News and Current Events - 2012

[Jeff Wrangler]

Lyle, thank you for finding that history of the Minnesota state seal. (That part about the Dutchman finding the seal in the street after a fire and taking it back to Europe with him is a hoot!)

However, this statement,

You ARE promoting what you say is outdated, ethnocentric imagery

is bullshit nonsense, unless you and I have a very different understanding of the meaning of the verb to promote. I have been criticizing the imagery of that seal for days now, expressing the opinion that Minnesota needs a new seal to eliminate outdated, ethnocentric imagery. Promoting it is the last thing I've been doing.

[doodler]

Ain't this fun!   

[garyd]

Lyle, thank you for finding that history of the Minnesota state seal. (That part about the Dutchman finding the seal in the street after a fire and taking it back to Europe with him is a hoot!)

However, this statement,

is bullshit nonsense, unless you and I have a very different understanding of the meaning of the verb to promote. I have been criticizing the imagery of that seal for days now, expressing the opinion that Minnesota needs a new seal to eliminate outdated, ethnocentric imagery. Promoting it is the last thing I've been doing.

Well, Jeff, write Minnesota!  Several days of gritching here isn't going to do anything.  (BTW, did you read the links or just Lyle's mash up?)

[killersmom]

OK, since the 'seal' discussion has descended into sniping at each other, the discussion is at an end, as well as the fact that it is not current events anyway.
No more sneaking in comments or discussions. They will be deleted.

Please bring back in discussions of CURRENT news and events.

Thank you.

[doodler]

Couple sues over adopted son's sex-assignment surgery

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina (Reuters) - A South Carolina couple sued doctors and state social workers on Tuesday for subjecting a 16-month-old child born with both male and female genitalia to what they say was medically unnecessary and irreversible sex-assignment surgery while the toddler was in foster care.

The state and federal lawsuits - believed by the couple's lawyers to be the first of their kind in the United States - argue that doctors should not have performed surgery to make the child's body appear to be female when they knew they could not predict how gender would develop.


more...

http://news.yahoo.com/couple-sues-over-adopted-sons-early-sex-assignment-185711866.html

[CellarDweller115]

Actually, I don't believe this is the first time that's happened.

I vaguely remember a TV show where a couple was raising their biological son, who had been born with functioning female parts, but under-developed male parts.  Their instruction to the doctors was to leave him alone, and see how he develops.

One doctor told the parents there was a "growth" on the testes and a biopsy should be performed.  Turns out there was no growth, and the doctor took it upon himself to decide for the parents what sex the child should be, and removed the male parts.

I'm not sure what the outcome of the case was.

[doodler]

I'm sure it's happened many times, especially with children unfortunate enough to be part of"the system."

What I don't get in the article is the statement that it is impossible to tell which gender the child will eventually identify with, followed by the couple's contention that the doctors/hospital knew there was a strong possibility that this child would be a boy.

You can't argue both.

[killersmom]

Boston bombing suspect wrote message in boat: CBS News report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was found hiding in a boat days after the blasts, left a handwritten message describing the attack as retribution for U.S. wars in Muslim countries, CBS News reported on Thursday.
The CBS News report, citing anonymous sources, said that Tsarnaev used a pen to write the message on an interior wall of the boat, where police found him bleeding from gunshot wounds four days after the April 15 bombing.

The note summed up with the idea that "when you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims," CBS News reported.

CBS News did not make clear how its sources knew the information and Reuters was not immediately able to confirm the report.

A spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston, Katherine Gulotta, declined to confirm or deny the report.

The CBS News report said Tsarnaev, 19, described his older brother and fellow suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died in a gunbattle with police, as "a martyr."

"Basically, the note says ... the bombings were retribution for the U.S. crimes against Muslims in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and that the victims of the Boston bombing were 'collateral damage,' the same way innocent victims have been collateral damage in U.S. wars around the world," said CBS News reporter John Miller, who is a former spokesman for the FBI.

The bombings at the finish line of the world-famous marathon killed three people and injured 264 others. The FBI identified the ethnic Chechen brothers as suspects from video and pictures at the scene.

More here:

http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bombing-suspect-wrote-message-boat-cbs-news-133902669.html

[killersmom]

The Benghazi Conspiracy Isn't Surviving D.C.'s Scandal Week

To be clear: There are not three scandals plaguing the Obama White House. The IRS situation is probably a scandal. The AP subpoena is maybe a scandal. Scandal is a subjective term, after all, but it's clear that the standard should be higher than "political opponents making unfounded accusations." Which is, after a brief flurry of evidence that fell apart, what Benghazi still looks like. By embracing the leaked talking points, Obama's opponents may have taken Benghazi off the table completely.

Conspiracy advocates were about 12 miles down the track on Benghazi even before ABC News released the talking point drafts implying an administration cover up. Now we know that they were someone's notes on the emails, not the original text, and the White House has now released the email chain. But when the ABC News story went up, opponents of Obama (and Hillary Clinton) seized on them as definitive, as evidence that the White House and State Department colluded to obscure the truth of what happened. After weeks of throwing things at the wall, something stuck. And that was exciting.

On Monday, Dick Cheney offered his analysis to Sean Hannity.
They lied. They claimed it was because of a demonstration video, that they wouldn’t have to admit it was really all about their incompetence. They ignored repeated warnings from the CIA about the threat. They ignored messages from their own people on the ground that they needed more security.

Each of Cheney's claims can now be rebutted. "They," meaning the White House, didn't claim the attack was the result of a demonstration video; the full set of emails shows that came from the CIA. There's no evidence that "they" ignored repeated warnings — though that issue did come up. "They" didn't ignore messages from "their own people on the ground" about the need for more security; their man on the ground, Ambassador Stevens who perished in the attack, declined offers to provide exactly that.

But when the notes on the emails were revealed — by some as-yet unidentified party willing to gloss over their specifics — the focus of most (but not all) Republican objections became the development of the White House talking points.

The whole story here:

http://news.yahoo.com/benghazi-conspiracy-isnt-surviving-d-c-scandal-week-163721028.html

[doodler]

EU survey reveals many gays live in fear

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Across Europe, gay couples are scared of publicly engaging in even the most basic expression of their affection: Holding hands.

Released Friday, the largest ever EU survey of hate crime and discrimination targeting members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community in the 27-nation bloc and Croatia showed many of them live in fear and conceal their sexual identity.

Two-thirds of the 93,000 people who filled in the anonymous online questionnaire said they were afraid of holding hands in public with a same sex partner — the figure rose to 75 percent for gay and bisexual men.


more...
http://news.yahoo.com/eu-survey-reveals-many-gays-live-fear-075234164.html

[Paul029]

While there’s a bit of a lull in discussion...  

No surprise there Paul! After all, we are talking about the People's Democratic Republic of Victoria.  

This reminds me of an episode of the ABC’s The Chasers’ War on Everything on “CNNNN.”

The set-up was that randomly selected passers-by in LA were asked to name which country should be invaded in The War on Terror.
Saudi Arabia, the Middle East, Italy, Cuba, Iran, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Canada, Sri Lanka and Iran, again, were all chosen.

Some couples (at the end of the attached clip) chose Iran, France and North Korea but when shown a map on which countries had been incorrectly labelled, they identified Australia as their chosen target for a US invasion.

I particularly liked the disarming frankness with which one of the interviewees admitted that he hadn't realised that North Korea was “a lot larger than South Korea” (i.e. Tasmania).  

See for yourselves (my apologies for the ad): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73WHwlREQVk&feature=youtube_gdata  

Okay, perhaps these innocents really knew what was going on, but we should be mindful of not confusing non-Australians about this, magicmountain.  

Which neatly brings me to News and Current Events:

The entire Australian mainland has been excised from the migration zone after a new bill passed Parliament.

"Up until now, asylum seekers who reached the mainland by boat could not be sent offshore to Nauru or Papua New Guinea's Manus Island for immigration processing.
The change strips away any legal advantage for asylum seekers who reach the mainland."

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-16/parliament-excises-mainland-from-migration-zone/4693940

This will no doubt reinforce the belief, in some quarters, that Australia is a totalitarian state.

[bentgyro]

Our province (BC) just had an election.  The Polls said that the NDP would wipe out the Liberals, instead it was the
other way around, the Liberals got back in with an even larger majority.  The Poll guy said that the polls were wrong because not
enough people voted, it wasn't that the polls were wrong!
I must say that I am deeply saddened by lack of voter turn out
 (in the 40+ percent).
I suppose when they have on-line voting and it is an app on their phone they will.
I hear too many young people saying that they don't like any of the candidates, that all the candidates are liars and
they aren't voting, so there!