Random Politics & Religion #00

QUICK! Somebody find this man a Hapsburg! FFXIAH needs new material that doesn't involve cake!

oh there it is....

When David had finished offering the burnt offering and the peace offering, he blessed the people in the name of the LORD of hosts. 19Further, he distributed to all the people, to all the multitude of Israel, both to men and women, a cake of bread and one of dates and one of raisins to each one. Then all the people departed each to his house.


hrmmmm. mysteriously there is nothing about excluding all the gay people in this passage....

Isn't Satan gay?

Isn't Satan gay?

Speaking of things not relating to cake Iran deal is about to fail !

I'm pretty sure all of the Middle East is gay. I have no evidence but I read it on the internet so it has to be true !

Even bigger news: U.S. judge to allow RadioShack to sell 1,740 stores

The "virgin" Mary?

If you eat meat in any country in the European Union, or even in China or Russia, you don’t have to worry about getting a dash of ractopamine with your pork or beef. All these nations ban the use of the growth-promoting drug.

But if you eat meat in the United States, buyer beware. Ractopamine may be unsafe for you. The drug is certainly unsafe for pigs and other farm animals dosed with it. It has caused hundreds of thousands of pigs to become lame or unable to walk without intense pain, or die.

Pork producers feed pigs ractopamine during the last few weeks before they are sent to the slaughterhouse. It alters the pigs’ metabolism so that 10 percent more of the food they eat turns into muscle. That translates into faster growth and leaner meat.

Eli Lily & Co’s Elanco Animal Health unit, the leading producer of ractopamine-based livestock drugs, said in a statement to Reuters last year that it remains confident in its products’ safety and the FDA’s approval process. The drug was originally approved by the FDA in 1999.

Beef producers are also flocking to ractopamine, according to Fortune magazine, after major meat packers refused to accept cattle doped with a similar muscle-building drug, Zilmax. Led by Tyson Foods and Cargill, the packers stopped accepting cattle treated with Zilmax in late 2013 after finding that the cattle were arriving at their slaughterhouses “hoofless” and in severe pain, according to a Reuters special report.

A March 2014 report from Texas Tech University and Kansas State University found that during cattle’s lives “the incidence of death was 80 percent greater in animals administered [Zilmax].”

Since the major packers stopped accepting cattle treated with Zilmax, the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, has begun studies to show the drug is safe and can go back on the market. But the packers have so far refused to go along. Not only do they say it causes animals to suffer; it also would prevent meat sales to foreign nations that ban use of the drug.

Now, however, beef producers are replacing Zilmax with ractopamine, though it seems to offer little for the well-being of their animals while risking serious harm to them. The drug has been linked to nearly a quarter-million cases of adverse reactions in pigs, including lameness, trembling, hyperactivity, hoof disorder, dyspnea, collapse and death.

Beef eaters should be concerned. The Food and Drug Administration’s original approval of ractopamine included no safety assessment on humans. A 2009 review of the related science by the European Food Safety Authority identified one assessment of the drug involving humans. That assessment involved just six healthy young men, one of whom dropped out after his heart began racing and pounding abnormally.

Yet the FDA allows pig producers to give ractopamine to their animals up until they are shipped to the slaughterhouse. A 2013 Consumer Reports study of supermarket pork products found ractopamine in one in five of the pork products inspected.

The meat industry’s focus on increasing production could be putting it at odds with consumers, who are ever more concerned about food safety and animal welfare.

The success of “fast-casual” restaurant chains like Chipotle, which foreswear meat from animals raised in the most inhumane conditions and dosed with drugs like ractopamine, shows that consumers will seek out and pay more for naturally raised meat.

Picking up on this, Smithfield Foods, the nation’s largest pork producer, has pledged to start seriously cutting back on ractopamine. It has also pledged to stop using gestation crates.

The public has already reacted against the extreme confinement of calves in veal crates, mother pigs in gestation crates and chickens in battery cages. As people learn how growth-promoting drugs can harm farm animals, they could well respond the same way.

The meat industry talks about responsible animal husbandry. But some parts of it look more like animal production run amok.

Long focused on ramping up meat production to meet increasing demand, producers jam animals together indoors, often in tight crates and cages; breed them to grow at a much faster rate than their natural pace, and dope them with hormones, antibiotics and other drugs to augment what’s been achieved through selective breeding for fast growth and hyper-productivity.

For food safety and animal health reasons, the European Union decided many of these drugs have no place in agriculture. China and Russia, not known for strict food-safety regulations, agree.

The question remains why American farmers still use them?

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday vetoed a measure by Republicans in Congress that would have blocked a government labor agency's rules designed to speed up the time it takes to unionize workers.

The rules would shorten the period between a union filing a petition to represent workers and an election, from the current median of 38 days to as little as 14 days. Employers would be required to share workers' names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses with unions.

The National Labor Relations Board adopted the rules last year and they are set to take effect April 14.

The Senate and House of Representatives, voting along party lines, approved a resolution this month that would have stopped enactment of the rules.

On Tuesday Obama, following through on a threat to reject the resolution, said the rules represented modest changes that would make it easier for workers to unionize.

"Unions historically have been at the forefront of establishing things like the 40-hour work week, the weekend, child labor laws, fair benefits and decent wages," Obama said at a press conference.

The labor board still faces court challenges in Washington, D.C. and Texas over the new process from business groups who say it violates the National Labor Relations Act by not giving employers enough time to prepare for elections.

Rep. John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, said in a statement that the new process would only help unions.

"With his veto, the president has endorsed an ambush election rule that will stifle employer free speech, cripple worker free choice, and jeopardize the privacy of working families," Kline said.

The NLRB and Democrats who support the rules say they were designed to rein in misconduct by a minority of employers who draw out the union election process in order to threaten and intimidate workers.

An NLRB spokeswoman declined to comment on Obama's rejection of the resolution.

Michael Adorno can’t help feeling behind.

At 33, Adorno has nearly $40,000 worth of student loan debt and — despite having earned an associate’s degree in information technology from Everest Institute — no full-time job to show for it.

“The best thing my school could do for me was set me up to work at a call center run by Xerox,” Adorno says. “You don’t need an associate’s degree to work at a call center. I wasn’t able to find any work in my field at all.”

Now Adorno has gone on strike, refusing to pay back debt for an education he claims didn’t prepare him at all for his field. In March, he joined the “Corinthian 100,” a growing movement made up of 100 (and counting) former and current students who attended schools under the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, Inc. banner., including Everest and WyoTech.

Last summer, federal regulators forced Corinthian to either shutter or sell the majority of its 100-plus campuses after allegations it had falsified student job placement data and pressured students to take out costly private loans. When Corinthian sold its remaining campuses in a $24 million deal to student loan servicing company Zenyth, Zenyth agreed to forgive $480 million worth of private student loan debt incurred by Corinthian students. But students who took out federal loans to pay for school have to meet a certain set of criteria to be considered for loan forgiveness. In a nutshell, they would have had to be currently or recently enrolled at campuses that were shut down last year. Alumni like Adorno, who completed his coursework long before regulators stepped in, are out of luck.

That’s why he and the rest of the Corinthian 100 are protesting to have their student loans discharged. They argue that school officials misled them about their chances of finding jobs in their areas of study and offered courses that didn’t prepare them for full-time work.

“When I started looking for jobs in IT, I realized they required all these certifications and security clearances, a lot of things I was not prepared for by Everest,” Adorno says. He tried to transfer his credits to another school to earn a Bachelor’s degree, but he learned he would have to retake many of his classes in order to do so, incurring even more debt in the process.

Stories like Adorno’s have helped strikers make headway with regulators. On Tuesday, representatives from the Department of Education and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau met with a small group of protesters in a private meeting in Washington, D.C.

“We’ve been concerned about the future of Corinthian students throughout this process – which is why we’ve taken a series of actions in recent months to protect students from being misled and to hold Corinthian accountable,” said Denise Horn, spokesperson for the Department of Education.

That government officials are open to dialogue with disgruntled Corinthian graduates doesn’t necessarily mean protestors will achieve their ultimate goal of complete student loan amnesty. In her statement, Horn says they encourage all borrowers to keep making student loan payments. But organizers of the protest have been buoyed by a pair of lawsuits filed against Corinthian by attorneys general in Massachusetts and California. They hope these legal actions will provide the the legal boost they need to go forward with their action.

The Education Department announced Tuesday that it’s taking steps to increase accountability of colleges’ financials. It is releasing a list of 560 colleges and universities that have been placed on “heightened cash monitoring,” which means those institutions are getting additional oversight “for a number of financial or federal compliance issues,” some of which may be serious and others that may be less troublesome.”

“We dont know how [regulators] are going to respond but we know we’re going in seeking a full discharge,” says Laura Hanna, an organizer for Strike Debt, the Occupy Wall Street offshoot that is backing the protest. “Until recently the Department of Education has not acknowledged these strikers, so it’s important they’re actually sitting in a room now acknowledging that this is going on.”

Republicans and liberal Democrats have something in common: Both are trying to keep alive the prospect that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren will run for president.

Warren isn't playing along, making the rounds this week to — yet again — insist she's not interested in the White House.

People on both sides have a vested interest in clinging to a dream that is all but certain to remain in the realm of fantasy. The left flank of the Democratic Party wants Warren to challenge Hillary Rodham Clinton in the primary race, or at a minimum, get Clinton to adopt Warren's tough-on-Wall Street agenda. Republicans view a Warren candidacy as a way to sow division among Democrats and boost their own fundraising.

Neither side seems to care much that Warren has repeatedly insisted that she doesn't plan to run for president and is not taking any of the necessary steps to lay the groundwork. That has been the message as Warren conducts a media blitz this week surrounding the paperback release of her memoirs.

"No, I'm not running and I'm not going to run," Warren said Tuesday on NBC's "Today" show. "I'm in Washington. I've got this really great job and a chance to try to make a difference on things that really matter."

Asked if she would categorically rule out a campaign, she responded, "I'm not running."

A draft-Warren group organized by the liberal MoveOn.org said Monday that labor leader Larry Cohen and environmentalist Annie Leonard were joining the movement to push the senator to run. The announcement came days after Texas land commissioner George P. Bush, son of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, sought donations for his father's Right to Rise PAC to send a message to "Hillary and Elizabeth Warren."

"Together we will show Hillary and Elizabeth Warren that they're in for one heck of a fight," the younger Bush wrote in a fundraising email to supporters, as if Warren were running for president.

Republicans have also used the wide reach of conservative talk radio to keep the drumbeat for a Warren candidacy alive.

"The progressive wing of the Democrat Party, which is perhaps the entire party now, really, really, really, really, really, really wants Elizabeth Warren to run," radio host Rush Limbaugh said earlier this month. "I mean, they can taste it."

Karl Rove, longtime political adviser to George W. Bush, said Warren could give Clinton "a scare."

"Elizabeth Warren's hard left prescriptions on the economy sing to the heart of the Democratic primary voters," Rove said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show last month. Recalling Clinton's third place finish in the 2008 Iowa caucuses, Rove added, "Remember, this contest opens up in some places that are not particularly friendly to Hillary Clinton."

Warren has been the subject of a draft presidential campaign for months, even as she insists she won't run. Clinton is expected to launch her presidential bid in April.

Warren declined to be pinned down Tuesday when asked in the NBC interview if she thought Clinton could, or would, carry her consumer-oriented message.

"I think we need to give her a chance ... to lay out what she wants to run on," Warren said.

This drug, banned in Europe, Russia and China, may be in your lunch

And I'm sure the street vendors in various eastern European countries are all held to the most rigid of the EU sanctioning body's testing for standards.

Chaos articles:

I've reached my pretending to read limits for the day !

Like most Americans I need a visual aid to comprehend even the most basic of concepts !

All the food is a lot healthier than any junk sold in the states.