sierra Leone they should know that she has been extremely well cared for and loved, and we have put our hearts and souls into making her dreams come true," DePrince said.

DePrince and her husband Charles have adopted nine children, and had two biological sons. Two of Michaela's brothers died before she was born, and a third died when she was young. Their deaths were a result of HIV contracted from a manufactured plasma product that was used to treat the hemorrhages associated with hemophilia.

May God have mercy on their souls.

DePrince said the family has worked hard to develop all their children's dreams.

"She says she would have not had this dream come true if she had not become Michaela DePrince" by adoption, DePrince said, adding that none of the three girls adopted from Sierra Leone have expressed interest in finding their biological family.

But Michaela said she does eventually want to return to her birthplace to open a school for dance and the arts.

"I hope to inspire a lot of young children," Michaela said, "no matter what people tell you, you should focus on your goals and you should do what you want to do, especially if you want to be a ballet dancer."

Michaela counts many African American ballet dancers among her role models: "They all have conquered something in the dance world because they were black and they've slowly broken down barriers."

When she was around 8 and rehearsing for The Nutcracker, just a few days before the performance she was told, "I'm sorry, you can't do it. America's not ready for a black girl ballerina."

For Michaela, "to say this to an 8-year-old is just devastating. It was terrible."

When she was 9, a teacher told her mother: "I don't like to put money into black dancers because they grow up and end up having big boobs and big hips."

Racist. But is it any different than saying only blacks can play basketball and be sprinters?

The dancer looked down at her petite figure and protested, "I don't have boobs. I don't get it."

Instead of getting her down, "It makes me more determined," she said. "Because I've been through so much, I know now that I can make it and I can help other kids who have been in really bad situations realize that they can make it too."

Amen to that, sister.

Her story, her technique, her focus, is set to inspire other young black and African girls who face hardship to pursue their dreams.

 Michaela's presence "shakes and rattles the whole idea that ballet is not for black people and shows it's for all people," said Dirk Badenhorst, CEO-designate of South Africa Mzansi Ballet. "Brilliance is colorblind and it really is proved by Michaela."

Ungrateful SOB Of The Year.

You've got to read the whole thing for the punchline, kiddies. I promise you it's worth the brain cells it'll kill.

From Amisland's premier propaganda organ, Lancaster Newspapers, Inc:

Atheist files complaint over restaurant's Sunday promotion

A Manheim Township man has filed a discrimination complaint against a Columbia restaurant that offers a 10 percent discount for diners who present a church bulletin on Sundays.

John Wolff, who is an atheist, filed the complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission against Prudhomme's Lost Cajun Kitchen in Columbia.
Wolff said the practice discriminates against him because he does not attend church.

"I did this not out of spite, but out of a feeling against the prevailing self-righteousness that stems from religion, particularly in Lancaster County," said Wolff, a retired electrical engineer.

Sharon Prudhomme, one of the co-owners of the restaurant, said she is not discriminating because diners don't have to actually attend a church or synagogue service to get a bulletin. She said area religious leaders told her that anyone can walk in a religious building and obtain a bulletin, without attending services.

Prudhomme added that she has no intention of changing the discount program, which she created to bring more traffic into her restaurant on a traditionally slow day.

"I think it's a waste, to actually give it merit," she said of the investigation of the complaint.

A Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission spokeswoman confirmed the complaint has been filed and there is an open investigation.

"He is alleging he was offered different service based on his religious creed," said the spokeswoman, Shannon Powers.

The restaurant's owners must respond to the complaint in writing within 30 days, Powers said. The commission will decide if there is probable cause to support the complaint.
 
If that is the finding, the case could proceed to a public hearing, Powers said. A decision will be rendered and a legally enforceable order will be issued.

Prudhomme said she began offering the discount a little more than a year ago. She said she has offered all kinds of discounts or incentives at various times, including some to senior citizens, early-bird diners, children under 12, people who shop at certain other Columbia businesses and even Columbia High School students.

"I thought it would be nice to do something for Sunday dinners and encourage people to come in," she said.

Wolff said he was disturbed when he found the offer on Prudhomme's website. He said was considering eating there, but never did.

"I don't consider it an earthshaking affair, but in this area in particular, we seem to have so many self-righteous religious people, so it just annoys me," he said.

Here it comes, kiddies. Put on your tinfoil hats.

Wolff has an interesting history with religion. Growing up Jewish in Germany as Hitler was coming to power, he and his family fled to Belgium in 1940, when he was 6. He was hidden in a Catholic boarding school and became a "devout Catholic," he said.

As he aged, Wolff said he came to the conclusion that no religion was better than another and that, in fact, there was no evidence of God's existence. [Emphasis mine. - F.G.]


Make that ungrateful dumbass sonofabitch of the year.


After encountering Prudhomme's policy, Wolff said he contacted the Freedom from Religion Foundation, based in Madison, Wis. The foundation sent Prudhomme two letters last year, telling her the church bulletin discount was discriminatory.

According to a posting on the foundation website, church bulletin promotions are illegal under federal law because any place of "public accommodation," such as a restaurant, grocery store or other business, may not discriminate or show favoritism based on religion.

"Church-bulletin discounts are restrictive promotional practices, which favor religious customers and deny customers who do not attend church, and nonbelievers, the right to 'full and equal' enjoyment of the restaurant, store or other business," according to the statement by the organization, which has successfully lobbied restaurants in other states to stop the practice.


The practice has been legally challenged in at least one other state. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit against a Maryland minor league baseball team, the Hagerstown Suns, which offered a church-bulletin discount. The two parties settled the dispute in 2000.

The Suns said they also would accept the bulletins of civic or nonprofit organizations for the discount, in addition to church bulletins. In turn, the ACLU agreed to drop the lawsuit.

With regard to going to a church or synagogue to obtain a bulletin, Wolff said, "I have no intention or desire to go into a church and pick up a bulletin."

He contacted the Human Relations Commission after the foundation could not persuade Prudhomme to change the discount.

"She got very snotty, saying that her pastors had told her go ahead and don't worry about it," he said.

Prudhomme said that is not true.

In fact, she said, she does not attend church, though she believes that how you handle yourself and treat others is important.

The church-bulletin discount was a marketing tool, plain and simple, not a religious outreach, she said.

"We're the kind of place where everybody can come," she said of her restaurant.
She said she's not worried about the challenge.

"It's just one of those things," she said. "We have people who say we should do everything they want, and bend over backwards."

"I'm an American. This is an independent restaurant. I can do as I wish and I'm going to continue to offer the church-bulletin discount."

Hah! That's what you think.

DAY 2151: PLUTO HELD HOSTAGE

FREE PLUTO! NO PLANET, NO PEACE!

The Astro-Nazis continue to discriminate against the cutest and coolest [literally] planet in Sol's system. How can any man of good conscience remain silent about this travesty, this sham, this mockery... dare I call it a traveshamockery?

From Space.com via Yahoo News:

Should Pluto's 5th Moon Make It a Planet?

Scientists on Wednesday (July 11) announced the discovery of a fifth moon orbiting Pluto in a major solar system find. But while many people think of moons as accessories for planets, like the Earth's moon or Jupiter's many moons, Pluto doesn't quite make the cut in the International Astronomical Union's (IAU) definition of "planet."

Despite of some determined lobbying by die-hard supporters to change its dwarf planet status, more moons around Pluto won't change its classification, experts say.

"Does it change the planetary status? Of course not," Michael Brown, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology, wrote to SPACE.com in an email. Brown's discovery of Eris, a rocky object about the size of Pluto, was a major factor in the IAU's decision to reassess exactly what constitutes a planet.

The IAU ruled that to be called a planet, an object has to meet three conditions. It must orbit the sun without being another object's satellite, it must have enough gravity to make it sphere-shaped and it must clear the area around it of other objects. But even with Pluto's five moons, it doesn't "clear the neighborhood."

Six years after the IAU's ruling, some controversy still surrounds the decision, but the official ruling is unlikely to change in response to finding more Plutonian moons. [The Moons of Pluto Revealed (Photos)]

Pluto isn't the only dwarf planet that has moons. The dwarf planets Eris and Quaoar have one, while Haumea has at least two.

No one has found any other dwarf planet that has five moons, but that may be because scientists have studied Pluto more carefully than other dwarf planets, say both Brown and Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and an advocate for classifying more objects as planets.

"It might turn out that Kuiper Belt planets commonly have significant numbers of moons," Stern told SPACE.com.

For Pluto, at least, the number of known moons may continue to grow in the near future. As scientists continue to scrutinize Pluto, looking for objects around it that may affect the New Horizons spacecraft that will arrive at Pluto in 2015, they may find even more moons.

The scientists responsible for finding out everything they can about Pluto before New Horizons' arrival have found that Pluto's moons are arranged in concentric circles around the dwarf planet. They've found moons located in what they call positions 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

"It makes you wonder if there's something at location 2 and locations 7, 8 and 9," said Mark Showalter, a planetary astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who led the team that discovered Pluto's new moon.

 

Lionel Batiste, Requiescat in pace.

The real jazzmen are passing from our midst. We mustn't let the music go too.

From AP via yahoo News:

Treme Brass Band singer Lionel Batiste dies at 81

Lionel Batiste, the vocalist, bass drummer and assistant leader of the Treme Brass Band, has died. He was 81.

Fans of the HBO series "Treme" (truh-MAY) may not have known Batiste by name, but they often saw him close up. He was the skinny guy with the big drum in the band, one of the acts regularly featured on the show.

Family and others close to Batiste were with him when he died Sunday at the Ochsner Health System's hospital just outside New Orleans, said Batiste's daughter, Karen Williams.

Batiste, known as "Uncle Lionel," had been ill for about a month, said band leader Benny Jones Sr. He said Batiste had been with the band since it was formed in 1995, but had played bass drum since childhood.

Batiste used his drum to stay afloat in the floods after Hurricane Katrina, Clarinetist Michael White said.

"The water kept rising," White said. "He couldn't swim. The water was too high for him to walk out. He saved himself by floating out on top of his bass drum."

 Amen to that, brother.

Batiste's singing voice was "somewhere between blues and old-time gospel, kind of raspy but with a nice quality to it," White said.

He recalled that in the late 1960s, Batiste wasn't playing but "second-lining" — dancing and strutting with a decorated umbrella to the band's music — and acting as grand marshal for parades and jazz funerals.

"He would bring joy and just New Orleans spirit. ... He made people feel good about themselves and about living," White said.

The "Treme 2012" bicentennial poster is a photograph of Batiste and his drum. Toni Rice of the Multicultural Tourism Network said the group was donating $10 from each poster sale to help with Batiste's medical and funeral costs.

"I'm broken-hearted," said actor Wendell Pierce, who played trombonist Antoine Batiste on "Treme."

 

"He's part of a long line of great musicians and great family. I was honored to have his name, the name of the character I played, and know that his legacy will live on," Pierce said.

Pierce said the legacy of Batiste and his style of music was evident in France, where he was working when he heard Batiste had died.

"I was walking home from a jazz club about 3 a.m. here in Paris, and on the banks of the Seine, there was a brass band playing some New Orleans music," Pierce said. "It just shows you the impact of musicians like Uncle Lionel ... his legacy will be felt not just in New Orleans but the world over."

Alfred Growe III, one of the trombone players in The Stooges Brass Band, said in true New Orleans tradition, area musicians would pay tribute to Batiste by second-lining every night leading up to his funeral.

"He was Uncle Lionel to us," said Walter "Whoadie" Ramsey, who also plays trombone and is the band's lead vocalist. "I will always respect what he did for New Orleans' music."

"Every chile, a chopped up chile".

From AP via Yahoo News comes the heartwarming story of a government bureaucrat standing up for women, except for those it's okay to butcher:

Medicaid official rules against Indiana abortion law

Indiana's decision to deny Planned Parenthood Medicaid funds because it performs abortions denies women the freedom to choose their health care providers, a federal hearing officer said.

The state had asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Chicago to reconsider its June 2011 ruling that found changes in Indiana's Medicaid plan unacceptable. But a hearing officer recommended in documents released Friday that a CMS administrator uphold the agency's initial decision.

The changes to Indiana's plan resulted from a 2011 law that would have made the state the first to deny the organization Medicaid funds for general health services, including cancer screenings. The law has been on hold while the dispute works its way through the courts.

The Indiana attorney general's office, which already is appealing a federal judge's order blocking the law, said it may also contest the panel's recommendation. The state had argued that the dispute should be decided administratively by the CMS, not in court.

"Because this is a recommendation, the Attorney General's Office has a chance to file an exception to it before the CMS administrator makes a final decision," the agency said in a statement.

Planned Parenthood of Indiana said it was gratified by the decision.

"Through its appeal, the State was continuing its attack on women's rights and attempting to restrict access to basic, lifesaving services such as Pap tests, breast exams, STD testing and treatment, and birth control," Betty Cockrum, chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said in a statement.

While Planned Parenthood officials had feared they might have to close some of the organization's 28 clinics in Indiana or suspend some services because of a loss of Medicaid funds, that has not happened so far. Cockrum has said about 9,300 women rely on Planned Parenthood for their health care.

Indiana had argued that Medicaid funds intended to help groups like Planned Parenthood provide general health care would indirectly subsidize abortions. The Hyde Amendment, a 1976 provision named after the late Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., bans all federal funds for abortion except in cases of rape, incest or when the life of the mother is at risk.

The state also said Planned Parenthood could continue to receive Medicaid funding if it established separate fiscal entities for abortion and other health care. But CMS said such an option was premature.

Hearing officer Benjamin Cohen wrote that the Indiana law violated the federal requirement that individuals must have the freedom to obtain care from any qualified provider. Restricting that choice just because a care provider also offers non-covered care isn't allowed, he wrote.

Benny! What's a good Jewish boy doing helping the babykillers?

Indiana asked the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago last August to lift U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt's June 24, 2011, preliminary injunction blocking parts of the abortion law. The court has not yet ruled.

Another federal appeals court ruled in May that Texas cannot ban Planned Parenthood from receiving state funds, at least until a lower court has a chance to hear formal arguments. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with a lower court that there's sufficient evidence the state's law preventing Planned Parenthood from participating in the Women's Health Program is unconstitutional.

 

Yesterday was a good day for comics.

 

Welcome to Benedict Roberts' Obamastan.

Once again, real science debunks the left-fascist political agenda masquerading as science.

How is it only Indians get this news story?

From ANI via Yahoo India News:

World was much warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is now

A study of semi-fossilised trees has proven that world climate was warmer in Roman and Medieval times than it is in the modern industrial age.

German researchers used data from tree rings - a key indicator of past climate - to claim the world has been on a 'long-term cooling trend' for two millennia until the global warming of the twentieth century. 

Oops! How did that bit of Heat Naziism get in there? Oh, right. How silly of me.

This cooling was punctuated by a couple of warm spells.

These are the Medieval Warm Period, which is well known, but also a period during the toga-wearing Roman times when temperatures were apparently 1 deg C warmer than now.

They say climate scientists have underestimated the very warm period during the years 21 to 50AD.

 Roman SUVs are obviously the cause.

"We found that previous estimates of historical temperatures during the Roman era and the Middle Ages were too low," the Daily Mail quoted lead author Professor Dr Jan Esper of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz as saying.

"This figure we calculated may not seem particularly significant, however it is not negligible when compared to global warming, which up to now has been less than 1 deg C," Dr Esper noted.

In general the scientists found a slow cooling of 0.6C over 2,000 years, which they attributed to changes in the Earth's orbit that took it further away from the Sun.

The finding, published in Nature Climate Change, is based on measurements stretching back to 138BC.

Yo, Heat Miser!Where's your toga?

Professor Esper's group at the Institute of Geography at JGU used tree-ring density measurements from sub-fossil pine trees originating from Finnish Lapland to produce a reconstruction reaching back to 138 BC. 

The study has for the first time precisely demonstrated that the long-term trend over the past two millennia has been towards climatic cooling.

 The bottom line, kiddies? Earth's climate has cycles that last many thousands of years and totalitarians use fear to control you.

 

The prod crackup continues apace. How could it not?

Come home to Rome, kiddies, before it is too late. Our doors are always open. [Until the fascist left nails them shut, that is. That will be proclaimed Victory of Luther Day.]

Traditionalists reject US Episcopal same-sex rite

Traditionalist bishops voiced dissent Wednesday after the Episcopal Church became the biggest faith group in the United States to approve a provisional rite for blessing same-sex unions.

- AFP via Yahoo! News 



"Presbyterian" perverts will have to wait two more years unless they want to go episcopal.

Presbyterian Church rejects gay marriage proposal

The U.S. Presbyterian Church on Friday narrowly rejected a proposal by same-sex marriage proponents for a constitutional change that would redefine marriage as a union between "two people," rather than between a woman and a man. The 338-308 vote followed nearly four hours of heated debate at the Church's General Assembly in Pittsburgh, a biennial gathering to review policy ...

- Roto-Reuters via Yahoo! News

Commies like the Slave Chinese dictators and Obama know their true enemies.

Just you wait until the Party of Blasphemy, Buggery and 'Bortion creates the "Free American Catholic Church" [as in "free"masons, kiddies]. Cardinals will be called "Obamas" and all priests will be required to be sodomites.

Remember, kiddies, thanks to that alleged Catholic John Roberts, the law of our land is now this: There is nothing the government isn't allowed to do.

From AFP via Yahoo News:

Catholic Chinese bishop disappears after proclaiming the One, True Church

A newly ordained Chinese bishop has not been seen since he quit the state-sanctioned Catholic association on the weekend, amid new tensions between Beijing and the Vatican, reports said on Tuesday.

Thaddeus Ma Daqin announced his split from the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association (CPCA) during the mass at his ordination as auxiliary bishop of Shanghai on Saturday, according to Hong Kong and Catholic media.

He told the 1,000-strong congregation that due to his new responsibilities he could no longer be a member of the CPCA, drawing loud applause from the assembly, the South China Morning Post reported.

Ma was vice-chair of the association's Shanghai branch and was a member of its national standing committee, the report said.

Ordained with the approval of the Vatican and Beijing, he was the first mainland bishop to renounce his membership of the state-run Catholic body.

The authorities immediately banned him from performing any religious duties and he did not attend his first mass as bishop on Sunday, raising fears for his well-being among the Shanghai faithful.

"I'm worried about the safety of Bishop Ma and I will pray for him," the Post quoted one member of the congregation as saying.

Catholic news service ucanews.com reported that Bishop Ma had sent a text message to priests and nuns in Shanghai saying he was "mentally and physically exhausted".

"I need a break and have made a personal retreat," he said, adding that he was at the Sheshan seminary near Shanghai.

Ma's ordination came a day after China's state-run Catholic church ordained a bishop in defiance of the Vatican.

The communist authorities dismissed protests from the Holy See as "rude and unreasonable" after the ordination of Father Yue Fusheng in the northeastern city of Harbin on Friday morning.

The Holy See had warned it deemed the consecration illegitimate and vowed to excommunicate priests who participated.

 

The state Catholic church has ordained more than 190 bishops, and many church members and clergymen support the practice, according to the State Administration for Religious Affairs.

China and the Vatican severed diplomatic ties in 1951 after the latter recognised the Nationalist Chinese government in Taiwan, a rival to the communist regime in China.

And although Beijing and the Vatican have improved relations in recent years as the Chinese Catholic population has grown, they remain at odds over which side has the authority to ordain priests.

 

 

 

It's time to shut down the taxpayer funded minor leagues for the NFL and NBA.

The Pedophile State University statutory homosexual rape scandal [You won't see those words anyplace but here.] is a symptom of the corruption of our colleges and universities by big sports money. Sports at state schools must be returned to their original purpose: extracurricular activities. [Private schools can do whatever they want, I don't care. But Notre Dame, Boston College and all the Catholic basketball powers should follow suit.] Get rid of all athletic scholarships and just say no to TV money. Schools are for educating children. Period.

If you think this crap can't get any worse, ask yourself what happened to Centre County DA Ray Gricar who was investigating Sandusky in 2005 before he disappeared. And what happened to the boy Mike McQueary saw being raped by Sandusky? [He never came forward and nobody knows his name. Except for the homosexual predator himself, that is.] The PSU brain trust told Sandusky he had been seen, but they didn't call the cops. If Sandusky is evil enough to have sodomized untold numbers of little boys for decades, is it too farfetched to believe he might have had a couple of people killed?

May God have mercy on us all.


Key quotes from Penn State child sex abuse report

Penn State leaders covered up assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky's child sexual abuse for years, disregarding the welfare of his young victims to save the reputation of the school, according to a report Thursday from former FBI director Louis Freeh. Freeh's report blames former top university officials President Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz, late head football ...

Roto-Reuters via Yahoo! News

• Ban Penn State Football! - The Daily Beast via Yahoo! News
• Penn State ignored child sex allegations: probe - AFP via Yahoo! News
• Penn State probe accuses Paterno of cover-up... - Associated Press via Yahoo! News
• all 38 news articles…

Submitted for your consideration without editorial comment.

Yeah, he oughta be convicted...

Biden tells NAACP Obama stands by his convictions

Bud Selig puts down his crackpipe [Ooo! How '90's!] long enough to take credit for the Pirates' success.

From Rob Biertempfel of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

Selig weighs in on Bucs' recent success

For the second year in a row, the Pirates are in the thick of the NL Central race as the season reaches its midpoint. 

The players, coaches, front office and ownership share the credit for the franchise’s changing fortunes.

Bud Selig would like to take a bow, too.

On Monday, the commissioner said changes to baseball’s economic landscape during his tenure have given Pirates fans reason for optimism.

“If this was still the late ‘90s, this couldn’t happen,” Selig said. “But it is happening today. 

“The Pirates are really improved and really coming on. It’s a manifestation of all the economic changes we’ve made — and all for the better, I might add.”

Selig was named acting commissioner in 1992 and was officially appointed to the post six years later. 

Since then, Major League Baseball’s revenues have increased 400 percent and its attendance figures have reached all-time highs. 

Selig’s most significant move was to implement revenue sharing, which last year led to a transfer of $400 million from larger- to smaller-revenue clubs.

According to documents leaked to the Associated Press in 2010, the Pirates got $34.4 million in 2007 and $32.1 million in 2008 from the revenue-sharing plan.

In honor of Ray Bradbury, Fyodor presents images of Mars.

Images courtesy of NASA via Yahoo News.

Raymond Douglas Bradbury, Requiescat in pace.

Mr. Bradbury was one of only two "science fiction writers" worth reading [Jules Verne, obviously.] because he was a writer. The futuristic fantasy component of his work was secondary to communicating something universal out of the personal, which is the job of a real writer. 

Below is part of The Old Gray Whore's obituary. Save yourself some time [and brain cells] by reading some of Mr. Bradbury's wonderful, edifying, and entertaining words instead.

Ray Bradbury, Science Fiction Master, Dies at 91

...Though his books became a staple of high school and college English courses, Mr. Bradbury himself disdained formal education. He went so far as to attribute his success as a writer to his never having gone to college. 

Instead, he read everything he could get his hands on: Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway . He paid homage to them in 1971 in the essay “How Instead of Being Educated in College, I Was Graduated From Libraries.” (Late in life he took an active role in fund-raising efforts for public libraries in Southern California.) 

Mr. Bradbury referred to himself as an “idea writer,” by which he meant something quite different from erudite or scholarly. “I have fun with ideas; I play with them,” he said. “ I’m not a serious person, and I don’t like serious people. I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.” 

He added, “My goal is to entertain myself and others.” 

 Amen to all that, brother.

He described his method of composition as “word association,” often triggered by a favorite line of poetry. 

Mr. Bradbury’s passion for books found expression in his dystopian novel “Fahrenheit 451,” published in 1953. But he drew his primary inspiration from his childhood. He boasted that he had total recall of his earliest years, including the moment of his birth. Readers had no reason to doubt him. As for the protagonists of his stories, no matter how far they journeyed from home, they learned that they could never escape the past. 

 In his best stories and in his autobiographical novel, “Dandelion Wine” (1957), he gave voice to both the joys and fears of childhood, as well as its wonders. 

“Dandelion Wine” begins before dawn on the first day of summer. From a window, Douglas Spaulding, 12, looks out upon his town, “covered over with darkness and at ease in bed.” He has a task to perform. 

“One night each week he was allowed to leave his father, his mother, and his younger brother Tom asleep in their small house next door and run here, up the dark spiral stairs to his grandparents’ cupola,” Mr. Bradbury writes, “and in this sorcerer’s tower sleep with thunders and visions, to wake before the crystal jingle of milk bottles and perform his ritual magic. 

“He stood at the open window in the dark, took a deep breath and exhaled. The streetlights, like candles on a black cake, went out. He exhaled again and again and the stars began to vanish.” 

Now he begins to point his finger — “There, and there. Now over here, and here ...” — and lights come on, and the town begins to stir. 

“Clock alarms tinkled faintly. The courthouse clock boomed. Birds leaped from trees like a net thrown by his hand, singing. Douglas, conducting an orchestra, pointed to the eastern sky. 

“The sun began to rise. 

“He folded his arms and smiled a magician’s smile. Yes, sir, he thought, everyone jumps, everyone runs when I yell. It’ll be a fine season. 

“He gave the town a last snap of his fingers. 

 

“Doors slammed open; people stepped out.

“Summer 1928 began.” 

Raymond Douglas Bradbury was born Aug. 22, 1920, in Waukegan, Ill., a small city whose Norman Rockwellesque charms he later reprised in his depiction of the fictional Green Town in “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” and in the fatally alluring fantasies of the astronauts in “The Martian Chronicles.” His father, Leonard, a lineman with the electric company, numbered among his ancestors a woman who was tried as a witch in Salem, Mass. 

An unathletic child who suffered from bad dreams, he relished the tales of the Brothers Grimm and the Oz stories of L. Frank Baum, which his mother, the former Esther Moberg, read to him. An aunt, Neva Bradbury, took him to his first stage plays, dressed him in monster costumes for Halloween and introduced him to Poe’s stories. He discovered the science fiction pulps and began collecting the comic-strip adventures of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. The impetus to become a writer was supplied by a carnival magician named Mr. Electrico, who engaged the boy, then 12, in a conversation that touched on immortality. 

In 1934 young Ray, his parents and his older brother, Leonard, moved to Los Angeles. (Another brother and a sister had died young.) Ray became a movie buff, sneaking into theaters as often as nine times a week by his count. Encouraged by a high school English teacher and the professional writers he met at the Los Angeles chapter of the Science Fiction League, he began an enduring routine of turning out at least a thousand words a day on his typewriter. 

 

His first big success came in 1947 with the short story “Homecoming,” narrated by a boy who feels like an outsider at a family reunion of witches, vampires and werewolves because he lacks supernatural powers. The story, plucked from the pile of unsolicited manuscripts at Mademoiselle by a young editor named Truman Capote, earned Mr. Bradbury an O. Henry Award as one of the best American short stories of the year. 

With 26 other stories in a similar vein, “Homecoming” appeared in Mr. Bradbury’s first book, “Dark Carnival,” published by a small specialty press in 1947. That same year he married Marguerite Susan McClure, whom he had met in a Los Angeles bookstore. 

Having written himself “down out of the attic,” as he later put it, Mr. Bradbury focused on science fiction. In a burst of creativity from 1946 to 1950, he produced most of the stories later collected in “The Martian Chronicles” and “The Illustrated Man” and the novella that formed the basis of “Fahrenheit 451.” 

While science fiction purists complained about Mr. Bradbury’s cavalier attitude toward scientific facts — he gave his fictional Mars an impossibly breathable atmosphere — the literary establishment waxed enthusiastic. The novelist Christopher Isherwood greeted Mr. Bradbury as “a very great and unusual talent,” and one of Mr. Bradbury’s personal heroes, Aldous Huxley, hailed him as a poet. In 1954, the National Institute of Arts and Letters honored Mr. Bradbury for “his contributions to American literature,” in particular the novel “Fahrenheit 451.” 

 

“The Martian Chronicles” was pieced together from 26 stories, only a few of which were written with the book in mind. The patchwork narrative spans the years 1999 to 2026, depicting a series of expeditions to Mars and their aftermath. The native Martians, who can read minds, resist the early arrivals from Earth, but are finally no match for them and their advanced technology as the humans proceed to destroy the remains of an ancient civilization. 

Parallels to the fate of American Indian cultures are pushed to the point of parody; the Martians are finally wiped out by an epidemic of chickenpox. When nuclear war destroys Earth, the descendants of the human colonists realize that they have become the Martians, with a second chance to create a just society. 

“Fahrenheit 451” is perhaps his most successful book-length narrative. An indictment of authoritarianism, it portrays a book-burning America of the near future, its central character a so-called fireman, whose job is to light the bonfires. (The title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites.) Some critics compared it favorably to George Orwell’s “1984.” François Truffaut adapted the book for a well-received movie in 1966 starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. As Mr. Bradbury’s reputation grew, he found new outlets for his talents. He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s 1956 film version of “Moby-Dick,” scripts for the television series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” and collections of poetry and plays.

In the mid-1980s he was the on-camera host of “Ray Bradbury Theater,” a cable series that featured dramatizations of his short stories. 

 

While Mr. Bradbury championed the space program as an adventure that humanity dared not shirk, he was content to restrict his own adventures to the realm of imagination. He lived in the same house in Los Angeles for more than 5o years, rearing four daughters with his wife, Marguerite, who died in 2003. For many years he refused to travel by plane, preferring trains, and he never learned to drive. 

In 2004, President George W. Bush and the first lady, Laura Bush, presented Mr. Bradbury with the National Medal of Arts. Mr. Bradbury is survived by his daughters, Susan Nixon, Ramona Ostergen, Bettina Karapetian and Alexandra Bradbury, and eight grandchildren. 

Though the sedentary writing life appealed to him most, he was not reclusive. He developed a flair for public speaking and was widely sought after on the national lecture circuit. There he talked about his struggle to reconcile his mixed feelings about modern life, a theme that animated much of his fiction and won him a large and sympathetic audience. 

And he talked about the future, perhaps his favorite subject, describing how it both attracted and repelled him, leaving him filled with apprehension and hope.