To The Bunkers!

By Juanita Jean

There are several things that scare the crap outta me before I’ve even had my first cup of coffee in the morning, and of those things, this is #1.

This headline. This one right here. In the morning newspaper.

On the truthfulness side, it most certainly would have to be God calling him because nobody else sure the hell is.

While most of you were ignoring him, I have been keeping an eye on Tom ever since he got indicted, mainly because he lives down the road from me and until they prove that sleazy is not contagious, I am keeping my distance.

Once he left Congress, Tom tried one scheme after another to make money. Most of them would make a monthly posting on his website before the scheme flopped and crashed, until he finally got down to just begging money off a damn street corner. Click the little one to see the big one.

The guy has quit everything he ever tried – the exterminating business, congress, Dancing With the Stars, the book writing circuit … he’s a whiner and wimp and that’s the damn truth.

In case you were wondering, Tom DeLay hasn’t found Jesus. It’s just his sideshow. He says Jesus tells him to do things and then he doesn’t have to accept responsibility when he falls on his face.

Also, it sounds a whole lot better than “my Momma said I have to ….”

So now he’s leading a revolution. Thank you, Pancho Villa.

Former Texas congressman Tom DeLay called on members of the Texas Patriot Tea Party on Tuesday night to join him in a revolution for the Constitution, to “shut down” every part of federal government that is not specifically based on the Constitution.

“It’s time for a constitutional renewal, a constitutional revival,” DeLay said in Burleson, adding that this revival is inherently linked to a “spiritual awakening” he sees happening across the country. He said conservatives have allowed “the left to intimidate us, cut off our heads, put us in prison.”

Holy crap, Dude, that was you. You led the conservatives. You’re late to the Tea Party game. You invented the politics of personal destruction and now you’re leading a revolution against it? Don’t you get dizzy sometime?

And here’s the part that makes me giggle like a little girl.

“It’s time for a revolution,” DeLay said. “I am not advocating for revolution in the streets. But if that’s what it takes … ”

Oh Tom, oh Honey, you’re 5′ 4″, chubby, 67 years old, balding, and have had a face lift or two. Just think how fabulous you’re gonna look taking it to the streets.

Plus, Tom was in Burleson, Texas, making this speech.

I go to Burleson every now and then because I like being the youngest person in town. Burleson is 95.62 white and the median income for a family is $50,432. Yeah, for sure, those people need to be supporting the Tea Party.

Tom has a plan to gain control of the government by having the Tea Party win the House because “the House controls the purse strings.” He also warned them to protect Ted Cruz.

“You will lose Ted Cruz. They will destroy him if you don’t support him,” DeLay warned.

No, no, no, Darlin’, we’re sitting on our hands because Ted Cruz is doing a perfectly competent job of destroying himself.

So the bottom line is that Tom DeLay has a new gig – he wants to make money by selling God and the Constitution. Break a leg, Tom.

Oh, and Tom compares his years of being indicted and convicted to being like Moses in the wilderness. He better watch that Messiah Complex because I think Ted Cruz has the third coast distribution rights on it.

Tom, while you were away, our cow died. So we won’t be needing your bull anymore.

Wackos intend to cage themselves in Idaho

Posted by Jim Hightower

Listen to this Commentary

I haven't heard such enthusiastic, downright raucous applause since Texas Gov. "Oops" Perry suggested in 2009 that his state just might withdraw from the union. Unfortunately for him, the applauders were not Texans, but the people of the other 49 states.

This year, though, Idaho is the recipient of hip-hip-hoorays from across the country. Why? Because it has been selected as the site of an extraordinary new town to be named "III Citadel." This will be a walled, heavily-fortified, one-square-mile settlement of some 7,000 armed & angry, ideologically-pure, anti-government extremists drawn from cities, towns and gopher holes all across America. Lucky you, Idaho!

Founder and apocalyptic visionary Christian Allen Kerodin, says the Roman numeral III in the name of his Citadel scheme represents what he calls the "3 percenters" – the percentage of Americans who are superpatriot survivalists capable of withstanding the coming economic doomsday and social upheaval. He says that, once established, he and his fellow Citadellians will take it upon themselves to restore America to Americans:

"The Southwest will be purged of Latinos," he explains, and "Enclaves of Muslims such as in Detroit will be culled… by fed-up Americans looking for some payback." In Kerodin's barricaded utopia, everyone older than 13 "must possess an AR-15 assault rifle, five magazines, and 1,000 rounds of ammunition." In an odd comparison, he declares that his last bastion of liberty will be like Disneyland – "a walled, gated private property." Yeah – only Goofyer.

Of course, the III in the Citadel's name could also refer to Kerodin's three felony convictions.

Nonetheless, he's doing America a favor if he can actually bring 7,000 like-minded zealots into his compound. Once they're inside, we can sneak up and lock the gates from the outside.

"7,000 Gun-Loving "Patriots" Living in an Walled Citadel Built Around an Arms Factory in Idaho - What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" www.alternet.org , August 15, 2013.

GOP official ousted for 'lazy blacks' comment on 'The Daily Show'

By Steve Benen

 

Following up on Rachel’s opening segment from last night, Don Yelton, a Republican Party official in North Carolina, thought it’d be a good idea to appear on “The Daily Show” and defend his party’s new voter-suppression law. It didn’t turn out well for him or the state GOP.

 

If you missed the interview, it’s a doozy. Yelton, who’s practically a caricature of himself, told Aasif Mandvi the new state voting law is intended to tilt elections in Republicans’ favor, used the “n” word, referenced “lazy black people that wants the government to give them everything,” and said, in all seriousness, that one of his “best friends is black.”

 

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The response came quickly.

A Buncombe County Republican precinct chairman has been asked to resign after making “offensive” comments on “The Daily Show.”

 

Buncombe GOP Chairman Henry Mitchell said Don Yelton officially stepped down from his position Thursday.

 

Mitchell called the remarks “offensive, uniformed and unacceptable of any member within the Republican Party.”

Though Yelton resigned from his post, he told a local television station that he stands by his comments. “This is being picked up in Raleigh, across the state,” he told WLOS in Asheville. “They’re trying to say, ‘Look at this guy. He’s racist.’ The whole question isn’t about racism.”

 

The controversy coincides with a new effort, launched just this week, in which the North Carolina Republican Party is trying to expand its outreach to the African-American community.

 

But in the larger context, there’s a more systemic issue for Republicans to come to terms with. Republicans are, after all, the party of birthers. They’re the party of Rep. Steve “Cantaloupe” King and Gov. Paul “Kiss My Butt” LePage. It was Republican Don Young who talked about “wetbacks” in March, and it was Republican Sarah Palin who talked about “shuck and jive” during the 2012 campaign.

 

It’s also, of course, the party that’s spearheading voter-suppression campaigns in states nationwide, in the most sweeping assault on voting rights since the Jim Crow era.

 

Earlier this year, Colin Powell, himself a Republican, lamented the “dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,” featuring GOP voices who “still sort of look down on minorities.”

 

It’s a problem that’s not going away.

Watch the impressive first trailer for Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The first glimpse of Marvel's upcoming blockbuster offers a surprising, political twist on the superhero genre

By Scott Meslow

With Thor: The Dark World just weeks away from release, Marvel has already started laying the groundwork for the next entry in its extended superhero universe, Captain America: The Winter Soldier. And the impressive first trailer offers a glimpse of a film that looks like the studio's most ambitious and adult offering to date. 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier is set after the events of both the first Captain America and The Avengers, as the hero adjusts to life in the modern day after spending over 50 years frozen in the Arctic before being thawed out. "I joined S.H.I.E.L.D. to protect people," says Captain America (Chris Evans) in the film's trailer. "To build a better world sometimes means tearing the old one down. And that makes enemies," replies Robert Redford's Alexander Pierce, making his debut in the Marvel universe.

Anyone who's sorry to see Captain America going solo again after his time with The Avengers will also spot a few welcome familiar faces, including Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), who has nearly as large a role as Captain America himself in the trailer.

If the presence of Robert Redford wasn't enough of a tip-off, the trailer makes it clear that Captain America: The Winter Soldier will take a more staunchly political angle than most of the other Marvel franchises. As a man who grew up in the 1930's and 1940's, Captain America is having a difficult time adjusting to a world where the U.S. government is asking its agents to eliminate potential threats before they happen. 

A big-budget superhero movie with the political implications of Showtime's Homeland? If Marvel can actually pull it off, Captain America: The Winter Soldier could well turn out to be the best, brainiest superhero blockbuster it has ever released.

Rose and Time Returns to Ouya

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published Thursday, 24 October 2013

Rose and Time, created by indie developer Sophie Houlden.

Rose and Time has returned to the Ouya store after its creator accepted the changes made to the controversial Free the Games fund.

In September indie developer Sophie Houlden pulled her time-travel stealth game from the Ouya marketplace over Ouya boss Julie Uhrman's lack of action.

Under its $1 million Free the Games Fund, Ouya promised to match contributions to successful Kickstarter games built for the micro-console. At the time the conditions were that the game must have raised at least $50,000, and in return for Ouya's contribution, a six-month exclusivity was agreed.

The first two titles Ouya confirmed to receive a contribution were American Football game Grid Iron Thunder, which asked for $75,000 and ended up with $171,009, and Elementary, My Dear Holmes!, which asked for $50,000. Both games were scrutinized for alleged suspicious backing, and Elementary, My Dear Holmes! saw its Kickstarter suspended after some claimed it was a "scam".

Following the outcry, Ouya announced changes to the Free the Games Fund rules and admitted the program contained "too many loopholes".

Satisfied with the changes, Houlden has now re-launched Rose and Time on Ouya, saying her problems with the company "don't exist any more".

"At the time a lot of developers besides myself were upset at how the Free the Games fund was going and said so," she wrote in a new blog post.

"Then, within a week of chatting with developers (including myself) about how the fund could be improved and what the best outcome for all concerned would be, the Free the Games fund was changed, none of the scam games received a single cent of the fund, the company admitted its mistakes, and was asking for yet more feedback to further improve things.

"Listening to developers, responding quickly, showing humility, and of course showing passion. All the reasons I pulled the game for, were non-existent after just that week. I didn't put the game back on immediately - I'm pretty suspicious so I wanted to keep an eye on things for a while longer - 'If this keeps up for a while I'll put it back for sure' I thought.

"Well, I've seen Ouya listening to developers, I've seen the humility multiple times, I've even chatted to Julie a couple of times in email and on Skype so I am confident at this point that I can no longer justify keeping the game off the console."

Houlden concluded: "Will the company screw up again? Probably. Will they do something that pisses me off? Almost certainly! But I believe when it happens the company will be receptive to criticism and will not be afraid to say 'my bad' if they realize they took a wrong step."

Eurogamer's Jeffrey Matulef interviewed Uhrman last month to discuss Ouya's problems and the future of the micro-console.

McDonald's advises hungry, sick employees to get welfare benefits

McDonald’s “help?” It’s just so outrageous

Look, by now, everyone knows that McDonald’s doesn’t pay their employees enough to make ends meet. See what happens when Nancy, a Chicagoland McDonald’s employee, calls the McResources “help” line.

And spread the word about the hidden costs of the fast food industry after you have.

Tea Party Logic

Chicken, ham, beef recalled over Listeria concerns

By David Earl

The USDA on Wednesday issued an urgent ‘Class I’ recall of chicken, ham and beef products distributed in Nebraska and Iowa.

The government is concerned some food products may contain the deadly Listeria bacteria. The recall affects 22,800 pounds of food distributed by Reser’s Fine Food, based in Topeka, Kan.

The food was sold under the following brand names: Cobble Street Market, Cross Valley Farms, Reser’s Fine Foods, Stonemill Kitchen, Chef Solutions and Millers. All of the food has ‘use by’ dates ranging from Oct. 23 to Nov. 26.

-- Find specific UPC numbers for the recalled products

Symptoms of Listeria include fever, chills and vomiting. The bacteria is responsible for the deadliest food-borne illness outbreak in American history. In 2011, a Listeria in cantaloupe killed dozens and sickened hundreds more.

Jon Stewart Takes Aim At Health Care Fiasco

All that stands in the way of Democratic electoral success is a mildly competent implementation of the health care policy they battled so hard to keep.

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Philly Cop Stops Black Man, Tells Him ‘All You Do Is Weaken the Fucking Country’

By Mychal Denzel Smith


This video was recorded on September 27 and uploaded to YouTube a few days later. It has recently made the rounds on social media and caught the attention of major news outlets. In it, two Philadelphia police officers stop, detain briefly and question two young black men who are walking down the street. The reason given for the stop is that one of the young men said “Hi” to a drug dealer.

You should watch the video in its entirety:



There are a number of choice quotes to be pulled from this video, my favorite among them the retort from the young man being stopped and who managed to film the incident, “You not protecting me by stopping me when I’m trying to go to work,” but it’s this exchange that has come to define the encounter:

Officer: “We don’t want you here [in Philadelphia], anyway. All you do is weaken the fucking country.”
Young man: “How do I weaken the country? By working?”
Officer: “No, freeloading,”
Young man: “Freeloading on what? I work.”
Officer: “Do you? Where?”
Young man: “[redacted] Country Club.”
Officer: “Doing what?”
Young man: “I’m a server”
Officer: “A server? Serving weed?”

The officer responsible for this racist line of questioning, Philip Nace, was recently placed in the Differential Police Response Unit, a disciplinary unit, for what a police spokesman called “idiotic behavior” after another video surfaced of him knocking down a basketball hoop and, while driving away in a police van, telling the group that was playing “have a good day.” He is being investigated by Internal Affairs.

“But this is one individual,” Lt. John Stanford told the Philadelphia Daily News, “Don’t let this individual put it in your mind that this is how officers act. The vast majority of officers give the residents of this city 110 percent.”

The problem is, as badly as Philadelphia police may want to isolate Nace and his poor behavior, this isn’t the result of mistakenly hiring one racist cop. This is a racist policy supported by a racist society doing exactly what it was designed to do.

Had Nace used softer language, had he asked politely and said “please” and “thank you,” he still would have stopped, searched and collected information on an innocent person for having done nothing more than speaking to someone he passed on the street. Because that’s the policy.

Philadelphia’s use of stop-and-frisk doubled in 2009, two years after the election of Mayor Michael Nutter (in case anyone were led to believe it’s only white mayors and police commissioners responsible for implementing this tactic, both Nutter and Commissioner Charles Ramsey are black), and in a similar fashion to what has recently happened in New York City, it was challenged in court and the city agreed to make adjustments to the policy.

However, it still exists, and still disproportionately targets black and Hispanic men. And one can’t divorce this from the fact that school budgets, affecting mostly black students, have been slashed, while hundreds of millions are being poured into a new prison facility, or the youth curfew that was implemented a few years ago.

Through colorblind language, there exists a concerted effort to criminalize the presence of black and brown youth in public and shuttle them off to bigger, shinier prisons.

They can discipline Nace, even remove him from the force (and they should), but his actions are only a symptom of the larger disease. The more we focus our energy on the Naces of the world, the further we get from a cure.

Mychal Denzel Smith has previously argued that institutional racism persists in the criminal justice system with or without stop-and-frisk programs.

Single mom: Son born out of wedlock snubbed by Marvin Winans' church

By Andrea Isom, Fox 2 News 

DETROIT (WJBK) - Charity Grace lives on the east side of the city with her 2-year-old son, Joshua. The two recently started to attend Perfecting Church under the leadership of Pastor Marvin Winans.

Fox 2 News Headlines

Sunday, a special blessing is planned at the church on East Nevada Street. They are having a dedication service for children two years old and under. Grace was looking forward to having her only child receive this blessing.

"I want to instill values and morals in my son based upon the word of God," said Grace.

She called the church on Tuesday to make arrangements. "I told them I was not married and that's where everything just broke loose."

Grace says she spoke with a woman who told her Pastor Winans' policy is that he is not to bless children of unwed mothers in front of his congregation.

"I've never felt so degraded and disrespected in my life," said Grace.

Rev. W.J. Rideout III of All God's People Church speaks out about injustice outside the church and all over the world. So, we asked if he thought this was an injustice inside the church.

"Every pastor has set up the pattern of his church, the way he feels or deems fit. But as it relates to the scripture, I feel like it's wrong," said  Rideout. "I feel like we're judging, but we're not judging with righteous judgement."

We asked to speak with Pastor Winans about the allegations. He declined an interview.

"What they could do for me is let my son get dedicated, during a week day with one of the elders of my choice," said Grace.

"I'm not speaking against the pastor, but sometimes we make poor decisions," said Rideout.

"I absolutely would not set foot back in the church right now because I feel like they look down upon me and my kind, meaning single moms and unwed mothers. The church should be the last place you should go to be judged and denied," said Grace.

Cat on a Hot Stove

By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON — PRESIDENT OBAMA won big.

So why did the moment feel so small?

At his victory scold in the State Dining Room on Thursday, the president who yearned to be transformational stood beneath an oil portrait of Abraham Lincoln and demanded . . . a farm bill. He also couldn’t resist taking a holier-than-thou tone toward his tail-between-their-legs Tea Party foes. 

He assumed his favorite role of the shining knight hectoring the benighted: Sir Lecturealot.

“All of us need to stop focusing on the lobbyists and the bloggers and the talking heads on radio and the professional activists who profit from conflict,” he sermonized. (We have met the enemy and they are . . . bloggers?)

Certainly, the House Republicans who held their breath until the country turned blue acted like foolhardy children on what John McCain called “a fool’s errand.”

The country agreed. So it probably wasn’t necessary for papa to preach, overacting the role of weary parent watching the irresponsible kids make their mistakes.

Sir Lecturealot, who hates selling and explaining and negotiating and cajoling and knocking noggins, always manages to convey tedium at the idea that he actually has to persuade people to come along with him, given the fact that he feels he’s doing what’s right.

Obama says he will now work for an immigration bill and a budget deal with deficit cuts. But as Peter Nicholas and Carol E. Lee pointed out in The Wall Street Journal, the president did not mention his more ambitious goals: hiking the minimum wage, widening access to preschool education, and shoring up bridges and roads.

“Those efforts require bipartisan consensus that may be even more elusive amid the ill will carried over from the budget fight,” they wrote.

Senator McCain, who excoriated the Tea Party zanies and voted with the president, indicated to The Journal that the president had poisoned the well. “A lot of us are resentful that he didn’t negotiate as hard as we think he could have or should have,” he said. He told CNN that if Obama does not “engage” with his adversaries, “obviously you’re not going to be a successful president.”

Democrats, too, chided the president for being the diffident debutante.

“This is a town where it’s not enough to feel you have the right answers,” Leon Panetta, the former congressman, Clinton chief of staff, C.I.A. director and defense chief, pointedly told Washington reporters. “You’ve got to roll up your sleeves, and you’ve got to really engage in the process.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein also urged presidential leadership, noting that Obama “stepped back” partly because he felt “burned” by all the scabrous budget fights. But as Mark Twain said, “We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.”

And if Obama is anything, he’s a cold cat on a hot stove.

Washington is surpassingly nutty right now, but the founding fathers did build a system designed for factional warfare. When sweet reasonableness doesn’t work, Obama’s default position is didactic disdain. He under-uses the fear and charm cards. When he first saw the White House movie theater, he was surprised there were so many seats beyond what the first family would need. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, probably would have built a balcony and auctioned off seats, if he could have.

As Valerie Jarrett told David Remnick in “The Bridge,” Obama’s “uncanny” abilities need to be properly engaged, or he disengages. “He’s been bored to death his whole life,” she said. “He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

Matt Viser wrote in The Boston Globe that, while Obama soared talking about getting past blue-and-red slicing and dicing, the blue states are getting bluer and the red states redder. In his stateside travel schedule, political meetings, staffing and legislative accomplishments, Obama has cleaved to the blue side more than he has tried to reach out to the red side, Viser wrote.

After Sir Lecturealot admonished both parties on their divisiveness in his 2010 State of the Union address, Viser said, the president did not have his first one-on-one with John Boehner for another year and a half, and has only met individually with Mitch McConnell twice.

When the president says “we’ve all got a lot of work to do,” he means Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. Obamacare should really be called Pelosicare, as the historian Niall Ferguson noted. And an unyielding Reid made sure Obama didn’t cave as in the past, which had emboldened Republicans to challenge the president this time. Obama is the anti-Lyndon Johnson.

He thinks he can come down from above, de haut en bas, and play the great reconciler, but you can’t reconcile in absentia. You have to be there. You’ve got to be all over these people.

The paradox of Obama is that he believes in his own magical powers, but then he doesn’t turn up to use them.

There’s nothing wrong with a president breaking a sweat somewhere beyond the basketball court.

Problems Persist With Emergency Alert System

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday October 19, 2013 @11:17PM
from the can-it-be-aliens-next-time-please dept.

 

chicksdaddy writes 

 

"More than six months after hacked Emergency Alert System (EAS) hardware allowed a phony warning about a zombie uprising to air in several U.S. states, a security consulting company is warning that serious issues persist in software from Monroe Electronics, whose equipment was compromised in the earlier attack. 

 

In a blog post, Mike Davis of the firm IOActive said patches issued by Monroe Electronics, the Lyndonville, New York firm that is a leading supplier of EAS hardware, do not adequately address problems raised earlier this year, including the use of 'bad and predictable' log-in credentials. 

 

Further inspection by Davis turned up other problems that were either missed in the initial code review or introduced by the patch. They include the use of “predictable and hard-coded keys and passwords,” as well as web-based backups that were publicly accessible and that contained valid user credentials. 

 

Monroe’s R-189 CAP-EAS product was the target of a hack in February during which EAS equipment operated by broadcasters in Montana, Michigan and other states was compromised and used to issue an alert claiming that the 'dead are rising from their graves,' and advising residents not to attempt to apprehend them. 

 

CAP refers to the Common Alerting Protocol, a successor to EAS. A recent search using the Shodan search engine by University of Florida graduate student Shawn Merdinger found more than 200 Monroe devices still accessible from the public Internet. 66% of those were running vulnerable versions of the Monroe firmware."

You Can Now Find Out Who Died In Your Home

The website that will tell you who died in your house

By Craig Hlavaty of the Houston Chronicle
Monday, October 14, 2013

A South Carolina man has a website with one simple purpose: telling you if someone has died inside your home.

Roy Condrey is the co-CEO and president of Diedinhouse.com, which shows homeowners — or potential buyers — whether or not someone died inside a residence. It’s an especially ghoulish line of work for some, but for those purchasing or selling a home it could mean thousands of dollars.

It’s harder to sell a house for top dollar — even one with every modern amenity — when a buyer knows that something grisly has happened there. It creates a headache for realtors and sellers alike.

The inspiration for the site came when a tenant renting Condrey’s Columbia, S.C.,  property told him the house was haunted. Condrey just assumed there was a law to require disclose a death in a residence, but discovered there is not. He also found that some states have laws that permit sellers and agents to not disclose such information.

“It occurred to me that a service which told people who died in their homes before they moved in would be popular,” says Condrey. “It’s harder to find things like this out than you think.”

Houston real estate agent Danelle Reed with Martha Turner Properties reminds that Texas is a non-disclosure state.

“Per the Texas Association of Realtors Seller’s Disclosure form it is not a requirement to disclose a non-violent death that occurred on the property. However, a violent death — like a murder — must be disclosed,” Reed said.

Reed adds that it is her company’s policy to instruct sellers to disclose any and all material facts that pertain to the property in order for the buying public to make an informed decision.

California and Texas are where Condrey says he gets the most traffic. In California, there are many famous murders and deaths and a fascination with the macabre.

In Texas, you can find the Clear Lake home where Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a bathtub in June 2001. You can also find the Fort Worth home of Chante Mallard, who in late 2001, hit a homeless man while drunk driving and left him bleeding to death on the hood of her car in her garage while she continued to party. She was convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2003.

You can look up reports on the homes of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, murder victims Jose Menendez and Kitty Menendez, and actor Phil Hartman. Condrey shows me records on the house where the Clutter family died in Kansas, the case that was detailed in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

Condrey and his small team of developers had been working on the site for a year before launching it on June 1.

Condrey says they’ve processed thousands of information requests. After a user plugs in an address, his site scours a multitude of sources to deliver information on previous owners and whether or not anyone met their demise inside the residence.

The stigma of a death in a home, especially a violent killing, can linger forever.

“It would bother me if I knew someone died in my house,” says Condrey. “For instance, I couldn’t live in a house where there was a murder-suicide.”

A quiet death, Condrey says, would be easier for some to deal with.

Some realtors shun what Condrey does, he says, mainly because he costs them money on what they call “stigmatized properties,” but he says he’s just providing a needed, legitimate service to the public. He’s begun to notice some realtors coming around to the site and even running searches on their own, which means tides are turning.

There was the story of Janet Milliken who moved from California to Pennsylvania in 2007 with her two children, after her husband had died. She bought a house for $610,000, which she later found out had been the site of a murder-suicide a year and a half earlier.

The Milliken family was still reeling from their own experience with death and having curious kids coming by on Halloween to gawk at their home as the place where a man killed himself and his wife didn’t help matters.

Milliken sued for fraud and misrepresentation, claiming the owners and real estate agents duped her.

The judge ruled against her, saying Pennsylvania state law does not require agents to disclose such events to buyers. She’s since appealed to the state Supreme Court.

“Some people don’t have a problem with knowing someone died in their home,” says Condrey. “But when you remind them that this knowledge could affect their home values, they change their tune.”

Condrey has been a guest on numerous morning shows, and he’s even done Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, which was a shot in the arm for business. Response has been positive, Condrey says.

Nearly 8,000 likes on Facebook and 54,000 page views aren’t too shabby for a site that works on what Condrey calls a small budget with only three people on staff. Of course, not everyone buys the $11.99 report, but they still gawk.

Aside from prospective home buyers, Condrey also hears from ghost hunters and those with a morbid curiosity looking for new places to visit.

People are more apt to be OK with a death in home decades and decades back. After all, people spend hundreds of dollars to stay at the Lizzie Borden Bed and Breakfast Museum, he says. A more recent or gruesome death is harder to deal with, it seems.

I’ve checked my own apartment and it’s clear, if you were wondering. Would it change my mind about my two-bedroom space? I would probably think twice about staying another year.

Checkout Craig Hlavaty of the Houston Chronicles article, The website that will tell you who died in your house: http://blog.chron.com/thetexican/2013/10/the-website-that-will-tell-you-who-died-in-your-house/

The Strangelove Republicans

By Rod Dreher • October 15, 2013, 9:45 P.M.

Today I heard an update on the radio from the fiscal crisis in Washington, and thought, “The Republicans really are going to push us over the edge.” I hope I’m wrong, of course, but it becomes more thinkable with each passing hour. I thought next about how hard we’ve worked to invest wisely, and to sock money away for retirement. If the world wakes up Thursday morning plunging into a 2008-style economic collapse, we could find our investments massively damaged. Some people we know have only now built their nest eggs back up after the 2008 disaster. We could be looking at that.

Or worse.

At least my family doesn’t have to worry about feeding itself. Food stamps in some states are about to be cut off, it appears, absent reopening the government at once. I slammed the Wal-mart food rioters for greed, because that’s exactly what it was. They were no Jean Valjeans. But the government being unable to provide food benefits to poor people because the Republicans will not authorize the money to pay the debts that Congress already incurred? That’s a different story.

Joe Carter, an Evangelical who is nobody’s idea of a liberal, has a post up on the free-market Acton Institute blog saying that Christians ought to oppose the GOP in this matter. Excerpt:

The Bible is clear that when an individual incurs a debt they are required, to the best of their ability, to pay what they owe. But does this same principle apply to governments?

Because of the differences in roles and responsibilities not all principles that apply to the individual apply to the state. However, it seems clear this is one principle that clearly applies to both.

In our form of government we elect representatives to act in our behest, including taking on contractual debt obligations. We may not agree with either the levels of spending or the priorities, but these legislators have been duly elected to incur debts on our behalf that we – or our grandchildren — must pay.For this reason, I believe as Christians we should not refuse to pay for the legal obligations that we have authorized.

In policy terms this means we have two general choices: we can raise the debt limit and borrow money needed to cover our shortfall or we can immediately raise taxes in order to generate the revenues necessary to pay the government’s bills.

Member of Congress who are refusing to raise the debt ceiling (or raise taxes) until their ancillary demands are met are acting immorally, since they are refusing to pay the debts they themselves authorized. Hopefully, they are only bluffing and have no real intention of throwing the country into a financial crisis. But even if they are lying about their true intentions, they are threatening to act immorally if they don’t get their way. As Christians we should find such behavior unacceptable. The fact that they are representing us makes such an action intolerable.

The Republican Party has driven the country to the brink, and this morning, House Republicans bolstered their ranks by … standing together and singing Amazing Grace. It’s Strangelovian. Maybe there won’t be a long-term fallout from this, but I tell you, it’s very hard to see entrusting power to a party that behaves this way, that manufactures crises like this for its own short-term political gain. The Republicans, having lost their mind, have destroyed their brand.

Amazing Grace. They cause this looming disaster — which, make no mistake, would be a global disaster — and then stand there singing a freaking hymn amid the ruins of their party, and the potential crash of our economy! Raving loonies, the lot. Josh Barro is right:

Can you imagine the situation this country would be in if Republicans controlled both houses of Congress right now? Or if we had a President whose administration gets jerked around by Heritage Action in the same way that House Republicans do? It would be a trainwreck, and “reasonable” Republicans like Nunes would still be on television saying they understand it’s a trainwreck, but by golly, operationally, they had no way to stop it.

There is no serious argument for Republican governance right now, even if you prefer conservative policies over liberal ones. These people are just too dangerously incompetent to be trusted with power.

Yes. I cannot believe I’m saying this, but I hope the House flips to the Democrats in 2014, so we can be rid of these nuts. Let Ted Cruz sit in the Senate stewing in his precious bodily fluids, and let Washington get back to the business of governing.

Burning Cross Mishap Leaves Florida Racist With Burns Over 50 Percent Of His Body

By Shannon Barber

A Florida racist gets his when he burns 50 percent of his body while setting up a burning cross. Image: Image Editor @ Flickr

Burning Cross Burns Racist

Karma is a bitch, yes she is. The perfect example of said bitchiness is the fact that when a Florida racist was erecting a burning cross, he set himself on fire, resulting in second degree burns over 50 percent of his body.

According to neighbors, Ron Nielson, 50, of Palm Bay, was erecting the display with his wife when he lit himself on fire by accident, says Yvonne Martinez of the Palm Bay Police Department. Nielson was apparently carrying the cross and some candles onto his lawn when the incident occurred. Martinez said:

It started as some kind of prank, apparently, and involved a wooden cross. We don’t know if he was trying to light the cross or the candles but when he did, his clothes caught fire.

A prank? Now that’s rich! Last I checked, a Halloween prank would be, say, toilet papering someone’s home. Or egging neighborhood cars. Immature, and inconvenient to the owners of the homes and cars, but hardly sinister.

However, burning crosses are definitely sinister, considering that these were what the Ku Klux Klan left in the yards of African- American families in the deep south in times past. This was no prank. This was a cruel, hideous display by a racist gone wrong. Or, in the eyes of people who see it for what it was, gone right.

Police are still investigating the scene where the burning cross injured its owner. A fire marshal told Martinez that the area was not properly ventilated.

When Neilson poured gasoline onto the materials, he caught fire, burning his midsection. He was airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center’s Burn Unit.

Let me help y’all out with this here investigation.

Candles are their own fuel. They do not require gasoline or anything else to catch fire like say, oh, a wooden cross would. They were trying to light the cross. Also, if this was outside, how was it not properly ventilated? Things that make ya go hmmm….

Do yourselves a favor here, Palm Bay PD, and don’t look the other way on this one. See this and call it for what it is: a couple of wannabe Klansmen whose little shindig went wrong.

Now, a more vindictive person would wish the man a slow, painful recovery. However, while I do believe that he got what was coming to him, considering his activities, I wish Mr. Nielson no ill. I wish him a comfortable, speedy recovery with as few scars as possible.

I also hope he learns a lesson from this. Don’t play with fire, and quit being a racist. I also hope he has a few African-American attendants at the hospital. If he gets to know some of us, perhaps he will like us a bit better.

Nope, no ill will here. After all, karma’s a bitch.

No, You Can’t Just Go to the Emergency Room—Unless You Want to Go Broke

By Tim Murphy

About three weeks ago I was walking home from the grocery store when a group of teenagers demanded my wallet, cellphone, and—for reasons I can't fully explain—gallon of whole milk. Although I made no effort to resist, I ended up with a laceration on my lip that required stitches, fairly intense swelling on both sides of my head that required X-rays, and a bruised rib. And I was down a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs. It sucked.

On Tuesday, though, I got some good news—a billing statement from George Washington University Hospital, where I got my stitches, CAT scan, painkillers, and a tetanus shot. Thanks to my employer-provided insurance company, Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, I ended up paying about $50. But if I didn't have insurance, like 47 million working-age adults nationally and approximately 23 percent of 18-to-25-year-olds, it would have increased the bill by a factor of more than a hundred. The sutures alone were $1,400, and another $300 to have them taken out four days later. I'm a young journalist at a nonprofit magazine. I do my best to budget responsibly. But I don't have $5,000 of disposable income just lying around. My unfortunate encounter with typically wayward millennials could have left me broke.

I mention this because conservative lawmakers have spent much of the last four years—and the three weeks since the Affordable Care Act's exchanges opened on October 1—arguing that emergency rooms are a suitable replacement for having health insurance.

"We do provide care for people who don't have insurance," Mitt Romney explained during his 2012 presidential campaign. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die."

During last year's campaign, now-Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) took heat from doctors groups when he argued against all evidence that it would be cheaper for the state to keep sending the 6.1 million Texans who lack health insurance to emergency rooms than it would to expand Medicaid. And in 2011, then-Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) explained that he was rejecting the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion in the nation's poorest and unhealthiest state because "there's nobody in Mississippi who does not have access to health care." After all, his office explained, there was always the emergency room.

But by the time the uninsured get to the emergency room, the damage has already been done.

According to a study from Harvard Medical School, someone dies as a consequence of not having health insurance about once every 12 minutes in the United States, because they aren't able to seek basic primary care treatment that can prevent more serious problems. (About 9,000 Texans will die each year as a result of Gov. Rick Perry's rejection of the Medicaid expansion, according to an analysis by the Institute for Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston.)

But Barbour and his colleagues missed the broader economic point: Someone has to pay for emergency room visits. Emergency care can help literally stop the bleeding—it did in my case. But it's expensive, and it's not a substitute for regular primary care or health insurance.

In recent months, conservative groups like FreedomWorks and the Koch Brothers-backed Generation Opportunity have sought to dissuade young Americans from purchasing health insurance, arguing that millennials are being forced to pay disproportionately high prices for something they're disproportionately less likely to need. But random crime can happen to anyone—and young people are disproportionately unlikely to be able to pay out of pocket.

If you get mugged in Washington, DC, and you're uninsured, you have some help. As the detective assigned to my case helpfully informed me, the District covers up to $25,000 in medical expenses for victims of violent crime. But there are plenty of other ways to mess up your face that don't involve felonies, and plenty of violent crimes that will send your bill sailing far north of $25,000. (Just consider the case of Salon reporter Brian Beutler.)

The numbers back this up: A 2012 study from the Commonwealth Fund found that 51 percent of uninsured young adults—the healthiest age group in the United States—had trouble paying medical bills.

So if you're uninsured and can afford a basic plan, you should get insured—because while your odds of going to the emergency room on any given day are statistically low, your odds of being financially ruined if you do are quite high. Otherwise, it just might cost you the arm and a leg you were trying to save.

Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter at Mother Jones. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com. RSS | Twitter

Republicans have become 100% useless to America

"A visibly frustrated President Obama delivered a blunt message to Republicans with whom he had feuded over the government shutdown and the debt ceiling over the past month on Tuesday: Elections matter. I won; you lost. Deal with it. That's a paraphrase — obviously...".

* Will Obama and the Democrats work with Republicans to cut corporate taxes along with Medicare and Social Security? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.



*Read more here from CHRIS CILLIZZA / The Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/10/17/president-obama-to-republicans-i-won-deal-with-it/

Petition Calls For Arresting And Charging Tea Party Republicans With Sedition

By Stephen D. Foster Jr.

Americans should reject Republicans at the voting booth in 2014, and demand the arrest of Tea Party Republicans for the high crime of sedition. Image: Gage Skidmore @ Flickr

 

The debt ceiling saga and government shutdown may be coming to a close but make no mistake, there should be consequences for those who willingly took America to the brink of disaster. Not only should Americans reject Republicans at the voting booth in 2014, they should demand the arrest of Tea Party Republicans for the high crime of sedition. And there’s a petition circulating online that does just that.

Tea Party Republicans could be charged with sedition under US law for holding America hostage.

According to the US Code (18 U.S.C. § 2384 ), seditious conspiracy is a crime under United States law. The law states in part that,
“If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to… prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States… they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

This is exactly what Republicans are guilty of. In their obsession to kill President Obama’s signature health care law, a group of House Republicans held America hostage in a last ditch effort to achieve their goal. At the urging of Senator Ted Cruz, House Tea Party members initiated a shutdown that has cost the country billions of dollars over the last two weeks. Republicans were absolutely happy about it. The shutdown caused a layoff of 800,000 federal employees, resulting in harm to military veterans, children, women, the poor, education, and businesses. It did terrible damage to the nation as a whole and hurt our reputation around the world.

And when Democrats didn’t give in to their demands, Republicans decided to threaten the economic security of the country and the world with a debt ceiling breach. A default on our debt would have sent the economy into a tailspin.

Republicans choose to deny that fact and insisted that not raising the debt ceiling was a good thing because Americans need to suffer.

Then if that weren’t enough, the GOP prepared to blame President Obama for the debt ceiling default if he refused to meet their demands. A default would have been used as an excuse  by Tea Party Republicans to try to impeach the President. So in the middle of a government shutdown and a debt ceiling breach, the GOP wanted to drag America through impeachment hearings at the same time. All because they want to use the budget resolution to repeal Obamacare.

Tea Party Republicans committed sedition by causing the shutdown and threatening a default to kill health care law.

Unfortunately for Republicans, the Affordable Care Act is a law that was legally passed by Congress. It was signed by the President. And ultimately, it was ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court. By shutting down the government and threatening the economic security of the United States in an effort to forcibly repeal, weaken, or delay the law, Republicans have committed an act of sedition. As such, a petition has been started on Moveon.org calling for the arrest of Tea Party Republicans who put the country at risk to forcibly repeal a law they don’t like.

The petition calls for arresting Tea Party Republicans for sedition against the United States.

The petition statement calls upon the Justice Department to arrest and charge House Republicans with sedition. The petition further states that,

“The House GOP leadership’s use of the Hastert Rule and H. Res 368 to shut down the government and threaten the US economy with default is an attempt to extort the United States government into altering or abolishing the Affordable Care Act, and thus, is self-evidently a seditious conspiracy. Arrest the perpetrators in Congress immediately and bring them to justice.”

To sign the petition, click here .

House Resolution 368 was a change in House Rules by Republicans that gave Majority Leader Eric Cantor the sole authority to re-open the government. The dead of night change effectively overthrew House Speaker John Boehner.

Should Tea Party Republicans be charged with sedition?

The simple truth is that Republicans did all of this by themselves to themselves. They held America hostage and put the entire nation at risk just to repeal a law that they have failed to repeal nearly 40 times in normal congressional business since 2011. It was a plotted conspiracy that has been in the planning since last year. And even though it certainly looks as if the shutdown and debt ceiling crisis is about to end, Republicans refused to make any promises that they wouldn’t do the exact same thing again in February.

Clearly, the GOP intends to repeat this hostage situation again.

The American people should hold the GOP accountable at the ballot box. But we should also insist that more serious consequences be suffered by Republicans for giddily placing the nation in jeopardy just to force Democrats to give in to their policy demands. This is tyranny of the minority and it can’t be allowed to go unpunished, especially when it is so clear that Republicans violated the law and betrayed the Constitution. If Republicans really love America, they’ll surrender themselves to authorities or resign their posts so that more responsible and reasonable citizens can take their place. Never before in American history has a radical right-winger been arrested and charged with sedition.

Perhaps it is time for that to change.

Senate deal OK - until it hits the House

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