Author Archive | DeepCough

McGruff Crime Dog Actor Busted For Drugs, Guns

By DeepCough on February 27, 2014 in News 43

Pic: USMC (CC)

Imagine a story reporting the death of Ronald McDonald by a Big Mac-induced myocardial infarction, (known commonly as a “Big Mac Attack”).

VIA First Coast News

John Russell Morales, 41, an actor who once played the crime-fighting cartoon bloodhound, has been sentenced to nearly two decades behind bars after pleading guilty to possessing 1,000 marijuana plants and a cache of nearly 30 weapons — including a grenade launcher and thousands of ammunition rounds.

Morales was arrested in 2011 after Galveston, Texas, police and drug-sniffing dogs — real dogs, that is — stopped him for speeding, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Kusin, who later prosecuted the case.

Authorities discovered diagrams of two indoor pot-growing operations and an abundance of marijuana seeds in Morales’ Infinity, according to the Houston Chronicle newspaper.

Keep reading.

… Read the rest

Mormon Church Changes Stance on Race

By DeepCough on December 23, 2013 in News 8

Mormon Jesus approves.

Just as the Roman Catholic Church has become more liberal, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, or Mormon Church, has decided that “dark skin” is no longer the “mark of Cain.” I tell ya, the End must be extremely goddamn nigh.

VIA Dwindling in Unbelief

The LDS church has finally confessed. It admits that it was wrong about
race from the church’s beginning in 1830 until 1978 when God changed
his mind about black people.

Here is what the new document “Race and the Priesthood” says about it:

Today, the Church disavows the theories advanced in the past that black skin is a sign of divine disfavor or curse … that mixed-race marriages are a sin; or that blacks or people of any other race or ethnicity are inferior in any way to anyone else.

If that is true, then the LDS church disavows the Book of Mormon, which says that God cursed people by blackening their skin, causing them to be “a dark, filthy, and loathsome people,” and that any “white and delightsome” person who “mixes seed” with them will be “cursed with the same cursing.”

Here are just a few passages in the Book of Mormon that the Mormon church now disavows:

After they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.

… Read the rest

Is There Really A War on Christmas? Evangelical Christian Author Says No

By DeepCough on December 11, 2013 in News 23

Well, that depends on who you talk to.

If you go on over to Fox Nation, you can bet your stocking there is. If you watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, it’s a seasonal running gag. But what of the people who actively celebrate the Christmas
holiday? You’d be surprised to find just how militant Christians aren’t about the celebration
of the Winter Solstice.

VIA USA Today

Nothing in evangelical Christian author Rachel Held Evans’ five years of blogging has gone as viral as her simple little flowchart to determine if one is being persecuted during the Christmas season.

“Did someone threaten your life, safety, civil liberties or right to worship?” it asks. No. “Did someone wish you happy holidays?” Yes.

“You are not being persecuted,” it says.

At last count, the post had attracted more than 700 comments, the vast majority in agreement with her.

Call it the backlash against the “war on Christmas” camp — a number of evangelicals distancing themselves from those concerned that the department store greeter said “happy holidays,” that the Nativity scene is gone from the local courthouse, that classrooms are hosting “winter parties.”

“God became flesh and lived among us, and if that’s not enough for people, I think they’ve missed the point,” said Evans, who lives in Dayton, Tenn., and wrote last year’s best-selling book, “A Year of Biblical Womanhood.”

Still, the idea that there’s a national war on Christmas is going strong.

… Read the rest

Bank Tellers Rely On Public Assistance, Too

By DeepCough on December 9, 2013 in News 16

If you think working for a bank is a good idea, because a bank is a lucrative business, a business which is responsible for handing out the currency that keeps the economy running, the people working, and the masses fed, then why are bank tellers in the same boat as fast food workers and Wal-Mart employees?

VIA CBS Money Watch

Taxpayers spend $899 million annually in state and federal benefits to support bank tellers and their families, according to a new report from The Committee for Better Banks.

One-third of bank tellers receive some sort of public assistance, ranging from Medicaid to food stamps, the financial industry employee advocacy group found, citing research from the University of California-Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education. In New York state, almost 40 percent of bank tellers and their family members are enrolled in public assistance programs, costing the state and federal governments $112 million in benefits.

… Read the rest

U.S. Health Care vs. Socialized Health Care

By DeepCough on November 25, 2013 in News 7

Say what you want about the PPACA legislation (I certainly don’t support it), it’s getting harder and harder to defend privatized, for-profit medicine when the United States gets ranked below Costa Rica by the World Health Organization. And as much as I want to support government-run health care, it’s idiots like these guys which make me fear what might happen the next time I get sick and there just so happens to be a vote on who gets to be insured and who doesn’t that day. Nevertheless, I can’t help but wonder what my life would be like if I grew up in Europe or north of the border.

VIA Christian Science Monitor

… Read the rest

The Internet Killswitch

By DeepCough on November 20, 2013 in News 2

In this report, Russia Today covers the judicial review of the National Security Agency,
the number of open-records request to the NSA in light of the leaks from Edward Snowden,
and even the dreaded internet killswitch.

VIA RT America

… Read the rest

TSA: What Is it Good For?

By DeepCough on November 15, 2013 in News 5

The-Simpsons-vs-the-TSA (TSA) isn’t as effective at detecting suspicious characters as one might think. The Government Accounting Office (GAO) has reviewed the TSA’s Screening Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) program was evaluated at being “the same or slightly better than chance.”

The SPOT program since 2007 cost $900 million. The TSA has failed to collect consistent data to prove the effectiveness of the behavioral detection program; worse yet, the SPOT program was initiated without any scientific validation. For reason, the GAO has recommended that Congress cut off funding to this program, something that the Department of Homeland Security disagrees with.

You think that’s bad? That’s only the tip of the damning iceberg.

Anti-TSA activist Johnathan Corbett, who filed a lawsuit against the agency on the faulty nature of their body scanners found a particularly revealing document that declares the probability of terrorists hijacking planes in the United States.

VIA TechDirt

Jonathan Corbett, a long-time vocal critic of TSA body scanners, has been engaged in a lawsuit against the government concerning the constitutionality of those scanners.

… Read the rest

The Rise of Big Chocolate

By DeepCough on November 13, 2013 in News 5

“The Rise of Big Chocolate” certainly sounds like a lascivious porno movie, but if there is any movie that comes to mind in this article, it’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, a wonderful and memorable family movie with catchy songs coating a rather bitter and dark enterprise involving vulture legal contracts, unsafe working conditions (why, oh why, is there never a barrier around the chocolate river?), worker exploitation, and even corporate espionage (remember Slugsworth), a movie that unfortunately mirrors the present due to monopolization of confectionery companies by Cargill and Barry Callebaut.

VIA Foreign Policy

Small and mid-size confectioners have traditionally been able to request specific blends and recipe mixtures from cocoa processors. But as the number of sellers has thinned, chocolatiers struggle to procure these specialties. “When it comes to Belgian chocolate, there is not that much variety anymore,” says Van Riet. He explains that his customers “are very nervous” as the consolidation in the industry continues.

… Read the rest

Occupy Wall Street Eliminates $15 million of Debt

By DeepCough on November 13, 2013 in News 16

Since the protest started in Zucotti Park in New York City near the financial district, the Occupy Wall Street movement has done a lot to raise awareness of the iniquities and corruption in the American political and economic system, whilst receiving biased mass-media editorializing and suffering undue violence from the local police. Since November 15, 2012, the Occupy movement started a program of debt-relief called “Rolling Jubilee,” which seeks to bailout individuals who have accrued debt through credit cards as well as medical bills. To date they have relieved millions of dollars in debt for just pennies on the dollar.

VIA Guardian

A group of Occupy Wall Street activists has bought almost $15m of Americans’ personal debt over the last year as part of the Rolling Jubilee project to help people pay off their outstanding credit.

Rolling Jubilee, set up by Occupy’s Strike Debt group following the street protests that swept the world in 2011, launched on 15 November 2012.

… Read the rest

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