“…but he isn’t about to do it — and It can’t be done, obviously.”
A couple more faux pas like the one Secretary of State John Kerry made at a briefing on Syria earlier this week and we’ll have achieved World Peace in no time!
Month: September 2013
Ladies and gentlemen, the big fight weekend has arrived.
Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez will end months of promotional build-up and weeks of premium cable sniping on Saturday night, when they meet in the ring at the MGM Grand for both a pair of 154-pound titles and the enviable position as the sport’s top drawing card.
The fight was initially announced in the spring, shortly after Alvarez had improved to 42-0-1 with a defeat of previously unbeaten Austin Trout and Mayweather scaled to 44-0 after a 12-round clinic against former two-division world champion Robert Guerrero.
The men faced off in 10 cities during a two-country press tour, then appeared in dueling video segments during the four-part Showtime All Access documentary series, which ended Wednesday.
The official weigh-in for the fight, at which both men contractually agreed to arrive at 152 pounds or less, is scheduled for today at 6 p.m. ET. The fight card will begin Saturday at 5:30 p.m. ET, with the Showtime pay-per-view broadcast set to open at 9 p.m. ET.
Big numbers are expected for the event, which could approach the record of 2.4 million buys set when Mayweather fought the since-retired Oscar De La Hoya in May 2007.
“It’s hard to predict where we’ll end up on this fight,” said Stephen Espinoza, Showtime’s top boxing executive. “De La Hoya/Mayweather was a perfect storm. Oscar was at the peak. Floyd was just starting to make a lot of noise. You had the perfect good guy/bad guy storyline. It’s hard to replicate that.
This piece of statistical evidence will be disputed by the guns don’t kill people, people kill people reasoning of the NRA in 3,2,1…
The study, which appears in the American Journal of Public Health, challenges the National Rifle Association’s claim that increased gun ownership does not lead to higher levels of gun violence.
Covering 30 years from 1981 and all 50 US states, it determined that for every one percentage point in the prevalence of gun ownership in a given state, the firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent.
In the absence of state-level data on household gun ownership, the study used a proxy variable — the percentage of a state’s suicides committed with a firearm — that has been validated in previous research.
The study, led by Boston University community health sciences professor Michael Siegel, is the first of its kind since the December 2012 mass shooting of 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“In the wake of the tragic shooting in Newtown … many states are considering legislation to control firearm-related deaths,” said Siegel in a statement.
“This research is the strongest to date to document that states with higher levels of gun ownership have disproportionately large numbers of deaths from firearm-related homicides,” he said.
“It suggests that measures which succeed in decreasing the overall prevalence of guns will lower firearm homicide rates.”
President Obama continued his call for action in Syria whether it be military or diplomatic, and he called on the leaders of Russia and Syria to continue talks with Sec. Kerry on securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons. “We’re making it clear that this can’t be a stalling tactic,” the president said. “We need to see concrete actions to demonstrate that Assad is serious about giving up his chemical weapons.”
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Minimum Wage Will be Raised to $10 An Hour
At least in California.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s minimum wage would rise to $10 an hour within three years under a bill passed Thursday by the state Legislature, making it one of the highest rates in the nation.
Washington state currently has the top minimum wage at $9.19 an hour, an amount that is pegged to rise with inflation. Some cities, including San Francisco, have slightly higher minimum wages.
The state Senate approved AB10 on a 26-11 vote and the Assembly followed hours later on a 51-25 vote, both largely along party lines. Gov. Jerry Brown indicated earlier this week that he would sign the bill, calling it an overdue piece of legislation that would help working-class families.
The bill would gradually raise California’s minimum wage from the current $8 an hour to $10 by 2016.
When it was her turn to share a deep, dark secret during a segment on “The Talk,” host Julie Chen explained that as a young journalist, she underwent plastic surgery to enlarge her “Asian eyes.”
Chen, 43, explained that she developed a deep insecurity about her eyes at age 25 after a boss at a Dayton, Ohio, news station told her that her heritage was hindering her career success.
“He said, ‘Let’s face it Julie, how relatable are you to our community?” she recalled. “How big of an Asian community do we have in Dayton? On top of that, because of your Asian eyes, I’ve noticed that when you’re on camera, you look disinterested and bored.'”
The “Big Brother” host said the same sentiment was shared by a big-time agent she sought out while attempting to further her career.
“He said, ‘I cannot represent you unless you get plastic surgery to make your eyes look bigger.'”
Chen said she had a conversation with her parents and extended family on the polarizing issue, but ultimately she decided to have the eye procedure. The talk show host also brought a before-and-after the surgery comparison.
Dr. Shiping Bao, was the Volusia County medical examiner in charge of handling slain-teenager Trayvon Martin’s body in February 2012. He now claims that Trayvon Martin was shot in his back.
Bao says that the Prosecution intentionally lost the case because Trayvon Martin fit the profile. According to Bao’s attorney, Willie Gary, the medical examiner’s office, the state attorney’s office and the Sanford Police’s “general attitude was that [Martin] got what he deserved.
According to the former assistant coroner, the results of Martin’s autopsy clearly showed that, despite Zimmerman’s statements regarding their altercation, there was no feasible way for Martin to have been on top of Zimmerman when the gun was fired, because the bullet entered Martin’s back.
Bao claims that the prosecution never actually asked him the questions that were crucial to the success in the case, and that he changed his opinion from the time he initially examined Martin and the time he was on the stand. Bao and his attorney say they believe he was fired for questioning the way the case was handled, and possibly for not going long with the desired narrative.
Bao testified in court that the amount of marijuana that was found in Martin’s system at the time of his death would have had little to no effect on his ability to reason—even though initiallyy he had stated that the drug could have possible impaired his mental state.
h/t AlterNet
It’s like the battered woman syndrome. Americans keep running back to their economic abusers.
A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll is showing some worrisome trends. Americans are beginning to trust the Republicans more than Democrats on issues they’ve proven to know nothing about. Issues like the economy, where Republicans have blocked progress time and time again by defeating numerous jobs bills, deficit reduction and foreign policy, Americans are putting more faith in Republicans.
“Republicans are now rated higher than Democrats on handling the economy and foreign policy, and the GOP’s lead has strengthened on several other issues, including dealing with the federal deficit and ensuring a strong national defense. On topics such as health care, Democrats have seen their long-standing advantage whittled to lows not seen in years.”
Will we ever learn?
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) praised a former conservative senator best known for his opposition to African American civil rights and gay people on Wednesday, suggesting that the nation would be better off if Congress were still filled with lawmakers who shared his beliefs and positions.
“It’s every bit as true now as it was then,” Cruz said at a fundraiser hosted at the Heritage Foundation. “We need 100 more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate.”
Helms, the longest serving senator from North Carolina, is renowned for speaking out against civil rights, voting rights, gay rights, and abortion — causes that Cruz himself has embraced in his short senate tenure.
The late Helms, who died in 2008, famously led a 16-day filibuster to prevent the Senate from approving the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday, described the Civil Rights Act as “the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress,” organized against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act, and opposed any “federal financing of AIDS research and treatment,” arguing that “There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy.” “Homosexuals are weak, morally sick wretches,” Helms was once quoted as saying and he sought to block a nominee “because she’s a damn lesbian.”
Cruz is less inflammatory, but remains committed to Helms’ causes.
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Man Robs Bank Wearing Barack Obama Mask
Hail to the thief!
A New Hampshire man was busted for robbing a bank while wearing a President Barack Obama mask, police said.
In a scene straight out of the 1991 film, “Point Break,” John Griffin Jr., 52 — wearing a “full face” mask of the President and sporting a blue suit, white shirt with a powder-red tie — held up a Bank of America branch in Merrimack about 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
Griffin fled with an undetermined amount of money, but responding officers spotted him behind a nearby office complex, cops said.
“It was probably within five minutes or so from the bank robbery getting called in to our officers deploying to the area,” Scott Park, a detective with the Merrimack Police Department, told WMUR-TV.
Controversial Gainesville Pastor Terry Jones, known for his plans to publicly burn copies of the Muslim holy book, was arrested Wednesday with thousands of kerosene-soaked Qurans, authorities said.
Jones, 61, was arrested on felony charges after a traffic stop near a pharmacy in Mulberry, a small town in Polk County, just before 5 p.m. He faces charges of unlawfully transporting fuel and openly carrying a firearm.
Deputies said Jones was riding in a pickup truck that was towing a smoker and trailer filled with kerosene-soaked Qurans. He also had extra bottles of kerosene inside the truck bed.
According to Jones’ website, he planned to burn 2,998 Qurans in the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday. He was arrested along with Associate Pastor Marvin Sapp.
Sapp’s pickup truck was seized. He also was charged with unlawfully transporting fuel and was cited for improper lighting on the trailer.
The car ia a Renault 4 and has already logged over 190,000 miles. What will happen to the Holy one if the car breaks down on the highway in the middle of rush hour traffic, and a tow truck is no where to be found?
The sweet wheels have already logged 190,000 miles on the road. It’s a second hand gift from a northern Italian priest who used the car to visit his poor parishioners, Famiglia Cristiana reports.
The 70-year-old priest, Rev. Renzo Zocco from Verona, sent Pope Francis some fan mail earlier this year, pledging his support and offering up his car. In true Francis fashion, the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics called Zocco’s cell phone in August for a quick chat.
At first, Francis was reluctant to accept the gift, thinking that it should be given to the poor. But Zocco reassured him that the car would serve as a testimony to the work that the priest had done in the working-class neighborhoods of Verona. Plus, he already had a replacement.
Zocco and about 100 of his parishioners from the church of Santa Lucia di Pescantina piled into a bus and headed for Rome. The pilgrims rolled up to the Vatican on Saturday with the 25-year-old car on a tow truck.
The white car had been fitted with a new 800 cc. 30-horse power engine. It uses a French stick shift that folds out from the dashboard and deck-chair-style seats, ABC reports.