If Not But For The Grace Of God

A few months after losing her administrative job in the summer of 2008, 23-year-old Brianna Karp got rid of her furniture, a beloved piano, and most of her books so she could move back in with her parents. When that didn't work out, she moved into an old trailer a relative had left her, settling into an informal homeless community in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Brea, Calif. By the summer of 2009, she was living without electricity, regular showers, home-cooked food, and most basic conveniences.

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Karp held tight to her laptop, however, and began writing a blog about her experiences. That generated attention that helped her land a part-time magazine internship, and eventually ink a book deal. Although her book, "The Girl's Guide to Homelessness," was recently published, Karp still lives in a dilapidated shed that the state of California considers not fit for human habitation. I spoke with her recently about her experiences.

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Human beings are wired to overlook negatives.  We generally don't want to spend too much time thinking about the risks we face, or how close to failure we really are.  That ability of denial is what allows us to succeed in a hostile environment.  That said I think we all would be better served to spend a little more time thinking about how close to the edge we really are.  Most people are much closer to homelessness and poverty than they realize.

Nice Guys Finish Last?

The study suggests that flashing a 'winning smile' is not the way to a woman's heart.

Indeed, men who swagger or look gloomy are much more likely to get pulses racing.

The surprising findings may help to explain the enduring appeal of 'bad boys'.

Experts say the findings indicate that smiling men do not appear to be as strong, powerful or masculine as those who glower or who seem arrogant.

GTFOH!

  Police found such a small amount of crack cocaine in James V. Taylor’s car that investigators described it as unweighable. It was enough for a 15-year prison sentence in Missouri, where the courts make an enormous distinction between crack and powder cocaine.

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Things TV taught me.

Policing The Police

What's good for the police apparently isn't good for the people -- or so the law enforcement community would have us believe when it comes to surveillance.

That's a concise summary of a new trend first reported by National Public Radio last week -- the trend whereby law enforcement officials have been trying to prevent civilians from using cellphone cameras in public places as a means of deterring police brutality.
Oddly, the effort -- which employs both forcible arrests of videographers and legal proceedings against them -- comes at a time when the American Civil Liberties Union reports that "an increasing number of American cities and towns are investing millions of taxpayer dollars in surveillance camera systems."

Then again, maybe it's not odd that the two trends are happening simultaneously. Maybe they go hand in hand. Perhaps as more police officers use cameras to monitor every move we make, they are discovering the true power of video to independently document events. And as they see that power, they don't want it turned against them.

The College Scam part 2

Here's a familiar story. Americans had a near-religious belief in the soundness of this investment. Uncle Sam encouraged it with tax breaks and subsidized it with government-backed loans. But then, in the 1990s and especially the 2000s, easy money perverted the market. Prices detached from reality. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves holding wildly overvalued assets. They also found themselves without the salaries or jobs necessary to pay off the huge loans they took out to buy the assets.

$h!t Always Flows Downhill

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." - John Steinbeck


In recent years, we've been hit with a barrage of statistics, charts, and even full-length books, documenting how inequality is on the rise in America.
But very few of them capture what's happened over the last 30 years or so as well as this image:

Welcome to The Future

One of the biggest issues with hydrogen fuel cells, aside from the lack of fueling infrastructure, is the high cost of the technology. Fuel cells use a lot of platinum, which is frightfully expensive and one reason we’ll pay $50,000 or so for the hydrogen cars automakers say we’ll see in 2015.

The Rise Of McJobs

Well I was reading this, but that's a lot of words for most people, so I opted not to do a post about this, then I came across this, and figured how can I avoid it?  The short version is this, most of the jobs being created in the U.S. are low wage jobs.

Gainful employment that pays one enough to support themselves let alone save and plan for the future is harder and harder to come by.  A lot of analysis that I've read attributes people being trapped in low wage jobs to their lack of education, but when 17 million Americans with college degrees are doing work you hardly need a diploma for, I find that hard to swallow.

The College Scam part 1

Top prosecutors in 10 states have convened a joint investigation into potential violations of consumer protection laws by for-profit colleges, Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D), who is leading the multi-state effort, said in an interview with The Huffington Post.
The combined investigation only began within the past two months, but it comes after several state attorneys general launched individual probes of deceptive recruiting practices and possible misrepresentations to recruits regarding federal financial aid dollars.

Forget Conspiracy Theories

It was equally clear from the start that this Orwellian-named "kinetic humanitarian action" was, in fact, a "war" in every sense, including the Constitutional sense, but that's especially undeniable now.  While the President, in his after-the-fact speech justifying the war, pledged that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake," it is now clear that is exactly what is happening.  "Regime change" quickly became the explicit goal. NATO has repeatedly sought to kill Gadaffi with bombs; one attack killed his youngest son and three grandchildren and almost killed his whole family including his wife, forcing them to flee to Tunisia.  If sending your armed forces and its AC-130s and drones to another country to attack that country's military and kill its leader isn't a "war," then nothing is.

Hypocritic Critics

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- The top Republican in the Rhode Island House, who was arrested in Connecticut two weeks ago on charges of driving drunk and possessing marijuana, was voted out of his leadership position Tuesday.
Republican lawmakers decided Rep. Robert Watson will be replaced as minority leader by Rep. Brian Newberry.

2nd Amendment Right!

Five-year-old Jarneshia Broussard was eating her lunch, a hot dog and beans, with her kindergarten class Tuesday when she heard a loud "pop" in the Ross Elementary School cafeteria.

The little girl at first thought a light blew out. Then she recognized the sound.

"I knew it was a gun because a gun goes 'pow,' " she said. "I got really scared."

A loaded pistol had dropped from the pants pocket of a 6-year-old male classmate and discharged, slightly injuring him and two other pupils in the legs or feet, officials said.

The three children — believed to have been hit by a single bullet or fragments — were in stable condition, smiling and playing video games, by Tuesday afternoon, said David deLemos, a trauma specialist at Texas Children's Hospital.

The Sky Is Falling!

If you’re too busy to think about Armageddon, as prophesied in the Bible, think again. It’s next Saturday.
At least that’s what followers of the California-based Family Radio ministry are saying. Since last October, Family Radio believers have fanned across the county in buses announcing that a tremendous earthquake will shatter the world on May 21. On that day, Jesus will reappear and take to heaven around 3 percent of humankind -- true Christians chosen long ago by God. Other humans will endure 153 days of death and horror until they are annihilated on Oct. 21, the end of the world.

No, They Don't Hate Us For Our Freedom

For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. . . .
"American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him," [the district's governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. "People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes," Mr. Khalid said.
The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy’s village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans . . .

Raking In The Dough Boy!

 Remember the outrage over lavish Wall Street bonuses doled out in the wake of the financial crisis? The brouhaha supposedly put an end to the outrageous pay packages enjoyed by many American CEOs -- and not just in the financial sector.
But over two years later, very little has changed. A new website launched by the AFL-CIO, aimed at focusing public attention on excessive executive compensation, touts some shocking numbers. Among them:

Moving America Forward

PETALUMA, Calif. — Solar panels have sprouted on countless rooftops, carports and fields in Northern California. Now, several start-up companies see potential for solar panels that float on water.

The solar panel system at Far Niente Winery involves nearly 1,000 panels on pontoons and about 1,300 panels on adjacent land.

Already, 144 solar panels sit atop pontoons moored on a three-acre irrigation pond surrounded by vineyards in Petaluma in Sonoma County. Some 35 miles to the north, in the heart of the Napa Valley, another array of 994 solar panels covers the surface of a pond at the Far Niente Winery.
“Vineyard land in this part of the Napa Valley runs somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 an acre,” said Larry Maguire, Far Niente’s chief executive. “We wanted to go solar but we didn’t want to pull out vines.”
The company that installed the two arrays, SPG Solar of Novato, Calif., as well as Sunengy of Australia and Solaris Synergy of Israel, are among the companies trying to develop a market for solar panels on agricultural and mining ponds, hydroelectric reservoirs and canals. While it is a niche market, it is potentially a large one globally. The solar panel aqua farms have drawn interest from municipal water agencies, farmers and mining companies enticed by the prospect of finding a new use for — and new revenue from — their liquid assets, solar executives said.
Sunengy, for example, is courting markets in developing countries that are plagued by electricity shortages but have abundant water resources and intense sunshine, according to Philip Connor, the company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.
Chris Robine, SPG Solar’s chief executive, said he had heard from potential customers as far away as India, Australia and the Middle East. When your land is precious, he said, “There’s a great benefit in that you have clean power coming from solar, and it doesn’t take up resources for farming or mining.”
Sunengy, based in Sydney, said it had signed a deal with Tata Power, India’s largest private utility, to build a small pilot project on a hydroelectric reservoir near Mumbai. Solaris Synergy, meanwhile, said it planned to float a solar array on a reservoir in the south of France in a trial with the French utility EDF.
MDU Resources Group, a $4.3 billion mining and energy infrastructure conglomerate based in Bismarck, N.D., has been in talks with SPG Solar about installing floating photovoltaic arrays on settling ponds at one of its California gravel mines, according to Bill Connors, MDU’s vice president of renewable resources.
“We don’t want to put a renewable resource project in the middle of our operations that would disrupt mining,” Mr. Connors said. “The settling ponds are land we’re not utilizing right now except for discharge and if we can put that unproductive land into productive use while reducing our electric costs and our carbon foot footprint, that’s something we’re interested in.”
Mr. Connors declined to discuss the cost of an SPG floating solar array. But he noted, “We wouldn’t be looking at systems that are not competitive.”
SPG Solar’s main business is installing conventional solar systems for homes and commercial operations. It built Far Niente’s 400-kilowatt floating array on a 1.3-acre pond in 2007 as a special project and has spent the last four years developing a commercial version called Floatovoltaics that executives say is competitive in cost with a conventional ground-mounted system.
The Floatovoltaics model now being brought to market by SPG Solar is the array that bobs on the surface of the Petaluma irrigation pond.
“We have been able to utilize a seemingly very simple system, minimizing the amount of steel,” said Phil Alwitt, project development manager for SPG Solar, standing on a walkway built into the 38-kilowatt array.
“With steel being so expensive, that’s our main cost,” Mr. Alwitt said.
Long rows of standard photovoltaic panels made by Suntech, the Chinese solar manufacturer, sit tilted at an eight-degree angle on a metal lattice fitted to pontoons and anchored by tie lines to buoys to withstand wind and waves.
The array, which is not yet operational, will be hooked up to a transmission line through a cable laid under the pond bed. Mr. Alwitt said that when the array is completed, 2,016 panels would cover most of the pond’s surface and generate one megawatt of electricity at peak output.
He noted that the cooling effect of the water increased electricity production at the Far Niente winery by 1 percent over a typical ground-mounted system.

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Less of this business of debating whether or not our planet is going to hell in a handbag, and more working toward us not contributing to that first class ticket.

Batman Got BEATDOWN!

ROFL.  Dude is lucky Batman didn't have no handskills, because he couldn't fight a lick himself.  That right there, wouldn't have cut it in August Martin, nope, not at all.

Save Chocolate Milk!

Chocolate milk has long been seen as the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down, but the nation's childhood obesity epidemic has a growing number of people wondering whether that's wise.
With schools under increasing pressure to offer healthier food, the staple on children's cafeteria trays has come under attack over the very ingredient that made it so popular — sugar.
Some school districts have gone as far as prohibiting flavored milk, and Florida considered a statewide ban in schools. Other districts have sought a middle ground by replacing flavored milks containing high-fructose corn syrup with versions containing sugar, which some see as a more natural sweetener.

Jon Stewart pwns Sean Hannity... Again.

People go to jail for this?

The New York Times recently reported that several states are considering bills that tackle juvenile sexting (the transmission of nude or “provocative” pictures to another person, usually by cell phone). Lawmakers are trying to address sexting largely because of a serious loophole in federal and state child pornography laws. In most states, when a teen sends a nude or “provocative” image of him/herself to another teen, it is not legally distinct from producing, distributing, or possessing child pornography. Clearly child pornography laws are meant to protect children from exploitation. The penalties for

"But I'm Innocent!"

Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of "pedophile!" and "pornographer!" stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents.

Bill Maher on Legalization

Partly because it has been beneficial in my life, partly because I believe in freedom. What could be more private than what goes on inside your mind? You should be allowed to manipulate that as an adult any way you want. Is it one of our top 10 problems, to legalize pot? No, but ending the drug war would be a great way to save a metric fuckton of money.

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She Raped Him?!

VALPARAISO | Prosecutors opted Monday to exercise their right to charge a 16-year-old Valparaiso girl as an adult on accusations of handcuffing, confining for hours and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy last week.
April Kuchta, of the 300 block of Roseland Terrace, was charged with felony counts of criminal deviate conduct, criminal confinement, intimidation and sexual battery, as well as a misdemeanor battery charge.  The seriousness of the first two offenses provide the option for adult charges without the more typical waiver process, said Deputy Prosecutor Tim Haraminac.

Shut Her Down!

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Miami Heat star Chris Bosh is suing the mother of his child for appearing on a reality TV show called “Basketball Wives,” which he said intrudes on his private life.

It's The Inequality Stupid!

So now that Osama is dead can we return to trying to fix our broken system?

The following graphs demonstrate, that contrary to dogma, a rising tide doesn't necessarily lift all boats.

Reality check.

Things done changed.

Notice a trend here?

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As long as we keep believing in the American Dream well never notice the nightmare we're living.

Classic Busted Tactic

That American helicopters could fly into Pakistan, carrying a team to kill the world’s most wanted terrorist and then fly out undetected has produced a stunned silence from the military and its intelligence service that some interpret as embarrassment, even humiliation.
There is no doubt that the raid has provoked a crisis of confidence for what was long seen as the one institution that held together a nation dangerously beset by militancy and chronically weak civilian governments.

You've Been Had!

“I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” — Martin Luther King Jr.

Is There A Problem Officer?

In 2009, "490,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped by the police on the streets, compared with 53,000 whites." 6% of those stops resulted in arrests. In Brownsville, "Men between 15 and 34 in the area were stopped an average of five times"—that means that "the police made over 52,000 stops between 2006 and 2010 in one eight-block neighborhood with a total population of only 14,000."

Took Them Long Enough.

The Justice Department sued Deutsche Bank AG, one of the world's 10 biggest banks by assets, on Tuesday for at least $1 billion for defrauding taxpayers by "repeatedly" lying to a federal agency when securing taxpayer-backed insurance for thousands of shoddy mortgages.
MortgageIT, a subsidiary of Germany's largest lender, egregiously violated federal rules that came with government backing on more than 39,000 mortgages worth more than $5 billion since 1999, according to the lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court.

Obama's Playing Chess, Not Checkers.

Gas saving tips to ignore.

1. Airflow gadgets -- $90+ wasted
The Theory: High-tech devices designed to increase your engine's airflow will improve fuel efficiency.
The Facts: It sounds plausible, but the results don't back up the impressive claims. Consumer Reports tested several of the devices, such as Fuel Genie ($89.95, plus shipping), that purport to increase fuel economy by accelerating airflow to the engine. The tests found no noticeable gains in MPGs, despite claims of 50% fuel savings. While it's true that drastically increasing the airflow to an engine is a common way to increase horsepower (i.e. forced induction through turbo and superchargers), doing so will actually increase fuel consumption and increase wear on the engine, not to mention that this proven technology costs significantly more than its gimmicky competition

Barack Wins. Flawless Victory. Fatality. (Uncut)

                                                      

After weeks of keeping his thoughts about Donald Trump largely to himself, President Obama on Saturday night ridiculed the real estate magnate in front of a live televised audience at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington, D.C.
As Trump and wife Melania sat among the guests gathered at the Washington Hilton, Obama poked fun at Trump's reality show, said Trump lacked the "credentials" to be president, and mocked the businessman's recent crusade to get Obama to release his long-form birth certificate.

Yall Some Punk A$$ Punks!

Okay for all the people saying "Osama's dead I'm scared now."  Let me ask you something.  Don't you think if they had some super plan that could just work on demand, they'dve done it by now?  I mean, if it's so fool proof that it can work in a moments notice. Well then why wouldn't they have done it already? 

It's like you telling me, "Well the terrorist are always trying to bomb us.  They haven't attacked us successfully since 9/11 but they have this one AWESOME plan that is guarunteed to work.  But they've been saving it for when Bin Landen got killed." 

Nah, I'm not buying that.  His followers won't do anything that they haven't already been trying to do for the last 10 years.  What do you think no attacks have happened on U.S. soil because they haven't been trying?! They knocked down The Towers and said, "I'm good."? 

For the last 10 years, for better or worse, the U.S. Military has been raining hell in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Lord knows where else.  For the life lost on 9/11 our army has taken more than a pound of flesh in return.  This isn't a kid game.  War is hell.  Even if they were to pull this "Magic Attack" and kill X amount of people, it wouldn't equal the amount our army has killed.  It's may be a cold and brutal math, but such is the nature of it.