News and Current Events - 2012

[Marge_Innavera]

"A new report from the National Employment Law Project shows that, recession or not, many states could have avoided borrowing for unemployment payments if they hadn't spent a decade weakening their unemployment insurance trust funds by slashing employer contributions:

Between 1995 and 2005, 31 states reduced employer contribution rates by at least one-fifth (Henchman 2011, 16), causing the nation’s average employer contribution rate over the decade leading up to the Great Recession to fall to its lowest point in the program’s 75-year history.

"As a result, going into the recession, state unemployment insurance funds were short of recommended minimum solvency standards by a combined $38 billion, and 30 of the 34 states not meeting that minimum standard ended up borrowing, combined with just six of 19 states that started the recession with adequate funds. Adequate unemployment insurance reserves could have reduced borrowing to 13 states borrowing $9 billion rather than what ended up happening, with 31 states borrowing $42 billion.

"But while the funding shortfalls came from employers contributing less than at any point in the previous 75 years, it's been jobless people who've gotten the blame and felt the pinch, with "At least ten states [passing] legislation to reduce the number of weeks of benefits available, severely restrict eligibility, or impose measures designed to discourage people from filing UI claims." Taxpayers, too, are paying, since states have already paid $3 billion in interest and penalties on what they've borrowed for unemployment, with more to come."


http://nelp.3cdn.net/569520538d26f260bb_wom6iiapf.pdf

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/03/1116351/-Tax-breaks-for-businesses-led-to-state-unemployment-funds-going-broke

[AZ.bbm]

       Just a short note re Stan's reply of today, #2799:

Wonderful points made stan; the info is impeccable and if anyone is truly interested it can be researched and found.

(Have to say this re the infamous traitor pollard: AIPAC has been pressuring every potus and his people to release pollard going back, if I recall correctly, to the Reagan yrs.  Each one has refused). 
They pressured cheney-bush so bad that it became a topic throughout Wash., DC. (pollard's traitorous wife - now his ex-wife - had been released before - why I'll never know.  She was in on the spying with the traitor husband from the get-go).
 
I was fearful that during cheney-bush's two terms, it may have happened.  But since then AIPAC has been/is still trying; they will not  stop.  Oh brother...

kathy

Thanks, Kathy!
 

Re the spy Jonathan Pollard's wife, I had only read that she had known that Pollard was spying for Israel from the get go, and she agree to keep quiet about it -that is, until he was found out... Then she swung into action, sweeping up all of the classified materials from their home and carting it off to a next-door  neighbor, who as it happened, was a high-ranking Air Force official...

The officer dutifully turned in the classified materials Pollard had retained in his house, but only after some time had elapsed (-time enough to photograph some/all of it, one wonders)... All of this could have been part of a prearranged 'plan of action' -- Air Force/intel people are plenty meticulous like that (-I have 1st-hand knowledge of that).


Of course they can't let Pollard out of prison, he knows too much.  If he did manage to get paroled there's a chance he would be assassinated via a drone attack...

Stan

[Tony_]

  Another mass shooting, this time at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, (?). I looked up their religion and background, and it is a very peaceful faith.  More domestic violence.

[AZ.bbm]

A very interesting post, Stan. 

1.
Holmes did have strange connections. Also, you might try googling the stories of a second person of interest, a friend of his from the same field. Myself, all I noticed was that 3 of his victims had intelligence backgrounds, or the near territory, and I briefly wondered at the statistical probability of that in Aurora.  But I do find the whole subject very dark.

2. 
Next, as far as thinking computers, way some time back, I had been reading about the attempts to get computers to generate language on their own, and, by coincidence, near to the same time, was reading about theories of identity and consciousness, and that these human characteristics arose from language and linear generation of sentences.

3.
[p.s. : on another subject, Yahoo news reported a study that pupil dilation has shown solid evidence of sexual orientation.  Your statements in other threads about bi-sexuality in males was confirmed.  The results for women were whacky. Should be easily googleable.]

-Thanks, Tony!

1. Eyewitnesses say that, before Holmes entered the theater, a man came in and sat in the front row, went out the Emergency Exit to take a phone call (who does that??) and re-entered the theater, having left the exit door ajar. Holmes entered via the same exit. Was the exit door already broken, and if so, how widely known was it?

The article above has the Aurora Police Dept. "discounting reports that Holmes had an accomplice" - directly contravening eyewitness accounts, broadcast on CNN, ABC, et.al.


2. I had a couple of undergrad courses in A.I., the texts were damned fascinating "Natural Language Processing" was one of them, the other was "Reasoning About Plans"., Also, I've read physicist Fred Alan Wolf's work on the mathematics of consciousness, book entitled, "Star Wave", wherein he developed his own calculus to describe the physics of human thought processes; and, I read Rudy Rucker's book, "Infinity and the Mind"...
All that is not a drop in the bucket compared to working toward a doctoral degree in neuroscience, as James Holmes was !


3. Thanks for relating the study about the eyes and sexual orientation, Tony!   


Stan

[CellarDweller115]

Another mass shooting, this time at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, (?). I looked up their religion and background, and it is a very peaceful faith.  More domestic violence.

At least 1 dead in shooting at Wisconsin Sikh temple

By the CNN Wire Staff updated 2:24 PM EDT, Sun August 5, 2012


A shooting at Sikh temple in the Milwaukee suburb of Oak Creek, Wisconsin, on Sunday, left at least three people wounded and one gunman killed by a police officer, authorities said.
 
The officer was wounded but "returned fire, and that shooter was put down," said Bradley Wentlandt, the police chief in nearby Greenfield, who briefed reporters. Wentlandt called it "an ongoing and very fluid situation."
 
"At this time, we don't know if there are additional shooters inside the temple," he said. SWAT teams were combing through the temple, he said, and he urged television stations not to show aerial footage of the operation while it was under way.
 
The officer was sent to the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, south of Milwaukee, after a 911 call about 10:25 a.m. (11:25 a.m. ET). He killed his attacker despite being shot "multiple times," and is expected to survive, Wentlandt said.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/05/us/wisconsin-temple-shooting/index.html

[doodler]

So what makes this domestic terrorism instead of a hate crime? I'm getting confused.

[kathy]

Me too.  It seems like both.

[kathy]

Thanks, Kathy!
 

Re the spy Jonathan Pollard's wife, I had only read that she had known that Pollard was spying for Israel from the get go, and she agree to keep quiet about it -that is, until he was found out... Then she swung into action, sweeping up all of the classified materials from their home and carting it off to a next-door  neighbor, who as it happened, was a high-ranking Air Force official...

The officer dutifully turned in the classified materials Pollard had retained in his house, but only after some time had elapsed (-time enough to photograph some/all of it, one wonders)... All of this could have been part of a prearranged 'plan of action' -- Air Force/intel people are plenty meticulous like that (-I have 1st-hand knowledge of that).

Of course they can't let Pollard out of prison, he knows too much.  If he did manage to get paroled there's a chance he would be assassinated via a drone attack...

Stan

You're welcome stan.  I agree again w/your statements above.

Didn't the traitor pollard's wife get out on some kind of stupid technicality? (!)  Stupid - whatever it was, since she was in on the whole thing with him from the start.  And it didn't take her long at all to ditch him.

kathy  

[killersmom]

The Mars Rover Curiosity successfully landed on the surface of the planet at Sunday evening at 10:32 PM PDT. (It actually took place 14 minutes earlier, since there is a 14-minute communications lag time for signals traveling the 154 million miles from Mars.

There was live streamed coverage of the landing and it was amazing to watch. The first 3 images were received within 3 minutes of touchdown.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/nasa-mission-to-mars-rover-curiosity-touches-down/2012/08/06/e10e7bf2-df89-11e1-8fc5-a7dcf1fc161d_story.html

[fritzkep]

Geaux Curiosity!

(But don't kill any cats up there)

[huntinbuddy]

On the heels of the nut job shooting the worshipers at the Sikh Temple in Wisconsin, we had an attack of our own here in Missouri.

http://www.komu.com/news/joplin-mosque-razed-in-fire-2nd-blaze-this-summer/

Details are still sketchy at this time, but apparently arson was attempted on the building July 4th.   This second fire appears to be suspicious in nature.   Joplin, you may remember, was the location of the most deadly tornado in US history in 50 years in May, 2011

[fritzkep]

Yeah, I heard about that on the news. The heat and copycatitis will really bring the nut jobs out.

[Tony_]

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire :  Romney's newest ads say Obama is taking the work requirements out of the 1996 welfare reform bill.  The truth? Waivers are being granted to those states who want more flexibility, and of the four requesting them, two have Republican governors and legislatures. This is an extension of the pattern of waivers to states for education and other federal rules.

 But the underlying problem is The New News. A significant number of Americans do not watch cable or network news, or read the newspapers.  They get their news from these commercials, which have become The New News.  Doesn't matter if that is only 10%.  It's enough to swing an election.
 Meanwhile, Obama's hair-trigger fight-back team is not what it was 4 years ago.

 In a related matter, Mormons are hungering for a Romney win to help along their long journey to acceptance.  They ought to think again.  He's a liar, and he also would never be able to manage the right-wingers of his own party.  The damage to this country from the new Herbert Hoover would slosh over to his Mormon faith and that's not good for them. Very short-sighted, IMO.

[killersmom]

A Chorus Line' Composer Marvin Hamlisch Dead at 68

Another big loss in the theatre world this morning:

Marvin Hamlisch, who achieved theatre immortality as the composer of the iconic musical A Chorus Line, died Aug. 7 following a brief illness. He was 68.

Mr. Hamlisch's other theatre works included They're Playing Our Song, Jean Seberg, Smile, The Goodbye Girl and Sweet Smell of Success. His latest musical, The Nutty Professor, recently opened in Tennessee. But it was with the groundbreaking A Chorus Line, which told of the frustrations and worries of a group of anonymous dancers trying out for a Broadway musical, that he made his mark as a theatre figure....

..Mr. Hamlisch is one of only 11 people to have won an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony award. On top of this, he also won the Pulitzer Prize for A Chorus Line.

Read more: http://www.towleroad.com/#ixzz22tawXAfB

[AZ.bbm]

So what makes this domestic terrorism instead of a hate crime? I'm getting confused.

-Yeah,  I agree; it is confusing. -But it looks as if it all comes down to a matter of 'motive'...

Princeton U. defines the terms as follows:

• hate crime,  n - a crime motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, typically one involving violence...

• ter·ror·ism,  n -  the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims...


• domestic terrorism,  n - terrorism practiced in your own country against your own people.