Russian Sledges

By Jim Travis

AFP

Obama Broccoli: President Loves the Tree-Like Vegetable Hated by George HW ... Headlines & Global News President Barack Obama told a child that his favorite food was broccoli. The oft ridiculed vegetable was once banned from the White House by former President George H.W. Bush. (Photo : Flickr). President Barack Obama was forced to answer one of the more ... Obama's favorite food: BroccoliPolitico Obama revives broccoli-GateAFP Well Now You Know! Barack Obama's Favorite Food Is Something You've Never ...Global Grind The Packer (blog) -Huffington Post all 49 news articles »

North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build.

1962 NASA Rejection Letter To A Woman

Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death. Three teenage African-American brothers in 1971 Detroit formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hopes of getting signed. But this was during the reign of Motown, and these guys were punk before punk even existed. Record companies found Death’s music – and band name – too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even released one album. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A BAND CALLED DEATH chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossibly ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band (hell… maybe even the first punk band!), and is finally receiving long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.

Hey poli sci geeks - my brother, Greg Weiner (yes there are more Weiners), is writing some articles here. Fair warning: They involve nuance and politics, so you will probably be angry at some of them. Enjoy!

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine Gov. Paul LePage vetoed a bill on Monday designed to provide information about food packaging that contains the toxic chemical bisphenol-A.

Here's a fascinating little story. There's been a battle royale up in Wisconsin over an effort to establish a big iron mining operation near Lake Superior, to be owned and operated by a company called Gogebic Taconite. The Republican legislature approved the mine in March over environmentalists' objections. Some protests have been staged since the operation got started. But people started to get freaked out over the weekend when the company brought in what the Wisconsin State Journal calls "masked security guards who are toting semi-automatic rifles and wearing camouflaged uniforms."

Now two state legislators are asking the company to withdraw the guards/paramilitaries. One of them, Bob Jauch, "said he was especially concerned that the guards are carrying high-powered rifles more appropriate for fighting wars than for guarding construction equipment in a scenic forest that draws scores of hikers and vacationers in addition to mine protesters."

Now masked guards in camoflage carrying assault rifles do seem a bit more mid-80s Latin American death squad than protecting some mining equipment in Wisconsin. So I started looking into the security company behind the paramilitaries, an outfit called Bulletproof Securities out of Scottsdale, Arizona that Gogebic brought in for the job.

[photo credit: Jim Limbach, h/t BlueCheddar]

Here's the Bulletproof website which lists all sorts of security/paramilitary type services. They even have their own 'border security force', which is something I thought the federal government took care of. But apparently not without occasional help from Bulletproof.

Indeed, as the site notes, "BPS has at its disposal the latest cache of specialized equipment for border security operations, not typically found in the private sector. As example, BPS owns heavily armored Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTV's), Tactical All Terrain Vehicles (T-ATV's), FLIR (mobile thermal systems), mast equipment (eye in the sky), and many other state-of-the-art assets ... The presence of BPS will prevent criminal organizations from posing a threat to your personnel or your mission."

If your needs are different, Bulletproof can also provide "a QRF (quick reaction force) tactical unit to secure a manufacturing plant during a heated worker strike."

The company's website provides an extremely wide range of services and suggests it has a huge amount of equipment to provide Quick Reaction Force services "in ALL conditions."

As this picture shows, they're ready for some sort of alpine mountain armored vehicle rescue in heavy snow.

Anyway, if you look around the site, Bulletproof clearly has a pretty big arsenal and a reasonably sized paramilitary at the ready to help you. So I thought I'd look Bulletproof owner Tom Parrella. And here's where things took an even more interesting turn. Parrella isn't just in the private security/paramilitary business. He's also owns a major real estate agency in Scottsdale.

In fact, they're run out of the same office on Gelding Drive.

So if you're looking for a new McMansion in the Scottsdale area and also need paramilitary protection for your border personnel, they've got you covered. I had never realized there were synergies between residential real estate and paramilitary security services and force protection. But this 2007 article from the East Valley Tribune from 2007 gives some of the background and how it all works.

Parrella used his experience as a police offer and profits from his still flourishing real estate business to start Bulletproof Securities, an elite personal protection service, in -- where else? -- Scottsdale.

The Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, lack of sufficient border security and the U.S. position in world conflicts convinced him of the need, he said.

"We see things changing and the threats coming here," Parrella said. "And it's something that is going to be more frequent in the future."

The same year he told the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce ""There's no way our government can secure and protect with the situation we're in. We're trying to bridge the gaps between private security contractors and local government and law enforcement."

Here's a local TV news piece on them (unfortunately you have to crank up the volume, it's very low). It's sort of a 90s era Taliban/al Qaida video in reverse, a bunch of guys out in the desert doing monkey bars and shooting targets. The weird thing about it is that the whole rationale is all the violence in Mexico, though they concede that Mexican law prevents them from going into Mexico so they just provide their services in Arizona. And presumably also Wisconsin.

Famous terrible person Pat Robertson is not someone who "switches on" or "punches" Facebook "Likes" willy-nilly, but pictures of gay couples embracing on the social networking platform make him want to throw up.

As such, he wishes there was a "Vomit" button on Facebook that he could "punch" to express his vomitous yearnings.

Mark Zuckerberg, please get on this ASAP.

h/t Right Wing Watch

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TRENTON, N.J. — He doggedly did his work, this pinstriped pooch who faithfully served minor leaguers of the New York Yankees while providing big league entertainment.

Chase, the bat-retrieving golden retriever for the Double-A Trenton Thunder who made highlight reels all across baseball for a decade, has died at 13.

"Chase was there a long time. He put a lot of smiles on people's faces," Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain, who played in Trenton, said Tuesday night.

It certainly took its time to arrive, but a number of coin-operated phone booths in Leeds have gotten a Doctor Who-like makeover in the form of a fresh blue paint coat, complete with free Wi-Fi and interactive information stations with touchscreens. Just one word, that’s all: TARDIS.

The post TARDIS finally arrives in Leeds as wifi-enabled phone booths appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

We just learned that Placido Domingo is in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism. We'd like to wish him a speedy recovery. You can read the full article HERE.

Just behind a small house, in a private courtyard, we can admire the future birthplace of James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the "Star Trek series" Enterprise spaceship.

A stone tells us that the Galactic Federation hero will be born there in 2228. In the while packs of Trek lovers and various nerds meet there at the Trek Fest in the Iowa contryside: those days you can meet people dressed in space uniform alongside with the 1800 styled Amish the ride horses and don't use electricity...the past and the future meet together.

"Ender’s Game is set more than a century in the future and has nothing to do with political issues that did not exist when the book was written in 1984. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, the gay marriage issue becomes moot. The Full Faith and Credit clause of the Constitution will, sooner or later, give legal force in every state to any marriage contract recognized by any other state. Now it will be interesting to see whether the victorious proponents of gay marriage will show tolerance toward those who disagreed with them when the issue was still in dispute." - Orson Card Scott, speaking to Entertainment Weekly today after news of the planned boycott of his coming movie went viral. Yes, folks, the man who swore to "destroy the government and bring it down" over gay marriage and who declared himself to be your "mortal enemy" now wants YOU to be all noble and forgiving and shit. FUCK THAT.

NOTE: Oh, how very interesting the talk must be at NOM headquarters today upon learning that a member of their board of directors has just told a national magazine that their entire campaign of hatred is now "moot." Get ready for a spittle-flecked denouncement from Brian Brown.

It’s unclear whether this glorious hack was inserted by a bored Vogue employee or some benevolent dinos-in-hats fairy or an out of character Anonymous, but it’s been up for a whole day now, so maybe it’s authorized? In any case, when dinos in hats appear on a major fashion site, ours is not to question why.

According to the limerick, it rhymes with "Kurdish."

July is "Ex-gay Pride Month," according to absolutely nobody except the Family Research Council. But it is still news worth celebrating, according to "ex-gay" rights advocates. Worth celebrating with a song!

Which is why Voice for the Voiceless (Mission: "Defending the rights of former homosexuals") recently put out a request for an anthem, and there are some pretty incredible perks if you win!

Perks like debuting your music video "LIVE at the First Ex-Gay Pride Month celebration in Washington, DC." And ... that is it, basically.

Not sure how to capture the pulse of the "ex-gay" movement in four chords? Don't sweat it, Dan Savage and some other aspiring musicians on Twitter have a few suggestions to spare.

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Fashion is not just frivolous consumerism, because what we wear is a statement about who we are — Ann Taylor pantsuits mean one thing, sweatshorts with words on the butt mean a different thing. It is harder to make that statement when you're working with state-imposed modesty garments. That's what the women of Iran are working with. The Iranian  Culture and Islamic Guidance Ministry sets standards for fashion — the sleeve length, cut and fit of women's clothes, the style of men's haircuts. But Iran Wire's Azadeh Moaveni explains how Iranian designer Farnaz Abdoli has turned the state-required cloaks into fashion.

For her company Poosh, Abdoli's clothes look more casual and bohemian. She uses little floral prints you might see on dresses in Brooklyn. "Though her designs are often technically compatible with state dress codes, long and flowing with proper sleeves, they are still innovative, combining folds and dress, abaas and shalwar kameez, dresses and smocks, in fresh interpretations of what can be deemed permissible," Moaveni writes. Even so, Abdoli's spring collection was attacked by Bultan News as "the spring prostitution campaign." 

In Iran, women's clothes have been a political issue since before the revolution in 1979. Back in the first half of the 20th century, women's clothes showed great variety: rural women wore a floral chador, secular and wealthier women wore Western clothes, and "the black chador was mainly worn in big cities by traditional and ultra-orthodox religious women." In the 1970s, things got more complicated:

The manteau only emerged in the 1970s as a political statement by young, educated women, many devoted to leftist or modern Islamist ideals. But after 1979, when the revolutionary government sought to impose black chador on all Iranian women, the meaning of both chador and manteau were transformed. In the early 1980s, a spectrum of women who might have looked nothing like each other on a pre-1979 street began to embrace the manteau as a compromise.

You can see all this stuff in archival photos from Iran. Here's are women demonstrating for equal rights in Tehran in 1979:

Demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in 1979:

But in 1996, women looked a little different:

And in 2005:

Moaveni writes that 15 years ago, her aunt took her to the bazaar to buy a big black manteau (cloak). "I felt like crying, in fact I probably did cry, when putting it on. I was young and wanted to look pretty. At least not as though I had been erased by a giant piece of black cloth." Her aunt said there were no other options. But Abdoli's designs show "just how much Iran has changed in the past 15 years, moving away from that old bazaar of homogeneity."

United States Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey urged the review after the station dropped its nightly newscast and replaced it with a tabloid-style magazine show.

Restoration Hardware's "1920s German Light Bulb Voltage Tester Bar" sells for $2000. It's a replica of a century-old refitted German lightbulb voltage tester salvaged from a German factory, and it oozes Weimar decadence. It weighs 265lbs.

1920s German Light Bulb Voltage Tester Bar (via OhGizmo)

Norman sez, "When the space race raged in the 1950s, fantastical visions of the future of travel were everywhere. Magazines like Popular Mechanics ran speculative articles about the rockets and space stations that would take civilization to the stars, and the accompanying artwork blurred the line between fiction and plausible reality. This art had a real affect on the space race in both the United States and Soviet Union; where Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, and Disney's Tomorrowland set the tone for the US space program, the Soviet Union's most influential art may have come from the magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi."

They've collected more than 200 covers, some of them absolutely stonking. If this is your sort of thing, try our archive of sovkitsch posts, and including a couple space-themed ones.

The Incredible Space Art of Russian Magazine Tekhnika Molodezhi

Those 1970s San Francisco Parties.

Nimoy, Sutherland, and Goldblum, 1978.

A fagoted seam is a decorative seam that joins two pieces of fabric together with a space between them and a row of hand stitching. It’s a very pretty detail seen most often in vintage clothing. It’s easy to incorporate this kind of seam into any patterns you make that have a yoke, or any other simple seam.

Первый секретарь ТПК, Первый Председатель ГКО КНДР, Верховный Главнокомандующий КНА уважаемый Маршал Ким Чен Ын руководил на месте учениями по артобстрелу 851-й войсковой части КНА.

Верховный Главнокомандующий, получив от командира доклад о плане артобстрела и расстановке артиллерийских подразделений, приказал открыть огонь.

Дал неожиданную виртуальную боевую обстановку, учения прошли, говорит он, а артиллеристы этой части, в глубине души осознав требование партии повысить технику об артобстреле, высокой интенсивностью вели подготовку, показали сегодня способность дать меткий огонь при любой боевой обстановке.

Ким Чен Ын отметил: самое главное в ускорении боеподготовки артиллерии – выпестовать из всех артиллеристов метких стрелков путем усиления обучения в мирное время. Затем он наметил программные задачи для дальнейшего совершенствования боеподготовки артиллерийских боев: интенсивно вести огневую командную подготовку с упором на повышение меткости попадания артиллерийского огня; интенсивно вести подготовку к огневой службе в наихудшем условии, близком к боевой обстановке; ни в коем случае нельзя позволить формализма, стереотипа и форса ведения артиллерийской подготовки и т. д.

Toward the end of “Nothing Can Hurt Me,” the new documentary about the Memphis power-pop band Big Star, there’s an interview with the singer Paul Westerberg, the leader of the Replacements, who explains why...

Fifty-year-old New Jersey resident Karen Waller was arrested today by the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force for her allegedly aggressive letter-writing campaign, which included 50 threats mailed to the U.S. Supreme Court, along with her local township, police department, and Rutgers University. "All of you Supreme Courts Judges will pay with death," read one letter signed "Karen," in script, along with Waller's home phone number. "Do not push my buttons," the notes said. "Do not disregard this letter. Do not underestimate me period!!! ... Lights out!!!" No ricin, at least.

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Filed Under: crimes and misdemeanors ,oh new jersey ,scary things

The average rent of an apartment in America is just over $1,000 per month. But do you know how much the average rent is in New York City. Do you? DO YOU? TOO MUCH.

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