Here’s a special Torah lesson on the holiday from family friend, Rabbi Jordan Yasgur:
Beautiful graphic courtesy of New World Ketubah.
Join the #PeoplesClimateMovement in demanding #climateaction
#PeoplesClimateMovement in demanding #climateaction
I’m joining the #PeoplesClimate Movement on Oct 14 to demand bold #climateaction from our leaders. Will you join me?
#PeoplesClimateMovement
#climateaction
Learn how EMV chip card payment technology will affect your small business
The SBA has resources to help small businesses with a payment technology revolution that’s coming soon – EMV chip card payments. Here’s what they say about it:
For merchants and financial institutions, the switch to EMV means adding new in-store technology and internal processing systems. To get chip-enabled for your business, contact your acquirer or payment services provider.
The switch to EMV also means a change in liability for credit card fraud. Today, if an in-store transaction is conducted using a counterfeit, stolen or otherwise compromised card, consumer losses from that transaction generally fall back on the payment processor or issuing bank, depending on the card’s terms and conditions.
The Logic of the Cat (fun video)
Wonderful video showing some of the wonderfully unpredictable, silly and sometimes annoying but funny things our cats do. It’s totally impossible to stay angry at them, even when they sleep in our cookware. Brought to you by Cole and Marmalade (whom are cats, naturally) and their people.
Bernie Sanders to reporters: do some real reporting for a change
Bernie Sanders in top form when he confronts reporters and tells them to stop making it look like presidential candidates are in a mud-wrestling contest with each other and do some real reporting – on the issues people care about. Because, “People are fed up.”
Truly.
#feelthebern
Expert framing of Jorge Ramos’ challenge to Donald Trump
Jorge Ramos, the influential anchor of Univision and an American immigrant from Mexico, has been denouncing Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Yesterday at a Trump press conference in Iowa, Ramos stood and questioned Trump on his immigration views. Trump at first ignored him, then scolded him for speaking without being called on and repeatedly ordered him to “sit down,” then told him: “Go back to Univision.” When Ramos refused to sit down and shut up as ordered, a Trump bodyguard physically removed him from the room. After the press conference concluded, Ramos returned and again questioned Trump about immigration, with the two mostly talking over each other as Ramos asked Trump about the fundamental flaws in his policy. Afterward, Ramos said: “This is personal. … He’s talking about our parents, our friends, our kids and our babies.”
Are New Jersey gentrifiers taking us for a ride?
Christie’s education voucher law allows public school students to attend schools in another district, with your tax dollars paying the receiving school’s tuition fees and the complete bill to, “provide and pay for students’ transportation to new schools up to 20 miles away.” Sounds a bit like specially chartered buses and other things extraordinarily expensive, doesn’t it? Wowza!
Bush started us on path to Nazi-ism. Trump goes much farther.
So, I’m reading this article shared by Truthout editor William Rivers Pitt about Trump’s extremist stand on deporting immigrants and his incessant hatemongering. And, I recently read a corroboration of Bernie Sander’s statement that Hitler was elected to govern Germany. All of a sudden that light-bulb goes on in my head: Trump could actually be a modern version of Hitler.
Trump’s fascist authoritarianism was thrown into stark relief by the courageous act of journalism “committed” by Mexican immigrant and Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos and Trump’s heavy-handed, dismissive treatment of him at a recent press conference. Ramos is one of the US Latino community’s most influential voices … Glenn Greenwald writes about the Ramos challenge:
The cost of “tough on crime” is $1B each year of your taxpayer money
vlogbrothers has created a sobering video about the “massive $75 BILLION per year failed experiment” we’re living in – which is what it costs American taxpayers each year to keep almost 1% of our neighbors in prison.
The video’s done in a light-hearted animation style and is under 4 minutes long, but pay attention to the scary statistics:
- By age 23, 41% of our country’s juveniles and young adults have been arrested.
- Our prisons violate international standards.
- Solitary confinement is considered torture under international law but in the United States it is a not governed or monitored by anyone except prison officials.
- This massive system costs taxpayers $75 Billion dollars each year.
- Private prison contractors have occupancy guarantees that mandate their prisons remain between 80 and 90 percent full.
Video brought to you courtesy of Natalie Hussein Wells‘ link to attn:‘s informative article. And remember, if you don’t want to support and pay for this crazy system, vote for politicians that favor reducing our incarceration rate, like 2016 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
Play about Central Park’s land 1825 Black Village showing at Kean U through 9/20.
…help justify destroying people’s homes and cemeteries, using eminent domain to make way for what would become the most visited city park in the country. The village was leveled in 1857, the same year construction began on Central Park.
Hah – every school year should start like this!
Faithtap asks the right question! “What better way to kick off a new year than with the spread of joy and enthusiasm?” Flash mob of singing teachers does exactly that. And they sound good, too!
The Desmoines, Iowa flash district teachers performed ‘One More Day’ from the hit Broadway musical Les Miserables. Not all are music teachers.
Big Brands making a killing from inmate labor, a slavery replacement
Very neatly written exposition of how prisons have replaced slavery as a means of augmenting the wealthy of the wealthy – on the backs of society’s most vulnerable.
“Insourcing,” as prison labor is often called, is an even cheaper alternative to outsourcing. Instead of sending labor over to China or Bangladesh, manufacturers have chosen to forcibly employ the 2.4 million incarcerated people in the United States. Chances are high that if a product you’re holding says it is “American Made,” it was made in an American prison.
US Colonel: slavery was the SINGLE reason for the Civil War (video)
Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point, sets the record state on the question of what the reason was for the United States Civil War. In this interesting short video Col. Seidule makes the case that the single reason was slavery. Does a good job with it, too.
Here are some highlights:
The buzz term “States’ Rights” was coined by Southern state residents and referred to the right they believed they possessed, to continue slavery.
NJ serious about protecting LGBT community from conversion therapy
Assemblyman Tim Eustace — the bill’s sponsor and an openly gay man — has called the practice “an insidious form of child abuse.”
Conversion therapy is always forced, psychologically brutal and it is sometimes, physically damaging as well. Furthermore, it is based on the false premise that being gay is wrong.
On 25 June 2015, New Jersey courts acted to establish another legal avenue for protection to victims of conversion therapy by opening an avenue for collecting financial damages:
Look at these pictures of Gaza – they show a paradise
These are pictures of Gaza, which Hamas and people hostile towards Israel describe as a concentration camp. These are anything but concentration camp conditions – this is a paradise.