Oh, No! Michael Hastings Killed in Car Crash
I was out most of the early evening today but when I got home I learned that Michael Hastings was killed in a car crash today. Oh. My. God. Say it ain’t so already. This is awful:
Michael Hastings — January 28, 1980 – June 18, 2013 — (Image via MediaBistro.com)
Michael Hastings, the fearless journalist whose reporting brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal, has died in a car accident in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone has learned. He was 33.
Hey, Let’s Shoot Us Some Illegals
My Tweet of the Day, which is actually from yesterday:
Todd Starnes — here’s his Twitter account — works for Fox so-called-News.
VICE Magazine Glamorizes Female Authors’ Suicides
One of my brothers committed suicide in 1988 at the age of 32, so as a “survivor,” I think it is appalling beyond words that a magazine would stage a fashion shoot based on the suicides of female writers. Suicide is not a thing to be glamorized.
This is just sick:
Vice‘s Women in Fiction issue is an interesting package. There’s a short story by Mary Gaitskill here, an interview with Marilynne Robinson there, and a short story by Joyce Carol Oates over yonder. And then…there’s the fashion spread. Featuring models styled and posed as famous female writers who have killed themselves. At their times of death.
[...]
Each photo in the spread is captioned with the name of the author depicted, her dates of birth and death, and cause of death. And the fashion credits for what the model is wearing (“Issa dress, Morgenthal Frederics glasses, Jenni Kayne shoes”), obviously.
(Image via Jezebel.com)
(Image via Jezebel.com)
Greg Louganis is Engaged — to His Boyfriend!
Remember blow-America’s-socks-off gorgeous Olympic swimmer Greg Louganis?
He’s getting married — to his boyfriend!
(Image via TMZ.com)
Some call him the greatest diver in history, but pretty soon someone will be calling him the greatest husband in history! (We hope.)
Olympic diving champion Greg Louganis, who won five Olympic medals, five World Championship titles and 47 national titles during his career, announced to People that he and his partner, Johnny Chaillot, are getting married.
“I finally met my soul mate – the more I fall in love with Johnny, the more I fall in love with myself. This is what the universe had in store for both of us,” Greg, 53, says of his paralegal beau, 52.
Bravo Greg and Johnny. All the best to you for your love and the guts it took to go public with this.
“Illegal Aliens” Living a Cushy Life in the USA?
Get a load of this. This is the dark underbelly of how “illegal aliens*” are exploited in the United States (by employers) and it illustrates why we need to fix the immigration mess.
Nine owners and managers of 7-11 stores across Long Island and in Virginia were charged Monday with making tens of millions of dollars by exploiting immigrants from Pakistan and the Philippines, in part by paying them using the stolen Social Security numbers of a child and three dead people while stealing most of their wages.
Most of the defendants were arrested early Monday as federal authorities raided 14 franchise stores. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents were executing search warrants at more than 40 other stores across the country suspected of similar infractions, authorities said at a Brooklyn news conference.
“These nine defendants created a modern-day plantation system, with themselves as overseers, with the immigrant workers as subjects, living in their version of a company town,” U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch told a news conference in Brooklyn.
[...]
The government said the defendants pocketed tens of millions of dollars in the scheme, hiding some money.
Federal indictments naming eight men and one woman allege that since 2000 they employed more than 50 immigrants who didn’t have permission to be in the U.S. They tried to conceal the immigrants’ employment by stealing the identities of about two dozen people – including those of the child, the dead and a Coast Guard cadet – and submitting the information to the 7-11 payroll department.
When 7-11′s headquarters sent the wages for distribution, the employers stole up to 75% of the workers’ pay, authorities said. The defendants also forced the workers to live in houses they owned and pay them rent in cash, they added.
Indentured servitude circa the United States of America 2013.
Awful. And to think this is just the tip of the iceberg.
* “Illegal aliens” as in they aren’t real human beings with feelings and loves and fears and families like the rest of us. And their blood is green, or something.
What do You Believe About How Wealth is Distributed in the United States?
Here’s a fascinating 3:43 minute video about how wealth is distributed in the United States and about how ignorant Americans are of how dramatically unequal it is.
About Obama’s Decision to Arm the Syrian “Rebels”
As usual, the Syrian “uprising” we’ve been hearing about for a few years now is complicated beyond belief and we here in the U.S. are only being told a fraction of the story, thanks to our lame so-called “news media.”
(Image via CNN.com)
Read this article by Robert Fisk of the U.K. Independent: Iran to Send 4,000 Troops to Aid President Assad Forces in Syria.
The title alone is pretty telling if you think about it for a second: Iran’s defending Syrian President Assad and the U.S. is arming the “rebels.” Great back door way of starting a war with Iran, huh?
Anyway, I suggest reading the whole thing. Robert Fisk is the Independent‘s Middle East expert and he’s been reporting from — and living there — for a long time. He knows of what he speaks.
It’s a tinderbox there — going back hundreds of years (literally) — and the though of the U.S. getting involved is pretty scary. It could lead to very bad things.
