Oscar Winners!

A 2012 survey conducted by the Los Angeles Times found Oscar voters are 94 percent white and 76 percent male, and the average age is 63 years old.

  Amy Goodman

So, really…what can an Oscar really mean to anyone?

Is This Picture Worth a Thousand Words?

So he's white?  Really, coloring aside, that's a pretty crap painting for an official office, don't you think?  This doesn't pass the smell test.

Ah...here's why....

Yeah, much more accurate.  :s

At least it's a more official-looking painting. 

Lighting, or a cheap computer program.

The governor’s communications director Michael Reed told POLITICO in an email, “Liberals are fixated on race. An MSNBC commentator recently accused the Governor of ‘trying to scrub some of the brown off his skin,’ and now liberal bloggers are using a portrait painted and loaned to our office by a constituent to make the same point.”

  Politico

Except it wasn’t liberals who provided the official artist with the photo to be used, nor liberals who approved the final work.

Outrageous, But Honest

Leaving aside the obvious issue of the thousands of people the US has burned alive with napalm, white phosphorous and drones...

And, seriously, Jordan?  IS could care less if Jordan executes a prisoner. In fact, I'd say it plays right into their goals.  Jordan must be doing it to impress the American public.

Will Obama denounce Jordan's revenge killing?  He should.  But if he does, he's being hypocritical again, as the entire "War on Terror" is revenge killing.  As was 9/11, and we go on and on ad infinitum.  Two hundred thousand years (or six thousand if you're a fundamentalist) and humans are really quite primitive still.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Suffer, People, Suffer

One of the most important provisions of the Affordable Care Act is the expansion of health coverage to low-income families through the Medicaid program. Here are basic facts about where states stand on Medicaid expansion.

  FamiliesUSA

The United States government continues to demand intellectual property provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) that will limit access to medicines for at least half a billion people, said the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) on Monday as negotiators continued another round of secret meetings in New York.

“MSF and many others have repeatedly voiced concerns that the TPP is a looming disaster for people who rely on access to affordable generic medicines, both internationally and in the United States,” said Rohit Malpani, director of policy and analysis at the MSF Access Campaign. “Despite this outcry, the US continues to work behind closed doors, without any input from the public, experts, or elected officials, to aggressively push for intellectual property provisions that put the profits of pharmaceutical companies ahead of people’s health.”

  Truth Out

Suffering is good for the soul, eh?

Best of Luck to Ray McGovern

Ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern goes on trial today.

Recap:

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who was arrested by New York City police [in October 2014] to prevent him from attending a speech by retired Gen. and ex-CIA Director David Petraeus, told me the day before that he was planning to ask a question during the Q-and-A.

[...]

But the 75-year-old McGovern was blocked from entering the event at the 92nd Street Y, was roughly put under arrest, and was held overnight in jail. He described his ordeal in an interview with RT, saying “I was warned as soon as I got to the ticket-taker, ‘Ray, you’re not welcome here.’”

[...]

He was hauled off to a local precinct and charged with resisting arrest, criminal trespass and disorderly conduct.

[...]

McGovern, who was suffering from a shoulder injury, said he was caused sharp pain by being forcefully handcuffed. “If you’ve seen the footage, you can see me screaming in pain as they try to pin my left wrist around behind my back,” McGovern told RT.

  Robert Parry

Yesterday, Ray penned a letter to General Petraeus. It is both interesting and enlightening. I doubt Petraeus read it. But you can.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Welcome Home, John Kiriakou

Only man to serve time for US government torture - the whistleblower.

 After two years in prison, on house arrest now until August.

 

Kiriakou had been awarded "10 Exceptional Performance Awards, a Sustained Superior performance Award, the Counterterrorism Service Medal, and the State Department's Meritorious Honor Award" (Wikipedia) by the CIA.  

Who Are You Going to Believe?

In highly unusual testimony inside the federal supermax prison, [...] former operative for Al Qaeda [Zacarias Moussaoui]has described prominent members of Saudi Arabia’s royal family as major donors to the terrorist network in the late 1990s and claimed that he discussed a plan to shoot down Air Force One with a Stinger missile with a staff member at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

[...]

In a statement Monday night, the Saudi Embassy said [...] “Moussaoui is a deranged criminal whose own lawyers presented evidence that he was mentally incompetent. [...] His words have no credibility.”

  NYT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Amend the Dictionary

The prominent Anonymous “hacktivist” Jeremy Hammond, who participated in some of the hacking collective’s most audacious cyber acts, was placed by the FBI on a terrorism watchlist, the Daily Dot reported on Monday.

The internet news website obtained a leaked document from the New York state division of criminal justice services that shows Hammond was classified as a “possible terrorist organisation member”. The document is marked “destroy after use” and includes the instruction: “Do not advise this individual that they are on a terrorist watchlist.”

  Guardian

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Two Steps Back

For the second year in a row, Republicans, anxious to kill off the "war on women" narrative, appointed a woman to give the official response to the State of the Union address. But while Sen. Joni Ernst got to make a speech on TV, don't look for her to be heading up any Senate committees this year. As the New York Times reports, the Republican takeover of the Senate means that far fewer women will be in powerful committee chair positions.

Under Democrats, women held nine committee chairs and under Republicans, they will only have two.

  Slate

Because Republican women know that men are the natural and God-appointed leaders.  If God had wanted women to run things, he'd have made Eve first.  :s

Business As Usual

David Baker reports for SF Gate that “Oil companies in drought-ravaged California have, for years, pumped wastewater from their operations into aquifers that had been clean enough for people to drink. They did it with explicit permission from state regulators, who were supposed to protect the increasingly strained groundwater supplies from contamination.”

  Bill Moyers

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.