Toxic Clean Room: Enter at Your Own Risk

[gotsnowgotslush]

The South Is America's High-School Dropout Factory


First, high school. This map shows the percentage of adults over 25 who have earned a diploma or finished an equivalency program across each county in the lower 48 states. The darker the shade of orange, the higher the graduation rate. Notice the giant pale underbelly stretching below the Mason Dixon line from the Southeast through Texas. That's our Southern dropout belt, where completion rates are largely below 85 percent. The national average, for reference, is about 87 percent.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...-americas-high-school-dropout-factory/282480/

Homeschooling, because Jesus!

Sex education, birth control, abortion and LGBT are rejected.
Evolution is rejected.
Global climate change is rejected.

Where does this leave a child, trying to fit in a world where technological advances are accelerating ?

 

[phrodeau]

The South Is America's High-School Dropout Factory


First, high school. This map shows the percentage of adults over 25 who have earned a diploma or finished an equivalency program across each county in the lower 48 states. The darker the shade of orange, the higher the graduation rate. Notice the giant pale underbelly stretching below the Mason Dixon line from the Southeast through Texas. That's our Southern dropout belt, where completion rates are largely below 85 percent. The national average, for reference, is about 87 percent.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business...-americas-high-school-dropout-factory/282480/

Homeschooling, because Jesus!

Sex education, birth control, abortion and LGBT are rejected.
Evolution is rejected.
Global climate change is rejected.

Where does this leave a child, trying to fit in a world where technological advances are accelerating ?

On the farm, as the family intended.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

"...instead of leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, Hager had something which, in domestic political terms at least, would prove even more explosive: a cache of correspondence from the computer of Cameron Slater, a vigorous, venomous rightwing blogger better known by his site’s title, Whale Oil."


http://www.theguardian.com/world/20...land-election-john-key-alleged-dirty-politics

*shiver*

The illness has spread, worldwide.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

July 6, 2015

Blanchard Forum close to sellout with George W. Bush and family headlining
High-powered lineup —
featured for 10th anniversary of Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum


43rd president of the United States and his family likely will be putting interested attendees on a waiting list, Kim Eason Rozycki, an event organizer, said.

“We’re pretty close right now. We get nervous and we don’t want to oversell it,” said Rozycki, director of events and operations with the Cunningham Center at Columbus State University.


President George W. Bush, former First Lady Laura Bush, and their two daughters, Barbara Bush and Jenna Bush Hager, headlining the opening night.

Jenna Bush Hager calling in favors, and barging in, to scoop up free publicity ?
Who was shoved out of her way, to make room ?

Organizers are anticipating attendees will come from across the United States. Rozycki noted that a couple of years ago there were people from 16 states and Canada. This year, she knows there are at least 115 companies represented, with the firms either sending their own staffers or inviting guests from elsewhere.

“So it’s not just a Georgia event or a Southeast event,” she said. “There’s generally people here from the West and the Northeast and Florida as well.”

Last year’s speakers included billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Spanx founder Sara Blakely and Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.

Tickets for this year’s forum are $529 per person or $4,200 for a table of eight.

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/2015/07/06/3801975_blanchard-forum-close-to-sellout.html?rh=1

The Leadership Institute at Columbus State University is a university-based consulting group that provides expertise and training in leadership development, team building, assessments, executive coaching and strategic planning. Its signature event, the Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum, is the premier leadership event in the region and offers an intimate setting with some of the world’s foremost leaders. The Forum, named in honor of Jim Blanchard, retired chairman and chief executive officer of Synovus Financial Corp., brings the best and brightest minds in the world to Columbus. Hosted annually by the Leadership Institute at Columbus State University, this year marks the 10th anniversary of the Jim Blanchard Leadership Forum.

http://news.columbusstate.edu/cunningham-center-at-columbus-state-university-celebrates-10-years/

What Didn’t Happen: Most significantly, SB 129, the Religious Freedom Act, failed to pass after supporters, led by State Sen. Josh McKoon (R-Columbus), would not agree to add some anti-discrimination language. Critics of the bill believe the measure had more to do with being able to refuse service to gay customers than actually preserving religious freedom. Not so, backers say, and they promise to bring it back next year.

No anti-immigration legislation made it through the session this year, despite another McKoon bill, SB 6, that sought to make it illegal to issue drivers licenses to immigrants with work permits or reprieves from deportation but no legal status.

There will be no name change this year for the state’s technical college system, which Deal wants to rename the Georgia Career College System. Opposition from some educational leaders to HB 315 and the hefty tab estimated for the change did this one in.

Plastic-bag foes won a round when SB 139 was defeated in the House. The bill’s supporters wanted to prohibit local bans on the bags after both Athens and Tybee Island indicated an interest in banning their use. The defeat had as much to do with preserving local control as it did with environmentalism.

http://www.georgiatrend.com/July-2015/2015-Legislative-Recap/

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

The more things change, the more that they remain the same ?


Trillionaires and their cronies and minions, echo the royals and all they held.
Respectable middle class citizens fall by the wayside, and into the margins.
Unwanted, unneeded, and unsupported, they fall into the void.

"The list of burials from parishes like St Botolph’s, in Aldgate, in the 1590s, with its references to nameless, homeless vagrants who had died in the street, still delivers a shock more than four hundred years later (not least because, in a city that still suffers from pervasive homelessness, it remains all too resonant). “A young man vagrant having no abiding place,” it reads at one point, “who died in the street before the door of Joseph Hayes, a brazier dwelling at the sign of Robin Hood in the High Street.” “He was about 18 years old,” the author of the list adds; “I could not learn his name.” One maid, of no address, is recorded as having died in the street near the postern. Other individuals, even more poignantly, are identified only by the clothes in which their bodies were found."

"The men and women who suffered this sort of fate were of course illiterate, and the archives of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries consequently contain few testaments from the victims of epidemic unemployment. The voices of vagrants are only to be found in what the medievalist Jacques Le Goff has called “the archives of silence.” The historian is therefore forced to imagine the desolate conditions in which they lived on the streets, or fought for life at least, and died: the cold; the loneliness; the days filled with people, pressing against one another, competing to subsist; the nights filled for the most part with emptiness, though never with complete silence; the sour smell of dirt; the sweeter smell of shit, animal and human … In the city, daily and nightly, derelicts of one description or another were unceremoniously deposited, as if by night-men, on the dust-heap of an ascendant capitalist system."

http://blog.longreads.com/2015/06/2...the-loyal-huzza-a-history-of-london-at-night/

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

The Wingnuts have their reasons..

Why would anyone oppose The Iran Nuclear Deal, after the effort to bring it about ?

War!

Republicans, the defense industry, Israeli warhawks and ISIS have something in common – they all want America to bomb Iran.

Religion!

Here in the United States, we have a number of religious extremists and the politicians they support who believe that a war with Iran is necessary as part of the sequence of events that would fulfill biblical prophecies and bring about the return of Jesus the Christ.

President Obama!

Wingnuts fear that President Obama will relocate 100 million Muslims to the United States.

(Even if President Obama fulfilled a mission that a Republican proposed, the Wingnuts would still protest, because Obama.)

Oil!

It stands to reason that lawmakers from those areas would oppose anything that could put more oil on the market and drive down production in the states they represent.

(Dig deeper, and the issue of exported of American oil will rise to the surface. The Koch brothers want to keep their profits. So much, for keeping America strong and independent.)


http://www.forwardprogressives.com/...why-republicans-oppose-the-iran-nuclear-deal/

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Despite being aligned with the Tea Party, (Elizabeth) Warren was hopeful Grimm was someone she could work with. “I didn’t care about his Tea Party ties. He’d been in law enforcement and dealt with Wall Street corruption. I was sure that someone like him would really appreciate the importance of having a watchdog like the consumer agency.”

Warren’s optimism was quickly crushed. After providing Grimm with an “enthusiastic description of what we were trying to get done at the agency, the congressman looked surprised.” With a clenched jaw, Grimm cut Warren off. He told her, “I don’t believe in government.”


“I thought about the congressman’s life,” writes Warren:

“A tour of duty in the military. A degree from a public university. Eleven years working in a federal government agency. Government training. And now a seat in the House of Representatives. Heck, he had even been quoted as saying that he wanted the government-paid health insurance when he joined the Congress, because ‘God forbid I get into an accident and I can’t afford the operation. That could happen to anyone.’ It seemed to me that he ought to be the poster boy for someone who understood all the good things that government can do.”

While acknowledging “government isn’t the solution to every problem,” Warren says that she hopes to one day ask Grimm: “Would you rather fly in an airplane without the Federal Aviation Administration checking air traffic control? Would you rather swallow a pill without the Food and Drug Administration testing drug safety? Would you rather defend our nation without a military and fight fires without our firefighters?”

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/10/gop...zabeth_warren_schooled_michael_grimm_partner/

2012

Staten Island could really use an effective congressman right now. Instead, New York's 13th congressional district is poised to reelect Grimm, an embattled freshman whose 2010 campaign is now the subject of an FBI investigation into whether Grimm knowingly allowed a fundraiser and an Israeli rabbi to solicit illegal cash donations from foreign nationals. That's not the only stain on his short record: In 2011, Grimm went on a privately funded trip to Cyprus, which he neglected to report in his congressional disclosures until 2012, when his host was arrested on corruption charges. And per the New York Times, Grimm's business partner, Bennett Orfaly, with whom he started a restaurant, allegedly "has ties to a member of the Gambino organized crime family, Anthony (Fat Tony) Morelli, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for racketeering and extortion in an elaborate tax fraud."

As you'd expect from a congressman who is just two degrees of separation from someone named "Fat Tony," Grimm's campaign has, at times, been somewhat nasty.

Grimm's ethics woes were enough to get him booted from his role as a Romney surrogate, but he's held steady in the polls in New York City's most conservative district.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/kerry-bentivolio-michael-grimm-candidates-actually-winning

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

"To see such a bright light go dark..." started April Courville, the marketing director for the music festival. "When I say this I probably speak for all of Lafayette: We want everyone to know this person (Houser) was not one of us... He didn't live here. He's not one of us."

http://www.nola.com/crime/baton-rou..._not_one_of_us_says_victims.html#incart_river


November 22, 1955 - John Russell Houser is born, son of a longtime tax commissioner in Columbus, Georgia.

December 3, 1983 - Houser weds Kellie Maddox.

1988 - Houser graduates from Columbus State University in Columbus, Georgia, with an accounting degree.

August 1989 - Houser is indicted on an arson charge for allegedly trying to hire a man to burn down the office of a lawyer who represented adult theaters.

September 25, 1989 - Georgia judge in arson case orders mental evaluation for Houser. Court records don't show any evaluation results, nor do they indicate how the case was resolved.

Early 1990s - Houser repeatedly appears on NBC TV affiliate's call-in show in Columbus, Georgia, where he provokes callers by advocating violence against abortion providers and opposing women in the workplace.

Fall 1994 - Houser enrolls in law school at Faulkner University in Montgomery, Alabama.

1996 - Houser briefly runs for tax commissioner, the office once held by his father, before dropping out of the race.

Spring 1998 - Houser graduates from law school, but never takes Alabama state bar exam.

April 2001 - City council in LaGrange, Ga., revokes Houser's liquor license for Rusty' Buckhead Pub after his fifth conviction in a year for selling alcohol to minors. Houser protests by hoisting a banner including a Nazi swastika.

October 23, 2005 - Domestic violence complaint filed against Houser in Phenix City, Alabama. He was never prosecuted.

2006 - Alabama sheriff refuses Houser's request for a concealed weapons permit, citing the arson arrest and domestic violence complaints.

April 21, 2008 - Houser shows up at daughter's workplace opposing her upcoming marriage. Police in Carrollton, Georgia, question Houser after receiving call about him being mentally disturbed at the home of his wife's aunt.

April 22, 2008 - Probate judge agrees to request by Houser's wife, daughter and others for an involuntary mental commitment, claiming Houser is a danger to himself and others, has a history of manic depression and bi-polar disorder, and has committed family violence.

April 23, 2008 - Houser is involuntarily committed to West Central Regional Hospital in Columbus, Georgia. It's unclear how long he remains there.

April 24, 2008 - Georgia judge signs order barring Houser from getting near family.

December 23, 2012 - Houser and wife separate.

February 2014 - Houser purchases gun used in Louisiana theater shooting at a pawn shop in Phenix City, Alabama.

March 14, 2014 - Court document is filed to evict House from his longtime home in Phenix City, Alabama.

May 5, 2014 - Judge signs order evicting Houser from the home. He tampers with gas lines, pours concrete in the plumbing and glues the fixtures, but no charges are filed.

October 2014 - Houser shows up on social media spending time with a friend in Dayton, Ohio, playing golf.

March 24, 2015 - Kellie Houser files for divorce, saying their relationship is irretrievably broken and Houser's whereabouts are unknown.

March 31, 2015 - Kellie Houser says her estranged husband calls, threatens her, and then threatens to kill himself outside his mother's retirement community if she didn't give him money. Police say Houser's mother gave him $5,000, to help him get back on his feet.

Early July 2015 - Houser rents a room at a Motel 6 in Lafayette, Louisiana.

July 23, 2015 - Houser kills himself after firing on the audience during a screening of "Trainwreck."

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Jack Hanna raised lions. This is what Jack had to say about the dentist who killed Cecil-


"They lure a lion with a piece of meat -- are you kidding me?” Hanna told 10TV. "(He was) drug over to right place to shoot it, track it for 40 hours while it bleeds to death? That's not hunting; any good hunter will tell you that.”

Hanna believes the men had to see Cecil's research collar, because they lured him in close for a bow hunt. “It's hard thing for me to stomach,” he says.

He says the situation is also hurting reputable conservation hunting.

"We do have hunters controlling animals in a decent way -- not cruel,” Hanna begins. “I don't hunt, but hunters give money to conservation and animals alive today because of hunters, but this isn't hunting … at all. This is a terrible situation and this man should pay dearly for it.”

"They had to see the collar."


Hanna went on, to say that he had visited the reserve, and came to know Cecil.

"Cecil was habituated."

Cecil was accepting of reserve vehicles. Hanna remarked that when he visited Cecil it was the closest that he had ever gotten to a wild lion.

Hanna made it clear that these lions were very protected.

http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2015/07/31/jack-hanna-horrified-by-cecil-the-lions-death.html

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

killing endangered species is usually strictly prohibited in the United States under the Endangered Species Act, hunters take advantage of a legal loophole which allows them to kill imported endangered species because they are not indigenous to the US.

Canned hunting made national headlines in 2005 when a Texas ranch operator devised a way for absentee hunters to kill animals of their choice via a webcam and a remotely-controlled gun.

Last year alone‚ according to the foundation‚ more than 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa.

http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2015/07/23/new-documentary-lays-bare-sas-canned-hunting-industry

Last year alone, over 800 captive lions were shot in South Africa. According to the film makers, Blood Lions “shows in intimate detail how lucrative it is to breed lions, and how the authorities and professional hunting and tourism bodies have become complicit in allowing the industries to flourish”.

Will Travers OBE, President of the Born Free Foundation, who features in the documentary and official trailer, said: “South Africa’s failure to address the canned hunting industry has emboldened those who make a living out of the death of lions bred, raised and slaughtered on a ‘no kill, no fee’ basis. The canned hunting industry is unnatural, unethical and unacceptable. It delivers compromised animal welfare and zero education. It undermines conservation and creates a moral vacuum now inhabited by the greed and grotesque self-importance of those who derive pleasure in the taking of life.


http://www.bornfree.org.uk/news/news-article/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=1913


I look at the pictures of American men and women posing with the corpses of beautiful wild African animals. They pretend to be hunters to be admired. Their minds and spirits are as poisonous as Joffrey Baratheon's. Killing for pleasure. Killing with no morals or ethics. They tell lies to themselves, and they tell lies to the world around them.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

April 26, 1986

Chernobyl fails.
The summer of fallout, follows.

30 years ?

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Arseholes with no hearts rob the unfortunate of a haven from the harsh New England Winter

Jimmy Carter inspired a huge amount of people to give their time, money, efforts.
An affordable housing project had won legal papers, land, materials, machinery, tools. A multitude of people pledged their labor and knowledge, donated their time. The fortunate added expertise, knowledge, and resources. Cooperation and good will brought a dream into reality.

One person ruined it all, with a selfish crime.

/ end gsgs comment

Over $1,500 worth of tools and other equipment was reported stolen at the Habitat for Humanity site in Wayland on Stonebridge Road on Thursday, MetroWest Daily News reported.

According to Deborah Huegel, director of development for Habitat for Humanity of MetroWest/Greater Worcester, the theft from the equipment trailer occurred sometime after midnight, with the plate over the hasp pried off and the lock smashed. A generator, air compressor, and over $1,500 worth of tools were reported stolen to the Wayland Police Department.

Located on Stonebridge Road, the $720,000 project consists of a cluster of four units in two structures being built with the help of local leadership and hands-on participation by over 1,000 MetroWest volunteers.

At least eight companies have volunteered at the site, including Spencer Financial, SanDisk, and eClinicalWorks. Hopkinton-based company EMC has been to the Stonebridge Road site four times.

The project was expected to be completed in late fall or early winter.


http://m.wcvb.com/news/major-theft-reported-at-habitat-for-humanity-site-in-wayland/35344132

Hopefully, when the funds can be found, and the resources will be guarded.
Nothing is sacred, when it comes to theft. These thieves are as low, as the
thieves who steal Christmas gifts from poor children.

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

An elephant is killed every fifteen minutes. Because human beings want ivory.

They are killing rare, endangered elephants for ivory. Tame, friendly elephants.

Humanity, would you please grow up?

 

[gotsnowgotslush]

Those who feed the craven, ugly side of human nature, in order to feather their own nests, have fed a monster.


In my city, the poor and the lost are being beaten by men who are being fed an evil message. These men drink this evil message as if it were alcohol. They pour this message inside them, until it obliterates all that is admirable about a human being.


No indulgence is too much indulgence, for the monster that voices evil.


I might not agree with a conventional religion's idea of leading a good life, but I do not agree with desecrating or destroying a place, where others invest the clear, pure, energy of hope.


Masturbating on a church's altar is the rape of people's hearts and spirits.
On the same level as raping a baby or a child.


What is it, that tells these men, that their indulgence, bought by the pain and suffering of others, is something that they have earned, or something they deserve ?


No, they are not Gods/ gods. They are human beings that have let themselves sink lower than an animal.