demnewswire:

In 1994, Congress enacted the Violence Against Women Act with broad bi-partisan support. It has been renewed several times since then, except for 2012. If VAWA is NOT reauthorized, then important funding for battered women shelters and to aid in prosecution of domestic violence and sex-based crimes will be lost! Contact your representative ASAP to speak out. Go to www.4vawa.org for more info.

Please take a few minutes on that day to call your Senators and Representatives.

• Use this number 888.269.5702 to connect to the Capitol switchboard.  Then ask to be connect to you U.S. Representative (www.house.gov) or Senator (www.senate.gov).
• Tell them:  “I am your constituent.  Now that the elections are over, I urge you to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA)!
• @[INSERT YOUR REP’S TWITTER HANDLE] #PassVAWA2012

In case you wanted a dose of CRAZY check out these Ya-Ho’s. I guess the problem with making violence illegal is sometimes American men marry women from other countries and after the nuptials the woman objects to being abused. Now bing-bang-boom SHE’S unfairly American.

(via reagan-was-a-horrible-president)

The story inside follows up on the juries’ refusal to convict now former NYPD officer Michael Pena on charges of rape for allegedly raping and sodomizing a schoolteacher on her way to work in the morning (because victim couldn’t remember color of parked car) he was convicted, instead of predatory sexual assault, a higher charge that may mean life in prison but still makes the layperson wonder: Why not rape?

She described in graphic detail how the cop threatened to shoot her with his service revolver if she resisted.

She told the court how he violated her repeatedly on a raw, wooden table.

She said she knew for sure it was rape because she begged him not to — and because “it hurt.”

But a Manhattan jury made up of highly educated professionals refused to convict Officer Michael Pena of rape for a startling reason —

“If she doesn’t remember these details, how does she know she was penetrated,” one of the holdouts reportedly said, according to sources.

(via realworldnews)

Is Koch PAC Non-Partisan, As They Claim?

Much has been written about the owners of Koch Industries, brothers David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, trying to control the political process through hundreds of millions of dollars in donations to right-wing causes and candidates.

In a voter information packet the Koch Industries corporate leadership informed tens of thousands of employees at its subsidiary, Georgia Pacific, that their livelihood could depend on the 2012 election and that the company supports Mitt Romney for president.

The packet arrived in the mailboxes of all 45,000 Georgia Pacific employees earlier this month. The cover letter [PDF], by Koch Industries President and Chief Operating Officer Dave Robertson, read:

While we are typically told before each Presidential election that it is important and historic, I believe the upcoming election will determine what kind of America future generations will inherit.

If we elect candidates who want to spend hundreds of billions in borrowed money on costly new subsidies for a few favored cronies, put unprecedented regulatory burdens on businesses, prevent or delay important new construction projects, and excessively hinder free trade, then many of our more than 50,000 U.S. employees and contractors may suffer the consequences, including higher gasoline prices, runaway inflation, and other ills.

Enclosed with the letter was a flyer [PDF] listing Koch-endorsed candidates, beginning with Romney. Robertson’s letter explained: “At the request of many employees, we have also provided a list of candidates in your state that have been supported by Koch companies or by KOCHPAC, our employee political action committee.”

The packet also included an anti-Obama editorial by Charles Koch [PDF] and a pro-Romney editorial by David Koch [PDF]. The letter went on to say, “We believe any decision about which candidates to support is—as always—yours and yours alone, based on the factors that are most important to you. Second, we do not support candidates based on their political affiliation.”

In the flyer sent to Oregon employees, all 14 Koch-backed state candidates were Republicans.

In September, a number of unionized employees at Georgia Pacific’s Toledo, Ore. plant posed for a photo in front of their union hall with Democratic state Senate candidate Arnie Roblan. When the Koch Industries voter information packet arrived in the workers’ mailboxes a few weeks later, they saw that Roblan was not on the list of Koch-endorsed candidates in Oregon. Then the AWPPW Vice President Greg Pallesen started receiving phone calls from workers. The union workers in the photo were worried that they might be fired from their jobs if the image got out on the Internet, because in the backdrop of the photo, the Georgia Pacific plant could be seen.

Their fear comes not only from the mailing, but also from a new Georgia Pacific social media policy [PDF] implemented earlier this year that warns, “Even if your social media conduct is outside of the workplace and/or non-work related, it must not reflect negatively on GP’s reputation, its products, or its brands.” Given the policy, the workers were scared to appear next to a candidate the Kochs do not support with the plant in the background.

More —> 10 Shocking Facts on the Kochs.

In a Democracy Now interview Amy Goodman and Nermeen Shaikh talk to George Farah. He explains how the contract was revealed by Time’s Mark Halperin who managed to get a copy of the contract and that it wasn’t by virtue of the commission operating with transparency.

George Farah was on DN before talking about the Commission on Presidential Debates and how we came to this point in electoral politics.

Mike McCurry, the former press secretary to President Bill Clinton, and a co-chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates repeatedly denied the very existence of this contract. When confronted the executive director of the commission, Janet Brown, about the existence of a contract that’s dictating the terms of the debates, she said there is no such contract, the commission is not a party to it. Once some of the features of the contract started to come out, the commission said the contract is only about podium heights and temperatures in the auditoriums and whether the candidates can wear risers in their shoes, but denied that there was any substance.
Now that we’re actually seeing the contract, we’re seeing there are extraordinary restrictions preventing there from being more unpredictable questions. We’re seeing the exclusion of all third-party voices according to the candidate selection criteria. And we’re seeing the prohibition on additional debates…

During an appearance on CNN’s Starting Point on Monday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) could not explain when President Obama “apologized” for the United States, despite repeatedly claiming that he went on an “apology tour” across the Middle East shortly after becoming president.

As the Washington Post put it, “the apology tour never happened.” Rather, shortly after becoming president, Obama traveled to the world introducing himself and differentiating his foreign policy from that of President Bush. “This is typical of many new presidents,” including Bush himself, who “quickly broke with Clinton administration policy on dealings with North Korea, the Kyoto climate change treaty and the international criminal court.”

The manufactured attack, which Republicans kicked off in 2009, “feeds into a subterranean narrative that Obama, with his exotic, mixed-race background, is not really American in the first place.”

Read more

(Source: abaldwin360)

Dr. Mark Craddock an Australian doctor and a member of the Exclusive Brethren Christian Fellowship sect has been banned from practicing medicine after he prescribed an 18-year-old man who was also part of the sect with a chemical castration drug after he came out as gay.

In a letter to the NSW Health Care Complaints Commission, the unnamed man, who is now 24, said that when he came out as gay, a church leader told him ”there’s medication you can go on.” He continued, ”He recommended that I speak to Dr Craddock on the matter with a view to my being placed on medication to help me with my ‘problem’,”

The teen went to visit the 75-year-old doctor who prescribed him a “gay cure”: the anti-androgen therapy cyproterone acetate, brand name Cyprostat, along with five repeats, according to ninemsn. He said the doctor did not refer him to a psychologist or discuss the drug’s side effects.

Cyprostat is a form of hormone therapy used to treat prostate cancer. Hormone suppressants have been used to “chemically castrate” sex offenders, the Guardian notes.

The Medical Council of the Australian State of New South Wales determined, “Dr Craddock failed to adequately assess the patient and failed to provide appropriate medical management of the patients therapeutic needs,” in an excerpt by Gay Star News. The committee found that Craddock was guilty of “unsatisfactory processional conduct. He was severely reprimanded and practice restrictions were placed on his registration.”

There are more than 40,000 Exclusive Brethren around the world. They “believe strongly in the traditional family unit. Marriage is held in the greatest [honor], as one of God’s original thoughts of blessing for the human race.”

Other doctors have taken dangerous steps in an attempt to “cure” homosexuality. In 2010, Dr. Maria New of New York City’s Mount Sinai was reportedly experimenting with injecting fetuses with steroids to potentially make girls “more feminine” and reduce odds they turn out gay, the Oregonian reported at the time.

The American Psychiatric Association has condemned the “treatment” of homosexuality. So has GLAAD saying, “The potential risks of ‘reparative therapy’ are great, including depression, anxiety and self-destructive behavior, since therapist alignment with societal prejudices against homosexuality may reinforce self-hatred already experienced by the patient.”

Activists have championed against “gay cures” in the United Kingdom, which includes Conversion Therapy. Last year, Apple pulled Exodus International’s “Gay Cure” app from its collection.

Click through for 11 horrific “cures” for homosexuality.