Obamacare haters lose again! Justices reject challenge

Maybe now those Republicans who have made it their mission in life to subvert health care in this country will pack it in.

The latest legal challenge by Obamacare haters was stifled with a 6-3 vote in the Supreme Court.

The justices said consumers qualify for a subsidy that lowers the cost of premiums whether they buy their coverage through federal or state exchanges. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion.

So, will this latest challenge be the last?

It’s hard to say. Since the inception of the Affordable Health Care Act Republicans have gone on a crusade to upend it. The moment the law was passed the GOP set their sights on trying to sabotage it.

Never mind the over six millions Americans who now have insurance where they didn’t before. There was never a groundswell movement to destroy Obamacare. It was a carefully organized attack by GOP politicians and their industry cronies.

Perhaps now the GOP will turn it’s attention to something more positive, like trying to reach more bipartisan agreements in Congress, instead of trying to hold Americans hostage to their ideologies.

One can only hope.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Professional home run catcher snags A-Rods 3,000th ball

                                      Good Day World!

Who knew?

Some baseball fans are professionals at snagging home run balls.

Take Zack Hample (photo above), who is credited with collecting more than 8,000 home run balls and has written books about the art. Zack Hample has snagged 8,149 baseballs at 51 different major league stadiums since 1990. Find out how and see what else he's been up to.Here’s his blog.

Quote:

“So . . . as you may have heard, Alex Rodriguez’s 3,000th career hit happened to be a home run, and I happened to snag it. (Un-REAL!!) I’m planning to write a long blog entry with lots of photos, but things are so crazy right now that I wanted to get this up quickly.”

Zack Hample, who's retrieved 8,000 baseballs, won't give HR back to A-Rod

It isn’t easy being a home run ball collector. A few years ago Zack was kicked out of this game:

Ballhawk Zack Hample Was Kicked Out Of Nationals Park Last Night, And He Is Pissed About It

In Hample’s own words:

“I was approached by a police officer. He told me he'd gotten a call from someone who reported that I was selling baseballs. I was like, WTF, and told him very calmly that it simply wasn't true and that there must've been a mistake.

Then more cops showed up. Then the head of stadium security showed up, along with his assistant and other stadium personnel.

There were seven of them, and they insisted that I'd sold a baseball, which they told me is illegal to do on their private property.

I told them that I'd snagged more than 6,300 baseballs in my life and never sold one — that I was proud of never having sold one . . . that I once turned down a $10,000 offer for a Barry Bonds home run that I caught, that I'd turned down a $500 offer last year after catching the Mike Trout homer, that I give away baseballs to kids at just about every game I attend, that I've raised all that money for charity, and so on.

I even offered to take a lie-detector test, but they didn't want to hear any of it. They simply insisted that I'd sold a baseball, and they ejected me from the stadium.”

Hample is considered a ballhawk—a member of that fraternity of obsessive dudes who hang around ballparks snagging baseballs. For some reason teams don’t like that – especially when a home run ball by a superstar like A-Rod is caught by a collector like Hample who isn’t interested in selling it!

I see Hample as a super collector, and there’s nothing wrong with what he’s doing. I think his detractors envy his success.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

No praise here for liars, regardless of stupid studies!

Good Day World!

It’s unsettling to see how crazy things are in the 21st century.

The parameters of society that I grew up in during the 50’s & 60’s aren’t so clear now. What was once wrong, is now right. In some cases.

My peers and I were told a story where George Washington supposedly chopped down a cherry tree (a rebellious thing if I ever heard one), but later admitted his misdeed, saying “I can not tell a lie.”

The moral of the story was always tell the truth. Even if that story itself wasn’t true, we got the message… lying is bad.

Which leads me to stupid studies. You know the kind I’m talking about. Frivolous research projects that involve flawed methodologies and idiotic conclusions. Here’s a recent example:     

University of Sheffield psychologists recently tested 135 children (hardly an empirical sampling) to see which ones were liars, and which were honest. They then came to the conclusion it was better to be a liar than to be honest.

Say what?

I’m not making this up. In the study, which was published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, children between ages 6 and 7 were allowed to look at answers in a trivia game. Those who checked and denied that they had later proved more skillful on a second memory test.

The conclusion was that the liars were smarter because they had to use more memory skills – a kid who lies needs to be able to keep his/her story straight. Back in my day that was called cheating.

ONE MORE EXAMPLE

In 2014 a Canadian-led study noted that being able to lie convincingly was a skill all children needed to grasp if they were to understand how other people think and feel.

But get this, children who were informed that lying was wrong were more likely to be truthful (go figure!). How 20th century. No praise for liars here!

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

Fear Flakka! It’s Deadly Delirium is Worse than Crack Cocaine

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That’s all our society needs right now, another drug that is cheap, deadly, and rapidly becoming popular.

It’s called “Flakka,” and has other nicknames.

If you live in Florida the chances are that you’ve heard of it. Flakka has also shown up in parts of Ohio, Houston and Chicago. But the substantial U.S. inroads have been in South Florida, making it the epicenter of the outbreak.

RECENT NEWS REPORT

“For decades, South Florida has battled drug traffickers who ship boatloads of cocaine from South America. Now the region is dealing with a new epidemic - cheap, synthetic drugs that arrive from China through the mail.

As authorities in the Sunshine State battle with the surge of Alpha-PVP, better known as "flakka" or "gravel," police departments have begun equipping officers with field detection kits, employing sniffer dogs at mail facilities and training patrol units to look for signs of delirium.

Users are said to feel a sense of super human strength and delirium.

Unlike cocaine, flakka, is both cheap and accessible. The drug is widely advertised for sale online by Chinese companies and can be shipped in large quantities to U.S. addresses by established global delivery companies. Once it hits the streets, a single dose can sell for as little as $5.

Flakka, which was placed on the U.S. list of illegal controlled substances in 2014, is chemically designed to mimic cathinone, a natural stimulant found in the leaves of the khat plant, chewed traditionally in the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa.

The drug's popularity, however, is only growing.

In 2014, the first year it appeared in the state, authorities in Broward County, which includes Fort Lauderdale and Hollywood, recorded 190 incidents involving flakka. By early May of this year, the number of incidents involving the drug had already raced past 275.

"Cocaine was king, until this year," said Detective William Schwartz, a veteran narcotics officer with the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

What has law enforcement and drug treatment professionals most concerned are flakka's long-term effects. First-time users can take three to four days to return to a normal state of mind, while for repeat users, it could be 14 to 16 days, according to drug treatment professionals.

Some 27 people have died from flakka-related overdoses in the last eight months in Broward County alone.”

(Reporting by David Adams and Zachary Fagenson, editing by Jill Serjeant and G Crosse)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Justice Scalia Stricken with Faith, Derangement, Syndrome

Good Day World!

What happens when you have a person in a position of power and they’re a complete asshole?

Imagine someone responsible for making or breaking our laws and who is completely out of touch with reality. It’s scary, but it’s happening.

How do you go about declaring a magistrate appointed for life of unsound mind and thus unfit to serve?

That’s my question regarding Antonin Scalia, one of our chief justices in the Supreme Court, and a world-class jerk. Arguably one of the most visible members of the nine-member body charged with the decisive resolution of our republic’s most contentious legal matters, Scalia rejects the fact of evolution.

He doesn’t believe in Global Warming, although 97% of the scientists in the world do, and even Congress reluctantly acknowledged it’s a fact. He can’t be relied upon to adjudicate without prejudice and should be removed from the bench…period.

The fact is, Justice Scalia has Faith, Derangement Syndrome (FDS).

According to writer/editor JEFFREY TAYLER, “ …people with Faith, Derangement Syndrome (FDS) exhibit the following symptoms: unshakable belief in the veracity of manifest absurdities detailed in ancient texts regarding the origins of the cosmos and life on earth; a determination to disseminate said absurdities in educational institutions and via the media; a propensity to enjoin and even enforce (at times using violence) obedience to regulations stipulated in said ancient texts, regardless of their suitability for contemporary circumstances; the conviction that an invisible, omnipresent, omniscient authority (commonly referred to as “God”) directs the course of human and natural events, is vulnerable to propitiation and blandishments, and monitors individual human behavior, including thought processes, with an especially prurient interest in sexual activity.”

Here’s more evidence of Justice Scalia’s FDS-related impairment, at the website of the New Civil Rights Movement.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Father’s Day means many things – foremost, it’s about love!

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years," - Mark Twain

                                     Good Day World!

Happy Father’s Day!

I’m thinking about my father today, Richard Wayne Stancliff, who raised me and my two sisters and brother. He’s going to be 87 in 8 days. Still going strong, and still a very important part of my life.

I’m proud to be a father too. My three sons, Richard Ryan, Nathan David, and Elijah Sundance, are father’s also.

Did you know that Father’s Day didn’t become a permanent holiday until 1972 when president Richard Nixon (aka Tricky Dick) signed it into law?

BRIEF HISTORY

Grace Golden Clayton may have been inspired by Anna Jarvis' crusade to establish Mother's Day; two months prior, Jarvis had held a celebration for her dead mother in Grafton, West Virginia, a town about 15 miles (24 km) away from Fairmont

After the success obtained by Anna Jarvis with the promotion of Mother's Day in Grafton, West Virginia, the first observance of a "Father's Day" was held on July 5, 1908, in Fairmont, West Virginia, in the Williams Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church South, now known as Central United Methodist Church.

Grace Golden Clayton was mourning the loss of her father when, on December 1907, the Monongah Mining Disaster in nearby Monongah killed 361 men, 250 of them fathers, leaving around a thousand fatherless children. Clayton suggested her pastor Robert Thomas Webb to honor all those fathers.

In 1910, a Father's Day celebration was held in Spokane, Washington, at the YMCA by Sonora Smart Dodd, who was born in Arkansas. Its first celebration was in the Spokane YMCA on June 19, 1910.

Her father, the Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart, was a single parent who raised his six children there. After hearing a sermon about Jarvis' Mother's Day in 1909 at Central Methodist Episcopal Church, she told her pastor that fathers should have a similar holiday honoring them.

Although she initially suggested June 5, her father's birthday, the pastors did not have enough time to prepare their sermons, and the celebration was deferred to the third Sunday of June. Several local clergymen accepted the idea, and on 19 June 1910, the first Father's Day, "sermons honoring fathers were presented throughout the city.”

In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the first presidential proclamation honoring fathers, designating the third Sunday in June as Father's Day. Six years later, the day was made a permanent national holiday when President Richard Nixon signed it into law in 1972. (Wikipedia)

“The most important thing in the world is family and love," - John Wooden

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

Why do politicians use music without asking in their campaigns?

(Dropkick Murphys hate Gov. Scott Walker)

                                  Good Day World!

What ever happened to asking?

Seems like politicians don’t understand what getting permission means, especially when it comes to using musical hits to promote their campaigns.

Examples:

* The punk band the Dropkick Murphys tweeted to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to stop using the 2005 song 'I'm Shipping Up to Boston', which was penned with folk singer Woody Guthrie.

“Please stop using our music in any way...we literally hate you !!! Love, Dropkick Murphys

* In kicking off his Republican campaign for president, real estate tycoon Donald Trump took the stage Tuesday to the Neil Young classic "Rockin' in the Free World." But a statement later released by Young's longtime manager said the blustery billionaire wasn't free to use that song.

* In 2000, Tom Petty told George W. Bush to back down from using his 1989 hit 'I Won't Back Down.' Petty's music publisher sent a letter demanding the then-presidential candidate to stop using it at rallies because it gave "the impression that you and your campaign have been endorsed by Tom Petty, which is not true."

* Tom Petty also didn't appreciate Michele Bachmann using another one of his songs when she was running for president in 2011. Bachmann strode onto stage at one rally with the 1977 song "American Girl" playing. Petty's team later sent her campaign a cease and desist letter, Rolling Stone magazine reported.

* Sarah Palin made her entrance at the 2008 Republican National Convention to Heart's 1977 hit – Barracuda. But sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were quick to pounce when the former vice presidential candidate used it.

* Palin's 2008 running mate, John McCain, got into his own clash with a prominent artist when John Mellencamp asked him not to use his 2007 song. (McCain's slogan at the time was, "Country First.")

The questions begs;

Has there ever been a Democratic candidate who was asked to stop using a song in their campaign?

The only one I know of is President Obama.

In February 2008, soul music legend Sam Moore told Obama to stop playing the Sam and Dave song “Hold On, I’m Comin’.” The then-candidate’s team had been blasting the tune at rallies without Moore’s permission,and some audience members had been adopting their preferred lyrics: “Hold on, Obama’s comin’.”

Moore’s gracious letter wished Obama well with his campaign for the Democratic nomination, adding:

“Having been hit with rocks and water hoses in the streets, in the day with Dr. King as part of his artist appearance and fundraising team, it is thrilling, in my lifetime, to see that our country has matured to the place where it is no longer an impossibility for a man of color to really be considered as a legitimate candidate for the highest office in our land.”

But please, Moore continued, stop using my song. “I have not agreed to endorse you for the highest office in our land....My vote is a very private matter between myself and the ballot box.”

Time for me to walk on down the road…

 

Gun Happy: US leads world in gun ownership and deaths

                                      Good Day World!

Another senseless slaughter.

A 21 year-old old white man walks into a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murders nine people in cold blood.

So many questions.

Why is this happening? Why is America’s gun culture so strong? Why can’t we control guns? Why is it so easy to get a gun, no matter who you are?

And, will we ever be able to curb the growing gun causalities with the likes of the NRA stopping any safety/gun control laws with the help of it’s corporate backers? 

Facts – Not rhetoric:

The United States has more guns and gun deaths than any other developed country in the world, researchers found.

A study by two New York City cardiologists found that the U.S. has 88 guns per 100 people and 10 gun-related deaths per 100,000 people - more than any of the other 27 developed countries they studied.

Here’s how it breaks down:

List of countries by firearm-related death rate

" Americans are 20 times as likely to die from gun violence as citizens of other civilized countries." (source)

* The United States has more firearms per capita, the most permissive gun control laws and a disproportionate amount of firearm-related deaths from homicides, suicides and accidents. (source)

* It seems like a relatively obvious equation: The weaker the gun laws and the higher the rate of gun ownership in a given state, the more deaths from gun violence that state will see. (source)

* States With Most Gun Deaths Have High Gun Ownership And Weak Gun Laws, Report Shows (source)

* Another recent report from researchers at Johns Hopkins and Stanford Universities found a positive link in all 50 states between right-to-carry laws and a rise in violent crimes.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

  

Walk on the wild side with 7 reptile and amphibian stories

Good Day World!

Today, I’ve been ruminating on reptiles and amphibians in the news.

My favorite story is the one about a man who takes his giant tortoise for a daily walk.  

The saddest story is a mystery about an 11-year-old female humpback whale that had been living in one area her entire life, but washed up ashore dead Wednesday.

The scariest story has to be the shark attacks at Oak Island, North Carolina.

The most inspiring story is about the rescue and release of sea turtles in Lima, Peru. 

One of the oddest stories is about an alligator giving a raccoon a ride as recorded by a family out for a stroll in a national park.

The weirdest is the surprising way Jellyfish put themselves back together.

The strangest story is about an author who poses the question, “Does An Octopus Have A Soul?” The author thinks so.

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Donald Trump’s Hair Raising Announcement

                                     Good Day World!

By now you’re aware that Donald Trump is running for president – the jokes have been coming so hard and fast his toupee keeps sliding off after Tuesdays announcement.

That makes a dozen Republicans officially running for a seat in the Oval Office in 2016.

I think it goes without saying that Trump is NOT going to be the last candidate standing for the Republican Party. So what’s his reason for even running?

If you listen to the pundits they’ll tell you Trump’s interest in politics seems aimed at gaining attention, not addressing serious issues. Don’t be surprised when he uses his candidacy to take personal potshots at the other candidates, particularly Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, instead of discussing policy.

Through repeatedly flirting with presidential runs in the past and now following through, the real estate mogul has become an influential person in national politics.

He's frequently a keynote speaker at Republican events like the Conservative Political Action Conference. He's treated as a serious candidate, appearing on-stage at GOP events before or after people who could in truth be the Republican nominee, like Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.

In reality, polls are often simply a test of fame.

Trump has an NBC tv show ("The Apprentice") and a chain of hotels named after him. He is ahead of some other Republican candidates simply because he is better-known. In a one-on-one contest between Trump and Rubio, the former would be trounced, as Republican voters learned more about both men's records and policy stances.

The only thing we can expect from Trump during this presidential campaign is that he’s going to upset apple carts repeatedly – it makes for good ratings.

Time for me to walk on down the road…