Society's ChildS


Pistol

Intended result? Wal-Mart runs out of semi-automatic rifles as handgun and magazine prices surge

Image
© Getty ImagesA Rock River Arms AR-15 rifle. The weapon is similar in style to the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle that was used during a massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. Firearm sales have surged recently as speculation of stricter gun laws and a re-instatement of the assault weapons ban following the mass shooting.

With President Obama endorsing sweeping gun restrictions in the wake of the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, prices for handgun magazines are surging on eBay and semi-automatic rifles are sold out at many Wal-Mart Stores locations.

Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, said Tuesday that it would continue to sell guns, including rifles like the one used at Newtown, where 26 people, most of them children, were killed on Dec. 14.

By contrast, Dick's Sporting Goods suspended sales of similar guns at its more than 500 stores.

Searches of five kinds of semi-automatic rifles on Wal- Mart's website showed them to be out of stock at stores in five states, including Pennsylvania, Kansas and Alabama. Wal-Mart doesn't sell guns online, instead asking customers to input a zip code to see if their local store carries a specific weapon.

Arrow Up

20 signs that the U.S. poverty explosion is hitting children and young people the hardest

Homeless Person
© Franco Folini
The mainstream media continues to insist that the economy is "getting better", but the poverty numbers for children and young people just continue to explode. For example, did you know that the poverty rate for families with a head of household under the age of 30 is a whopping 37 percent? Children and young people sure didn't cause our recent economic downturn, but they sure are getting hit the hardest by it. According to the U.S. Department of Education, for the first time ever more than a million U.S. public school students are homeless. That seems like an impossible number, but it is actually true. How in the world could the "wealthiest nation on earth" get to the point where more than a million children can't count on a warm bed to sleep in at night? Sadly, a huge number of American children can't count on a warm dinner either. About a fourth of them are enrolled in the food stamp program. What do you do if you are a parent in that kind of situation? How do you explain to your kids that you can't afford a nice home like everybody else has or that you can't afford to go to the grocery store and buy them some dinner?

Young people are experiencing very rough times right now as well. If you are under the age of 30, it is really, really difficult to get a job in America today. The competition for the few decent jobs that seem to be available is absolutely crazy. Unemployment among young people is at a level that we have not seen since World War II, and this is causing major problems.

Even if you do have a college degree, there is no guarantee that you will be able to get any type of a job. In fact, more than half of all college graduates under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year. There are millions of very talented college graduates that are waiting tables, making sandwiches or stocking shelves down at the local branch of a global retail conglomerate. Meanwhile, they are saddled with record breaking amounts of student loan debt.

This is easily the worst economic environment that we have seen for young people since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The number of good jobs continues to decline. Many young people are faced with the choice of taking a bad job or having no job at all.

If you are under 30 in America today, you better hope that you come from a wealthy family or that you have some really good connections, because otherwise the future looks pretty bleak for you.

The following are 20 signs that the U.S. poverty explosion is hitting children and young people the hardest...

Pirates

Slashing social programs for the poor and elderly for token tax increases for the uber-rich

Image
The orchestrated negotiations between the White House and Republican House Speaker John Boehner on a deficit-reduction deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff" moved toward their predictable conclusion over the weekend, when Boehner offered to support a token tax increase on the super-rich in return for massive cuts in social entitlement programs.

In a telephone call to Obama on Friday, Boehner dropped his opposition to any increase in income tax rates and said he would endorse allowing the rate for households making more than $1 million a year to rise from 35 percent to the Clinton-era rate of 39.6 percent. He also said he would support raising the national debt ceiling for another year.

In return, Boehner demanded $1 trillion in cuts in the core federal health care programs for the elderly and the poor, Medicare and Medicaid, and the federal retirement benefit program, Social Security. Boehner reportedly said he would drop Republican demands for an immediate increase in the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to 67, but would insist on changing the formula for cost-of-living increases for Social Security and other government-funded retirement and disability programs so as to reduce benefit increases for tens of millions of people.ary

Vader

Disgusting!! Texas cop gives body cavity searches to two women in public during routine traffic stop

Image
Invasive: Female trooper Kellie Helleson, left, aggressively searched their private parts
  • Angel Dobbs, 38, and niece Ashley Dobbs, 24, were pulled over on State Highway 161 near Irving, Texas
  • Trooper searched car for marijuana before requesting invasive cavity search
  • Older woman claims search by trooper Kellie Helleson irritated an anal cyst she was suffering causing 'severe pain and discomfort'
  • Also suing the Texas Department of Public Safety for failing to act on previous complaints about 'violating' searches
Two Texas women are suing after state troopers subjected them to a humiliating and invasive 'roadside body cavity search' that was caught on video.

Female trooper Kellie Helleson is seen in the footage aggressively searching the private parts of Angel Dobbs, 38, and her niece, Ashley Dobbs, 24, in front of passing cars.

The women, who claim the trooper used the same rubber glove for both of them, were initially stopped by Helleson's colleague David Farrell on State Highway 161 near Irving after he saw one of them throw a cigarette butt out the window.

Comment: This is just so massively outrageous and disgusting - what more can be said? Police state?? We are already there!


Megaphone

Social media users spreading false information about Sandy Hook

Image
© Jared Wickerham/Getty ImagesState Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance speaks about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., Saturday. He delivered another update Sunday morning.
Following the killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School some social media users took to Twitter to spread false information about the shootings.

Connecticut officials cautioned against the spread of false information on social media sites in the wake of Friday's massacre.

Anyone who posts fake material about the rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School or killer Adam Lanza could face arrest, Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance said at a press conference Sunday.

"There has been misinformation coming from people posing as the shooter in this case, using other IDs, mimicking this crime and crime scene," Vance said, adding that some of the posts are of a "threatening manner."

"It's important to note that we have discussed this with federal authorities. These things are crimes. They will be investigated and prosecuted."

Comment: Contradictory stories and outright misinformation is not only coming from social media users - the MSM is also spinning the story.
Sandy Hook massacre: Official story spins out of control
Sandy Hook psy-ops: Police state here we come


Dollar Gold

Fiscal cliff is a diversion from the derivatives tsunami and dollar bubble

Image
© facebook.com
The "fiscal cliff" is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the "fiscal cliff" is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years. The Guardian reports that means the federal deficit has to be reduced about $109 billion per year or 3 percent of the current budget. More simply, just divide $1.3 trillion by ten and it comes to $130 billion per year. This can be done by simply taking a three month vacation each year from Washington's wars.

Attention

Update: Montreal school admits baby-snatching eagle video is a hoax

Image
© Youtube screenshotA screengrab is shown from a YouTube video called "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid."
A Montreal media school has admitted that a viral video showing a toddler being snatched up by a golden eagle is a hoax.

The video -- uploaded to YouTube Tuesday -- begins with the camera following a large bird circling in the sky above a park. The bird then swoops down to where a child is sitting on the grass, with an adult standing nearby.

The bird appears to grab the child with its talons before ascending a few feet into the air as the adult runs over. The bird drops the child and flies away.

Within just a few hours, the video had gone viral, amassing more than 2.7 million views.

But on Wednesday, the Montreal-based Centre NAD posted a blog owning up to the fact that the video was the work of several students in the school's 3D Animation and Digital Design program.

"Both the eagle and the kid were created in 3D animation and integrated into the film afterwards," the school wrote, citing Normand Archambault, Loic Mireault and Felix Marquis-Poulin as the student masterminds behind the clip.

"The production simulation workshop class, offered in fifth semester, aims to produce creative projects according to industry production and quality standards," the blog added.

Eagle

Fake? Golden eagle grabs child in Montreal Park

A massive golden eagle circles a park before swooping down and appearing to grab a toddler with its claws and trying to fly off with him in an incredible video posted on YouTube.

The clip shows the child's parent looking on in horror as the feathered beast, one of the world's deadliest birds of prey, apparently snatches the boy and lifts him a few feet off the ground.

Footage then shows the eagle dropping the child, whose name and age are unknown, on the grass a few feet away.


Question

What if children mattered no matter where they lived - and died?

We do not live in a world that treats all life equally. Not even close. Human beings inevitably feel certain tragedies more deeply, based on proximity to the victims, national identity, the circumstances of death and so on.

It is not surprising that there has been so much media attention paid to the horrible massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The thought of small children being gunned down in a classroom is shocking and tragic. And the usual suggestions to avoid "politicizing" a tragedy by talking about public policy decisions that might prevent future tragedies seem to have less resonance this time around.

When we draw comparisons between a particular event and other similar tragedies, it is not to say that they all matter equally, but to remind ourselves that we're conditioned to feel that some matter quite a bit more than others.

When I heard the news about Newtown, I thought of previous mass shootings in this country. That is perhaps a natural reaction.But then I also thought about the case of Sgt. Robert Bales. He is accused of massacring 16 Afghan civilians earlier this year, nine of them children. It is not the only atrocity of the Afghan War, but the accounts of the attack are particularly horrifying. Bales allegedly left his base and entered the villages of Balandi and Alkozai, near Kandahar. He proceeded to kill the victims as they slept, and then burned some of their bodies.

Sheriff

SWAT Cops to ask for IDs from everyone in Arkansas town

There isn't a lot to do in Paragould, Arkansas, but residents of the town of barely 25,000 seem to have no problem finding trouble.

Now in order to curb the rising crime rate, the city is proposing heavily armed police patrol the streets on foot, RT reported.

At a town hall meeting on Thursday, Mayor Mike Gaskill and Police Chief Todd Stovall endorsed a plan to send cops dressed in full-fledged SWAT gear and equipped with AR-15s into downtown Paragould starting in 2013.

The militarized police force will be tasked with trying to control a crime rate that has made Paragould an increasingly dangerous place to live in recent years. According to statistics collected by city-data.com, Paragould has had a property crime index rating more than double the national average since 2007. Rapes, burglaries, thefts and assaults per capita are also well above the mean there, statistically suggesting Paragould is perhaps the least-safe among area cities.