The Professional Left Podcast
PO Box 9133
Springfield, IL 62791
In the month of February the economy created 295,000 jobs. Tune in to Fox... @JohnFugelsang @SXMInsight #UniteBlue pic.twitter.com/gyjyzzsS0v
— Syd's Soapbox (@heysyd) March 6, 2015
"This Court now concludes that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. That speakers may have influence over or access to elected officials does not mean that those officials are corrupt. And the appearance of influence or access will not cause the electorate to lose faith in this democracy."
-- Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United v. FEC, 2010.
A 3-year-old boy died yesterday after having shot himself in the head in what police are deeming an accidental shooting, The Houston Chronicle reports.
Harris County Sheriff Deputies said that the shooting happened at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Friday. According to KHOU, the gun was in the boy’s mother purse, which had been placed on a shelf.
The boy’s mother was in another part of the house, but when she heard the gun go off, she rushed in and found her son with a gunshot wound to the neck and jaw.In the two months of 2015 so far, almost 80 kids under the age of 12 have died from gunshot wounds here in USAmerica Inc. (Gun Violence Archive)
What is this virus treatment?
The researchers at the Mayo Clinic in the US, led by Dr Stephen Russell, are using an approach called ‘oncolytic virus therapy’, which is generating a lot of excitement in the cancer research community around the world. In fact, we’ve written about some of our work in this area a couple of times already.
Briefly, it involves treating patients with viruses that have been genetically engineered to specifically infect cancer cells, rather than causing the particular illness that they usually bring. When injected into the body, the viruses seek out and destroy the tumour cells, multiplying inside them to create even more cancer-killing viruses. At least, that’s the theory.
To date, researchers have created oncolytic viruses from a number of different types of modified virus, including the herpes virus (which causes cold sores), pox viruses and adenovirus (common cold). But while tests in cancer cells grown in the lab and animals have been remarkably successful, this promise unfortunately hasn’t yet translated into success in clinical trials with actual cancer patients.Now if we could just get a certain bunch of politicians to turn loose on the purse strings and get some of these docs the bucks they need to finish the thing, we might just have a chance. (translated: Stop voting for assholes who stand in the way of research and development.)
With more than 1,500 observations, the study uncovered substantial, statistically significant race discrimination. Bus drivers were twice as willing to let white testers ride free as black testers (72 percent versus 36 percent of the time). Bus drivers showed some relative favoritism toward testers who shared their own race, but even black drivers still favored white testers over black testers (allowing free rides 83 percent versus 68 percent of the time).
The study also found that racial disparities persisted when the testers wore business attire or dressed in army uniforms. For example, testers wearing army uniforms were allowed to ride free 97 percent of the time if they were white, but only 77 percent of the time if they were black.
This elegant experiment follows in a tradition of audit testing, in which social scientists have sent testers of different races to, for example, bargain over the price of new cars or old baseball cards. But the Australian study is the first, to my knowledge, to focus on discretionary accommodations. It’s less likely these days to find people in positions of authority, even at lower levels of decision making, consciously denying minorities rights. But it is easier to imagine decision makers, like the bus drivers, granting extra privileges and accommodations to nonminorities. Discriminatory gifts are more likely than discriminatory denials.
A police officer is an out-and-out bigot if she targets innocent blacks for speeding tickets. But an officer who is more likely to give a pass to white motorists who exceed the speed limit than to black ones is also discriminating, even if with little or no conscious awareness. This is one reason the Twitter hashtag #crimingwhilewhite is so powerful: It draws attention to the racially biased exercise of discretion by police officers, prosecutors and judges, which results in whites getting a pass for the kinds of offenses for which minorities are punished.So the discrimination is there; the biogtry is there; it's just behind a slightly less thoroughly disgusting mask. It's about the "positive" of granting a little favor for the White Folk so it looks and sounds a little better, but it's still the same old "negative" of denying that favor (ie: privilege) to Black Folk. I'm willing to call it as having made some progress, but we're still pretty well stuck with a problem of unequal treatment, and having that inequality based on the color of somebody's skin.
“My blunt language suggesting that the president doesn’t love America notwithstanding, I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart. My intended focus really was the effect his words and his actions have on the morale of the country, and how that effect may damage his performance.”
Really?
When you boldly and directly state that a President doesn’t love his country, while suggesting that this lack of affection is the result of not being like "us", you have to be something of a fool to imagine that you can return to the fray pretending that what you meant to say was you don’t like how the President speaks on the subject of American exceptionalism.
ImmigrantsI could add: Public Lands and Clean Water and Breathable Air and Redress Through The Courts and a Livable Wage and and and.
Unions
ACLU
Muslims
Gays
Liberals
Medicare
Harry Reid
NOAA
Professors
Thinking people
Public & Indian Housing
Canadians
Sewer systems
Journalists
Jesus' teachings
Europe
Whistleblowers
Social Security
Progress
Scientists
President Obama
Peace Corps
Lesbians
Social justice
Mosques
Laws
Media
Truth
Creative people
14 year old rapist victims
Housing & Urban Development Dept
Government healthcare
Illegal aliens
United Nations
Diplomacy
Smart people
NEA
Bureaucrats
Postal Service
Empathy
Government
1st Amendment
Any Arabic person
Economic justice
Consumer protections
Artists
Democrats
Social programs
All democratic leaders
14 year old incest victims
Sanity
Public education
14th Amendment
Actors
Wildlife
Federal government
Food stamps
Worker's rights
Change
Student aid programs
Environment
Hate crime laws
The Poor
Department of Education
The vulnerable
Nancy Pelosi
Environmental Protection Agency
Logic
The weak
State government
Unemployed
Food banks
4th Amendment
Progressives
Thinking
Tree huggers
Abortion
Hollywood
Teachers
Census workers
Federal Trade Commission
Endangered species
Reason
Homeless people
Consumer Product Safety Commission
Women's rights
City government
Food & Drug Administration
Intelligence
Environmentalists
Any liberal leader
Movies
College professors
5th Amendment
Regulations
Blacks
Soccer
Compassion
Facts