Fox invited Anti-Islam commentator Frank Gaffney to smear President Obama with "signaling surrender" to terrorists in his May 23 speech, ignoring Obama's direct references to the ongoing threat of terrorism and calls for increased vigilance in the face of "more localized threats." On May 23, Obama appeared at the National Defense University to speak about ongoing counterterrorism efforts, the use of drone strikes overseas, and his plan to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Two days later, Fox hosted Center for Security Policy (CSP) founder Frank Gaffney, asking him why he felt "the president's speech was ill-advised and coming at an inappropriate time." In response, Gaffney falsely suggested that Obama had signaled a willingness to surrender, while calling for increased recognition of wha...

Last year Obama beat Romney in New Jersey 2,117,175 (58%) to 1,472,709 (41%). In 2008 he had beaten McCain with 57%. Yesterday Obama supporters in the Beltway media were touting how the Republican plans to sabotage the Affordable Care Act could well backfire on GOP governors and legislators who are obstructing it. Jonathan Cohn was all over the success in California, where the ACA is driving the cost of health care down. "Based on the premiums that insurers have submitted for final regulatory approval," he wrote, "the majority of Californians buying coverage on the state's new insurance exchange will be paying less-- in many cases, far less-- than they would pay for equivalent coverage today... Unfortunately, millions of uninsured and under-insured Americans live in places like Florida and...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 25, 2013 11:56 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetUS Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Saturday called for the “scourge” of sexual assaults within the military to be “stamped out,” in a speech at the West Point military academy in New York. Speaking at a graduation ceremony for newly commissioned officers, the Pentagon chief emphasized it would be their responsibility as rising leaders to “bring the best out” of themselves and their fellow soldiers. “Sexual harassment and s...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 25, 2013 11:59 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetOscar-winning director Roman Polanski on Saturday blamed birth control pills for “masculinising” women, as he premiered what he called a satire on sexism. Polanski unveiled “Venus in Fur” starring his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, which was the last movie in competition to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Asked by a reporter how his views of women had changed over time, the filmmaker said he thought feminism and advances...

By Eric W. DolanSaturday, May 25, 2013 12:23 EDT...

By Vanessa Thorpe, The ObserverSaturday, May 25, 2013 12:35 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetGoogle’s indexing of extremist websites helps police track their activity and will continue, the company’s chief told an audience at the Hay festival. Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, was asked to act to take down terrorist-sympathising websites from his search engines during a question and answer session at the literary festival on Saturday. This weekend MPs, including the Labour politician Paul Flynn, c...

By Eric W. DolanSaturday, May 25, 2013 14:34 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet The American Civil Liberties Union this week warned school officials in Ohio not to adopt policies that advanced creationism in the classroom. “It’s the job of families, not public schools to educate children on spiritual values,” said ACLU of Ohio staff attorney Drew Dennis. “It is irresponsible for schools to repeatedly waste resources designing these types of unconstitutional policies.” The Springboro Community City School Di...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 25, 2013 14:41 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetCyber hackers attacked several official Saudi websites on Saturday, posting an Algerian flag on their homepages that later vanished, local media reported. The website of the information ministry was among the hacked sites, according to state news broadcaster Al-Ekhbariya and newspapers. The websites of Al-Ekhbariya itself, along with sports channel Al-Riyadiyah, Channel One and Quran Radio, as well as King Fahd Cultural Cen...

By Ed Vulliamy, The ObserverSaturday, May 25, 2013 14:46 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetDavid Simon surged into the American mainstream with a bleak vision of the devastation wrought by drugs on his home town of Baltimore – The Wire, hailed by many as the greatest television drama of all time. But what keeps him there is his apocalyptic and unrelenting heresy over the failed “war on drugs”, the multibillion-dollar worldwide crusade launched by President Richard Nixon in 1971. When Simon brought that heres...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 25, 2013 15:33 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetA documentary on relatives wiped out in the Khmer Rouge’s tyrannical grip on Cambodia in the 1970s earned Cambodian-French director Rithy Panh a major prize at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. Entitled “L’Image Manquante” — “The Missing Picture” in English — the 95-minute work earned the top award in the festival’s “Un Certain Regard” category, which showcases films by emerging directors. Panh, 49, has been previously ...

By Arturo GarciaSaturday, May 25, 2013 16:51 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet A foreclosure eviction in Tampa, Florida yielded a grisly find for authorities on Thursday, as they found not only a squatter on the property, but dozens of dead and diseased cats. WPEC-TV reported on Saturday that 66-year-old James Hopkins was discovered on the premises, which belonged to another person. Besides Hopkins, there were dozens of sick cats around the house, and at least a dozen more stashed away in a freezer. Accord...

By Agence France-PresseSaturday, May 25, 2013 17:00 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetThe world’s top chefs say it’s only a matter of time before Latin America, home to Brazil’s black bean stew “feijoada,” Peru’s refreshing raw fish “ceviche” and Mexico’s street tacos, cooks its way into gastronomy’s elite. Spanish pastry king Jordi Roca and Danish chef Rene Redzepi, who runs the kitchen of Copenhagen’s famed Noma restaurant, praised the growing recognition of the region’s diverse cuisine. “It’s a question o...

Open Thread Plus 400 PPM Cartoon | ThinkProgress   Original linkOriginal author: Joe Romm

(Credit: First Response) While pregnant teens are being shamed for making bad choices in the US, a new ad campaign in Britain is tackling the other side of the spectrum with an arresting image of a pregnant old woman. The campaign, sponsored by the pregnancy testing company First Response, purports to warn young women that their childbearing years are numbered. The average British woman bears her first child at age 30, 5 years later than American women. In the name of “provok[ing] a debate about how old is too old to have a baby,” First Response Get Britain Fertile had make-up artists transform 45-year-old British TV presenter Kate Garraway into a cartoonishly ancient-looking pregnant woman. Yet even as First Response claims there is a lack of awareness about the female biological clock, t...

While the overall warming is about 0.16°C per decade, there are three ten-year periods where there was a hiatus in warming, as the graph above shows, from 1977 to 1986, from 1987 to 1996, and from 2001 to 2012. But at each end of these periods there were big jumps. We find exactly the same sort of flat periods in climate model projections, lasting easily up to 15 years in length. by Kevin Trenberth via The Conversation Has global warming stalled? This question is increasingly being asked because the local weather seems cool and wet, or because the global mean temperature is not increasing at its earlier rate or the long-term rate expected from climate model projections. The answer depends a lot on what one means by “global warming.” For some it is equated to the “global mean temperature.” ...

(Source: Yahoo) Facebook rejected an ad this week that disputed scientifically unsound claims that abortion can cause higher instances of breast cancer, arguing that the advertisement violated the company’s guidelines “by advertising adult products or services, including toys, videos, or sexual enhancement products.” The news comes as a coalition of sexual violence prevention and women’s equality organizations are pressuring Facebook to take a stronger stance in favor of women’s health and crackdown against messages that “trivialize or glorify” violence against women. “I’m a big supporter of that campaign,” Michelle Kinsey Bruns, the online manager of Women’s Media Center and the creator of the ad, told ThinkProgress in a telephone interview on Saturday morning. The ad linked to a page on...

At times, the meeting of the Board of Education of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) on Wednesday took on the air of a mass mock trial; at others, it seemed like a public execution. On the dock were 53 elementary schools and one high school charged with underutilization of space and underperformance. The prosecutor—CPS superintendent Barbara Byrd-Bennett—charged that those crimes led to an even more grave offense: unbalancing the budget. The proposed punishment?  Off with their heads, or rather, shut their doors and merge them with other schools in the largest single closing of urban public schools in U.S. history. As they had done in rounds of community public hearings leading up to this hearing, parents, community leaders, city council members, teachers union leaders and teachers decri...

“I work at Quick Pita in the food court of the Ronald Reagan Building. I work nearly 12 hours every day serving lunch to the thousands of people who work in the building. But I am not here to tell you how hard I work. I am here to tell you that my employer does not follow the law,” testified Antonio Vanegas before a hearing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus yesterday.   Vanegas is one of 100,000 low-wage workers in the Washington, DC area, according to Good Jobs Nation, many of whom are employed by federal contractors or in federally owned buildings like Union Station, the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, and the Ronald Reagan Building. He and about 100 of his colleagues went on a one-day strike yesterday in order to draw attention to their low pay. Despite provision...

A time-honored tactic of conservative lawmakers is to “starve the beast”by defunding government programs. In the case of food stamps—the quintessential whipping boy for budget hawks—they’re going a step further by trying to starve actual people.   The House of Representatives and Senate have proposed the United States “tighten our belts” by slashing billions of dollars from poor people’s food budgets. The main mechanism for shrinking the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funding is the removal of “categorical eligibility.” Basically, most states have used this policy to streamline enrollment: Families are made eligible for food stamps based on their receipt of other benefits, such as housing or childcare subsidies. That often means broadening eligibility for working-p...

Tweet The recent imbroglio involving the IRS allegedly targeting conservative groups for investigation is not the first time the agency has been accused of politicizing its tax assessments—and, as it almost goes without saying, it hasn’t always been right-leaning groups who have drawn its scrutiny. A major scandal erupted in 1951 after it was discovered that individual IRS agents were being routinely bribed into ruling in favor of certain, typically affluent, taxpayers. A Nation article in early 1952 titled “Internal Confusion in Internal Revenue,” by Norman Redlich, argued that IRS scandals “will exist as long as personal judgments determine how much money individuals and corporations shall pay to the Federal Treasury each year.” Moreover, Redlich a...

Tweet Simple concept: people who consume food should have information about what’s in their food. And if foods contain genetically modified organisms, consumers surely have a right to know. Who could disagree? Most senators, that’s who. While 64 countries around the world require labeling of foods with genetically engineered ingredients, while the American Public Health Association and the American Nurses Association have passed resolutions supporting this sort of labeling in the U.S., the Senate voted 71-27 to keep Americans in the dark. U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed an amendment to the federal farm bill that would have allowed states to require clear labels on any food or beverage containing ingredients that have been genetically modified.  ...

Lord Baden-Powell, inventor of the Boy Scouts: Would you entrust your burgeoning lad to this man? Would you want your burgeoning lad anywhere near this man?"President Obama praised the Boy Scouts of America's decision to lift its ban on openly gay youth, but added he hopes the organization will take further action to allow openly gay Scout leaders, according to the White House." "Allowing gay scouts but not adult scout leaders . . . was a step backward, because it reinforced the most vile stereotypes and misconceptions deliberately peddled by anti-gay activists." by KenThe president's take on yesterday's vote by the Boy Scouts of America overturning the ban on membership by openly gay boys but maintaining the ban on openly gay Scout leaders, is the moderate middle-of-the-road position enun...

The Seraphim LP issue of the c1961 Colin Davis disc of Mozart overtures I keep going on about, as in this July 2012 previewby KenI've spent a lot of time and effort trying to find a path into Mozart's two mature efforts to resurrect the opera seria, Ideomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito. Though the operas themselves remain for me massive expenditures of genius effort which came to not a whole lot, I love both overtures with an abiding passion. What's more, in the case of the Clemenza Overture in particular, when I finally saw the opera in the flesh for the first time, I was surprised by how effective a theatrical overture it was. If only what followed had lived up to that promise.MOZART: Idomeneo, K. 366: OvertureMOZART: La Clemenza di Tito, K. 621: OvertureRoyal Philharmonic Orchestra, Colin ...

Rep. Mike McIntyre (D-NC) told North Carolina television station WECT that he's unhappy the Boy Scouts of America lifted its ban on gay youth. "I'm very disappointed," McIntyre said. "I know my church has a long history of producing Eagle Scouts including my son and I know that many organizations that sponsor scouting are quite concerned about that and did not feel like it was an appropriate step. I know I'm concerned about it and did not think it was an appropriate step." McIntyre is a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, which is identified on its website as a group of "fiscally conservative Democrats that are deeply committed to the financial stability and national security of the United States and dedicated to finding bipartisan solutions to the nation's biggest challenges." The congres...

By Agence France-PresseFriday, May 24, 2013 21:00 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetWhen Michael Adebolajo was filmed clutching the bloodied knives he apparently used to butcher a soldier, Britons were chilled by the strong London accent in which he spoke of his Islamist motives. How could one of their own have become so radicalised? A picture is slowly emerging of the 28-year-old, one of two men of Nigerian descent who were shot by police shortly after soldier Lee Rigby was hacked to death on a London stree...

By Arturo GarciaFriday, May 24, 2013 21:14 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet An activist whose two-year prison sentence is the focus of a new documentary outlined the difference between “climate justice” and environmentalism for Bill Moyers on Friday. “We don’t want Walmart to be a greener, corporate citizen,” Tim DeChristopher said on Moyers & Company. “We want Walmart to be subservient to human interests. We don’t think corporations should be masters of men. And you know, that’s really, that’s the di...

By Agence France-PresseFriday, May 24, 2013 21:45 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetA Zambian truck driver who was forced to kick, bite and stab his way from the clutches of a giant python, said Friday he was lucky to be alive. Kelvin Katoka, 25, unknowingly ran into the giant snake, while driving his excavator in the bush at a copper mine in north western Zambia. “Within no time, the python was all over my body and it then threw me on the ground,” he told AFP by phone from his hospital bed, where he has bee...

By Arturo GarciaFriday, May 24, 2013 22:12 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet The stars of the classic Pac-Man video game series get a noir makeover in a new video parody by animator Chris Weller. “Goodnight Sweet Pakman” begins with a sweet moment between Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man before the stakes are dramatically raised, as Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde — now not just floating beasties but hitghosts armed to the (metaphorical) teeth — come tearing down their block guns a-blazing, literally. Of course, the c...

By Agence France-PresseFriday, May 24, 2013 22:30 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweetAn explosive comparison made by a liberal Russian politician between Stalin’s agents and Hitler’s secret police has provoked a storm of abusive criticism in Russia that has been tinged by anti-Semitism. The controversy erupted when anti-Kremlin liberal politician Leonid Gozman, who is himself Jewish, criticised a television series aired on the May 9 World War II victory day about Stalin’s counter-intelligence police Smersh. G...

By The Christian Science MonitorFriday, May 24, 2013 22:47 EDT   Like Raw Story on FacebookTweet[Image by Ryan Somma via Flickr Creative Commons]     ...