March 1, 2015

In Mayoral Runoff, Rahm Emanuel’s Corrupt Governance Has Finally Caught Up With Him

by Rick Perlstein

On Tuesday, Chicagoans voted themselves a reprieve. With 45.4 percent of the vote, Mayor Rahm Emanuel ended the first round of his first re-election bid almost five points below what he needed to avoid a runoff election in April — and three points below his performance in the last major pre-election poll. “Mayor 1 percent” will face second-place finisher Jesus “Chuy” García, the soft-spoken, compassionate Cook County board member who proclaimed himself with a Chicagoan lilt the “neighborhood guy” — who over-performed the poll.

Perhaps what turned some voters against Rahm at the last minute — or motivated them to go to the polls in the first place on a cold Chicago day that started out in the single digits — was an Election Day exposé that appeared in the British paper the Guardian by investigate reporter Spencer Ackerman. “The Disappeared” revealed the existence of Homan Square, a forlorn “black site” that the Chicago Police operate on the West Side.

There, Chicagoans learned — many for the first time — arrestees are locked up for days at a time without access to lawyers. One victim was 15 years old; he was released without being charged with anything. Another, a 44-year-old named John Hubbard, never left — he died in custody. One of the “NATO 3” defendants, later acquitted on most charges of alleged terror plans during a 2012 Chicago protest, was shackled to a bench there for 17 hours.

It “struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11 feel to it,” the Guardian reported. And for a candidate, Rahm Emanuel, who ran on a message he was turning the page on the old, malodorous “Chicago way,” the piece contributed to a narrative that proved devastating.

more

http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/26/mayoral-runoff-rahm-emanuels-corrupt-governance-finally-caught/

March 1, 2015

How Scott Walker Built a Career Sending Wisconsin Inmates to Private Prisons

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is perhaps best known for dramatically weakening public and private unions in his state—something that has propelled him to the top of the 2016 Republican presidential field.

Over Walker’s long career in state politics, he also accomplished another transformation: increasing Wisconsin’s incarceration rate while making sure private companies had a larger role managing those prisoners.

He rarely talks about it anymore, but Walker’s efforts as a young legislator didn’t just change the Wisconsin criminal justice system—they helped fill Walker’s campaign coffers with money from private prison operators as he ascended from the state legislature to the governor’s mansion.

During his nine years in the state house, from 1993 to 2002, Walker often campaigned as a tough-on-crime Republican who promised new efforts “to protect our families, our senior citizens and our property.”

more

http://www.thenation.com/article/199369/how-scott-walker-built-career-sending-wisconsin-inmates-private-prisons#

March 1, 2015

Nurses Sound A Code Blue In D.C. On Fast Track & TPP

With the White House and some of the biggest multinational corporations lobbying Congress to “fast track” the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive trade deal between the United States and 11 other countries, National Nurses United today converged on the nation’s capital to explain that what’s good for investors’ balance sheets is not necessarily good for patients.

“Nurses are patient advocates—and by extension advocates of our patients’ families and our communities—and we are here to sound a Code Blue on fast track,” said RN Deborah Burger, a member of the NNU’s Council of Presidents. “While there are many good reasons to reject fast track, the nation’s registered nurses are particularly concerned about these trade agreements’ threats to public health and safety.”

She points to pharmaceutical corporations that would be given years more of monopoly pricing practices on patents for high-priced, brand-name drugs to block distribution of competitive, cheaper, lifesaving generic medications. “That is especially critical for people suffering from cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and other illnesses in developing countries as well as in the United States,” she said.

Burger was one of dozens of nurses to attend a press conference today with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Connecticut) urging lawmakers to reject fast track legislation for the TPP. Described by former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich as “NAFTA on steroids,” the TPP is largely being negotiated in secret. The Obama administration and Republican lawmakers want Congress to approve fast-track authority, which would require Congress to ratify the treaty but relinquish its Constitutional authority to amend the trade pact in any way.

That cannot happen.

more

https://www.popularresistance.org/nurses-sound-a-code-blue-in-d-c-on-fast-track-tpp/

March 1, 2015

Eugenie Clark dies at 92; Respected scientist swam with sharks

As a schoolgirl in the 1930s, Eugenie Clark spent countless hours pressed up to the tanks at a New York City aquarium, absorbed by the alligators, sea turtles and hundreds of species of fish just beyond the glass.

There was one creature, however, that completely enthralled her. "If only," she thought, "I could be in the water with a shark."

Clark eventually got her wish.

She became an intrepid underwater scientist with the nickname "Shark Lady" after she established a respected marine research laboratory in Florida in the 1950s and became a best-selling author known for her ability to explain shark behavior and other mysteries of ocean life.

Clark died Wednesday of non-smoking lung cancer at her home in Sarasota, Fla., said her son, Nikolas Konstantinou. She was 92.

more

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-eugenie-clark-20150301-story.html#page=1

March 1, 2015

Sunday's Non Sequitur- Go To The Light!

March 1, 2015

This Is The End Of The Line For The USAF's Most Versatile Cargo Jet

The C-17 has been in production for 25 years, with 279 Globemasters emerging from Boeing's (and once McDonnell Douglas') historic Long Beach factory. Yesterday, the final aircraft had its wings mated to its massive fuselage, ending not just the production run of the C-17, but the 72-year-old plant that produced it.

Although the quad-engine transport found some export success later in its production life – with Canada, Australia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, India, and NATO's heavy lift wing receiving copies – the demand for large transport aircraft has softened as defense budgets around the globe retract. Add in the fact that out-sized cargo transport can be purchased by the hour from commercial vendors, including operators that fly the larger Soviet-designed An-124, and the high operating and sustainment costs of owning the C-17 begin to look like a waste.

When it comes to the USAF, the C-17 may be a victim of its own success. The jet is so effective at its job that more units aren't required to "take up the slack" for the USAF's aging transport fleet.

In many ways, the C-17 was the perfect aircraft for the last 15 years of conflict in the Middle East, with its ability to take large loads into and out of combat zones, even on short and less than perfect runways. But that capability came at the price of high-fuel usage while cruising.

more

http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/this-is-the-end-of-the-line-for-the-usafs-most-versatil-1688525621/+damon

March 1, 2015

Dead Cherry Tycoon Reportedly Ran One of NYC's Largest Pot Farms

The pot farm owned and operated by Arthur Mondella, the cherry magnate who killed himself on Tuesday, was reportedly among the largest ever discovered in New York City. The New York Times and New York Daily News report that the grow room—located in Dell's Maraschino Cherries Company's basement, behind a hidden door and down a ladder—spanned 2,500 square feet and could harvest up to 1,200 pot plants.

While the involvement of the factory's other employees remains unclear, investigators believe Mondella must have had at least some help setting up the complex operation, which included 120 growing lamps, dozens of strains of marijuana seeds, 50 books on horticulture, and an irrigation system.

"The way you have to set that up, there's got to be plumbers and electricians working off the books who are very sophisticated,and it wasn't Arthur Mondella, as far as we know, that had that kind of skills," a law enforcement official told The New York Times. The same official said the farm was the largest investigators had ever seen in New York.

As for why Mondella would turn an apparently thriving business into a huge drug operation, authorities and his family remain baffled, though officials suspect a link to organized crime.



more

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/dead-cherry-tycoon-reportedly-ran-one-of-nycs-largest-p-1688438180/+LeahBeckmann

February 28, 2015

In Search of: The Afghanistan War

By Brian McFadden-
In honor of Leonard Nimoy, who passed away today, here’s a throwback to a Strip I did featuring him way back in 2012. He’s obviously remembered as Spock, but he did a bunch of other stuff.

February 28, 2015

Toon- America At War: with Bill O'Reilly

February 28, 2015

Spock’s Voyage Home: Farewell To Leonard Nimoy

When Leonard Nimoy titled his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, some Star Trek fans took it as an insult, thinking Nimoy was trying to distance himself from the role that made him famous. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Rarely does an actor get a chance to play a character as memorable as the starship Enterprise’s Mr. Spock: a superior intellect with a cool demeanor, a casual courage, and a fierce sense of loyalty.

Nimoy appreciated the opportunity when he was cast in the original Star Trek pilot back in 1964, and it was his performance as Spock over the next five years—playing the half-Vulcan scientist with confidence and a deadpan wit—that made Spock such a pop culture icon. Nimoy titled his second autobiography I Am Spock, to clear up any confusion. And right up until his death earlier today, Nimoy signed nearly all of his personal correspondence with “LLAP,” meaning, “live long and prosper,” Spock’s motto.

And yet Nimoy really wasn’t Spock—or at least, he wasn’t just Spock. By the time he put on the pointy ears for the first time at age 33, he’d already been in over 20 television series and a half-dozen movies. Nimoy started acting as a child in Boston, and was working steadily not long after he arrived in Hollywood in the early 1950s. At a time when TV was jammed with Westerns, war dramas, and cop shows, Nimoy was a go-to guest star, prized for his lanky frame, his sharp facial features, and his deep, raspy voice. He made an instant impression, and excelled at playing exotic characters and imposing goons.

After Star Trek, Nimoy continued to make use of his innate alien-ness. His most prominent post-Spock part was as a magician and master of disguise on the spy series Mission: Impossible; and children of the 1970s would come to know Nimoy as the host of the chilling In Search Of… documentaries, where his authoritative narration helped make the supernatural seem plausible. His last major acting job was as a recurring character on Fox’s cult science-fiction series Fringe, where Nimoy played one of a pair of well-meaning mad scientists whose inventions nearly destroy the universe. To the end, he used his acting career to get people thinking about technology, humanity, and responsibility.

more

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/27/spock-s-voyage-home-farewell-to-leonard-nimoy.html