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Politics

Ralph Reed – Kids Better Off in Orphanages than Adopted by Gays

On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the panel discussed, among other things, Vladimir Putin’s stance on gays, including his refusing to allow gays to adopt kids in Russia.

One member of the panel was Ralph Reed, a prominent member of the Republican right-wing and a self professed Christian.

The question – whether or not kids are better off in orphanages than being adopted by gay parents?

Reed replied;

“The social science on this is clear. This isn’t about Vladimir Putin, this is about what’s best for children here in the United States. The social science is irrefutable: a child who grows up in a home without the mother and father present, and they both very unique procreative, nurturing, and socializing roles, they’re nine times more likely to end up dropping out of high school; they’re five times more likely to end up in poverty; and they’re three times more likely to end up addicted to drugs and alcohol.”

“But the social science is also irrefutable that a child raised in an orphanage is in much worse shape than a child raised in a home,” fellow panelist Cokie Roberts stated. “And the fact that people are willing to take these children and raise them, and raise them in a loving way, is clearly better for these children.”

“Would you agree with that?” host Martha Raddatz asked. “Would you rather have a child sitting in an orphanage than have gay parents?”

“I think the social science is just simply not in yet on same-sex couples,” Reed said, in a notable departure from his comment thirty seconds ago. “I think the law has every right to set an ideal. And the ideal is a mother and a father.”

“It’s also true, if we got better men we would be in better shape,” Roberts said.

r/t Mediaite

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dancing Television

Feel Good Video – Dancing To The Drummer’s Beat – Video

Photo: GirlFromTheHills

Ahhh, back in the days! These are the shows I grew up on. Brings a smile to my face and I hope watching this video brings a smile your way too.

Watch as your favorite sitcom characters get down to Dance to the Drummer’s Beat.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics the supreme court

Not So Breaking News – Fox News Contributor Thinks Obamacare is Unconstitutional – Video


George Will

To hell with the Supreme Court and their interpretation that the Affordable Care Act better known as Obamacare was constitutional. What do they know anyway. If you really want to know if the healthcare law is constitutional, just ask George Will – a Fox News contributor whose opinion apparently matters to those at Fox.

On Sunday, Mr. Will once again offered his opinion and guess what? The Fox News regular disagrees with the Supreme Court and has determined that Obamacare is in fact, unconstitutional.

Sidenote: It can be argued that opposition to Obamacare is all one needs to be a contributor on the Fox “News” Network. Mr. Will fits this description perfectly.

Now back to your regularly scheduled Fox News Obamacare bashing…

Mr. Will continues… “On May 8, here in the second-most important court in the land — the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals — there will be an argument that this is objectively a revenue measure,” Mr. Will said. “The Supreme Court said as much, a tax measure.”

“It did not originate in the House. And under the standards of origination, the whole thing is unconstitutional, so this argument, again, is far from over.”

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Easter egg hunt Featured

Easter Egghunt Discovery – Dead Body Under Backyard Deck

The mother planned an easter egg hunt in her backyard for her 4 year old child. During the egghunt on wednesday something else was found, a decomposing body.

Knoxville Police have identified the body of the man found during an Easter egg hunt earlier this week.

KPD said the man is Joshua Wayne Grubb, 29, a homeless man from Knoxville. Officials are still waiting for results of his autopsy, but say they believe he died of natural causes.

The body was found by a mother who was having an Easter egg hunt for her four-year-old child in the back yard, according to Knoxville police. Officials said the body had been there for about two weeks.

The woman told police she had smelled a foul odor outside her home on Forest View Road for several days. She tried to find the source of the smell a couple of times during the week to no avail.

When someone cut the woman’s grass earlier this week, she asked the person mowing to search for whatever was creating the foul odor in the yard. The person cutting the grass also did not notice the corpse beneath the deck.

Wednesday night at 7:19 p.m., the mother noticed the smell again during the Easter egg hunt and was finally able to locate the body.

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Featured News

Body Found In Plastic Storage Container On Brooklyn Street


Where the body was found – Photo (GoogleMaps)

Police are questioning a suspect after a body was found stuffed in a plastic storage container in the middle of a street in Brooklyn. According to cops, a passer-by made the discovery in front of a home on East 54th Street in Flatlands at about 12:30 p.m. Saturday. According to CBS, a Brooklyn nightclub owner called police to report that a bouncer at the club admitted to him that he’d killed a man.

Police have not identified the suspect. “Somebody was killed over there by somebody they knew and we have nothing to worry about,” neighbor Lynn Kerschner said police told her.

Neighbor Chris Savareace told CBS that he was friends with the victim, who goes by the nickname Chino. “I don’t know what made somebody so mad to do that to him. I heard they put him in a box, that’s what I heard from the cops. There’s some kind of people in the world that really ain’t that with it anymore,” he said.

h/t – gothamist

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Health

How Long Should It Take to See Muscle Definition?

SHUTTERSTOCK

The question: “When should I expect to see more defined muscles?”

The experts: Jon-Erik Kawamoto, strength and conditioning specialist, owner of JKConditioning; Lee Boyce, C.P.T., owner of Boyce Training Systems

The answer: Depending on how often you exercise and the intensity of your workouts, give it between four to eight weeks for your muscles to get ripped, says Kawamoto. While that seems like a long time, there are other signs that show your exercise routine is working—like climbing a flight of stairs without feeling totally winded, he adds.

If you’re dead-set on unveiled toned muscles ASAP, focus on high-intensity interval training (HIIT) about three to four days a week. “These combination workouts will boost your metabolic rate,” says Boyce, which helps melt fat fast so that your muscles can be seen. Check out 7 examples of HIIT workouts here (bonus: they’re all 20 minutes or less!).

MORE: Boost Your Metabolism All Day Long

Also, make sure to give yourself off-days between workouts to let your body recover from new muscle activations; pushing yourself too far can lead to injury and slow your strength improvement—not fun.

But don’t forget about your diet. If muscle growth is your fitness goal, you have to add more protein into each meal. Those are the building blocks for strong muscles, says Kawamoto. Start by matching your daily protein intake with your weight—so if you weigh 110 pounds, consume 110 grams of protein a day, recommends Boyce.

MORE: The Best Sources of Protein

Yes, that’s a lot—but your muscles need that energy to power through a tough workout and refuel afterward. Now, you could stick to chicken breasts and plain Greek yogurt (yawn)… but these 37 protein-packed meals taste way better!

h/t – fitness

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Featured

Almost 100 Hate Crime Killings Linked To One Website: Report

Stormfront.org is linked to close to 100 killings in the last five years, the Southern Poverty Law Center found.

From the Guardian:

The White Nationalist web forum Stormfront.org says it promotes values of “the embattled white minority,” and its users include Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 77 people in a 2011 massacre in Norway, and Wade Michael Page, who shot and killed six people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin in 2012.
The SPLC said ten murderers had links to Stormfront.

“It’s pretty clear that websites like Stormfront are breeding grounds for people who are just enraged at their situation, it’s there that people find the reasons their lives aren’t as they had hoped and Stormfront helps them find the enemy that is standing in their way – whether it be Jews, African Americans, immigrants and so on,” Heidi Beirich, report author and a director at the SPLC’s Intelligence Project told the Guardian. “Unfortunately it’s not very surprising that people who live in this kind of stew of violent racism eventually pick up a gun and do something about it at some point.”

NBC News reports that Frazier Glenn Cross, the man accused of killing three people at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City on April 13, was barred from Stormfront because of disagreements with the site’s founder.

The report calls Stormfront the “murder capital of the Internet.” SPLC’s research shows the site typically only gets about 1,800 visits a day, half of which are people outside the U.S.

But the site has a core group of very active users, and Stormfront’s “bias-related murder rate” accelerated significantly after Barack Obama became president, the report found.

Earlier this week, CNN reported that, in America, people who follow far-right wing ideologies have been responsible for more killings than Islamic extremists since September 11.

CNN notes that, according to a count by the New America Foundation, “right wing extremists have killed 34 people in the United States for political reasons since 9/11” whereas “terrorists motivated by al Qaeda’s ideology have killed 21 people in the United States since 9/11.”

 

h/t – huffington

 

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Featured

Video: Medical Intern Assaulted By Rikers Inmate

A 24-year-old medical intern was viciously assaulted by an inmate at Rikers Island this week. Joseph McRae was caught on surveillance video punching Stephanie Porcelli in the lockup’s George R. Vierno Center around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday. Porcelli suffered a broken jaw and multiple facial fractures in the unprovoked attack. You can see video of it below.

In the video, you can see McRae feigning a punch before actually doing so; it’s unclear whether Porcelli spoke to him before he punched her, sending her flying onto her back. Porcelli underwent surgery on Friday for her facial injuries. McRae, 24, was arrested in July 2013 and charged with two counts of assault for allegedly striking two women in the face at Penn Station.

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Healthcare ObamaCare Politics

The Simplest Reason Obamacare Succeeded – Explained

Sarah Kliff explained – There’s a very simple reason that Obamacare hit 8 million sign-ups: Being uninsured is horrible.

But the political conversation over Obamacare was driven almost entirely by people who had, and knew they would be able to keep, their health insurance. It was filled with a lot of assumptions, theories, and speculations about what people who didn’t have good insurance, or any insurance, would do. And after Obamacare’s disastrous launch, the theory took hold that these people wouldn’t find this untested program worth the trouble. It was the permanently insured speculating about the uninsured and the barely insured – and, unsurprisingly, they got it wrong

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Featured

Ex-Cop Accused of Killing Wife In Front Of Kids Told People He Would “Kill This B**** One Day”


Victim Jessica Mera with her two kids in the local bodega before the shooting (screenshot); Mera (Facebook); Former Officer Kevin Canty (Facebook)

Yesterday, a former NYPD officer was arrested for allegedly fatally shooting his wife in front of their two small children in Queens. Former officer Kevin Canty, 43, has been accused of killing his wife, 40-year-old Jessica Mera. Friends and neighbors told the News that the couple fought a lot, and Canty would often threaten his wife. “He told more than one person—’I’m gonna kill this bitch one day,'” said 22-year-old Shanique Varlack. “Everybody is just so distraught. He’s a cop. He’s supposed to protect us. He took an oath and now? He’s a murderer. She did not deserve to die.”

Canty allegedly shot Mera inside the couple’s home on 104th Street near 101st Avenue in Ozone Park just before 11 a.m. Saturday. Their two kids, a 4-year-old girl and 7-year-old boy, were in the house at the time. “The boy told me personally: ‘My dad shot my mom and there’s blood all over,'” a neighbor who asked to remain anonymous told the News. “My wife heard gunshots and the kids were running out on the street. They were banging on car doors as cars were passing by. They were trying to get help, someone to listen to them.”

Canty was a Manhattan transit cop before retiring last year with a disability; he was previously praised by the NYPD on Facebook for his part in saving the life of a man who suffered a heart attack at the Union Square subway station in July 2012.

“He’s kind of a scary guy, kind of intimidating. You got to talk to him for him to talk to you,” said neighbor Danny Ali. “He told me he was a detective. About a year ago, I saw he had a broken hand. He said he broke it in a fight. He wouldn’t say more about it.”

“They were always fighting. They’d fight outside, they would fight everywhere,” said neighbor Joanne Bagley. “They were not a happy couple. I guess it was inevitable.”

The News adds that Canty repeatedly banged his head against the inside of a squad car window after he was arrested. “They are going through a really tough time right now,” someone who identified himself as Mera’s friend told them. “You have no idea what this family has been through — this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

h/t – gothamist

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Celebrities Featured

Surf Magazine Sued Over Racist Article, Author Responds With Threatening Letter

Surfing Life, an Australian surf publication, is facing a $200,000 lawsuit for a story that described Indigenous Australian surfer Otis Carey as being “apeish” and comparing him to the late stone age’s Cro-Magnon.

According to the surf website The Inertia, Carey is suing the article’s author Nathan Myers and the surfing magazine owned by Morrison Media for defamation of character and seeking $200,000 in “emotional damages.” The story was published in the March issue of Surfing Life, and the passage in-question reads:

“With his apeish face and cowering hair-curtains, I expect little more than Cro-Magnon grunts from his mouth. I am caught off guard by the clarity and eloquence of his speech.”

In response to the suit, Myers penned an open letter to Carey, which The Inertia published on Monday, but it didn’t do much to appease his critics. In it, he reiterates his apology but also criticizes Carey’s decision to file suit. “I think you’re a fine human,” Myers wrote, “And I also think you’re making a mistake.”

In the letter, Myers calls the lawsuit “unreasonable” and explains that the term “apeish” was “intended to convey the folly of [his] own ill-conceived first impression” of Carey, citing Carey’s “dark, gritty” surf film “Kill the Matador.” Myers also says that the lawsuit could put Surfing Life and its staff of “career world travelers” and “open minded people” out of business, warning Carey that he risks putting his own reputation on the line.

You do realize of course,” Myers says, “that surf magazines are how freesurfers like you make your living, right? … Is this how you want to be remembered by surfing? The man who killed the magazine?”

Critics slammed Myers on Twitter for using a threatening tone in his response to Carey’s suit:
Surfing Line was quick to offer an official apology after the original story was published, claiming that they had no racist intent and that they “read the offending term as a jibe at the stereotypical surfer.” They also noted that their editor Wade Davis is “a man of colour whose maternal family immigrated to Australia from Africa,” a comment that further enraged their Twitter critics:
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time an Indigenous Australian athlete has been subjected to racist comments. Last year, Indigenous rugby player Adam Goodes was offended when a young girl called him an “ape” from the sidelines. The 13 year old apologized to the rugby star and told reporters it was meant to be a joke, but Goodes saw it as a larger problem in Australian society.

“It’s an issue about what our parents are teaching our kids. I never want anyone to feel what it’s like to be abused verbally about your race, about being black, about your appearance.”

To come to the boundary line and hear a 13-year-old girl call me an ‘ape’,” he told news reporters, “and it’s not the first time on a footy field that I’ve been referred to as a ‘monkey’ or an ‘ape’, it was shattering.”

 

h/t – huffington

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Featured

Woman Wants Abortion So She Can Be On ‘Big Brother’

An aspiring glamour model who had a £5,000 breast enlargement on the NHS is planning to abort her baby to appear on Big Brother.

The 24-year-old who is four-and-a-half months pregnant said: ‘This time next year I won’t have a baby. I’ll be famous instead.’

Josie Cunningham, 24, who sparked outrage when she had the operation to enhance her bust, is now pregnant after falling into a life of prostitution.

Josie Cunningham said she wants to terminate her pregnancy in a bid to star on the next series of Big Brother.

She told the Sunday Mirror: ‘An abortion will further my career. This time next year I won’t have a baby. Instead I’ll be famous, driving a bright pink Range Rover and buying a big house. Nothing will get in my way.’

Ms Cunningham said she had been on the shortlist to appear on the reality TV show but was reluctant to proceed because of her pregnancy.

‘At first I thought thank God, it’s a footballer or a doctor and not a Big Issue seller and they have money.’

She added: ‘I want to be famous for being me – Josie Cunningham, a glamour model in my own right. If I want to do that I need to put my career first.’

Ms Cunningham posted an image of her baby’s scan for her 927 followers on Twitter.

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