Society's ChildS


Dollar

The Obamacare extortion plan: Bigger penalties this year if you don't comply

obamacare
Oh, yay!

The Obamacare website homepage has an exciting announcement for us!

Here's what it says:
See plans & prices for 2015!
Starting November 15, you can enroll in an affordable health plan that works for you
How about...NO. I'd rather not, thanks.

Like Daisy Luther of The Organic Prepper, I am NOT going to comply with Obamacare. I've said that from the day I first heard about this extortion plan.

The mainstream media is alerting us that UH OH!, the second enrollment season is HERE and if you don't comply like a good citizen, you'll be facing even BIGGER penalties this time around!

Comment: See also:

Obamacare: A Deception

Here's how Obamacare rips off young adults

Obamacare is another private sector rip-off of Americans




Smiley

Australians bury heads in sand to mock government climate stance

Aussie Protesters_1
© Mike Bowers More than 400 people buried their heads in the sand at Sydney's Bondi Beach.
More than 400 protesters stuck their heads in the sand on Australia's Bondi Beach on Thursday, mocking the government's reluctance to put climate change on the agenda of a G20 summit this weekend.

Prime minister Tony Abbott's perceived failure to address climate change is all the more galling in the wake of an agreement between the United States and China on Wednesday to limit their carbon emissions, they said.

"Obama's on board, Xi Jinping's on board, everyone's on board except one man," activist Pat Norman, 28, bellowed into a megaphone on the Sydney beach.

"Tony Abbott!" the protesters shouted back.

Parents with babies, school children and working people in business suits dug holes on the beach and stuck their heads in them. The ostrich is said to stick its head in the sand in futile bid to avoid danger.

Ornithologists say the African bird does no such thing but that didn't spoil the protest.

Eye 1

Vampire-fanged Utah trucker had multiple victims, says prosecutor

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© NewsComAu
A Utah truck driver who wore vampire-fang dentures and is charged with sexually abusing and beating two women who he held captive in his vehicle as he traveled the country had four more victims, federal prosecutors have said.

Timothy Jay Vafeades, 54, was arrested in Minnesota late last year after a weigh station officer saw bruises on a 19-year-old hostage's face and intervened. Another woman later came forward to say she, too, was held and abused by the man.

In documents filed in federal court in Utah this week, prosecutors said they now intend to prove that four other women were similarly mistreated in what they called "a pattern of sexual abuse" by the defendant.

Each of the women reported suffering repeated beatings with a belt, being forced into sex, and being warned by Vafeades not to look at nor talk to other people, the court documents said.

Arrow Up

The true costs of BP's Gulf oil spill

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© Unknown
In April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded, causing the single largest marine oil disaster in US history.

While the oil gushed from nearly a mile below the surface, BP promptly began to lowball the daily flow rate.

The US government established the Flow Rate Technical Group (FRTG) led by Marcia McNutt to determine the true amount of oil being injected into the Gulf of Mexico. The FRTG was composed of scientists from the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the US Geological Survey, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the US Department of Energy and outside academics.

According to the FRTG, BP's disaster led to at least 4.9 million barrels of oil being injected into the Gulf of Mexico. BP has challenged this calculation for numerous reasons, including asserting that this figure includes 810,000 barrels that was collected before it could enter the Gulf.

Yet a scientist who is part of the FRTG said early on that even the 4.9 million barrel figure, which means an average of roughly 56,000 barrels per day during the 87 days BP's oil flowed, could be nearly three times too low.

"BP's own estimate for a freely flowing pipe in their oil spill response plan was 100,000 to 140,000 barrels per day," Dr. Ira Leifer, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, told Truthout at his office. "This is according to the calculations they submitted to the government, as part of their permitting process," which BP said was their worst-case scenario.

Leifer was all over the media while BP's well was gushing, and said he decided to do so because BP was not being forthcoming with data so his team could do their work.

And since BP wasn't being open, Leifer decided to use BP's own figures.

Comment: There is now more than enough data to show how BP's actions before and after the Gulf oil spill are the result of nothing less than gross negligence. But even more, BP's acts are indicative of the thinking of psychopaths in control of large corporations and how their shortsightedness, greed and arrogance can reap so many long-reaching and destructive effects on all life on the planet.

See the following few articles, a small sampling actually, which illustrate how BP took "responsibility" for the disaster:


Ambulance

Bodo Community in Nigeria suing Shell for devastation of land during 2008 oil spills

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© Reuters / Akintunde AkinleyeCanoes lie in oil-slicked mud on the shore of the Bodo creek in Ogoniland near Nigeria's oil hub city of Port Harcourt December 4, 2012.
Royal Dutch Shell was aware that its Nigerian pipelines were poorly maintained prior to the 2008 Bodo oil spills, and later underestimated the size of the leaks to avoid paying compensation, Amnesty International reported after studying court documents.

Fifteen-thousand members of the Bodo community are suing Shell in London's High Court, claiming the two oil spills in 2008 devastated an area of up to 90km in Ogoniland, southern Nigeria. The oil giant earned $450 billion in revenues last year.

"The result was an environmental catastrophe for the Bodo Community and the biggest loss of mangrove habitat in the history of oil spills. The 40,000 residents of the Bodo Community primarily relied on fishing and their way of life and source of livelihoods has been destroyed for years to come," said Martyn Day, a senior partner at Leigh Day, which is representing the plaintiffs.

Among the documents obtained by Amnesty from the ongoing case is an internal note written by an employee eight years before the spills, which says "the remaining life of most of the Oil Trunklines [in the area] is more or less non-existent or short, while some sections contain major risk and hazard."

Another internal memo compiled in 2009, after the company was already facing legal pressure for the impact of the accidents, cautions that the company "is corporately exposed as the pipelines in Ogoniland have not been maintained properly or integrity assessed for over 15 years."

Heart - Black

The KKK is prepared for war against Ferguson 'terrorists'

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© MSNBCTraditionalist American Knights of the KKK leader Frank Ancona on 'All In with Chris Hayes' on Nov. 12, 2014
The leader of a Ku Klux Klan group told MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Wednesday that St. Louis-area residents have supported their campaign threatening to use "lethal force" against protesters they feel act violently in the aftermath of the upcoming grand jury decision regarding Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson.

"It kind of came about from hundreds of calls we've been getting from residents in St. Louis County concerned with things that they've seen on social media," Traditionalist American Knights of the KKK head Frank Ancona explained. "Random attacks on whites, D.C. sniper-style shootings, police officers being threatened that their wives are gonna be raped, and that they're all targets."

Ancona did not cite specific evidence of any of these alleged threats.

The Riverfront Times reported that Ancona's group has been passing out flyers calling demonstrators "terrorists" and saying, "We will use lethal force as provided under Missouri law to defend ourselves."

Ancona told the Times that the demonstrators, who have been protesting against local law enforcement for not pursuing a case against Wilson for shooting and killing 18-year-old Michael Brown on Aug. 9, were "the best recruiters since [President Barack] Obama" for his organization.

Comment: You know it's getting bad when the KKK is starting to gain ground again. And really, the mentality of the police is not much different. Comments from St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson show a concerning lack of understanding when he describes talk about the militarization of the police as 'noise' and needing to take a back seat in a 'dialog'. What he means is that the police have the weapons and the little people need to know there will be no dialog about it. A framed and one-sided discussion is not a dialog!


Ambulance

Fracking blast kills one Halliburton worker, injures 2 in Weld County, Colorado

Halliburton fracking site
© Helen H. Richardson, The Denver PostThe Halliburton fracking site where one person was killed and two others were injured Thursday, Nov. 13, 2014.
Mead - One worker was killed and two were seriously injured Thursday when a frozen, high pressure water line ruptured at a Weld County oil well site.

The workers were trying to thaw the line when the accident occurred, officials said.

The Anadarko Petroleum Corp. well was being hydraulically fractured, or fracked, by the Halliburton Co. and the workers were Halliburton employees.

Anadarko said it was suspending all fracking operations in the area pending a review of the accident.

The area has been the scene of drilling since at least 1979, but this year Anadarko has sunk at least nine, deep horizontal wells, according to state records.

Each of those wells has to be fracked by pumping a mixture of water, sand and trace chemicals into the well at high pressure to crack rock and release oil.

Thomas Sedlmayr, 48, was airlifted to Denver Health and Grant Casey, 28, was taken by ambulance to the Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland. The name of the dead worker has not been released.

"This is a very difficult time for all of us at Halliburton, and we are working with local authorities as they look into the details of this incident," Halliburton said in a statement.

"Out of respect for the families' privacy, we are not releasing any additional information at this time," Houston-based Halliburton said.

Weld County Sheriff's Office deputies are investigating the accident.

Heart - Black

Gun rights advocate tells moms against guns to 'put a d*ck in your mouth and shut up'

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© Twitter/@Robhot1982The ever charming Robert J. Kinnison
In an expletive-filled video diatribe directed at gun control group Moms Demand Action, a gun rights activist pushed back at the group's latest attempts to limit the open carry of weapons, telling the women to "Put a d*ck in your mouth and shut up!" in a video discovered by Liberaland.

Phoenix resident Rob Kinnison - who uploads pro-gun rants on YouTube under the name Raging Rob - posted the video in response to Moms Demand Action's drive to get the country's largest supermarket chain, Kroger, to ban open-carry in their stores.

In a bleep-filled tirade, Kinnison vociferously explains that he is going to continue sending photos of himself bearing his gun while at Kroger stores.

"I'm gonna send photos of Kroger, of me inside Kroger, outside Kroger, with my gun, inside Kroger ... whatever," he states, before adding, "And I'm going to send those photos to mothers demand ... momsdemandaction.org, and I'm going to send them every f*cking day until Moms Demand Action shuts the f*ck up!"

Following some unintelligible and heavily bleeped yelling, Kinnsion then tells the group to "Put a d*ck in your mouth and shut up!"

When not posting videos defending open carry, Kinnsion maintains a Twitter account @Robhot1982, comprised mostly of retweets and videos from neo-Nazi and white power groups calling for a "White Revolution," as well as racist and homophobic tweets from an account called 'N*gger Basher.'

Watch the video below:


Comment: If only this guy would take his own advice and shut up, the rest of us wouldn't have to listen to his angry, hateful, racist, and sexist remarks that only serve to point out that there are definitely some people who shouldn't be allowed to put videos on YouTube, much less carry a gun.


Eye 2

Son of U.S. senator charged with killing 21 dogs at kennel owned by family

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© Maricopa County Sheriff's OfficePhotos of dogs at Green Acre Dog Boarding
The son and daughter-in-law of an Arizona senator pleaded not guilty Thursday to multiple charges of animal cruelty, stemming from the deaths of 21 dogs at a Phoenix-area kennel that they were looking after in June.

Austin Flake, the 21-year-old son of Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), and his wife Logan, also 21, were taking care of the 28 dogs staying at Green Acres Dog Boarding in June. The facility is owned by Logan's parents, Todd and MaLeisa Hughes, who were on vacation when strategy struck.

Deputies from the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office were called to the kennel in Gilbert on June 21, where they found 20 dead dogs piled into a shed on the property. The investigators found that the canines had been crammed in a poorly ventilated 9-by-12-foot room for hours on end. The "slumber room" was cooled separately from the rest of the home. The animals died of heat exhaustion and suffocation, the New York Times reported.

"Owners claim the air conditioning was cut off after a dog chewed through some electrical wiring," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said in a statement two days later. "But it seems unreasonable that dogs could be healthy at 11PM at night and dead by 5:30am the next morning as the owners suggest. Even the veterinarian I met with today agrees that the timeline given by the owners and caretakers is highly suspect."
#Gilbert23 These people suffocated 24 dogs then piled them in a shed NO PLEA BARGAINS!! #Arizona pic.twitter.com/s6CwlsCQFQ

- TKrypt (@TKrypt) October 19, 2014
The Flakes attempted to save the dogs they found still alive at 5:30 a.m. by hosing and icing them down, but failed to call for emergency assistance before the dogs died, the statement noted.

Red Flag

Ridiculous: Police officer dubbed 'Cannibal Cop' released from jail

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© Reuters / Carlo AllegriFormer New York City police officer Gilberto Valle (L), dubbed by local media as the "Cannibal Cop," speaks to the media beside his father Gilberto Valle (C) outside the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
A former New York City police officer convicted of planning to kidnap and rape women before killing and eating them was sentenced to time served on Wednesday, as he insisted in court that the women were "never in danger."

Gilberto Valle, now known as the 'cannibal cop,' was convicted in 2013 for kidnapping conspiracy. Though he faced a possible life term, a federal judge threw out a jury's guilty verdict earlier this year given Valle's steps were "not sufficient - standing alone - to make out the elements of conspiracy to commit kidnapping."

On Wednesday, Valle, 30, was sentenced to one year time served, the maximum for a misdemeanor, and one year probation. He also was ordered to continue mental health treatment. Valle had already served 20 months in jail as he awaited trial.

During his sentencing in a Manhattan federal court, Valle apologized to the women who had to testify in the trial. He said his conversations in online fetish chat rooms were only role-playing fantasies and not about taking concrete steps to kidnap or harm anyone.

"I just hope they know they were never in danger," Valle said, according to AP. "I would never do the things I talked about on the Internet - never."


Comment: A man will say just about anything to stay out of jail.


Comment: See also: