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Sunday, November 27, 2011

Everything You Want to Know About What OWS Is Up To Now (And Why It Just Had Its Biggest Media Week Ever)



"Screw us and we multiply," protesters declared last week after a series of crackdowns. The pithy slogan resonates: after the NYPD's cruel Zuccotti raid stunned onlookers, the number of events attended, endorsed, or created by the New York Occupy protesters has kept on expanding.

Indeed, thanks to those raids and rebunds, Pew reports that OWS had its biggest press week yet.

New actions, campaigns and ideas are being hatched at a rapid rate--and new occupations are already occurring.
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Norquist: GOP Won't Be 'Fooled' Into Raising Taxes

Posted: 21 Nov 2011 05:00 PM PST

As a Congressional "super committee" tasked with cutting the deficit on the verge of failure, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist insisted in a series of interviews Monday that it wasn't his fault.

Norquist told CNN's Carol Costello that Republicans were willing to "compromise" with Democrats as long as additional tax revenues were off the table.

At least 279 Republican members of the current Congress have signed Norquist's pledge to never raise taxes.
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SNL's Seth Meyers Mocks Congress for Saying Pizza is a Vegetable


By Heather

Saturday Night Live's Seth Meyers had a bit of fun this weekend by mocking the Republicans in Congress for wanting to classify pizza as a vegetable in an attempt to fight the Obama administration's attempt to make federally-subsidized school lunches more healthy -- House Republicans Say Pizza Is a Vegetable.
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Taibbi Highlights Hypocrisy of Punishment of Wall Street vs. Main Street

In an article at Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi contrasts the story of a woman who committed food stamp fraud and recieved a harsh penalty with the fraudsters of Wall Street, who, at worst, got slaps on the wrist for their crimes. Taibbi explains:

Last week, a federal judge in Mississippi sentenced a mother of two named Anita McLemore to three years in federal prison for lying on a government application in order to obtain food stamps.

Apparently in this country you become ineligible to eat if you have a record of criminal drug offenses. States have the option of opting out of that federal ban, but Mississippi is not one of those states. Since McLemore had four drug convictions in her past, she was ineligible to receive food stamps, so she lied about her past in order to feed her two children.

The total "cost" of her fraud was $4,367. She has paid the money back. But paying the money back was not enough for federal Judge Henry Wingate.
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The how, what and where of Nato supply trucks


KABUL: Nato helicopters attacked a military checkpoint in northwest Pakistan on Saturday, killing up to 28 troops and prompting Pakistan to shut the vital supply route for Nato troops fighting in Afghanistan, Pakistani officials said.

Nato supply trucks and fuel tankers bound for Afghanistan were halted at Jamrud town in the Khyber tribal region near Peshawar hours after the raid, officials said.

Following are some facts about the Pakistani supply routes for Nato forces fighting in Afghanistan and the alternatives:
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Mitt Romney Implies He Destroyed Hard Drives To Block Access From Political Opposition



In the midst of everything going on, this story has fallen by the wayside, but it's an important one, especially if you think Mitt Romney will win the Republican nomination for 2012. At the end of Romney's term as governor, Romney's staffers destroyed emails, sold publicly-owned hard drives to staffers, and made sure no digital tracks were left behind. This action flies in the face of public records laws in Massachusetts, which require that electronic records be preserved for state archives. (Bush administration, anyone?)
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Right-Wing End-Times Theology and the Politics of the Antichrist Smear


Alleged would-be presidential assassin Ortega-Hernandez reportedly called Obama 'the Antichrist.' So who put that idea in his head?
November 20, 2011

Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez, a 21-year-old from Idaho Falls, Idaho, was charged this week with attempting to assassinate Barack Obama by firing rifle shots at the presidential residence at the White House. The president, Ortega-Hernandez reportedly maintained, is the Antichrist.
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