Faced with the prospect of losing both hands and her one remaining foot, a young Georgia woman battling to survive a case of flesh-eating bacteria that has already claimed one leg mouthed the words “Let’s do this.”
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Georgia woman learns toll of flesh-eating bacteria
PHOENIX (Reuters) – An Arizona wildfire threatened two more towns on Friday, with high winds on the way, even as firefighters made progress against the largest of a string of blazes spreading across the U.S. Southwest. More than 1,000 firefighters in Arizona and Colorado were battling five major blazes that have consumed more than 55 square miles (142 square km) of ponderosa forest, brush and grass, and a new blaze erupted in Utah on Thursday. …
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Arizona towns at risk as wildfires hit U.S. Southwest
Ultra-Orthodox Jews who believe that the Internet threatens their way of life have rented the New York Mets’ stadium for an unprecedented gathering on how to use modern technology in a religiously appropriate way.
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Ultra-Orthodox Jews plan huge NYC meeting on Internet risks
Editor’s Note: Katrina Trinko, the National Review author who reported the claim first made by this article, has retracted the story that Elizabeth Warren may have plagiarized in her 2006 book All Your Worth: I took down my earlier post on Elizabeth Warren plagiarizing from the book
President Barack Obama holds a cash advantage of more than 2-to-1 over Republican challenger Mitt Romney but the president’s money advantage is beginning to dwindle.
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Obama holds 2-to-1 cash advantage over Romney
MCALLEN, Texas (Reuters) – A man suspected of killing his newlywed bride near Chicago and leaving her in a bathtub in the same silver sequin cocktail dress she wore to her wedding reception may have fled to the U.S.-Mexican border in Texas, an FBI affidavit showed. Arnoldo Jimenez, 30, has been on the run since a relative found his wife, Estrella Carrera, stabbed to death in a bathtub on Sunday, two days after the wedding, police in Burbank, Illinois, said in a statement. The relative found Carrera, 25, after she failed to pick up her two young children, ages 2 and 8, on Saturday. …
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Bride’s suspected killer may have fled to U.S.-Mexican border
The Republican leaders in Congress have mostly defined themselves by what they’re against, but now they’ve announced what they’re for — the most popular parts of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). I can only imagine the political identity crisis this is causing within the GOP. Their hallmark is opposing anything the President supports , even if it started as a Republican legislative proposal, and now they’ve plunged themselves into a partisan political abyss of their own making: they are supporting the key provisions of the president’s signature legislative achievement, a law the Republicans have derisively and incessantly called “Obamacare” for two years. It turns out that the party realizes that may not have been such a good idea. So they’re now pretending to come up with what amounts to their own version of Obamacare. As Politico reports : “If the law is partially or fully overturned they’ll draw up bills to keep the popular, consumer-friendly portions [of Obamacare] in place — like allowing adult children to remain on parents’ health care plans until age 26, and forcing insurance companies to provide coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. Ripping these provisions from law is too politically risky, Republicans say.” These provisions are not just popular and central to the law. They are among the few elements of the ACA that are inextricably tied to and, some say, dependent upon the individual responsibility provision , also known as the individual mandate. Yet the Republicans and their extremist friends in the corporate special interest crowd are challenging that provision and the entire law at the U.S. Supreme Court. You can call this irony or hypocrisy or both. The simple fact is that Obamacare expands coverage to more than 30 million people and eliminates the worst insurance company abuses for those of us with coverage. It stops insurance companies from denying our care and jacking up our rates whenever they please. Apparently the Republicans have noticed that these things are good and popular with voters . The GOP’s political schizophrenia was evident in the quick backtrack by Speaker John Boehner and Budget Chairman Paul Ryan , who responded to the Politico report by stridently saying they would repeal the entire law, no matter what. Recognizing the political quicksand he was entering, Ryan offered uninsured families a single strand of hope: while the GOP has no intention of crafting actual legislation that could help actual people, which the ACA does every day, the Republicans may deign to share their “vision” with the huddled masses. Republicans’ political back-flips are staggering and make Mitt Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, look consistent by comparison. While telling their diehards they’re repealing Obamacare in full, they’re misleading the public and telling them they can keep the provisions that protect them from insurance company abuses. Many of the Obamacare provisions the Republicans say they’d like to keep are ones that are already in effect. If the court were to fulfill the desperate hopes of Republicans in Congress and overturn Obamacare, the Republicans would then try to immediatelly reinstitute much of what the court will have overturned. That’s stunning and bizarre. For two years the Republicans have promised to “replace” Obamacare as part of their non-stop repeal campaign. A fake plan like this is hardly a “replacement.” Just like their promise to protect Medicare , the talk about preserving the good stuff is an election year lie. The Republicans will always put the big corporations before the consumers they represent. They have an extremist agenda, and they’re pursuing it at all costs. They’ve been driving an assault on women’s health care , on health care in general, on every program central to the goal of opportunity and shared prosperity for all. Now that the election is getting closer, their right-wing agenda doesn’t seem like such a great idea. Boehner’s words show that the GOP has discovered that hating the people they represent is bad politics. But how can the party reconcile that realization with its fundamental desire to do whatever big corporations say? They have to lie to the voters. The Republicans in Congress and Mitt Romney will never do anything to help the middle class. They want to end Medicare as we know it . They support insurance company discrimination against the sick. They are waging an enthusiastic war on women and students and middle-class taxpayers. They want to give massive tax breaks to the 1 percent and protect outrageous things like big tax subsidies for the oil companies. Anyone inclined to entrust our nation’s health care to this duplicitous party that exists to front for people who have grown rich off the status quo should remember that.
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Ethan Rome: More Hypocrisy From GOP’s Crack Team of Health Care Con Artists
To hear his neighbors tell it, James Willie was just a regular guy who sometimes played with the neighborhood kids. Police describe him as a cold-blooded killer who stalked his victims on dark stretches of Mississippi’s highways and shot two of them dead.
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Neighbors: Highway shooting suspect a regular guy
WASHINGTON — The reelection campaign of President Barack Obama reported raising $25.7 million in April, down from $35 million raised in March. While the campaign raised fewer dollars last month than the previous one, its support from small donors remained high with 43.7 percent, or $11.23 million, coming from donors giving less than $200 in total. Big donors were still a source of support with donors giving $2,500 and above contributing $3.69 million in April. The employment categories that typically dominate presidential campaign finance filings continued to show big contributions. The leading donor group in April was Retired with $2,595,175. Self-Employed was a close second contributing $2,313,319 and the Not Employed category came in third with $1,682,106 in contributions. Among individuals who listed an actual employer, tech companies and law firms dominated. The top tech firms in terms of employee giving were Microsoft ($51,747), Google ($28,061), and IBM ($13,768). Law firm donors included Bass Berry & Sims ($22,100), Blank Rome ($12,315), and WilmerHale ($13,359). A few finance company employees gave their share to the Obama campaign: Goldman Sachs employees gave $14,150 while JPMorgan Chase employees combined to give $10,593.
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Barack Obama Raises $25.7 Million, 43% From Small Donors
Busloads of Occupy activists have been arriving in Chicago to protest the summit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “We’re trying to bring a critical mass of people back to the Occupy movement,” said Nicole Powers, an activist and managing editor of Suicide Girls, a website that has extensively chronicled the Occupy movement since it began on Wall Street. “We want to get mass involvement back into the Occupy movement as we move into an election season.” Protestors plan to gather in Daley Plaza on Friday and on Saturday for a march to the home of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Sunday brings the climatic event: a march from Grant Park to the McCormick Place convention center, where NATO delegates will be meeting throughout the weekend. The list of targets is smaller than it used to be. The Group of Eight was originally supposed to meet in Chicago this weekend, but White House officials scrapped the idea after word of the Occupy plans got out. Now the G8 is meeting in the seclusion of Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland. Occupy protesters have happily taken credit for the move. Many in Chicago have invoked the historical echoes of earlier protests — the melee at 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, and the protests of international organizations like NATO that rattled cities around the world in the late-’90s and early-2000s. “I think that this is a historic weekend in Chicago,” said Stephen Weber, an activist who helped organize bus trips for hundreds of activists from eight cities. “The fact that the G8 was supposed to be here and they moved to Camp David is indicative of the power of the narrative and the visibility of discontent in this country and around the world.” Protesters are not alone in anticipating something akin to the 1968 Chicago riots. The police department has supplied officers with pepper spray and $1 million worth of new riot gear. Cops arrested 20 participants in preliminary protests. Weber, who helped start the group 99% Solidarity, an offshoot of the Occupy movement, said he opposed NATO because it fights wars and because governments fund those wars with money they should spend elsewhere. “There’s definitely a connection between the two and I think they’re very important,” Weber said. “My hope is 30 years from now, we won’t have a need for marches like this.”
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The Occupy Movement Descends On Chicago For NATO Summit