Allen Daniel Hicks Dead: Stroke Death Of Inmate Sparks State Investigation

People! Mr. Hicks was NOT AN INMATE (therefore he could be you or me).

He was a man who was (incorrectly) arrested and was waiting to be arraigned before a judge. AND yes, it takes more than a day to be arraigned.

The arresting officer, while not an EMT, should have been trained to know the difference between a drunk who smelled like alcohol and a man dragging his leg and slurring his speech because of a stroke.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

hello.

Republicans are assholes

Santorum to sick kid: Don’t complain about $1 million drug costs

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum told the mother of a child with a rare genetic disorder on Tuesday that she shouldn’t have a problem paying $1 million a year for drugs because Apple’s iPad can cost around $900.

Speaking to more than 400 people at Woodland Park, Colorado, the former Pennsylvania senator said that demand should set prices for drugs.

“People have no problem paying $900 for an iPad,” the candidate explained. “But paying $900 for a drug they have a problem with — it keeps you alive. Why? Because you’ve been conditioned to think health care is something you can get without having to pay for it.”

The mother replied that she could not afford her son’s medication, Abilify, which can cost as much as $1 million a year without health insurance.

“Look, I want your son and everybody to have the opportunity to stay alive on much-needed drugs,” Santorum insisted. “But the bottom line is, we have to give companies the incentive to make those drugs. And if they don’t have the incentive to make those drugs, your son won’t be alive and lots of other people in this country won’t be alive.”

“He’s alive today because drug companies provide care,” the candidate continued. “And if they didn’t think they could make money providing that drug, that drug wouldn’t be here. I sympathize with these compassionate cases. … I want your son to stay alive on much-needed drugs. Fact is, we need companies to have incentives to make drugs. If they don’t have incentives, they won’t make those drugs. We either believe in markets or we don’t.”

Republicans are idiots

Alabama Republican Senator: Low teacher pay mandated by God

By Stephen C. Webster Thursday, February 2, 2012 12:10 EST

A Republican State Senator from Alabama claimed this week that keeping teacher salaries low is actually an order from the Christian deity figure, imparted in ancient texts written by Jewish tribesmen thousands of years ago.

Speaking at a prayer breakfast recently, Alabama state Senator Shadrack McGill praised giving pay raises to politicians, saying that it helps to prevent bribery. Then he shifted gears and went in the opposite direction with regards to teachers, arguing against a bill that would increase their salaries.

“Teachers need to make the money that they need to make,” he said, according to Alabama newspaper The Times-Journal. “There needs to be a balance there. If you double what you’re paying education, you know what’s going to happen? I’ve heard the comment many times, ‘Well, the quality of education’s going to go up.’ That’s never proven to happen, guys.

“It’s a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher’s pay scale, you’ll attract people who aren’t called to teach. To go and raise someone’s child for eight hours a day, or many people’s children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn’t want to do it, OK?”

He continued: “And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It’s just in them to do. It’s the ability that God give ‘em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn’t matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity. “If you don’t keep that in balance, you’re going to attract people who are not called, who don’t need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance.”

McGill voted in favor of a 67 percent pay raise for lawmakers in 2007.

Alabama ranks 31st in the nation in average teacher salaries, although the state did see an 11 percent increase in teacher pay from 2007-2009. The state’s Republicans have adopted so-called “right to work” laws that forbid public employees from collectively bargaining for better wages and benefits.

$16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts

Audit of the Federal Reserve Reveals $16 Trillion in Secret Bailouts:
The first ever GAO (Government Accountability Office) audit of the Federal Reserve was carried out in the past few months due to the Ron Paul, Alan Grayson Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill, which passed last year. Jim DeMint, a Republican Senator, and Bernie Sanders, an independent Senator, led the charge for a Federal Reserve audit in the Senate, but watered down the original language of the house bill(HR1207), so that a complete audit would not be carried out. Ben Bernanke, Alan Greenspan, and various other bankers vehemently opposed the audit and lied to the Congress about the effects an audit would have on markets.

What was revealed in the audit was startling: $16,000,000,000,000.00 had been secretly given out to US banks and corporations and foreign banks everywhere from France to Scotland. From the period between December 2007 and June 2010, the Federal Reserve had secretly bailed out many of the world’s banks, corporations, and governments. The Federal Reserve likes to refer to these secret bailouts as an all-inclusive loan program, but virtually none of the money has been returned and it was loaned out at 0% interest. Why the Federal Reserve had never been public about this or even informed the United States Congress about the $16 trillion dollar bailout is obvious — the American public would have been outraged to find out that the Federal Reserve bailed out foreign banks while Americans were struggling to find jobs.

View the 266-page GAO audit of the Federal Reserve(July 21st, 2011): http://www.scribd.com/doc/60553686/GAO-Fed-Investigation
Source: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-696
FULL PDF on GAO server: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11696.pdf
Senator Sander’s Article: http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=9e2a4ea8-6e73-4be2-a753-62060dcbb3c3

Chinese Traffic Cameras In Heze City, Shandong Capture Gruesome Accidents (VIDEO)

It looks like, in many cases, that both parties are at fault. Do the people on the 2-wheelers not look to the left or right as they drive thru the intersecti­on? In any case they are ALL idiots who do not know how to drive.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Tax Season is Almost Upon Us--But Just You and Me Because Corporations Do Not Pay Taxes

GE had $10.3 billion in pretax income, but paid NOTHING to Uncle Sam. Exxon Mobil had $45.2 billion PROFIT, paid none of it to the IRS. Corp tax shelter tricks shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto US taxpayers. In 2008 the GAO found that “2 out of every 3 US corps paid NO federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005."

I know the argument from the Right about "oh they create jobs and if yuo tax them they'll hire fewer people or increase the prices on their products." But guess what, when you tax the common worker he can't buy as much so the corps sell less and that causes corps to make less. You must tax someone, so why is always joe six pack who has to pay the tax adn not the mega-corp?

This is how anti-tax Republicans are, at least for corporations. They literally think that even when corps pay ZERO taxes, the corps are being taxed too much.

At the Tea Party summit last weekend, THINKPROGRESS spoke to former Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN), a prospective GOP presidential candidate, about corporate tax cheats. Asked about Bank of America, another wildly profitable American bank that paid nothing in corporate taxes in 2009, Pawlenty simply relied “Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high.” Reminded several times that Bank of America doesn’t pay it’s corporate taxes, regardless of rates, Pawlenty said that both exemptions and rates should be lowered. However, he again emphasized that he was not troubled, or even aware, of corporate tax dodging, and that corporate tax rates should be reduced:

FANG: Governor, today liberals are demonstrating all over the country in what CBS has called a liberal version of the Tea Party. Their main complaint is that a lot of corporations aren’t paying their fair share. For example, Bank of America, in 2009 paid nothing in corporate income taxes, same with ExxonMobil, GE, and a lot of other big corporations. Do you think corporations like Bank of America should pay their fair share? What are your thoughts on that?

PAWLENTY: Well actually the corporate tax rate in Minnesota and around the country is too high. And I think one thing we could and should do is–

FANG: You think zero is too high with Bank of America paying nothing?

PAWLENTY: We have the highest corporate tax rate, or one of them, in the world–

FANG: But they use loopholes and offshore bank accounts to pay nothing.

PAWLENTY: The things I’ve called for is reducing tax rates and looking at exemptions or special deals within the tax code that give certain companies privileges or benefits. I can’t speak individually to any country, company would get in that regard, but I think one goal or direction is to simplify and reduce tax rates and clean out as many of the special deals as possible.

FANG: To be clear, do you think Bank of America pays too much in taxes already?

PAWLENTY: I don’t know what Bank of America pays in taxes. I’ll just say, setting aside Bank of America, the corporate tax rate in America is too high compared to our competitor nations.

Watch the video here:http://thinkprogress.org/2011/03/02/pawlenty-bofa-taxes/

Palin's Homer Moment: Celebrity Sarah Confronted by Citizen (WATCH)

Why couldn't she have been happy with her 15 minutes. She's going to try to drag this on for 15 years. God help us.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Defiant Brit struts through Dubai mall in a bikini

This is what happens when the government is ruled by Religion.

Defiant Brit struts through Dubai mall in a bikini
By The Associated Press
Thursday, August 5th, 2010

A British woman stripped down to her bikini and strutted defiantly through a swanky Dubai mall after an Emirati woman covered head-to-toe in black confronted her for wearing a low-cut shirt, police said Thursday.

Mall security detained both women and took them to a police station for questioning Wednesday. They were released later in the day after the Emirati woman lodged a complaint for public indecency against the Briton, said a police official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Police said the British woman, whose name was not released, was shopping in the five-star Dubai Mall when the Emirati woman approached her and criticized her for wearing a shirt she felt violated the conservative dress code followed by most women in this Muslim country.

The two argued, then the Briton stripped down to her bikini and walked through the mall filled with luxury shops and near hotels with swimming pools.

The mall, one of the world's largest, has signs asking shoppers to dress modestly, although Westerners routinely ignore the advisories.

The incident is the latest in a string of cases involving Westerners in Dubai, a cosmopolitan, city-state with the most lenient social codes in the Gulf but a tendency to crackdown on foreigners who ignore the rules.

In March, a British couple was sentenced to a month in jail for kissing in public while an Indian couple was sentenced to three months' prison for exchanging steamy text messages.

In 2008, two Britons accused of having sex on the beach got three months behind bars, though their sentences were later suspended.

Source: AP News

Let this be a lesson to all the Tea-Partiers and Right-Wing extremists that want the rule of God before the rule of the Constitution.