History for June 21

History for June 21 - On-This-Day.com
Martha Washington 1731, Jean-Paul Sartre 1905, Jane Russell 1921 


O.C. Smith 1932, Mariette Hartley 1940, Juliette Lewis 1973 


1834 - Cyrus McCormick patented the first practical mechanical reaper for farming. His invention allowed farmers to more than double their crop size. 


1893 - The Ferris Wheel was introduced at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, IL. 


1913 - Georgia Broadwick became the first woman to jump from an airplane. 


1940 - Richard M. Nixon and Thelma Catherine ‘Pat’ Ryan were married. 


1963 - In St. Louis, Bob Hayes set a record when he ran the 100-yard dash in 0:09.1. 


1973 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may ban materials found to be obscene according to local standards.
 

1974 - The U.S. Supreme Court decided that pregnant teachers could no longer be forced to take long leaves of absence. 


1985 - Scientists announced that skeletal remains exhumed in Brazil were those of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele. 


1989 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that burning the American flag as a form of political protest was protected by the First Amendment. 

A national disgrace!!!-----Why Carlos Montero Has Been in Rikers for Seven Years Without Trial

Why Carlos Montero Has Been in Rikers for Seven Years Without Trial | The Marshall Project:
"For those unfamiliar with the pace of justice in New York City, the New York Post story earlier this week headlined “Man arrested as teen has waited 7 years in Rikers for trial” likely came as a shock.
The story of Carlos Montero, who so far has spent 2,431 days in jail without a trial (much less a conviction) immediately raises a series of obvious questions about due process and speedy trial rights under the Constitution.
But Montero is one of hundreds of current jail inmates who are incarcerated indefinitely, despite the fact that no judge or jury ever has convicted them.
At Rikers, approximately 400 inmates have been waiting for at least two years for their cases to get to trial. As of April,
The New York Times reported, there were at least five others who, like Montero, have been awaiting trial for more than six years. 
This week, The Wall Street Journal reported that the city’s municipal courts had “cleared” 591 of the 1,427 cases that, “as of mid-April, involved inmates who have been at Rikers more than a year, data from the state judiciary showed...”"

Signs Of Financial Turmoil In Europe, China And The United States

Signs Of Financial Turmoil In Europe, China And The United States
As we move toward the second half of 2015, signs of financial turmoil are appearing all over the globe.
In Greece, a full blown bank run is happening right now.
Approximately 2 billion euros were pulled out of Greek banks in just the past three days, Barclays says that capital controls are “imminent” unless a debt deal is struck, and there are reports that preparations are being made for a “bank holiday” in Greece.
Meanwhile, Chinese stocks are absolutely crashing.  
The Shanghai Composite Index was down more than 13 percent this week alone.
That was the largest one week decline since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.  
In the U.S., stocks aren’t crashing yet, but we just witnessed one of the largest one week outflows of capital from the bond markets that we have ever witnessed.
Slowly but surely, we are starting to see the smart money head for the exits.
As one Swedish fund manager put it recently, everyone wants “to avoid being caught on the wrong side of markets once the herd realizes stocks are over-valued“.
I don’t think that most people understand how serious things have gotten already.
In Greece, so much money has been pulled out of the banks that the European Central Bank admits that Greek banks may not be able to open on Monday…

"Islamic! Islamic!": Muslim Persecutions of Christians, April, 2015

"Islamic! Islamic!": Muslim Persecutions of Christians, April, 2015

• He could hear from inside his room where he was hiding the gunmen opening doors and inquiring if the people inside were Muslims or Christians.
• 

  "The motorbike riders got down from their bike and started beating [Christian journalist] Shamim Masih and... warned him that if he did not stop reporting on Christian issues, they knew his family and home and would teach him and his family a lesson." — Nazir S. Batti, Pakistan Christian Congress Party.
• "The city of Mosul alone had 45 churches. Now there is not a single one. The buildings have been destroyed. Four hundred churches have been destroyed in Syria. ... The same is happening in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Northern Africa." — Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia
• "What happened to Christians in Iraq and Syria... does not receive Arabic media coverage that befits human beings, whatever their religion." — Hani Naqshabandi, Saudi writer.

Is Environmentalism Making Americans Poorer?

Is Environmentalism Making Americans Poorer? | Somewhat Reasonable
A few days ago, EPA Chief Gina McCarthy penned a post on Mic.com, claiming to make the “economic case” for clean energy, asserting that carbon pollution, like that produced by coal-fired power plants, is cutting into economic stability and growth.
McCarthy called for support for the Clean Power Plan, a reconfiguration of carbon emission standards that would put weight on coal-fired power plants to clean up their acts or face the consequences.
...There are also other economic consequences to McCarthy’s plan that she hasn’t considered: whether Americans can afford clean energy on an individual basis.
As the EPA and the Obama Administration has increased their pressure on so-called “dirty” energies, like coal, they’ve driven up energy costs for individuals, and according to a study released this week by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, that’s having a disparate effect on lower-income Americans.
Yesterday the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity released a report that documents how the Obama administration’s war on coal (and on cheap energy generally) has hurt poor and middle-class Americans. 
...This simple chart tells the story: while energy costs account for only 7% of expenditures by those who earn over $50,000 per year, those making less than $30,000 pay an astonishing 23% of their after-tax income for energy.
...According to the ACCCE study, many Americans sacrificed in other areas in order to meet rising energy costs, some even forgoing prescriptions, medical care and food in order to simply heat their homes.
But while they struggle, ultimately because of the EPA’s heavy regulatory hand, the companies the EPA favors – and their millionaire investors – are profiting at suffering Americans’ expense. Alternative energy bigwigs like Al Gore and billionaire environmentalists hedge fund operators like Tom Steyer, are using the Obama Administration’s push for alternative energy to get rich off of grants and loans the EPA and DOE dole out to alternative energy projects, and off of climate-altering investments.
The poor get poorer (and colder) while the rich get richer.

This is cool!!-----See how that vertical 787 takeoff looked from the cockpit

See how that vertical 787 takeoff looked from the cockpit - CNET:
"Boeing's new 787-9 Dreamliner passenger jet is a big-boy plane, and last week we saw that it's capable of some big-time maneuvers.
Boeing released a video of the jet making what looks like a near-vertical takeoff from a runway in Washington state in preparation for the Paris Air Show happening this week.
The video has since amassed nearly 10 million views on YouTube, and now Boeing has released some additional footage to take advantage of a new feature Google's video site has been testing called "Choose Your View."
The multiple-view experience, which works best in a desktop or laptop browser, can be found on Boeing's YouTube channel and allows you to experience that crazy takeoff and the brief flight that follows from three different angles -- looking at the 787 from outside, the pilot's view from the cockpit and a view inside the cockpit itself where you can see the pilots doing their thing."

Very good read!-----Pope Francis Embraces Green Theology to Demonize the Modern World

Pope Francis Embraces Green Theology to Demonize the Modern World - Reason.com
Pope Francis's eco-encyclical, issued to great fanfare this week, might be hyperbolic, anti-progress, and seemingly keen to bring the hotness of hell up to Earth.
(How else do we explain its mad aside against air-conditioning, which the pontiff brands as one of humanity's "harmful habits"? 
Clearly he wants to heat us up in preparation for our eternal frying for all the eco-sins we've committed.)
But we should nonetheless be grateful that, for all its dottiness, this humanity-lecturing letter has been published.
For it shows in black and white—and green—what a colossal amount in common there is between environmentalism and Catholicism.
That Francis can so readily adopt eco-lingo, can read as fluently from the gospel according to Greenpeace as he does from those other gospels, confirms that God-botherers and eco-worriers share a serious agitation with the human urge to explore and develop—what they call our "hubris"—and long to make us live simpler, less stuff-filled lives.
Francis takes to eco-moaning like a duck to water.
(Probably polluted water— yes, yes, we know.)
He slams humanity's view of itself as "lords and masters" of nature, our belief that we can "plunder her at will."
Such arrogance and greed will have "dire consequences," he finger-wags.
...He slams our "excessive anthropocentrism."
We must "restore men and women to their rightful place"—that is, as humble janitors of the planet, whose only job is to keep Earth nice for future generations, not to dig at it, extract its innards, remake it in our own image.
If all this downbeatness about humanity and scaremongering about the future sounds familiar, that's because it echoes the eco-hysteria that has become so prominent in Western political life.
The Vatican is now a fully-fledged green institution.
Which isn't surprising.
The demonisation of human hubris and promotion of eco-meekness that is at the heart of the green ideology chimes perfectly with the asceticism of Catholicism.

The similarities between the pieties of environmentalism and the diktats of Catholicism are striking. Environmentalism rehabilitates in secular drag the stinging rebukes of humanity once delivered by pointy-hatted men of God...

This State Has The Most Deaths From Drug Overdose

This State Has The Most Deaths From Drug Overdose:
"Almost 13 times more people die from drug overdoses in West Virginia than they do in North Dakota, as drugs have become a bigger killer than car crashes in the United States.
An average of 120 Americans die from a drug overdose everyday, but West Virginia tops the list of U.S. states, with 34 per 100,000 people dying from substance abuse between 2011 and 2013, a 35 percent increase on data between 2007 and 2009.
...The report said drug overdose deaths have more than doubled in the past 14 years nationally and have resulted in 44,000 deaths per year, half of which are prescription-drug related.
Prescription drugs are the biggest killer in the U.S., causing 44 deaths every day, followed by alcohol, cocaine and heroine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Drug overdoses have become the leading cause of injury in 36 states, including West Virginia.

LISTEN: Ghost From Clintons' Past Surfaces In Explosive, Newly-Discovered Audio Sure To Haunt Hillary

LISTEN: Ghost From Clintons' Past Surfaces In Explosive, Newly-Discovered Audio Sure To Haunt Hillary:

"In 1998, Mrs. Clinton told NBC’s Today that special prosecutor Kenneth Starr was part of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” to target her husband in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“I think as this matter unfolds, the entire country will have more information, but we’re right in the middle of a feeding frenzy right now, and people are putting out rumor and innuendo,” Mrs. Clinton told Matt Lauer, advising Americans at the time “just to be patient, take a deep breath, and the truth will come out.”

Pension Armageddon

Pension Armageddon | The Weekly Standard:
The problem is as much legal and political as it is fiscal.
Fifty-five percent of government workers in California are union members, the sixth-highest share among the 50 states.
Pensions have become a cornerstone of the “new Tammany Hall” arrangement, whereby elected officials boost workers’ pay and benefits in exchange for union assistance at the ballot box. 
No other special interest comes close to matching the resources possessed and deployed by labor in California, especially at the local level. 

Even on the rare occasions when political support develops to challenge the unions on pensions, legal barriers thwart reform. The so-called California Rule is a state constitutional doctrine that prevents modifying current public employees’ pension benefits:
Whereas private corporations routinely “freeze” their defined-benefit pension plans—workers keep everything they’ve earned so far, but future accruals come in the form of 401(k)-style defined-contribution plans—this is effectively prohibited for state and local workers in California.
The pension reform game is rigged. As DeMaio explains, “I’ve always likened this to a baseball game.
Reformers are one team and the government-union bosses are another team.
And the reformers are out there on the field, doing practices, building support amongst the public. The unions aren’t doing any of this, .  .  . they’re sitting behind the dugout writing the rule book with the umpires....”

The Trans Fat Ban Is Worse Than You Think

The Trans Fat Ban Is Worse Than You Think - Reason.com:
"...the American Heart Association has suggested that Americans consume "less than 2 grams of trans fats a day." 
So, he argues, "if the FDA and AHA are correct, then current consumption levels—prior to and without any ban —are well within safe levels."
Even with the decline, the FDA banned trans fats. Left-wing intrusions—small and large—follow a similar trajectory.
...we should not forget the favorite weapon of do-gooders: lawsuits.
Government unleashes the lawyers to do their work, punishing companies that fail to comply, even ahead of the deadline.
The usual collection of class action attorneys and professional bullies sue food companies that continue to use trans fats for various financial reasons—for example, taste and increased shelf life.
In today's world, the idea that government could dictate, say, what sort of sexual relationships a person can indulge in—whether they are bad for one's health or even a public risk—would seem preposterous. 
Even banning pot is beginning to be regarded as useless intrusion by millions.
Yet allowing government to decide what we eat (or what our kids eat) is now considered a moral imperative.
After years of pressure from trial attorneys and junk-science public interest groups, the Obama administration has followed through with its pledge to ban what is—in the amounts most Americans ingest—a benign ingredient.
But even if it's not, we have labels for a reason.
It's unlikely the ban will do anything but create precedents that allow further intrusions into how and what we eat. 
Which is precisely the point."

How THEY will silence us! Most chilling post of the year-----How Government Stifled Reason's Free Speech

How Government Stifled Reason's Free Speech - Hit & Run : Reason.com
...For the past two weeks, Reason, a magazine dedicated to "Free Minds and Free Markets," has been barred by an order from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from speaking publicly about a grand jury subpoena that court sent to Reason.com.
The subpoena demanded the records of six people who left hyperbolic comments at the website about the federal judge who oversaw the controversial conviction of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht.
...On May 31, Nick Gillespie published a post at Reason.com's Hit & Run blog discussing Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht's "haunting sentencing letter" to District Court Judge Katherine Forrest, and the judge's harsh response.
Gillespie noted that Forrest "more than threw the book" at Ulbricht by giving him a life sentence, which was a punishment "beyond even what prosecutors...asked for."
...In the comments section of the post, six readers published reactions that drew the investigative ire of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York.
In a federal grand jury subpoena dated June 2, the U.S. District Court commanded Reason.com to turn over "any and all identifying information" we had about the individuals posting those comments.
This is the first time Reason.com has received such a subpoena from any arm of government.
...U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara subpoenaed all of the identifying information we had about the authors of such comments as, "Its (sic) judges like these that should be taken out back and shot."
And, "Why waste ammunition? Wood chippers get the message across clearly. Especially if you feed them in feet first."
This last comment is a well-known Internet reference to the Coen brothers' movie Fargo.
The subpoena also covered such obviously harmless comments as: "I hope there is a special place in hell reserved for that horrible woman," and "I'd prefer a hellish place on Earth be reserved for her as well."
The comments are hyperbolic, in questionable taste–and fully within the norms of Internet commentary.
...To live in a world where every stray, overheated Internet comment—however trollish and stupid it may be—can be interpreted as an actionable threat to be investigated by a federal grand jury is to live in a world where the government is telling the public and media to just shut up already. 
As we gather and publish more information on just how often this sort of thing happens, we pledge to always be on the side of more speech rather than less.

Cruz Moves to Fine State Department for Illegally Withholding Key Iran Report | Washington Free Beacon

Cruz Moves to Fine State Department for Illegally Withholding Key Iran Report | Washington Free Beacon:

"Iran has long been a leading violator of human rights, carrying out hundreds of state-sanctioned executions and abusing the human rights of its citizens. Iran also continues to imprison several American citizens who human rights advocates report are being abused.

Cruz said the report is likely being delayed in order to avoid upsetting the Iranians and potentially harming ongoing nuclear discussion.

“It appears that both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are trying to sweep under the rug Iran’s horrific human rights record because, presumably, acknowledging that fact would be inconvenient” for the ongoing diplomacy with Iran, Cruz said.

The policy, he added, appears to be “surrender everything to the Iranian mullahs in a hope they will accede to a [nuclear deal that only accelerates their acquiring nuclear weapons.”

You Can Now Be Fired in Colorado for Using Medical Marijuana on Your Time Off

You Can Now Be Fired in Colorado for Using Medical Marijuana on Your Time Off | The Daily Sheeple:
Thanks to a landmark ruling in Colorado’s Supreme Court, there is new clarification to the state’s medical marijuana law—though employees may not like the news.
If a workplace has a policy prohibiting drug use, workers who test positive for marijuana are not protected from termination—even if they are registered for medical use.
In other words, you can be fired in Colorado for using marijuana during your time off.
...“The Supreme Court holds that under […] Colorado’s ‘lawful activities statute,’ the term ‘lawful’ refers only to those activities that are lawful under both state and federal law. 
Therefore, employees who engage in an activity such as medical marijuana use that is permitted by state law but unlawful under federal law are not protected by the statute,” states the ruling..."

History for June 20

History for June 20 - On-This-Day.com
Jean Moulinn 1899 - High profile member of the French Resistance during World War II, Errol Flynn 1909 - Actor, Audie Murphy 1924 - Actor, most decorated American soldier of World War II 


Brian Wilson 1942 - Musician (Beach Boys), Anne Murray (Morna Anne Murray) 1945 - Singer, Candy Clark (Candace June "Candy" Clark) 1947 - Actress 


Lionel Richie 1949 - Singer, musician, John Goodman 1952 - Actor, Nicole Kidman 1967 - Actress 


1756 - In India, 150 British soldiers were imprisoned in a cell that became known as the "Black Hole of Calcutta." 


1782 - The U.S. Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States. 


1793 - Eli Whitney applied for a cotton gin patent. He received the patent on March 14. The cotton gin initiated the American mass-production concept. 


1837 - Queen Victoria ascended the British throne following the death of her uncle, King William IV. 


1941 - The U.S. Army Air Forces was established, replacing the Army Air Corps. The Army Air Forces were abolished with the creation of the United States Air Force in 1947. 


1943 - Race-related rioting erupted in Detroit. Federal troops were sent in two days later to end the violence that left more than 30 dead. 


1947 - Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills, CA, at the order of mob associates angered over the soaring costs of his project, the Flamingo resort in Las Vegas, NV. 


1967 - Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The U.S. Supreme Court later overturned the conviction. 


1977 - The Trans-Alaska Pipeline began operation. 

Tiny Arizona Church Wins Major Supreme Court Battle Against Gov’t: ‘A Victory for Everyone’s Freedom of Speech’ | TheBlaze.com

Tiny Arizona Church Wins Major Supreme Court Battle Against Gov’t: ‘A Victory for Everyone’s Freedom of Speech’ | TheBlaze.com:

"The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major victory to a small Arizona church on Thursday, ruling that local officials cannot restrict messages on signage based on “how worthy the government thinks [they are],” according to the conservative legal firm that represented the house of worship."