#WiseFriend Ian Rowcliffe muses: Life certainly is a guessing game, where you work at improving on your guesses
Don’t let GOP lies confuse you – Obamacare is a good thing
Twitter trolls are spreading lies about Obamacare and its relationship to Medicare and Seniors. You can combat their lies by getting the real facts and sharing them. Obamacare (aka Affordable Care Act) is a good thing, especially for seniors.
#1 Troll says “Egregious example f Obamacare Medicare cuts-hospital refusing 2 ADMIT seniors & OBSERVING them instead”
Truth: Hospitals have been taking advantage of lack of clarity in Medicare billing procedures to charge higher rates when possible. This is not a failing of the ACA and it is being addressed by Congress.
Free press defender Joe Torres speaks at BCC Oct 2
There are times in history when the story of current events – what we know as news – enters a state of flux. New voices emerge to tell the stories of people and our world that are happening in real time. Today, we see this with YouTube, blogging, social media, community radio and TV. Periods of change can also be times of danger. People’s right to know must be protected and reporters must hold themselves responsible for present facts and truth without embellishment as far as they are able to discern them … in other words, the principles of expository journalism must be upheld.
Mother of killed 4 year old Israeli boy writes to UN Sec’y General
(Foto Source) Our good family friend Rabbi Moshe Jordan S. Yasgur forwarded this email, written by the mother of a 4 year old Israeli boy to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon. The recent Hamas-Gaza conflict has caused an international outcry to be raised against Israel, but examination reveals that the barbarities and calls for genocide are emanating from the Hamas side.
My sons’ godfather Rabbi Moshe Yasgur forwarded us this letter, written by the mother of a 4 year old Israeli boy to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.
Why would they make a heart out of palms?
When you’re a kid, certain things just don’t make sense. One of those for me, were hearts of palm. They tasted OK but I still didn’t want to eat too many of them. Couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to replace a good old red-blooded human heart with a heart made out of these things.
It was decades before I would “get” that one, but now I can finally enjoy gobbling these bad boys up without feeling I’m colluding in some kind of Frankenstein experiment.
Young Black woman Zionist shares her truths about Israel
Chloé Simone Valdary is young Black non-Jewish woman Zionist who believes that the current worldwide campaign to create unfounded hatred of Jews and Israel has been artificially engineered by Arab oil magnates, and is funded with their fortunes. Chloé established the group “Allies for Israel” at the University of New Orleans where she studies, to fight “anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism on campus”.
In Tablet Magazine Chloé explains why an anti-Israeli/Jewish position is fundamentally wrong, especially for African Americans:
What is capitalism?
Capitalism is an economic system in which a small group of people at the top of a financial hierarchy exploit others at lower levels according to the principle: buy low sell high. This small group uses profits to buy land and also control labor rates and conditions; food, water, transportation and processes others must buy, rent or use in order to participate in organized society – thereby setting in motion a self-perpetuating system of automatic wealth acquisition. As long as society functions, those holdings will be used and the holders of them will acquire greater wealth, which will translate into more acquisition in a never ending loop.
How Koch Bros’ $25M gift to United Negro College Fund can hurt us
A friend posted this on Facebook about the $25 Million gift given to the United Negro College Fund by the Koch Brothers:
If this money comes from sincerity (their heart) it is a blessing, but if it comes with “strings attached” the Koch brothers will have not surprised us. They will show us as usual their true colors! Win-win situation either way!
My thoughts are different:
Not necessarily, Maria. The insidious multi-level strategies that typically accompany gifts by the rich and powerful are designed to have subtle, but long-lasting and far reaching effect. First we should ask, what is being asked for as a direct trade for the gift? We may never know everything that was bargained away behind closed doors but we do know that two Koch Brothers designees will sit on a scholarship decision committee of three that will decide which students get that blood money. Right out of the gate, it’s clear that the money was not given with an open hand.
Weatherdude accurately called March storm warning a hoax
Days before the “historic” early March 2014 storm that never materialized, I came across an article on Daily Kos by Dennis Mersereau aka the Weatherdude. He accurately predicted the storm was not going to develop. Dennis went on to say that the warning was a hoax perpetrated by one man who fooled the entire country with a fake weather report (“Kevin Martin is pulling this “storm” out of his ass”) and that the fake meteorologist has done this several times already.
Emerging BCC Latino leaders share thoughts on debut development program
Four years is a long time in community college terms but it was so worth it to keep on working at bringing this program to Bergen Community College. I got to know so much about the college and campus organizing just by recruiting advisors, speakers and participants to the College Leadership Development Program. 2014 CLDP @ Bergen Cohort members are enjoying participation tremendously, and the speakers we’ve brought in are enjoying us!
Thanks to USHLI for dreaming up a really good program and providing us with guidance to get it off the ground, to our speakers, donors and advisors, to BCC for hosting our evening workshops and to Kimi Wei of The Wei for so much help.
~ Jorge Ivan Gomez Wei
Christie wants to use leftover campaign funds to pay for Bridgegate defense
You would think that a person in Christie’s situation would learn from past mistakes, but I guess after you’ve fallen a certain distance from grace self-correction becomes impossible. Christie’s camp is once again making the law all about our governor’s wishes instead of about legal precedent, common decency, responsibility to constituents or logic.
This time, Christie wants to use leftover campaign funds to pay legal bills for the Bridgegate defense. No matter that the Christie-Booker team went after Sharpe James for doing exactly the same thing:
Book: Reign of Error by Diane Ravitch
Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools by Diane Ravitch
Category: Social Justice, Education
In the days that Diane Ravitch was U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education in the administration of George H. W. Bush, she drank lots of Kool Aide and believed strenuously that destroying public education was good for students of color and poor kids. But one day the veil was lifted from her eyes. She understood the error of her previous thinking, and did a complete about face to become the country’s most visible and high-profile champion of public education. I’m a Diane fan and now, you can be too! Read her book and her blog.
Book: The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Category: Social Justice
Author Michelle Alexander-West is the wife of a United States federal prosecutor and an attorney in her own right. In this book, she does a truly remarkable job of drilling down through levels of strategy, policy and procedure that form the complex web of injustice that has brought the United States to the terrible point of imprisoning over 1% of our adult population and detaining 25% of all prisoners everywhere in the world … many of whom have been jailed for minor offenses, such as carrying a couple of marijuana cigarettes. Over 3200 non-violent offenders have been jailed for life for non-violent offenses like that, or for stealing an item of clothing worth $150. Unjust imprisonment is part of the intentional destruction of the lives of people of color.
I can do something!
I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do ~ Edward Everett Hale
Thought of the day via Ken McDaniels. Thanks Ken!
Scientific method flow chart
Scientific method flow chart, found via Theresa Lam, who comments
That’s right, scientists should be open to the results changing at any point down the line … Everyone learns that in sixth grade.
So let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need to follow results to their progressive conclusion, whatever that is.