Anybody who loves cats is going to adore this precious indoor/outdoor kitty who, as you’re about to witness, might need a scratching post because kitty sure gets a tad too playful when company comes over. I also suspect if you go a few hours without changing the box he’ll let you know.
Today’s podcast:
Nicholas Kincade suffered abrasions to the face when Lafayette, Indiana Police Lieutenant Tom Davidson pushed Kincade after Kincade’s wheelchair accidentally ran over Lieutenant Davidson’s foot. In the video Kincade tumbles to the ground, surrounded by five police officers who then handcuff Kincade drag him into a police cruiser and arrest him for assaulting an officer.
Charges against Kincade were dropped in March. But Lieutenant Davidson, who shoved Kincade, nearly lost his job when Lafayette, Indiana Police Chief Patrick Flannelly accused Lieutenant Davidson of using excessive force. Police Chief Flannelly was overruled last month by an independent commission that decided Davidson should only be suspended for 30 days and demoted from Lieutenant to officer.
Watch the video and decide.
This was sent into us by one of our tipsters Tammy in Manhattan. Well, now that same sex marriage is pretty much legal it’s about time Judge Judy learned all about Grindr. By her reaction it’s really too bad she’s not running our Supreme Court:
The Green family’s religious beliefs are more of a weekend hobby.
Apparently Hobby Lobby doesn’t allow its religious beliefs to interfere with an insatiable thirst for more money. Mother Jones in April of 2014 reveals corporations are not only human, they’re often self righteous charlatans who have no problem making money off the very medical procedures and products they deny their own employees.
Molly Reddin authored the investigative piece examining Hobby Lobby’s $73 million holdings in mutual funds that invest in companies that not only manufacture contraception but the very same abortion inducing drugs used by Planned Parenthood.
Reddin poured over Hobby Lobby’s 401K for employees filed with the Department of Labor in 2012. Reddin writes.
Several of the mutual funds in Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan have stock holdings in companies that manufacture the specific drugs and devices that the Green family, which owns Hobby Lobby, is fighting to keep out of Hobby Lobby’s health care policies: the emergency contraceptive pills Plan B and Ella, and copper and hormonal intrauterine devices.
Reddin says Hobby Lobby’s investments are also in pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Forest Laboratories that earn millions off drugs used by doctors to induce abortions. She writes that Hobby Lobby also has holdings in healthcare giants like Aetna and Humana which offer insurance plans that include surgical abortion, contraception as well as the Morning After Pill also known as Plan B.
I guess the Green family’s religious beliefs are more of a weekend hobby.
Tacony is one of Philadelphia’s oldest neighborhoods sitting upon the Delaware River ten miles from downtown. Up until his troubles began a few weeks back, William Walters served as a Republican committeeman for the 65th Ward of Tacony. That’s because he cares about his community. In fact William Walters cares so much about his community he also served on Tacony’s Neighborhood Watch committee.
But, Phillymag.com reports, this year members of the Tacony Neighborhood Watch committee insisted William Walters turn in his badge all because they recently discovered that William Walters had too much on his plate. Turned out that besides being on Neighborhood Watch, and acting as a Republican committeeman, William Walters for the past thirty years was also serving a third civic organization as the Grand Dragon of Philadelphia’s chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. William Walters was burning the cross at both ends.
William Walters is asking the ACLU to help him sue the Neighborhood Watch committee.
William Walters doesn’t think it’s fair he got kicked off the Neighborhood Watch committee. He says he’s being persecuted. And if anybody’s an expert on persecution it’s the Grand Dragon of Philadelphia’s KKK. William Walters says the KKK is simply misunderstood. William Walters, did I mention he’s also a Republican committeeman?, Walters insists that the KKK is a “Christian organization.” He says he’s planning to sue.
Perhaps William Walters should move to Sanford, Florida. That’s where George Zimmerman was also kicked off his Neighborhood Watch committee, but he still got to keep his gun and patrol the area freelance style. Zimmerman also got to shoot and kill Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, and then get celebrated as a hero by Republicans who were generous enough to pay his legal bills.
Better yet, if William Walters still misses Philadelphia, he should move to Philadelphia, Mississippi where 50 years ago this month members of his conservative “Christian” group, no not the Republican party, that other conservative “Christian” group he belongs to, put on their white hoods and dragged three Civil Rights Workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner into the back woods and murdered them.
As a Republican committeeman William Walters would also appreciate Philadelphia, Mississippi as the spot where Ronald Reagan kicked off his run for President on August 3, 1980 at the Neshoba County Fair right there in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
Ronald Reagan chose Philadelphia, Mississippi, one of the key focal points of KKK activity, to launch his presidential campaign because he was signaling all the racists in the south that the GOP is open for business. Reagan’s Southern strategy remains a resounding success to this day as the GOP’s core constituency continues to be the old confederacy.
Reagan picked Philadelphia, Mississippi to kick off his campaign as a dog whistle for racists.
Republicans can claim to be a big tent, but truth is they are a party solely for “Christian” bigots, which, according to my reading of the Gospels, is oxymoronic. There simply is no room in the GOP tent for black people or anybody who isn’t Christian.
Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina is the only black Republican serving in Washington, DC. Senator Scott just like that other senator from South Carolina Lindsay Graham is all about family values, and just like Lindsay Graham Senator Scott doesn’t have a family either. What is it about Republican Senators from South Carolina not being able to find the right girl and settling down? I wonder if Senator Tim Scott is a closeted homosexual just like Senator Lindsay Graham. It must be tough being a bigot when you’re gay, African American or maybe both.
Well, anyway, Senator Tim Scott is the only black Republican in Washington, and once Majority Leader Eric Cantor leaves next year every single Republican in both houses of Congress will call themselves Christian even though Jesus wouldn’t dare.
Which brings me back to William Walters who is wrong about everything he believes. Although he is right about one thing. William Walters’ work as Grand Dragon of the KKK will in no way infringe upon his ability to be a loyal Republican.
The Supreme Court is about to hand down a ruling on whether the privately owned “Christian” company Hobby Lobby should be exempt from Obamacare’s mandate that employees provide contraception to their employees. Hobby Lobby lawyers tell the Supreme Court that providing contraception to employees goes against the company’s deeply held religious beliefs.
David Green who owns Hobby Lobby is worth more than $5 billion.
So, we wondered if Hobby Lobby’s “deeply held religious beliefs” also included providing paid maternity leave to its employees. After all, if you want your workers pregnant, certainly you’d be willing to join the rest of the industrialized world by paying for the mother’s eight or so weeks with her newborn. Certainly Hobby Lobby CEO and founder David Green, whose net worth is north of $5 billion, could afford to offer paid maternity leave.
Alas, Mr. Green’s Hobby Lobby doesn’t want to pay for maternity leave either. Here’s what we found from an anonymous Hobby Lobby employee who wrote four years ago…
Why does such a successful business not provide BETTER maternity leave for their employees? I’ve been with this company for almost 8 years and work myself to the bone … but yet I’ll have to take my vacation that I have worked so hard … in order to still be able to get paid when I do take maternity leave. .. I just feel that such a “Christian company” would look after their faithful employee’s a lot better. I don’t feel that I’m asking for much, but some payment for maternity leave is better than nothing if it means that it will keep food on the table. Thank you for your time.
During this week’s Working Families Summit, President Obama drew attention to our nation’s dismal record on providing for newborns and their mothers by telling his audience…
“There is only one developed country in the world that does not offer paid maternity leave, and that is us… And that is not the list you want to be on — on your lonesome. It’s time to change that.”
The Supreme Court will rule on Hobby Lobby any moment now. Corporations we are told are people, so we’d like to think a company WHO calls itself “Christian” would behave like a good Christian. A good Christian would worry about the health of a mother and her newborn by providing paid maternity leave, especially when you refuse to pay for her contraception.
Hobby Lobby refuses to pay for its employees contraception or maternity leave.
Which brings us to another Christian corporation Ralph Reed whose hobby as a lobbyist has earned him millions.
Ralph Reed is the Born Again Christian with a boyish face who just missed going to jail a few years back when investigations into Lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s Indian Casino scandal exposed Reed as an inveterate Washington insider whose lobbying efforts were just on the cusp of illegal, certainly they were deceitful
Reed got his start in the 80s as one of the prime shakers of the Christian Coalition breaking down the separation of Church and State. At this week’s Faith And Freedom Conference, Ralph Reed incited right wing domestic terrorism by promising to, and I quote “raze” the I.R.S. building in Washington D.C. He talked of “killing” the I.R.S. and leaving the IRS building “in rubble” as a “monument to future generations” about the importance of liberty.
Quick Fact: When asked if Jews should pay taxes Jesus said, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.” Jesus believed in paying taxes, but apparently Ralph Reed knows better than Jesus.
Ralph is all smiles, but underneath it all Reed is sending out a dog whistle telling his evangelical faithful to act against our government. Homeland Security should take note of this. And we should all remember Andrew Joseph Stack III, 53, of north Austin, Texas who flew his single-engine fixed-wing Piper PA-28-236 into an I.R.S. building in Austin, Texas killing himself as well as several other IRS employees back in February of 2010.
Ralph Reed smiles as he incites violence.
Stack left behind a screed attacking the IRS, especially the tax code, and said he had been left with no choice but to use his plane to set things right. This was an act of domestic terrorism, incited by right wing charlatans like Ralph Reed who demonize the I.R.S. to score political points and money.
Muslim leaders have been questioned by the FBI for suggesting far less. Flip the script: had Ralph Reed been a Muslim leader, not a Christian leader, he’d be put on a watch list and brought in for questioning. Instead Ralph Reed rakes in millions as a lobbyist wandering the very halls of congress he so wantonly incites his followers to attack.