October 31, 2014

Early vote update: North Carolina Democrats are banking a lot of votes

.There has been a lot of of per-state analysis over the past few weeks, including McDonald's own assessments and a good overview from our Reid Wilson. The trends, though, are clear from the graph above: dips in the percentage of early votes from Republicans in several states and increases in the vote from Democrats and those who don't identify a party.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=&w=1484

That said, here's how the data looks. As of the the Election Project's latest update, 11.6 million Americans have voted. Where the numbers are broken down by party (or, in the case of Georgia, race) we plotted them against registration. The smaller dots on the line show past data updates. Some states were added later than others, or weren't updated as regularly.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/10/29/early-vote-update-north-carolina-democrats-are-banking-a-lot-of-votes/

October 31, 2014

Florida "cop of the month" rapes woman while on duty

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/fla-month-rapes-woman-patrol-car-hood-cops-article-1.1994103


A Florida Cop of the Month allegedly raped a woman on the hood of his patrol car while he was on duty, police said.

Boynton Beach police arrested their own Stephen Maiorino Thursday for the alleged incident.

The eight-year force veteran — who earned an "Officer of the Month" award in 2010 and appeared on two national TV shows for his all-star cop accomplishments — will be fired, Police Chief Jeffrey S. Katz said in a statement.

Police said the 35-year-old cop picked up a woman earlier this month, raped her while holding a gun and threatened to arrest and kill her.

The nightmare started around 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 15.

A 20-year-old woman was a passenger in a car, but the driver was arrested for DUI, leaving her stranded, the Sun-Sentinel reported. Maiorino, who was on duty, responded to the scene and said he'd take her to police headquarters so her family could pick her up.

October 31, 2014

Early Voting Numbers Look Good for Democrats, black votes look real good

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/early-voting-election-results-hold-good-news-for-democrats.html

Early Voting Numbers Look Good for Democrats
By NATE COHN
OCTOBER 31, 2014
Democratic efforts to turn out the young and nonwhite voters who sat out the 2010 midterm elections appear to be paying off in several Senate battleground states.

More than 20 percent of the nearly three million votes already tabulated in Georgia, North Carolina, Colorado and Iowa have come from people who did not vote in the last midterm election, according to an analysis of early-voting data by The Upshot.

These voters who did not participate in 2010 are far more diverse and Democratic than the voters from four years ago. On average across these states, 39 percent are registered Democrats and 30 percent are registered Republicans. By comparison, registered Republicans outnumbered Democrats in these states by an average of 1 percentage point in 2010.

The turnout among black voters is particularly encouraging for Democrats, who need strong black turnout to compete in racially polarized states like Georgia and North Carolina. In those two states, black voters so far represent 30 percent of the voters who did not participate in 2010. By comparison, 24 percent of all those who voted in those states in 2010 were black.

October 31, 2014

Happy Halloween

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2815528/Are-terrifying-pets-Hardly-adorable-animals-dressed-Halloween.html

October 31, 2014

When Abortion Is Illegal In Your Country, This Activist Group Can Sail to You to Provide the Procedu

http://www.alternet.org/activism/when-abortion-illegal-your-country-activist-group-can-sail-you-provide-procedure

30, 2014  |    
A woman in Morocco looking for help is considering drinking bleach to end her pregnancy. In Poland, a rape victim says she’s thinking about hitting her stomach with a stick to induce a miscarriage. Another woman desperately emails, “I am not a monster, I just cannot have the baby.”

These are the distressed messages that  Women on Waves receive every day from women who live in countries where abortion is illegal. The organisation, an activist group famous for providing abortions on a ship in international waters, has recently been chronicled in the award-winning film,  Vessel. The movie follows the work of Dutch doctor Rebecca Gomperts and her crew as they work around various countries’ abortion laws – and sometimes just flout them – to help women end their pregnancies.

While watching the film, which  has its New York premiere next month, it’s hard not think about the current hostile climate for reproductive rights here in the US and wonder: How long until illegal abortion is the norm here, too?

Diana Whitten, the film’s director and producer who spoke with me by phone from a screening in Vermont, told me that, while it’s not in anyone’s best interest to break the law, “laws never prevent abortion.”

“They never have, and they never will. All they prevent is  safe abortion,” she said.  Women on Waves, she added, will never bring “abortion to these countries - it’s already there.” It’s just illegal.

October 30, 2014

young woman who was going to end her life on nov 1st changes her mind

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/cancer-patient-vowed-life-doesn-time-article-1.1992636

October 30, 2014

bat hospital - where baby bats are cared for until ready for release. WARNING - adorable pics

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2814142/Pictures-adorable-abandoned-baby-bats-swaddled-blankets-sucking-bottles.htmlInside Australia's BAT hospital - where adorable abandoned baby creatures are wrapped in blankets and fed with bottles
Abandoned baby bats have been pictured recuperating in hospital while swaddled in colourful blankets
The Tolga Bat Hospital is a community group working for the conservation of bats and their natural habitat. 
The furry critters are grounded due to tick paralysis 
About 300 baby bats are orphaned each year due to tick paralysis or because their mother is too ill to feed them  
Tick paralysis kills hundreds of bats every year on the Atherton Tablelands 

Volunteers at the hospital spend their time caring for the bats, nursing them back to health and then release them back into the wild when they are ready.

According to the Tolga Bat Hospital's website: 'caring for sick or young animals is like caring for sick or young humans, many tasks are very repetitive but your love and respect for the animals will make it very rewarding.'

Tick paralysis is killing hundreds of flying foxes in Australia each year.

October 30, 2014

Cop Explodes & Threatens a Man With Jail For Saying “God Bless You”

The video picks up with the MacLeod telling the man in a condescending and annoyed tone,

“Have a good day, get outta my face before I decide that this might not be the best judgment that I made.”


http://thefreethoughtproject.com/cop-explodes-threatens-man-jail-god-bless-you/

Valdes replies, “You have a great day too.”

MacLeod then responds, “Trust me I will.”

Valdes replies back, “God bless you.”

At this point the officer becomes livid and decides to throw around his perceived authority over the citizen and threaten the man him with jail, as he obviously feels disrespected in some way.

Officer MacLeod says,

“You know what, fuck it. I’ll throw your ass in jail. You wanna be a sarcastic bitch, I’ll be fuckin a bigger bitch. You’re fuckin with the wrong dude bro. I’ve been here longer than you’ve fuckin been alive. I’ve put up with more shit than you can ever think of, so if you wanna test me again you’ll be finding Dade County jail real fuckin hunky dory tonight.”

.

October 30, 2014

high percentage of blacks voting on Sunday show why GOP is trying to restrict it

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/upshot/data-from-sunday-points-to-black-churches-role-in-mobilizing-voters.html

voting on Sundays has been one of the biggest fronts in the voting wars of recent years. Some of this past Sunday’s early voting numbers make the reason quite clear.

Data from two states that permit Sunday early voting, Georgia and North Carolina, show that 53 percent of the 25,000 early votes cast on Sunday were from black voters, compared with 27 percent of early voters across the two states since voting began for this year’s midterm elections.

“Souls to the Polls” drives are a big part of the explanation. Black churches often promote voting after services, sometimes even taking church members directly to the polls. Such drives are traditionally most popular on the Sunday before an election, when black turnout might be even higher than it was on Sunday.

A good portion of these voters would have probably cast ballots anyway. But given the margins that Democrats run up on Sundays, it is not hard to see why so many Republican election officials have sought to restrict early voting on Sundays.

October 30, 2014

“Lovin’ beats hatin" Mcdonalds new slogan (not the Onion)

The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today blog reports that the slogan — which is just an extension of, and not a replacement for, the “I’m Lovin’ It” campaign that McDonald’s has driven into the ground over and over again since 2003 — is set to make its debut on Jan. 1, giving every hungover American a good reason to go to any other fast food restaurant than one that thinks “Lovin’ Beats Hatin’.”

This lovin’ fest will apparently peak during the Super Bowl on Feb. 1, so that everyone who managed to avoid the commercials for the month leading up to that night will suddenly understand the various jokes their friends have been making on Facebook about McDonald’s.

While the “I’m lovin’ it” slogan has been dropping its “g” for more than a decade and is considered a success by some, one has to wonder about the logic of continuing — or rather, continuin’ — to beat that dead horse (which by no means goes into your Big Mac) when sales have been sagging for the fast food giant.

Additionally, while everything I learned about the advertising biz came from watching Bosom Buddies and Thirtysomething as a child, I’m pretty sure that using the word “hate” in a slogan is akin to, I dunno, running ads featuring regular consumers questioning whether or not the food you make is real.

http://consumerist.com/2014/10/28/mcdonalds-mistakenly-thinks-internet-wont-mock-lovin-beats-hatin-slogan/

McDonald’s Mistakenly Thinks Internet Won’t Mock “Lovin’ Beats