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Gay couple banned from dancing to country music together, but hip-hop is okay

David Edwards
Raw Story
Thu, 26 Dec 2013 18:31 UTC
Image
The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is backing two Texas men who say that they were recently kicked out of a South Texas night club for dancing to country music instead of hip-hop or rap.

Justin Meyer, 21, explained to the Victoria Advocate that management at Cactus Canyon told them on Saturday night that there was a policy against men dancing together to country music.

However, Meyer said that he later discover that the club had no such policy.

"I don't like that we were lied to," he remarked. "The confrontation never would have happened if they hadn't lied about the policy."

Meyer's boyfriend, 30-year-old James Douglas, said that the couple was finishing a dance to the song "Cowboys and Angels" on Saturday night when they were told that they were violating club policy and posed a safety risk.

"Why is it not OK for me to dance with my boyfriend when there are girls here who dance together all the time?" Douglas recalled asking.
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Gift 2

Atheist group saves Christmas for Oklahoma family claiming poor treatment by church

Travis Gettys
The Raw Story
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 14:54 UTC
Image
© Shutterstock
An Oklahoma mother said atheists saved Christmas for her family after she was treated poorly by a church charity.

Tiffany Wait said she and her husband went to Bible Baptist Church's Toy Shop on Christmas morning to get gifts for their 7-month-old son but were turned away when she declined to hand over the baby for a volunteer to hold.

"I am poor and would not be able to celebrate Christmas this year without their charity," Wait said. "I went last year and it was a life saver. This year however, I was treated shockingly bad."

She said she didn't want to hand over her baby, who doesn't like strangers, but the volunteer insisted she had to or the family couldn't participate in the giveaway.

"I stood there, fighting back tears and asked, 'You would turn a baby away on Christmas,'" Wait said.

But she said the volunteers refused to make an exception, and Wait said one woman tried to take the child away from her.
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Arrow Down

Teen survives 300-foot plunge off of California cliff


KWTX.com
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
plunge off cliff
© www.nbclosangeles.com

The teen told paramedics after he was saved that he intentionally drove off the cliff.

A teenage driver whose car plunged 300 feet off of an ocean cliff in Southern California was rescued after firefighters waded into the surf to free him from the vehicle..

The 19-year-old driver was hospitalized in critical condition. He told paramedics that he intentionally drove off the cliff in the Bluff Cove area of Palos Verdes Estates about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

Authorities sent to the scene at around 2 a.m. Friday found waves slamming the car. Los Angeles County firefighters, lifeguards and local police helped in the rescue and the driver was finally pulled free and was flown to a hospital.

The crash site is on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
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Hiliter

Where the 1.3 million people losing unemployment aid this week live

Niraj Chokshi
The Washington Post
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 11:05 UTC
Image
© Committee on Ways and Means Demcrats/Labor Department
Darker shading means a larger share of a state’s population will lose emergency jobless benefits Saturday.
A projected 1.3 million people will lose emergency unemployment benefits when they expire Saturday.

Darker shading corresponds to states where a higher share of the population is affected.

Congress offered the extended benefits as unemployment ballooned during the Great Recession and has put off their expiration 11 times since. Renewing the long-term insurance is a top agenda item for the Senate when it convenes Jan. 6, Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has said. The body is expected to vote quickly on a three-month extension of the benefits.

Recipients still face, at best, a delay in their checks and, at worst, a permanent end to them. When the aid expires Saturday, the unemployed will only be able to collect a maximum 26 weeks of benefits in most parts of the U.S., down from about twice as much in many states.

The recession may technically be over, but for many the recovery has yet to begin. The plight of the long-term unemployed - a group the benefits are aimed at helping and whose ranks have swelled - has also proven particularly difficult to solve. Studies have shown that they are more likely to suffer mental-health setbacks and are less likely to be hired.

And every state but one - North Dakota - has added more people than jobs since the recession began. Nationally, that deficit between jobs and population growth equates to roughly 9.2 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank that produces research focused on low- and middle-income workers. In 33 states, the gap between jobs and population growth is 5 percent or greater.
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Arrow Up

Pasadena police use Rose Parade as excuse to search hundreds of vehicles


Police State USA
Thu, 26 Dec 2013 15:39 UTC
Warrentless Car Searches
© Police State USA
California - An annual New Year's tradition, along with the crippling fear of terrorism, is giving police in Pasadena the excuse they need to perform hundreds of warrantless vehicle searches.

Police State USA obtained a tip from a reader notifying of the signs being posted near the route of the upcoming Rose Parade - an annual parade held on New Year's Day in Pasadena. The parade draws crowds of hundreds of thousands of people from all over the country. Hundreds of recreational vehicles gather along the parade route and in nearby parking lots in the week preceding the parade.

The sign in the photograph sent to Police State USA reads:
DEC. 29 THRU JAN. 1

FOR SECURITY PURPOSES ALL VEHICLES PARKED IN THIS AREA ARE SUBJECT TO INSPECTION AND SEARCH BY PASADENA PD. NON-COMPLIANCE MAY RESULT IN CITATION AND TOW AT OWNER'S EXPENSE.
Pasadena Police have been treating the Rose Parade like a terrorist target since 9/11, and have annually employed a program they dub "Parade Watch." A police document from 2002 discusses the program and some of its tactics. Discussing the vehicle searches, Pasadena PD published, "One of the simplest responses would have been to post 'No Parking' signs along the cross streets of the route, however, such a response was inconsistent with the goals and the tradition of the Rose Parade."
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Question

World gone mad: Hundreds of teens terrorize Brooklyn mall and shut it down after mob organized on Facebook to watch fight between girls


Source
Fri, 27 Dec 2013 15:37 UTC
Hundreds of teens terrorized a Brooklyn mall Thursday during an attack organized on social media, forcing it to close its doors for hours during crucial day after Christmas sales. More than 400 teens swarmed Kings Plaza Mall, in Southern Brooklyn, trashing stores, assaulting shoppers and stealing things after a t-shirt insulting a high school student sparked anger among classmates.

A large group of teen girls reportedly fought each other over the incendiary t-shirt and the violent 'knockout' game also broke out on the mall's top floor - where one teen may have been carrying a gun, cops told the New York Post.


Teens used social media to organize the attack with the goal of putting the mall 'on tilt,' according to Facebook and Twitter posts cited by the Post. The shirt showed a picture of the girl with a derogatory comment about her, the New York Daily News reported.

Mall employees rushed to close their stores as chaos broke out all around them. 'I've been here seven years and I have never seen anything like this before - I'm so scared. I know they will come back,' store clerk Abu Tabel, 31, told the paper.

'I was begging them to stop. There were a lot of kids hundreds of kids... [Security] would chase them out one door and they would come back in another door,' he continued.
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People

Terminally ill girl who had 10,000 people sing Christmas carols at her home dies on Christmas Day


NY Daily News
Wed, 25 Dec 2013 12:17 UTC

Delaney Brown, 8, was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia. In her last week she was granted a few wishes including 10,000 people who sang Christmas carols at her house and talking to Taylor Swift.

A terminally ill girl who received support from thousands of Christmas carolers outside her home over the weekend died early on Christmas morning, her family said.
Image
© Team Laney/Via Facebook
Delaney Brown, 8, was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia in May.
Delaney Brown, 8, of West Reading "passed away quietly with her loving family by her side," family spokesman Christopher Winters said in a statement Wednesday.

On Saturday night, thousands gathered outside her home in eastern Pennsylvania to fulfill her wish for a huge holiday singalong. The crowd cycled through holiday favorites such as "Frosty the Snowman," ''Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer" and "Jingle Bells" and ended with a chorus of "Happy Birthday" to the girl, who turned 8 on Friday, The Reading Eagle reported.
Image
© Ben Hasty/AP
People fill the 400 block of Chestnut Street, Saturday in West Reading, Pa., where thousands of people came out to sing Christmas carols in front of Brown's home.
Shortly after the caroling began, the family's Facebook page showed a picture of Delaney giving two thumbs up with the text, "I can hear you now!!! Love you!"
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Hourglass

California church displays bleeding Trayvon Martin nativity scene

Elizabeth Sheld
Breitbart
Thu, 26 Dec 2013 00:00 UTC
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© Daily Bulletin
Outside the Claremont United Methodist Church is a nativity scene with a bleeding Trayvon Martin. The California Church has turned their nativity scene "into a piece of art that comments on our times" for the last seven years.
John Zachary, the artist, told me the acquittal in July of George Zimmerman, who fatally shot the 17-year-old African-American in 2012, struck him as a worthy subject for Christmas comment.

For one thing, the backdrop to the Christmas story is the slaughter by King Herod of all infants in Bethlehem, a barbarous attempt to kill the Messiah.
Zachary described that when looking for pictures of Trayvon "one of the teenager lying dead on the pavement particularly tore at him. 'What if Jesus was lying there bleeding to death? I was kind of thinking of that,' Zachary said."

The title of the nativity "art" is called " 'A Child is Born, a Son is Given,' the wording outlined in red formed from a pool of blood at Trayvon's feet."
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Bizarro Earth

Over-the-top amenities for the uber-rich

Lauren Beale
Los Angeles Times
Tue, 24 Dec 2013 14:23 UTC
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© Jim Bartsch /July 26, 2010
Designer Steve Hermann's Glass Pavilion is cantilevered over grass to make it look as if it is floating on air.
Moats, walk-in safes, wellness suites and dental chairs are among the features that home designers and builders use to capture the imaginations of wealthy buyers.

If you thought Southern California mansions could hardly get more outlandish, consider the latest must-have feature: A moat encircling the property.

Other exclusive amenities include dental chairs, botox stations and wine "cellars" that somehow made their way into the kitchen. It's all part of growing competition among designers, architects and developers for the attention of ultra-wealthy buyers.

Moats are making their biggest splash since medieval times.

At Jennifer Lopez's former home in Bel-Air, which recently resold for $10 million, an arched footbridge and a cobblestone driveway cross a stone-lined waterway that encircles the French-style villa.

In Brentwood, supermodel Gisele Bundchen and New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady included the water element at their newly completed European-style estate. Luckily for the neighbors, the couple's moat looks more like a winding stream than a means of defense.
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Cow Skull

After a month of trying, I still can't sign up for Obamacare

Ike Brannon
The Weekly Standard
Thu, 26 Dec 2013 09:51 UTC
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© Webpro
After a month of trying, I still can't complete an application to join the D.C. Health Exchange. For a week, the Obamacare marketplace asked me to prove my citizenship, my daughter's existence, and my fixed address in the District of Columbia, but it would not allow me to submit the requested material.

That changed, slightly, yesterday when it started allowing me to submit those things, which I did, but it must now validate them via a person. Perhaps this is why Barack Obama's staff had to physically visit the D.C. exchange in order to sign up the president for Obamacare.

It also apparently keeps losing all of my family's personal information, so I'm having to type my name, address, Social Security number, as well as a) a fixed address or b) whether I'm incarcerated or c) or whether am a member of an American Indian or native Alaskan federally protected tribe.

And despite selecting "send me all messages via email" it doesn't actually do that - the messages just sit in my account at the D.C. exchange, which tells me when I log in that I have a message there. Which I can't read because when I click on it my computer asks me to select a program to use to access whatever it is and no matter what I select it just displays a bunch of random characters. Word, WordPerfect, Microsoft reader, and PDF are not helping with this - but why would they use that sort of program for a message like that?
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