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Oklahoma senate endorses plan to abolish the electoral college

Josh Israel
Think Progress
Fri, 14 Feb 2014 12:28 UTC
red state blue state
© Dr_Flash/Shutterstock
The Oklahoma Senate voted Wednesday to pass a bill that would add Oklahoma to the growing list of states working to ensure that the presidential candidate receiving the most votes becomes president. It became the first legislative body in a GOP-leaning state to embrace the National Popular Vote, an interstate compact that would ensure that the candidate who garners the most votes in each presidential election would also receive a majority in the Electoral College.

Oklahoma is not a politically competitive states in presidential elections. No Democratic nominee has carried the Sooner State since President Lyndon Baines Johnson in his 1964 landslide victory - and Mitt Romney received more than twice as many votes as President Barack Obama in the 2012 race, carrying all 77 counties. As such, candidates on both sides of the aisle focus their travel and advertising budgets elsewhere, largely ignoring the state's 3.8 million residents.

SB 906, which passed 28 to 18 and now proceeds to the Oklahoma House, would add Oklahoma to a growing group of states that have agreed to automatically give their electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, regardless of how the candidate does in their state. The compact, which has already been endorsed by ten jurisdictions possessing 136 electoral votes, would only go into effect when at least 270 electoral votes are governed by the compact. Oklahoma's 9 electoral votes would bring the count to 145, about 53.7 percent of the needed total.
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Heart - Black

The town that hanged an elephant


Daily Mail
Sat, 15 Feb 2014 05:13 UTC
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A photograph of the hanging of Mary the elephant
Trooping into the tatty Big Top to the accompaniment of a drunken four-piece band, the elephants in Charlie Sparks's travelling circus did their best to entertain the audience on that cold afternoon in February 1916.

They sat on their haunches, stood on their heads, and formed an elephantine train as they placed their forelegs on each other's backs and trumpeted around the ring.

In short, they performed every trick they had been tortured into learning, but they could not make up for the absence of the real star of the show, a five-ton Asian elephant named Mary.
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Pistol

LA Sheriff's Dept. shot and killed an 80-year-old man with a submachine gun in his own bed


Alternet
Fri, 14 Feb 2014 04:21 UTC
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© Shutterstock.com/nomekoMallory died when one of the officers, Sgt. John Bones, fired six shots from his MP-5 9mm submachine gun.
Sheriff's Department is facing a lawsuit over perhaps one of the most appalling acts of police brutality in recent years: Shooting an 80-year-old man to death with a submachine gun while he lay in his own bed.

According to Reason.com, last summer deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department burst into the home of retired engineer Eugene Mallory. The department suspected Mallory of having methamphetamine, after receiving an anonymous tip.

The sheriffs found no drugs inside the property. But they did find 80-year-old Eugene Mallory in his home, which is where people often are in the early hours of the morning. And here's where things took a deadly turn for the worst.

The deputies first claimed that they ran into Mallory in the hallway of his house, where he was carrying a gun. But after the investigators found that Mallory's bed was covered with blood, they changed their story.
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Eye 2

Alone, jobless and mentally ill: Australian dad's road to murder

John Silvester
The Age Victoria
Sat, 15 Feb 2014 03:55 UTC
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© Ken IrwinGrief-stricken locals have left flowers, balloons and teddy bears at the Tyabb recreation reserve where Luke Batty died.
As Greg Anderson left the Frankston accommodation house where he had been staying, he told fellow residents he would not be coming back.

Later a large knife was found missing from the house.

It is believed the 54-year-old concealed the knife and other personal items in a bag he took with him on Wednesday, catching public transport and walking to Tyabb's recreation reserve.

It was there the mentally ill Anderson killed his son Luke Batty before being fatally shot by police.
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Cupcake Pink

Shocking! National Science Foundation poll finds 1 in 4 Americans unaware that Earth circles Sun


Breitbart
Fri, 14 Feb 2014 14:38 UTC
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Americans are enthusiastic about the promise of science but lack basic knowledge of it, with one in four unaware that the Earth revolves around the Sun, said a poll out Friday.

The survey included more than 2,200 people in the United States and was conducted by the National Science Foundation.

Ten questions about physical and biological science were on the quiz, and the average score -- 6.5 correct -- was barely a passing grade.

Just 74 percent of respondents knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, according to the results released at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

Fewer than half (48 percent) knew that human beings evolved from earlier species of animals.
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Bizarro Earth

The 14,000 oil spills in America that nobody is talking about

Abby Martin
Youtube.com
Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:00 UTC
Abby Martin goes over updates to the chemical spill in West Virginia and the coal-ash spill in North Carolina, exposing the human and environmental impact as well as the lack of accountability that accompanies tens of thousands of similar ecological catastrophes that occur in the US every year due to the US' addiction to fossil fuel.


Comment: Oil spills are devastating to the environment and also toxic for humans:
What Sickens People in Oil Spills, and How Badly, Is Anybody's Guess
The Consequences of 'Drill, Baby Drill': More Than 90 Oil Spills a Day in the U.S.
U.S. railroad oil spills in 2013 surpassed previous four decades combined
Polluted America

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Heart - Black

Second grader left to walk streets for hours after teacher locks her out of class for spilled water


Mail Online
Wed, 12 Feb 2014 12:59 UTC
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Demanding answers: Damia and Jason Dillard's seven-year-old daughter Samaya was found wandering the streets on December 13 after being kicked out of class for spilling water
  • Jefferson Elementary School teacher Lupe Rodriguez accused of dragging Samaya Dillard, 7, out of class on her chair on December 18
  • The second grade student then walked about two miles away from the Californian school, across a busy highway and to a parking lot
  • She was missing for more than an hour before anyone noticed
  • Her dad Jason Dillard found her roaming the neighborhood
  • Samaya's parents are suing the school, claiming the teacher had bullied the girl over several months
The parents of a seven-year-old girl who wandered the streets for up to two hours after her 'bully' teacher kicked her out of class for spilling water are suing the school.

Jason and Damia Dillard say the Jefferson Elementary School teacher dragged their daughter, Samaya, out of the second-grade class on a chair 'in a fit of frightening rage' about 9.30am and ordered her to stay outside on December 18.

But after sitting alone through recess and the beginning of her reading class, Samaya walked out of the California school and across major intersections, a freeway and through a shopping center parking lot before she was found.

She'd been missing for more than one hour before anyone noticed she was gone.
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Arrow Down

Texas teen gets suspended from school for being human

Jason Howerton
The Blaze
Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:12 UTC
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© FacebookChristian Tumax
An 18-year-old student at Rudder High School in Bryan, Texas, was suspended from school after he stood up for a special needs students at lunch.

Christian Tumax told KBTX-TV that he heard his friend, the special needs student, hollering behind him. When he turned around, he saw him being "harassed."

Immediately, Tumax said he intervened and told the bullies to "be quiet and leave him alone." School officials say there was then an exchange of words.

The incident landed him in a meeting with school officials. He was suspended later that day.

However, Tumax said he isn't angry at school officials for doing their job.

"They had to base it off what they saw in the cameras," the student explained. "They saw me go forward, and that's the reason I got suspended."
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Stock Down

20 Signs that the global economic crisis is starting to catch fire

Michael Snyder
theeconomiccollapseblog.com
Thu, 13 Feb 2014 18:29 UTC
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If you have been waiting for the "global economic crisis" to begin, just open up your eyes and look around. I know that most Americans tend to ignore what happens in the rest of the world because they consider it to be "irrelevant" to their daily lives, but the truth is that the massive economic problems that are currently sweeping across Europe, Asia and South America are going to be affecting all of us here in the U.S. very soon.

Sadly, most of the big news organizations in this country seem to be more concerned about the fate of Justin Bieber's wax statue in Times Square than about the horrible financial nightmare that is gripping emerging markets all over the planet. After a brief period of relative calm, we are beginning to see signs of global financial instability that are unlike anything that we have witnessed since the financial crisis of 2008. As you will see below, the problems are not just isolated to a few countries. This is truly a global phenomenon.

Over the past few years, the Federal Reserve and other global central banks have inflated an unprecedented financial bubble with their reckless money printing. Much of this "hot money" poured into emerging markets all over the world. But now that the Federal Reserve has begun "tapering" quantitative easing, investors are taking this as a sign that the party is ending. Money is being pulled out of emerging markets all over the globe at a staggering pace and this is creating a tremendous amount of financial instability. In addition, the economic problems that have been steadily growing over the past few years in established economies throughout Europe and Asia just continue to escalate.
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USA

Serving and hungry: The Farm Bill is a mixed bag for military families

Steve Holt
Takepart.com
Fri, 14 Feb 2014 17:27 UTC
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Stricter eligibility requirements for SNAP will likely drop some service members from the program.

When Congress finally passed a budget deal last year, one cut was included in the bill that neither Democrats nor Republicans planned on allowing to happen: a small reduction in pension payments for 750,000 veterans. It was unexpected because when it comes to benefit programs, service members are deservedly sacrosanct in the eyes of the government: They're owed for their sacrifice. And just this week Congress approved a new bill to restore the full pension payments. The cut in nutrition assistance that will soon hit military families that rely on food stamps, however, isn't being treated so expediently.

Which is not to say that the cuts won't have an impact: Representatives from groups supporting military families say they're seeing plenty of food insecurity in their consultations with service members. And amid a conversation about nutrition assistance that tends to generalize recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and other federal benefits as "entitled" or "takers," nobody is ready tolabel the more than 5,000 military families receiving SNAP as such. Same goes for the more than 900,000 veterans the Department of Agriculture says live in households that receive food stamps.

Comment: Way to go U.S.A! What a stellar way to go about Supporting your Troops! Take away active-duty families food subsidies and then 'help returning military veterans pursue careers in agriculture and assist them in accessing USDA programs' and this is the good news about the Farm Bill?! Veterans can look forward to working for the Big Ag/Big Pharm controlled USDA:

Corruption: USDA Looks Out Only for Self Interests
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was created in 1889 and has the stated mission of providing for the health and safety of American agriculture while promoting good agricultural practice. It has devolved into an organization whose primary purpose appears to be to protect and defend Big Agribusiness and the profits it brings while ignoring the safety and health concerns it causes.

The latest in the saga of corruption and conflicts of interest to beset the U.S. government's agricultural oligarchy is President Obama's appointment of Islam Siddiqui as chief agricultural negotiator for the U.S. trade representative.[1] Siddiqui was appointed in a sidestepping maneuver that went around Congress, despite serious concern expressed by citizens, small farm advocates, and organic growers.

Siddiqui is not new to the government game. He was undersecretary in charge of the marketing and regulatory programs of the USDA's organic labeling standards. These are the same standards that allowed genetically modified (GMO) crops, irradiated foods, and worse to be labeled as "organic." He also worked hard to convince the European Union to accept both hormone-treated beef and GMO crops.
USDA Fires Organic Farming Specialist for Expressing Opinions
Wait, Did the USDA Just Deregulate All New Genetically Modified Crops?

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