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2nd American Doctor Accused Of Killing Lion Illegally In Zimbabwe

August 3, 2015, 6:31 am
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Jan Casimir Seski M.D.

"Dentist Pays $55,000.00 To Kill A Collared Lion Illegally Lured From Its Sanctuary"


Alan: Whatever the legality or illegality of Dr. Seski's carnage, big game hunting "for sport" should be shamed.

Here is friend Fred Owens view at Frog Hospital: 

Cecil the Lion. You need to live in Africa for three years in order to really know the place. I lived in Africa for one year and learned just enough to be wrong most of the time. So keep that in mind when I say this -- I never met an African who expressed the smallest interest in the welfare of animals. Maybe they should care, but they don't care, and it's their country. This was disturbing to me when I realized that big parks like Hwange in Zimbabwe were managed for tourist income, but not for any innate love of the lion or the elephant. 

I began to see the African point of view. And it's what you have to work with if you care about the wildlife. Americans and Europeans love these magnificent animals and pay to keep them alive. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not neo-colonial or arrogant. That's where you start if you want to make it better.

You take a small farmer near the border of Hwange Park and his patch of corn. Supposing one or several elephants come cruising across his farm and trample his corn? That happens all the time. Elephants are not cute and lions are predators. These large animals can be difficult to live with.

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Alan: Ill-advised war-making -- and most war-making is ill-advised -- is another behavior that should be shamed:

The Bush Family Legacy: "25 Years In Iraq With No End In Sight." NPR
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-bush-legacy-25-years-in-iraq-with.html

Hans Blix' Fruitless Search For WMD And Bush/Cheney's Rush To War In Iraq

"The Fall Of Iraq. Jawdropping Video Footage Of Cheney, Albright, Gen Clarke & Others"

Uncle Sam's Mercenary Christians Kill 17 Iraqi Civilians. 2 Frenchmen Kill 12 In Paris


"Do War's Really Defend America's Freedom?"
(Homage Marine Commandant, Major General Smedley Butler)
Timeline Of United States Military Operations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations

Overseas Military Operations Of The United States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overseas_interventions_of_the_United_States

"Why of course the people don't want war... Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought along to do the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's Deputy Chief and Luftwaffe Commander, at the Nuremberg trials, 1946.



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2nd American Accused of Killing Lion Illegally in Zimbabwe

Victor Beattie
August 03, 2015
WASHINGTON—
Zimbabwe authorities, who recently requested that Washington extradite a Minnesota dentist for allegedly poaching a rare, black-maned lion, have accused a second American of illegally killing another lion.
Pennsylvania medical doctor Jan Casimir Seski, a bow hunter, has been accused of illegally killing a lion near Hwange National Park in April. Safari organizer and landowner Headman Sibanda has been arrested in the case.
The announcement follows last week's revelation that dentist and bow hunter Walter Palmer killed a locally popular, black-maned lion in early July.  
The killings have generated an international debate over trophy hunting and have prompted Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority to suspend hunting of lions, leopards and elephants around Hwange.
Guide faces trial
In a statement last week, Palmer said he believed he was acting legally when he killed Cecil on July 1. He said he used professional guides and secured all proper permits. 
On Wednesday, guide Theo Bronkhorst faces trial in Zimbabwe on a charge of failing to prevent an illegal hunt with Palmer. In an interview with the French news agency AFP, he denied allegations that they lured the wounded Cecil out of Hwange and killed him with a gun. He has pleaded not guilty.
Conservationist Jack Hanna, who'd directed the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, said Sunday on the ABC newscast "This Week" that the lion population has declined dramatically in the last 70 years.
"In 1947, when I was born, there were about 450,000 lions" worldwide, he said. The number had dropped to 100,000 in the mid-1970s, he added, and fewer than 30,000 remain today.
He urged "immediately considering the loss of lions," perhaps redistributing some from areas where they're plentiful to supportive habitats where they're otherwise disappearing.
Hanna called for more careful consideratin of trophy hunting, in which parts of a slain animal, such as the skin, antlers or head, are kept for display.
"I'm not saying an end to everything," he said. "The predator-prey relationship is messed up in a lot of places, so you have to work on that." 
Prospects for Palmer
Meanwhile, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the Palmer case. The dentist has not been seen in public since the story broke last week. His office is closed and he reportedly has received death threats.Comments have flooded the Twitter hashtag #CecilTheLion.
U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner on Friday declined to discuss Zimbabwe's request that Palmer be sent there for trial.
More broadly, he said extradition requests are received through diplomatic channels, and State works closely with the Justice Department to determine whether they meet treaty requirements. If so, the Justice Department requests that a U.S. court determine whether the individual is extraditable. After those judicial proceedings, the secretary of state makes the final decision on extradition.
"Obviously, humanitarian concerns and the ability of an individual to receive a fair trial may be considered at this stage of the process," Toner said.
Jens David Ohlin, a professor at Cornell University Law School in New York state, said Palmer could be extraditable if what is alleged in Zimbabwe can also be considered a crime in the United States, punishable by at least one year in prison.
Palmer could use further legal tools, Ohlin added.
"He can lobby the Justice Department and he can lobby the State Department, or his lawyers can, and ask them to block the extradition request and to not comply with it," Olin said. Or, Palmer's lawyers could fight extradition if he’s been arrested in the United States. After being brought to a local court, Palmer could contest extradition, "and he could say there is some defect in the process."
Legislation proposed
In Washington, U.S. Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey has introduced legislation to halt illegal big-game deaths by American trophy hunters.The CECIL Animal Trophies Act would expand import bans to species proposed for listing as threatened or endangered, as well as those already endangered. 
FILE - Cecil, a black-maned lion at Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, was killed this summer by American hunter Walter Palmer. The Zimbabwe National Parks agency shared the 2012 photo.
FILE - Cecil, a black-maned lion at Zimbabwe's Hwange National Park, was killed this summer by American hunter Walter Palmer. The Zimbabwe National Parks agency shared the 2012 photo.

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Picky Eating Could Signal Emotional Woes

August 3, 2015, 7:23 am
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Children gather around a selection of vegetables at RHS London Harvest Festival Show on October 7, 2014 in London, England. (credit: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
Children gather around a selection of vegetables at RHS London Harvest Festival Show on October 7, 2014 in London, England.

Picky Eating Could Signal Emotional Woes

August 3, 2015
CHICAGO (AP) – Parents of picky eaters take heart: New research suggests the problem is rarely worth fretting over, although in a small portion of kids it may signal emotional troubles that should be checked out.
Preschool-aged children who are extremely selective about what they eat and dislike even being near certain foods are more likely than others to have underlying anxiety or depression, the study found. But only 3 percent of young children studied were that picky.
Less severe pickiness, dubbed “moderate selected eating” in the study, was found in about 18 percent of kids. These are children who will only eat a narrow range of foods. Kids with either level of pickiness were almost two times more likely than others to develop anxiety symptoms within two years, the study found.
More typical pickiness, including kids who just refuse to eat their vegetables, is probably merely “normal dislike,” said eating disorders specialist Nancy Zucker, the lead author and an associate psychiatry professor at Duke University’s medical school. These are the kids who typically outgrow their pickiness as they mature.
Zucker said young children with moderate pickiness are probably more likely to outgrow the problem than the severe group, although more research is needed to confirm that.
The study was published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.
Dr. Arthur Lavin, a Cleveland pediatrician said picky eating is among the top concerns parents bring to his office, and that the study “helps us understand who we should be concerned about.”
“There’s more going on here than just not wanting to eat broccoli,” said Lavin, a member of an American Academy of Pediatrics committee on psycho-social issues. He was not involved in the research.
The study focused on about 900 children aged 2 through 5 who were recruited from primary care doctors affiliated with Duke’s medical center in Durham, North Carolina.
Researchers did in-home interviews with parents to evaluate kids’ eating habits and any mental health issues. Follow-up evaluations were done two years later in almost 200 children.
Compared with children who aren’t fussy eaters, depression and social anxiety were at least two times more common in kids with severe pickiness; attention deficit behavior and separation anxiety symptoms were more common in moderately selective kids.
Severe selective eating described in the study is akin to a condition called avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder, added in 2013 to the latest edition of a widely used psychiatric manual, the study authors said. It can occur in all ages; some of those affected are extra-sensitive to food tastes, smells and textures.
Zucker said severe pickiness may be the first clue for parents that a child is experiencing anxiety or depression and that they may want to seek help from a mental health specialist.
Moderate pickiness is less concerning but affected kids can make family meal-times a battleground, she said. To avoid that, Zucker suggests that parents try introducing new foods at random times during the day.


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What Aborted Fetuses Have to Do With Vaccines

August 3, 2015, 8:01 am
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The Black Market In Infants

The Thinking Housewife

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

Merton Quotations

What Aborted Fetuses Have to Do With Vaccines


A small but growing number of parents who object to vaccinating their children on religious grounds say they do so because many common vaccines are the product of cells that once belonged to aborted fetuses.
There is a grain of truth to this statement. But even religious leaders, including a future pope, have said that shouldn't deter parents from vaccinating their children.
Vaccine and Cell Line Science
Some childhood vaccines, including the one against rubella -- which is part of the MMR vaccine given to millions of children worldwide for measles, mumps and rubella -- is cultured in "WI-38 human diploid lung fibroblasts," according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's fact sheet on the vaccine's ingredients.
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Merck, the vaccine's manufacturer, acknowledged that those cells were originally obtained from an electively aborted fetus. They were used to start a cell line, which is a cell multiplied over and over again to produce cells that are of a consistent genetic makeup. The WI-38 cell line is used as a culture to grow live viruses that are used in vaccines.
Vaccines Developed Using Human Cell Strains
"Merck, as well as other vaccine manufacturers, uses two well-established human cell lines to grow the virus for selected vaccines," Merck said in a statement to ABC News. "The FDA has approved the use of these cell lines for the production of these Merck vaccines."
Other common vaccines, including those for chicken pox, hepatitis and rabies, are also propagated in cells originating from legally aborted human fetuses, according to the FDA.
"These abortions, which occurred decades ago, were not undertaken with the intent of producing vaccines," said a spokeswoman for the U.S. Centers Disease Control and Prevention.
The original cells were obtained more than 50 years ago and have been maintained under strict federal guidelines by the American Type Culture Collection, according to Merck.
"These cell lines are now more than three generations removed from their origin, and we have not used any new tissue to produce these vaccines," the company added in its statement.
To say that the vaccines contain a significant amount of human fetal tissue, as some objectors to the vaccines claim, is misleading, stressed Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.
"There are perhaps nanograms of DNA fragments still found in the vaccine, perhaps billionths of a gram," he said. "You would find as much if you analyzed the fruits and vegetables you eat."
And to remove human fibroblast cells entirely from vaccines is out of the question, Offit explained, noting they are necessary because human viruses don't grow well in animal cells.
"They have also been tested for safety and the fetal cells can go through many more divisions than most other cells before dying," he said.
Ethical Considerations
Religious organizations have sided in favor of vaccines as well, even those generally opposed to abortion.
"We should always ask our physician whether the product he proposes for our use has an historical association with abortion," the National Catholic Bioethics Center states on its website, but then goes on to say "one is morally free to use the vaccine regardless of its historical association with abortion."
"The reason is that the risk to public health, if one chooses not to vaccinate, outweighs the legitimate concern about the origins of the vaccine," the center's position statement continued. "This is especially important for parents, who have a moral obligation to protect the life and health of their children and those around them."
Offit said he was glad the Catholic Church supports vaccination.
He noted it is particularly ironic to object to the rubella vaccine using fetal cells because Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, commented on the subject in 2003, saying: "Universal vaccination has resulted in a considerable fall in the incidence of congenital rubella, with a general incidence reduced to less than 5 cases per 100,000 live births."
In other words, Offit explained, the rubella virus increases the risk of spontaneous abortion.
In the U.S., vaccination prevents up to 5,000 miscarriages each year in the U.S. alone, he said.
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Idaho Huntress Defends 'Kill' Photos

August 3, 2015, 10:09 am
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Facebook | @Sabrina Corgatelli
Cover Photos - Sabrina Corgatelli | Facebook


"Second American Doctor Accused Of Killing Lion Illegally In Zimbabwe"


Idaho Huntress Defends "Kill" Photos

An Idaho huntress Sabrina Corgatelli is defending 'kill' photos she recently posted on Facebook during a legal hunt in South Africa.
Corgatelli has received a firestorm of negative attention on her social media page in the wake of the illegal killing of Cecil the lion in Zimbabwe.
Facebook user Lili Brooksby said, "Wow. Well done. You killed a harmless slow animal. You must feel very big and clever. Enough to post it on Facebook. Sociopath." Another user, Maerwynn Griffin, posted, "You're really a disgusting person, Sabrina. Just a sad, small, disgusting person."
However, not all the comments directed toward Corgatelli were negative. Facebook user Becky Dipasquale defended the huntress, posting, "You may not like what she hunts but wow seems she has more class then you foul mouthed so called compassionate [people]."
Facebook
Mobile Uploads - Sabrina Corgatelli | Facebook
Corgatelli's photos include images of her with a giraffe, wildebeest and warthog, which she shot under the guidance of Old Days Safari, a local organization that arranges big-game hunting excursions for visitors.
In her July 25 post on the giraffe, she said, "Such a amazing animal!! I couldn't be any happier!! My emotion after getting him was a feeling I will never forget!!!
Despite the heavy criticism of her hunting, which has included numerous death threats, Corgatelli has defended her hobby.
In an interview with TODAY's Carson Daly on Monday, Corgatelli said that "Everything [she has] done [in South Africa] is legal, so how can you fault somebody because of their hobbies?"
She told Daly, "There is a connection with the animal, and just because we hunt them doesn't mean we don't have a respect for them."
While Corgatelli's story differs from that of Minnesota dentist Walter J. Palmer, who killed Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe, without a permit, the Idahoan has also had her job targeted by Facebook commenters. Her employment information has been posted online, according to TODAY.
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The Death Of "Shop Class"

August 3, 2015, 11:49 am
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Young female apprentice sanding a cabinet part in a woodshop.
Scenes like this are happening less often in our high schools

Alan: A foundational error of American educational philosophy is the implicit belief that everyone - through academic training - can become a "chief" which, in turn, obviates need for "Indians." 

I would prefer to see many more well-trained Indians and far fewer relatively inept "chiefs."

Eruope has always understood the honorability of manual labor and they educate their young accordingly. 

My own presumptions in this matter began to shift 40 years ago when my brother who was tasked with setting up the production line at a plastics packaging business in Rochester, New York realized it was very hard to locate craftsmen and craftswomen who could operate machinery to mold plastic, and when you did find a candidate s/he commanded a salary of over $100,000.00 in today's dollars.

The Death Of Shop Class

Mark E. Andersen

This past week I attended my class reunion. On Saturday morning we took a tour of my alma mater, Madison East High School—GO PURGOLDERS! Many things had changed in the school, and some things, like the smell of the boys locker room, will likely always stay the same.
In high school, I was a shop rat. Power mechanics, auto mechanics, auto body, drafting, print shop, plastics shop, wood shop, and metal shop. Those classes are likely the only reason I was able to graduate from high school. I learned how to weld, sandblast, paint, sand, use power tools, hand tools, I learned to set type and run a printing press. I learned how to repair anything from a lawn mower engine up to my dad's '79 Mercury Zephyr. I learned more about math in wood shop than I did in Algebra and Geometry.
While I use few of those skills today, I still do use some of them. I am not afraid to use a saw, hammer a nail, and could likely still run an arc welder if I needed to. Those classes were central to my education. Teachers like Mr. Ackley (wood shop), Mr. Sample (auto shop), Mr. Bloom (power mechanics), Mr. Kane (metal shop), Mr. Suchomel (plastics), and Mr. Stasiluk (drafting and print shop) taught me the importance of reading comprehension, math, and above all, patience. They taught the practical side of what I was learning in English, Algebra, Geometry, and Physics.

What disappointed me most about the school tour was what had happened to the shop areas of the school. No welding can be done in metal shop anymore. That wing of the building, built in 1932, does not have adequate ventilation. The paint booth in the auto shop is gone, also a victim of inadequate ventilation—there's no money to upgrade the ventilation for those classrooms. The auto shop is reduced to nothing more than simple auto maintenance classes as there is no money for the diagnostic tools used on modern automobiles. The print shop is no more, a victim of advancing technology. The plastics lab is now an athletic trainer's room. The wood shop, while still full of equipment, is no longer as popular as it once was.
We often hear of the skills gap, where there are jobs out there, but not enough qualified applicants for those jobs:
Based upon estimates of surveyed executives, about 60 percent of the manufacturing jobs unfilled today are attributable to a shortage of applicants with the requisite skills. Thus the authors anticipate that 2 million of the projected 3.4 million manufacturing jobs that come online by 2025 will be unfilled because of the skills gap.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has also mentioned the skills gap in his weekly radio address:
I've frequently heard from employers that they cannot find enough skilled workers to fill positions. The skills gap is a very real concern in Wisconsin and around the country. And the gap is only expected to increase. In the next ten years, approximately seventy percent of jobs will require some training behind a high school diploma but less than a four year degree.
This is the same governor who has attacked public schools during his tenure in office to the point of crippling them. For all his talk of tools and reforms for public education, his record more than speaks for itself:
The Wisconsin budget accelerates Walker’s four-year attack on the public sector, in particular the public schools. Among its measures are an expansion of a voucher program that provides taxpayer funding of private schools and cuts of $250 million to the state’s nationally renowned public university system.
Between the attacks on public education and the well-meaning emphasis on academics due to the federal No Child Left Behind initiative, which has induced high schools to shift resources toward core subject areas of math and reading, shop classes like machining, welding, and robotics are being crowded out. The very classes that allowed me to actually understand thePythagorean theorem or Newton's Third Law are the very classes that are on the chopping block.
We will always need people to be able to weld, fix cars, and other trades and these jobs should not be looked down upon, nor should they be looked at as second tier jobs.
The work of electricians, builders, plumbers, chefs, paramedics, carpenters, mechanics, engineers, security staff, and all the rest is absolutely vital to the quality of each of our lives. Yet the demands of academic testing mean that schools often aren’t able to focus on these other capabilities at all. Vocational programs – such as carpentry or welding classes, cosmetology classes or many of the other practical areas of study available in some US high schools and in the vocational schools that dot our cities and suburbs — are seen as second-rate options for people who don’t make the academic cut.

In many cases the very people screaming about the skills gap, and stating that they desperately need skilled workers are the very ones responsible for gutting school funding.
Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) is pushing to eliminate the state's top income tax bracket of 7.65 percent, a rate paid by individuals earning $240,190 per year or more and married couples earning $320,250 per year or more.
And:
Aiming to make Wisconsin more attractive to business, Republican lawmakers have proposed reducing the state tax on the production earnings of manufacturers and agricultural businesses to almost nothing by 2016. The tax reductions - slashing the rate in annual steps from the current 7.9% to 0.4% - would apply to the production income of the businesses, not to income such as royalties and investments.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates the measure would cost the state $359.7 million over its first five years, and $128.7 million a year once it is fully phased in starting in 2016.
How can manufacturers expect to have intelligent, trained workers when they do not want to pay taxes?
Not all teens are great at academics, and not all kids are going to be good welders. But, each child should have an equal chance at success. It is well past time to make businesses pay their fair share towards educating the youth of America. If they need an educated work force—and they do—they should help pay for it.

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Mike Huckabee: I Won't Rule Out Using Federal Troops And The FBI To Prevent Abortion

August 3, 2015, 12:09 pm
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U.S. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee speaks to the 42nd annual meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council in San Diego, California July 23, 2015.  REUTERS/Mike Blake - RTX1LKV3
Alan: Only 20% of Americans want to proscribe abortion under any circumstance. http://wps.ablongman.com/long_sobel_pto_1/40/10417/2666961.cw/content/index.html
And if rape-impregnation of your 12 year old daughter by Willie Horton were stipulated in polling questions, the number of Americans who "say" they oppose abortion under any circumstance would dwindle.
Just how low do you think the number would go? 5%? 2%? 
My point is this. 
If "a line" can be drawn somewhere other Absolutely No Abortion Under Any Circumstance, then people-of-conscience can conscionably choose different legal thresholds for when abortion is permissible.
Mike Huckabee: I won't rule out using federal troops and the FBI to prevent abortion

On the war on women, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee once said:
“I think it’s time Republicans no longer accept listening to the Democrats talk about a 'war on women,'" Huckabee said during a speech at the Republican National Committee's winter meeting in Washington. "The fact is the Republicans don’t have a war on women, they have a war for women, to empower them to be something other than victims of their gender.”
Now, less than two years after that statement, Huckabee hints he would have an all-out real war on women's private health decisions, troops and all:
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee indicated Thursday that if elected, he wouldn’t rule out employing federal troops or the Federal Bureau of Investigation to stop abortion from taking place in the United States.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against bans on abortion, Huckabee said past presidents have defied Supreme Court rulings.
Supreme Court and laws of the land be damned, Huckabee does what Huckabee wants to do:
“Would that be a huge controversy?” the former Arkansas governor asked. “Yes.”
So, there you go. Mike Huckabee, who doesn't think there is a conservative war on women, is now saying out loud that he wouldn't rule out using federal troops and the FBI for an actual war on women.
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This Alabama jail really did torture an inmate with a Burmese python

August 3, 2015, 12:15 pm
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Burmese Python
Burmese python, torture device
This Alabama jail really did torture an inmate with a Burmese python

Shaun King

Yes. This really happened.
Trawick Redding Jr., of Ozark, Alabama, a former inmate of the Dale County Jail, just filed a lawsuit. In it ...
He claims correctional officers, Zeneth Glenn and Ryan Mittlebach, used a "deadly and venomous snake as a means of torture, assault of inmate, cruel and unusual punishment" while he was in jail two years ago.
Alan: No, the Burmese python is not venemous although it is deadly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burmese_python
"We think this is a very serious matter that should be dealt with," Redding's attorney Martin Weinberg told AL.com. "This was not just a garden snake that somebody just found on the ground walking into the jail or the woods by the jail. This was something that was planned out as a means to control, torture and harass the inmates."
We know this really happened because the county admits it fired the two officers over the incident. What's doubly disturbing, beyond the obvious torture by snake, is that after Officer Zenith Glenn was fired by Dale County, it appears he has now been rehired by the nearby Ozark Police Department, according to attorney Martin Weinberg, reached by email, who is representing the inmate in this case.
So, in summary, an inmate from Ozark was tortured with a snake in jail, the officer was fired, the inmate is now free, and the local police department in Ozark hires the terminated officer. Can you imagine having to see a police officer out walking the street who tortured you in jail with a damn snake?
This is a recurring theme in law enforcement in which officers are fired or quit after complaints of misconduct and simply move one town over and push reset. We desperately need a national database of police misconduct and a federal law prohibiting officers found guilty of misconduct from participating law enforcement.
"Robocop" Bill Melendez was fired from multiple police departments, sued in a dozen different cases of extreme police misconduct, and was still hired by yet another police department in Michigan where he beat a black grandfather and attempted to plant drugs on him. He has since been charged with three felonies and terminated, but only after a life of misconduct.
Jeff Roorda was fired for falsifying reports as a police officer in Missouri, then literally moved one county over and became a small town police chief. He's now a key leader in the St. Louis Police Union in spite of his previous misconduct.
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The Borowitz Report: Nation Worried That Rest Of World Might See Debate

August 3, 2015, 3:18 pm
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The New Yorker
Alan: "Conservative" politics is an embarrassment.
When conducting research, future historians will be the first of their kind to find themselves in a state of continual laughter.
And not just laughter, but belly laughter.

The Borowitz Report: Nation Worried That Rest Of World Might See Debate

Moderate Republican For Trump: Only Trump Can Restore GOP Sanity... By A Landslide Loss


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The United States And Canada: The Difference Between Barbarism And Civilization

August 3, 2015, 6:26 pm
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"Pax On Both Houses: Compendium Of Canada Blog Posts"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2014/05/compendium-my-blog-posts-concerning.html

"Gun Cartoons and Gun Violence Bibliography"

"Politics And Economics: The 101 Courses You Wish You Had"

"Plutocracy Triumphant"
Cartoon Compendium

Hitchhiking robot's US trip comes to sudden, tragic end

A robot who hitchhiked across Europe and Canada lasted just two weeks in the US.
Video posted online appears to show a man in a sports jersey repeatedly kicking hitchBOT and damaging it beyond repair.
The Canadian researchers who created hitchBOT as a social experiment about whether robots could trust humans said that someone in Philadelphia vandalised the robot early Saturday, putting a sudden and premature end to its first American tour.
"Sadly, sadly it's come to an end," Frauke Zeller, one of its co-creators, said.
The kid-size robot set out to travel cross-country after successfully hitch-hiking across Canada in 26 days in 2014 and parts of Europe. It's immobile on its own, relying on the kindness of strangers. Those who picked it up often passed it to other travelers or left it where others might notice it.
It started in Marblehead, Massachusetts, on July 17 with its thumb raised skyward, a grin on its digital face and tape wrapped around its cylindrical head that read "San Francisco or bust".
The robot bounced around the Boston area and was briefly taken to sea. One day, it took in a Red Sox game, checking off one of the items on the bucket list created for it. But hitchBOT never made it off the East Coast.
The creators were sent an image of the vandalised robot Saturday but couldn't track its location because the battery was dead. They said they didn't know who destroyed it or why.
The robot was designed to be a talking travel companion and could toss out factoids and carry limited conversation. A GPS in the robot tracked its location, and a camera randomly snapped photos about every 20 minutes to document its travels.
During past travels, the robot attended a comic convention and a wedding, and had its portrait painted in the Netherlands. It once spent a week with a heavy metal band.
With the robot destroyed, Zeller said, she was most concerned about children who loved hitchBOT and followed it on social media. Her team doesn't plan to release the last photo of it to protect young fans who might be distraught.
"I hope that people won't be too disappointed, too sad," she said.
© ninemsn 2015

Read more at http://www.9news.com.au/technology/2015/08/04/09/27/hitchhiking-robots-lasts-two-weeks-in-us#qBSCt7dRygLsSrvr.99
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Behind Every Republican Success

August 3, 2015, 6:38 pm
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Poll Released Today Reveals A Huge And Growing Lead For "The Donald"

August 3, 2015, 7:11 pm
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Moderate Republican For Trump: Only Trump Can Restore GOP Sanity... By A Landslide Loss

Another poll, another huge — and growing — Trump lead


It seems like only this morning that we were updating our "state of the debate" graphic and talking about how John Kasich was pretty secure in his position and how the center of gravity in the 2016 Republican race was Donald Trump in about every sense of the phrase. It seems like it was only this morning, because it was only this morning.
Now there's a new national poll -- this time from Fox News, hosts of the Thursday debate that this poll helps to cement. Now, Kasich is in ninth, and Jeb Bush clearly in second, but otherwise it's the same, trend-wise. Kasich emerging from the mass of third-tier candidates, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Ben Carson (among others) tussling in the middle, Bush and Scott Walker tied for first in the alternate universe where there's no Trump, and Trump, ahead by a mile in this current universe.
Fox is very good about providing detailed information about precisely who likes each candidate, and has done so over time. That lets us create this rather amazing look at how Trump's support has grown since June, right around the time he launched. Up, up, up, up -- except with voters who make under $50,000 a year. They were early adopters, but now they've changed their minds a bit. Except: Margins of error and so on. But let's keep an eye on this over the long term.
If you're Donald Trump, you'll probably take "rocketing up in the polls except seeing a slight downturn in one constituency." If you're anyone else, you'd take it, too, probably even more eagerly.
There's another warning sign for Trump, though. The number of people who say they would never consider voting for him is exceeded only by the number saying that about Christie, who has not seen a moment of rocketing upward basically since Hurricane Sandy.
Notice, though, that more people have strong feelings about Trump. More people say they would vote for him, too. He's polarizing, that Donald Trump! Who knew.
Who knew.

Philip Bump writes about politics for The Fix. He is based in New York City.


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Best Voter Fraud Cartoon Ever - With Bonus Point!

August 3, 2015, 7:23 pm
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Chris Christie: Once A New Jersey Thug, Always A New Jersey Thug

August 3, 2015, 7:29 pm
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Chris Christie to teachers union: You deserve a punch in the face
 

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, struggling to gain traction in a crowded 2016 GOP presidential field, said Sunday that a national teachers union deserves a “punch in the face” and called it the “single most destructive force in public education.” Christie said the union cares only about higher wages and benefits and not about children.
Christie, who has long made teachers unions a favorite foil, made the comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” in response to host Jake Tapper, who noted that Christie has said that he confronts bullies by punching them in the face. “At the national level, who deserves a punch in the face?” Tapper asked.
Without missing a beat, Christie said: “Oh the national teachers union, who has already endorsed Hillary Clinton 16, 17 months before the election.”
Christie was referring to the American Federation of Teachers, the second-largest teachers union, which became the first national labor union to make an endorsement in the 2016 race when it gave its backing to Clinton on July 11. The largest union, the National Education Association, has not yet made an endorsement.
Christie said the AFT was “not for education for our children. They’re for greater membership, greater benefits, greater pay for their members. And they are the single most destructive force in public education in America. I have been saying that since 2009. I have got the scars to show it. But I’m never going to stop saying it, because they never change their stripes.”
Randi Weingarten, the AFT president and a close Clinton ally, responded with a statement Monday.
“Chris Christie has issues – from reneging on his promise to fix pensions to his state’s fiscal standing facing near junk bond status,” Weingarten said. “But the biggest issue is he’s a bully and has anger management problems. That he would threaten to punch teachers in the face —mostly women seeking to help children meet their potential and achieve their dreams — promotes a culture of violence and underscores why he lacks the temperament and emotional skills to be president, or serve in any leadership capacity. It’s a sad day in the life of our nation to see a candidate threaten violence to gain political favor.”
Christie has long tangled with public employee unions but has a particularly fraught relationship with teachers unions, frequently railing against their pensions and health care benefits. He has called the unions “political thugs,” and he has had several public confrontations with individual teachers, captured on video and replayed on YouTube or cell phone images shared widely on social media .
In 2013, after Christie delivered a speech at a VFW hall during his campaign for re-election to a second term as governor, middle school teacher Melissa Tomlinson asked Christie, “Why are you portraying our schools as failure factories?” He wagged a finger at her and said: “What do you want? I’m tired of you people,” according to Tomlinson.
Recent polls put Christie toward the bottom of the Republican field in the 2016 presidential contest, with about 3 percent of likely GOP voters in his corner.


Lyndsey Layton has been covering national education since 2011, writing about everything from parent trigger laws to poverty’s impact on education to the shifting politics of school reform.
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Fortune Magazine: "As Obamacare Takes Hold, Unpaid Hospital Bills Vanish"

August 3, 2015, 8:32 pm
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"Don't Buy The Hype. 
American Insurance Companies Think Obamacare Will Be Just Fine"

"The Hard, Central Truth Of Contemporary Conservatism"

As Obamacare Takes Hold, Unpaid Hospital Bills Vanish

As hospital operators begin to report second period earnings — the sixth consecutive quarter of new revenue from once uninsured patients — the number and size of unpaid medical bills continues to fall thanks to theAffordable Care Act.
The health law last year began to provide subsidized private health insurance coverage on public exchanges and expanded Medicaid for poor Americans. With increasing numbers signing up to private coverage and more states opting to expand Medicaid in the last 18 months, hospital companies are seeing expenses for charity and uncompensated care fall.
A snapshot of this trend could be seen in last week’s earnings report of Universal Health Services (UHS), a large multi-state investor-owned operator of hospitals, which reported uncompensated care declined in the second quarter “as it has the last six quarters now,” Universal Health chief financial officer Steve Filton told analysts on the company’s second quarter earnings call.
Universal Health said its acute care hospitals have seen a “decrease in the aggregate of charity care, uninsured discounts and provision of doubtful accounts as a percentage of gross charges” this year through June 30 compared to the same period in 2014. Universal Health’s cost providing for so-called “doubtful accounts” dropped 17% to $274 million during the first half of the year from $331 million during the six-month period ended June 30, 2014.
Such trends, which helped Universal Health raise its earnings forecast for the rest of the year, should help the entire hospital industry, particularly as more states opt to expand Medicaid. Under the ACA, states have the option to expand Medicaid and 31 states including the District of Columbia have done so, according to the latest tally from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
“We assume that the growth in our Medicaid patient base and utilization is related at least in large part to Medicaid expansion,” Filton told analysts. “We see it quite clearly most dramatically in those states, Nevada, California, the District of Columbia that have participated in Medicaid expansion.”
Universal Health’s acute acre hospitals are located in California, Florida, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas and the District of Columbia. An even clearer picture of U.S. hospital finances will emerge this week when Universal Health’s larger hospital operators report their earnings. Tenet Health (THC) and Community Health Systems (CYH) report Tuesday, HCA Holdings (HCA) reports on Wednesday. 

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Sanders, Trump And The Revolt Against The Ruling Class

August 3, 2015, 8:39 pm
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Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley; author, 'Beyond Outrage'




The Revolt Against the Ruling Class

Posted: 
"He can't possibly win the nomination," is the phrase heard most often when Washington insiders mention either Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.
Yet as enthusiasm for the bombastic billionaire and the socialist senior continues to build within each party, the political establishment is mystified.
They don't understand that the biggest political phenomenon in America today is a revolt against the "ruling class" of insiders that have dominated Washington for more than three decades.
In two very different ways, Trump and Sanders are agents of this revolt. I'll explain the two ways in a moment.
Don't confuse this for the public's typical attraction to candidates posing as political outsiders who'll clean up the mess, even when they're really insiders who contributed to the mess.
What's new is the degree of anger now focused on those who have had power over our economic and political system since the start of the 1980s.
Included are presidents and congressional leaders from both parties, along with their retinues of policy advisors, political strategists, and spin-doctors.
Most have remained in Washington even when not in power, as lobbyists, campaign consultants, go-to lawyers, financial bundlers, and power brokers.
The other half of the ruling class comprises the corporate executives, Wall Street chiefs, and multi-millionaires who have assisted and enabled these political leaders -- and for whom the politicians have provided political favors in return.
America has long had a ruling class but the public was willing to tolerate it during the three decades after World War II, when prosperity was widely shared and when the Soviet Union posed a palpable threat. Then, the ruling class seemed benevolent and wise.
Yet in the last three decades -- when almost all the nation's economic gains have gone to the top while the wages of most people have gone nowhere -- the ruling class has seemed pad its own pockets at the expense of the rest of America.
We've witnessed self-dealing on a monumental scale -- starting with the junk-bond takeovers of the 1980s, followed by the Savings and Loan crisis, the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom), and culminating in the near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 and the taxpayer-financed bailout.
Along the way, millions of Americans lost their jobs their savings, and their homes.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to big money in politics wider than ever. Taxes have been cut on top incomes, tax loopholes widened, government debt has grown, public services have been cut. And not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail.
The game seems rigged -- riddled with abuses of power, crony capitalism, and corporate welfare.
In 2001, a Gallup poll found 77 percent of Americans satisfied with opportunities to get ahead by working hard and 22 percent dissatisfied. By 2014, only 54 percent were satisfied and 45 percent dissatisfied.
The resulting fury at ruling class has taken two quite different forms.
On the right are the wreckers. The Tea Party, which emerged soon after the Wall Street bailout, has been intent on stopping government in its tracks and overthrowing a ruling class it sees as rotten to the core.
Its Republican protégés in Congress and state legislatures have attacked the Republican establishment. And they've wielded the wrecking balls of government shutdowns, threats to default on public debt, gerrymandering, voter suppression through strict ID laws, and outright appeals to racism.
Donald Trump is their human wrecking ball. The more outrageous his rants and putdowns of other politicians, the more popular he becomes among this segment of the public that's thrilled by a bombastic, racist, billionaire who sticks it to the ruling class.
On the left are the rebuilders. The Occupy movement, which also emerged from the Wall Street bailout, was intent on displacing the ruling class and rebuilding our political-economic system from the ground up.
Occupy didn't last but it put inequality on map. And the sentiments that fueled Occupy are still boiling.
Bernie Sanders personifies them. The more he advocates a fundamental retooling of our economy and democracy in favor of average working people, the more popular he becomes among those who no longer trust the ruling class to bring about necessary change.
Yet despite the growing revolt against the ruling class, it seems likely that the nominees in 2016 will be Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. After all, the ruling class still controls America.
But the revolt against the ruling class won't end with the 2016 election, regardless.
Which means the ruling class will have to change the way it rules America. Or it won't rule too much longer.
ROBERT B. REICH's film "Inequality for All" is now available on DVD and blu-ray, and on Netflix. Watch the trailer below:
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Texas' Tea Party Attorney General Arrested For Brazen Fraud Felony

August 3, 2015, 8:43 pm
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Texas’ attorney general surrendered to authorities Monday in connection with felony charges that he misled investors in a scheme to funnel money to himself.
Ken Paxton, 52, turned himself in at the Collin County Sheriff’s Office, where he was booked in connection with three charges: two counts of fraud and one count of failing to register as an investment adviser.
Paxton pleaded not guilty and pledged to mount a vigorous defense, even as most high-ranking Texas Republicans kept their distance.
Other prominent Texas politicians have been indicted while in office – most recently, then-Gov. Rick Perry last year – but they could wave off such prosecution as politically motivated.
Not so for Paxton, a tea party Republican who was investigated by the state’s iconic Texas Rangers and indicted by a grand jury in one of the most conservative counties in Texas.
“He’s bleeding to death and don’t know it yet,” said Southern Methodist University political analyst Cal Jillson.
Paxton has been in office only seven months. A former member of the Texas House of Representatives first elected in 2002, Paxton rose quickly in Texas politics, capped by his election in November to the state’s highest law enforcement position, running on a tea party platform.
But before his election, in the difficult GOP primary, Paxton disclosed that he violated state securities law by not telling regulators that he received a commission when he sent clients from his law firm to a financial planner.
Paxton paid a $1,000 fine, but a public watchdog group, Texans for Public Justice, called for a broader criminal inquiry, which was led by the Texas Rangers.
According to the indictment, Paxton, a McKinney, Texas, attorney and real estate adviser at the time, cobbled together the scheme in 2011, when he drew in at least two other investors who put in at least $100,000 each.A Collin County jury handed up felony charges that allege that Paxton duped investors into backing Dallas-area technology firm Servergy Inc. without disclosing that he was receiving a commission for their investment.
The booking documents show that he faces two counts of first-degree securities fraud and a lesser charge of failing to register with state regulators. Each of the fraud counts carries a punishment of five to 99 years.
The district attorney in Collin County declined to take the case, citing a conflict of interest because he and Paxton have a longstanding business relationship, and handed it off to a pair of Houston defense attorneys, Brian Wice and Kent Schaffer, who were appointed to prosecute the case.
“Our statutory mandate as special prosecutors is not to convict, but to see that justice is done,” Wice and Schaffer said in a statement issued Saturday.
Paxton won’t need to step down unless he is convicted, at which point his law license would be suspended.
"Attorney General Ken Paxton will plead not guilty to these accusations and he will demand a trial by jury,” Paxton’s attorney, Joe Kendall, said in a statement. “He is looking forward to the opportunity to tell his side of the story.”
Texas Democrats urged Paxton to leave office immediately, saying he should spare the state the embarrassment of a lengthy trial.
Paxton becomes the second high-ranking Texas official to be booked at a county jail in one calendar year.
Last August, Perry turned himself in at the Travis County Jail after a complaint from another Texas watchdog group included accusations that Perry threatened to veto funding to the state’s Public Integrity Unit, which was investigating one of Perry’s prized state initiatives.
The two men have something else in common: Like Perry before him, Paxton smiled for his mug shot.

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Jessica Alba's "Honest Company" Sucker Punches A Whole Demographic Of "Organic Puritans"

August 3, 2015, 8:47 pm
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Jessica Alba at company headquarters. 

The Failure of Jessica Alba's Honest Company's Sunscreen
A consumer products company whose eco-friendly and hypoallergenic goods are intended to give parents peace of mind is now getting a piece of the minds of customers over the apparent failure of their reformulated SPF 30 sunscreen lotion. The Honest Company, co-founded by actress Jessica Alba, is now the focus of customer complaints and photos of sunburned children posted online. The company’s “natural mineral-based skin protection” lotion has been advertised as a safe and simple alternative to sunscreens containing synthetic chemicals, providing 80 minutes of water resistance and “broad spectrum’ skin protection against the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation.
With some caveats, customer reviews on Amazon.com provide an insightful timeline as to the problems with the product. Last year, most of the complaints focused on the thick and greasy character of the lotion. The product was reportedly reformulated in early 2015, with the packing changing from a light blue, to white and yellow with colorful graphics. Reviews began accumulating in March 2015 – and exploded in July – with reports of users suffering extensive sunburns after sun exposure with the new formulation of the lotion, even when reportedly using and reapplying as directed.
So what’s going on? The issue could be a problem with the reformulation itself — but it could also have to do with the simple fact that people apply sunscreen differently on the beach than they do in the lab. Here’s what we know so far:
The mineral-based sunscreen component is zinc oxide, the chemical that conjures up memories of lifeguards strutting around with white cream on their noses. Zinc oxide has excellent sun-protectant qualities in that it absorbs or deflects the three major classifications of ultraviolet light: UVA, UVB and far UVA. The aesthetic problem is that it works best at a concentration so high that the white color doesn’t disappear when rubbing in. Moreover, the zinc oxide particles have to be suspended in a relatively thick and greasy carrier that feels like rubbing on petroleum jelly, often because it contains some petrolatum.
That aesthetic problem is what plagued the product during 2014. Customers complained that the product left a white coating on the skin, was greasy and uncomfortable, with several reports of an unpleasant smell, “like a mix of rancid oils and dirt,” said one customer on Amazon who had reportedly purchase it directly from the company.
The new formulation released this year appears to have reduced the zinc oxide concentration from 20 percent to 9.3 percent with the claim that it doesn’t leave a white residue. The base, which still lists beeswax as the number one ingredient, now contains shea butter and a variety of plant based oils, likely intended to improve the sensory features of the product.
I called The Honest Company for comment this morning and was promised a return call when a West Coast representative could respond to me. But People magazine reported this company comment in their article posted Sunday night:
The Honest Company is committed to providing safe and effective products, and we take all consumer feedback very seriously.
Our Sunscreen Lotion was tested, by an independent 3rd party, against the protocols prescribed by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) monograph for over-the-counter sunscreen products. The results showed that our product is effective and safe for use as an 80 minute water-resistant (FDA’s highest rating), SPF 30 sunscreen lotion in accordance with FDA regulations when used as directed (Shake Well. Apply liberally and evenly 15 minutes before sun exposure. Reapply after 80 minutes of swimming or sweating, immediately after towel drying and at least every 2 hours).
The number of complaints received on our own website about our Sunscreen Lotion constitute less than one half of one percent of all units actually sold at honest.com.
What might have gone wrong, then?
This response provides us with some clues as to why a subset of customers may have been reporting product failures – and these are my speculations as a scientist who knows a bit about pharmaceutical formulations.

My most immediate thought is that users might not have shaken the product adequately before using. Unlike a bottle, which seems like it should be shaken, the product is provided in a three-ounce tube. For whatever psychological reason, I don’t think of a tube as requiring shaking.
Moreover, with the change in the formulation of the base and reducing the zinc oxide content, the active ingredient might slowly concentrate in the tube depending on where it’s been sitting. So, you might get a huge burst of zinc oxide at first and then a bunch of carrier with less zinc oxide, or you might just get a bunch of carrier. I say this because 2015 customers vary in their complaints about the whiteness of the product when rubbed on the skin.
Another problem might be an individual user’s interpretation of “apply liberally,” but that’s a potential problem with any sunscreen product. When a company or independent contractor tests its product on human volunteers, it’s applied at two milligrams per square centimeter of skin surface area. For context, the average adult has 1.7 square meters of skin surface area, or 17,000 square centimeters (no, not 170). (It’s 1.9 m2 for men, 1.6 m2 for women.)
So if an adult were to cover their entire body in product at the FDA testing standard, you’d need to apply 34 grams (1.2 ounces), or just over a third of a tube of The Honest Company’s sunscreen. Most folks don’t apply it everywhere everywhere, but this is where the general recommendation of “a shot glass worth’s” of sunscreen comes from: a shot glass holds about one fluid ounce and that would be about 28 grams of a typical lotion.
Do you put on that much lotion? Does the popularity of concentrated sunscreen sprays make you think you need less lotion? Do you really reapply it every hour or two? Do you reapply it after toweling off? Swimming or sweating? Yeah, I thought so.
But children, whose sunburns seem to be most commonly reported for this product, have a high surface area relative to their weight. So if you’re applying sunscreen to your child, you might tend to apply less than you apply to yourself. Usually, that’s not a problem. But if a product is just on the edge of being protective, any variation could make them even more susceptible to a sunburn.
I’m always hesitant to report too hastily on customer complaints but the abundance and timing of this episode is convincing that something has gone wrong with the product.
Incidentally, the $1 billion success story of actress Jessica Alba’s consumer products business, The Honest Company, was just featured on the June 15th cover of Forbes magazine. The article, by staff writer Clare O’Connor, had been posted online two weeks earlier and counts over 1.1 million views. Riding the wave of parental fears over “chemicals” in products that touch the skin in one way or another, Alba was spurred to start the company after her own child showed the same hypersensitivity issues that she had as a child:
In 2008 Alba was newly engaged to Internet entrepreneur Cash Warren and pregnant with their first child. At a baby shower thrown by family and friends, she remembers her mother advising her to use baby detergent to prewash the piles of onesies she’d received as gifts. She used a mainstream brand and immediately broke out into ugly red welts, harkening back to a childhood spent in and out of emergency rooms and doctors’ offices.
In the case of sunscreen, the FDA has approved 17 chemicals for use. One of the older chemicals, PABA (p-amino-benzoic acid), can cause some skin hypersensitivity and has gone by the wayside. The most common today is oxybenzone and avobenzone but some consumers are concerned over reports that these chemicals are absorbed into the body. But just because they get into the body, they’re not dangerous and we metabolize them quite readily.
The marketing tactic for “chemical-free” or “synthetic chemical-free” products has fueled this resurgence in the use of zinc oxide. But even though zinc oxide occurs in nature, commercial zinc oxide is synthesized from pure zinc or zinc ores. So while we’d all prefer products applied to skin to be free of dangerous or allergy-inducing chemicals, we now have a case where having a dogmatic consumer product philosophy might have backfired – with the chemical still being synthetic.



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Washington Post: The Search For America's Best Food Cities

August 3, 2015, 10:02 pm
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Pope Francis' Parenting Guide

August 3, 2015, 10:12 pm
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Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality

Pope Francis: One Of The Most Powerful Critiques Of Capitalism You Will Ever Read

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/03/pope-francis-one-of-most-powerful.html


Pope Francis: "This Economy Kills"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-this-economy-kills.html


Catholic Social Teaching

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/catholic-social-teaching.html

Pope Francis: Moving The Moral Compass 
From "The Individual" Toward "The Collective"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-moving-moral-judgment-from.html


Pope Francis knows the family is made up of real people living in the real world, which is why he often gives down-to-earth advice.
The Catholic Church has long taught that the family is a school of humanity — the first and best place to learn about love and respect. In fact, a healthy society relies on citizens who learn love, responsibility, loyalty, acceptance of others and solidarity from their family relationships, Pope Francis has said.
The pope, a former teacher, has, in a way, been handing today's families detailed lesson plans, offering guidance in what actually needs to be done. The world Synod of Bishops on the family, which the pope has convoked for October, also is expected to deliver concrete guidelines for the pastoral care of the family and its members.
By devoting his general audience talks to the family since last December, as well as making the family a key topic of other speeches and homilies, Pope Francis has been offering concrete and, at times, colorful advice, which will give people gathering for the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia in September plenty of material to parse through.
The pope's approach starts from the bottom up.
He doesn't begin with a textbook concept or picture-perfect ideal everyone needs to magically become an exact replica of. The family is a real institution made up of very human, and therefore, limited members who need real help.
With examples from his own life and the real lives of others, he points to what is happening "on the ground" and then builds a pastoral plan — what would God's response be to this reality.
For example, the Christian response to the all too typical problem of anger or misunderstanding is to choose the path of dialogue, which requires eating lots of tart "humble pie", he said in a homily in January 2014.
"Sometimes the plates will fly," the pope said. But "after the storm has passed", things have to be worked out as soon as possible, "with a word, a gesture", so no one ends up "isolated in this bitter broth of our resentment".
Other similarly practical advice he has given couples: play with your kids more, stop the swearing, be more affectionate and always say, "Please,""May I" and "Thank you." Moms and dads must lead the way, he says; they are the most influential role models for their kids.
Kissing in front of the children is a "beautiful witness", he told parents in June 2015. Children watch their parents carefully and "when they see that dad and mom love each other, the children grow in that climate of love, happiness and security".
He has told youngsters to go out, discover the world and "build everything together, do everything with love, everything is possible and faith is an event always to be proclaimed".
Talk to your best friend, Jesus, every day, he told children last December, and be "apostles of peace and serenity" at home and at school.
"Remind your parents, brothers and sisters and peers that it is beautiful to love one another and that misunderstandings can be overcome, because when we are united with Jesus everything is possible," he said.
Giving advice to grandparents, the pope has said that families and kids need their prayers, wisdom and gifts to give them the encouragement, hope and faith they often lack in today's frenetic world.
"We older people can remind ambitious young people that a life without love is barren. We can tell fearful young people that worrying about the future can be overcome. We can teach young people who are in love with themselves too much that there is more joy in giving than receiving," he told his fellow seniors in March. The pope's dream is that families challenge today's throwaway culture with "the overflowing joy of a new embrace between young and old people".
The 'hidden heroes' of today
Key to drawing the needed strength and inspiration is reading the Gospel, prayer, confession, Communion and fellowship with the poor, he said in May.
"Imagine how much our world would change if each one of us began right here and now and seriously took care of ourselves and generously took care of our relationship with God and our neighbor," he told Vatican employees and their families before Christmas last year.
The Holy Family is still the perennial role model for families, the pope has said. Mothers can mirror the same love and attention Mary had for her son, and fathers can exemplify the patience and understanding of Joseph, who did everything to support and protect his family.
The real secret, he said, is just to "welcome Jesus, listen to him, speak to him, take care of him, protect him and grow with him" like Mary and Joseph did, and "that is how the world will become better".
Pope Francis knows families cannot do it on their own. He also insists policymakers and leaders devise and support policies that build up families and neutralize their biggest threats: war, poverty, consumerism and economic policies that promote the worship of money and power.
Justice for women must be promoted since, in the West, they face discrimination in the workplace and often are forced to choose between family and job obligations, the pope has said. Also, women too often face violence in "their lives as fiancees, wives, mothers, sisters and grandmothers" and, in developing countries, "women bear the heaviest burden" by having to walk far to collect water, often risk dying in childbirth, and face kidnapping, rape and forced marriages, he said in May.
Culture needs a humanizing re-haul, too, he said, to ease the pressure on couples to not be afraid of the lifelong commitment of marriage and to see children as a blessing, not a burden.
Pope Francis has been especially vocal about resisting current trends that seek to legitimize same-sex unions, contraception and fluid notions of gender. He warned families in the Philippines against this "ideological colonization that tries to destroy the family" and takes away human identity and dignity, and he repeatedly has reaffirmed church teaching that marriage is a lifelong bond between a man and a woman.
Given the many challenges — both within society and within the walls of the family home — Pope Francis regularly praises the many men and women who are fighting the good fight every day.
Leaders and communities "should kneel before these families, who are a true school of humanity, who are saving society from barbarity" by staying together and safeguarding their bonds amid difficult conditions, even in poverty and crisis, he has said.
Regular men and women who care for their infirm loved ones, miss a night of sleep and still roll into work the next day are the "hidden heroes" and the "hidden saints" of today, he said.
The pope has urged the men and women who are on the right path to lend a hand to help evangelize and to help other families heal so that the teachings of the faith will touch more people's hearts and give them the strength to follow God's will.

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Pope Francis Cuba Visit To Include Mass Near Che Guevara Portrait

August 4, 2015, 7:47 am
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Cuban workers prepare Monday the altar where Pope Francis will celebrate a Mass in September at Revolution Square in Havana. 

Pope Francis: Quotations On Finance, Economics, Capitalism And Inequality

Pope Francis: One Of The Most Powerful Critiques Of Capitalism You Will Ever Read

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/03/pope-francis-one-of-most-powerful.html


Pope Francis: "This Economy Kills"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-this-economy-kills.html


Catholic Social Teaching

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/catholic-social-teaching.html

Pope Francis: Moving The Moral Compass 
From "The Individual" Toward "The Collective"
http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2015/01/pope-francis-moving-moral-judgment-from.html

Pope Francis Cuba Visit To Include Mass Near Che Guevara Portrait


By  @superjulia j.glum@ibtimes.com 
When Pope Francis celebrates Mass during his visit to Cuba next month, he won't be alone. Looking over the pontiff's shoulder will be the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara -- or at least his portrait. Workers began setting up Monday the altar for Pope Francis in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución, which features a 118-foot image of Guevara's face on the side of a building, Agence France-Presse reported.
Guevara, an Argentine doctor nicknamed "Che," is a controversial figure. He met Fidel and Raul Castro in the 1950s, and together they worked to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, he went on to become a military adviser, president of the Cuban national bank and minister of industry before leaving the country to spread revolution. He was executed by the Bolivian army in 1967. Guevara is known worldwide as a symbol of communist revolution, according to the History Channel. 
Pope Francis, like Guevara, is from Argentina. He recently played a key role in brokering a deal to restore diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States. The papal visit, scheduled for Sept. 19-22, is considered a landmark event.
Francis won't be the first pope to speak under Havana's huge Guevara portrait. John Paul II did so in 1998, saying that Guevara was now "before God's Tribunal" but was certain "he wanted to serve the poor." Benedict XVI followed suit in 2012, urging Cuba to embrace "genuine" religious freedom.
Francis has already run into Guevara's image at least once this year. When he spoke at the Meeting of Popular Movements in Bolivia on July 9, he was introduced by Bolivian President Evo Morales, a leftist who was wearing a jacket with Guevara's face on it.
After the pope leaves Cuba on Sept. 22, he will go to the U.S. He is expected to meet with President Barack Obama, address Congress and celebrate Mass at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia. See the full itinerary here.
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