FACEBOOK SPECIFICITIES. My account was accessed by others and I decided to change the password today. The Facebook window read to click onn reset passwork, while the only directions to click on were Send codes and access (my email account). A Dafne Veg-alf Turillazzi is probably involved in password stealing.

BUDGET BRILLIANCE. Tax cuts in California to favor companies like Apple caused a loss of 9.2 billion in revenue and have lead to cuts in social services such as schools and programs for the disabled.

ACCRETIVE HEALTH is a debt collection agency that impersonates hospital workers to pressure even emergency room patients into paying their bills now with money and later with body parts from the morgue.

A NEW CREATURE IS BORN. Sidetracking lobbying rules the Conservative American Legislative Exchange Council mixes a blend of legislators and business interests to reduce government, harm labor unions and diminish public interest legislation. To do so they claim to interact equally while not declaring the origin of the bills, by using loopholes to aid business interests and by outvoting legislators in favor of business. All this paying what they call scholarships to legislators for conferences supported by child care facilities.

WHAT PEREMPTORY CHALLENGE REALLY IS: When both the defendant and the prosecution determine through years of personal bias to exclude a majority of African Americans from jury duty.

How many Bosnians and Croatians does it take to change ethnicity?

The Miss Universe Competition has opened its doors to transgenders: one big move forward for stereotyping.

Hate for injustice keeps you safe; love keeps you whole.

GOTTA SAY,there's nothing more repugnant than those who think people are worth dirt. Now spin that into meaning I'm not eco conscious.

Life is a wonderful, delicate mess.

DO GET A GRIP. In a country that has seen anarchists, communists and socialists run for office successfully, in a country in which even Richard Nixon opened doors to China,in a country that survived Regan's fiery rhetoric and his flirt with Iran to become palsies again with Nicaragua, in a Germany who has judges who supported the Red Army Faction, in an Israel in which its own politicians are worried about possible future apartheid conditions, but with labor still going strong, in a world in which even Reagan had to triumph Mandela, in a world with a Communist party in Russia opposing Putin and Medvedev's fascistic nationalism, in a world filled with socialist parties and governments, in a world open to reform and increased democracy and plain being more just and equal because that's the way to fulfillment in life, you still have a man like Florida Republican Allen West demonstrate his brilliance, farsightedness,concern with the wellbeing of the United States and thorough understanding of politics and foreign policy by trying to stir up trouble claiming there are up to 80 Communists in the Democratic party only because he doesn't get out much and hasn't read the constitution of the United States? Okay, granted, it's not like big business makes this information available to you and bookstore workers don't switch material on the display tables at the speed of light because you're not a celebrity or paying them cash on the sly not to do so or don't get paid by others in some kinda tender to enact scenarios that might get you arrested based on false testimony in the bookstore, even if for now all you're left with is catch phrases and old time dictionary entries,it's not over until it's over. Don't cede to the bait. THINK.LEARN. THEN DECIDE. Don't believe the bullshit.Whatever would happen if word got out that an elected official is violating the constitution of the United States?

MALE POTION IN A BOTTLE. Trying to breach the same barrier as deodorant, Dr. Pepper 10, a soft drink with 2 grams of sugar and ten calories, is being advertised as a men only drink that promotes roaming jungles at high speeds in beefy wheeled vehicles. The only other products that can claim such gender specificity in a supermarket are the feminine hygiene items on display in aisle 6 and one shouldn't eat them.

THE MARLINS AND SPANISH, PART TWO. See what the results are for objecting to a knowledge of other languages? At a press conference held to illuminate us concerning anticonstitutional suspensions and threats of firing for wishing Fidel Castro a long life, supported by fiery indignation bubbling to the surface of a cauldron of bullshit, Guillen said he was speaking Spanish and in that language he had expressed what amounts to amazement and disappointment that Castro was still alive. Now THAT'S constitutionally protected thanks to a Supreme Court decision considering death threats freedom of speech when flung by a crowd of baptist protesters discriminating against gays by crashing a funeral for a member of the military who wasn't even gay, and makes Guillen less of a sissy. So when they bury Castro in Florida, Guillen can follow his mistaken critics, have his say again in Spanish if they let him and claim to have God on his side. In the meantime, he and his partners can bandy that opinion at grandma's funeral without a peep from anyone. One major exemption, of course, are threats against the President of the United States.

THE MARLINS AND THEIR TAKE ON FOREIGN POLICY, PART ONE. With Santorum quitting someone else needs to play God,and CBS reports the Marlins's little showdown of their own. Ozzie Guillen was reported as saying that he loved Castro and was glad he had stayed in power for so long. Result? He was suspended for five games, the Cuban community is in an uproar and there's clamor from two "officials" that he should be fired. Mr. Guillen has since retracted his statement, claiming ironic immunity. CBS has him say that he meant to express amazement at how Castro had not died sooner and was upset that he discombolulated people who hated Cuban politics for whatever reason so much so they jumped on rafts to float on over to Miami. CBS also edited a "no I didn't" out of context as the answer to a question posed on the air by a newscaster as to whether Guillen meant what he said or not. Let alone that it's illegal to fire anyone for political beliefs that aren't at odds with the basic tenets of the constitution of the United States,or for reading,or for voting, the Marlins must have seen the chance to apply for a position as Romney's influent cabinet members since, after the candidate's on again-off again play on self-deportation not even his ID card can identify him. Their plan is to influence foreign policy as baseball players since the sport is spread throughout the world and they know nothing of presidential politics not at odds with countries like Cuba. After all, even Russia has its political party run by a sports team owner, and I should brush up as well, since I thought the Marlins were a football team, not a baseball team. Castro just doesn't have the build of an effective supporter, so he's out. I mean, even the Pope picks on him in his own country, while visiting a shrine to the virgin of good luck.

OVERHEARD ON THE SUBWAY, FROM AN AFRICAN AMERICAN FAMILY: A MOTHER, TWO DAUGHTERS AND TWO SONS, CHILDREN. "Venus in furs"; "we're cops too";"white" as a blanket statement, neither preceding or following any conversation; two of the boys mock leave the subway car at a stop not theirs, after feigning it to be theirs, no comment by the mother; the mother asks if the eldest girl is talking to the whole subway car or her sister; the mother scold a boy saying "you sound like a girl" and the eldest girl mocks up a paranoia that the train won't stop at the last stop.

CROSSROADS DENIES PRESTIGE ITS HEREDITARY RIGHTS. Steven J. Law, the chief officer of Crossroads, the Republican superPAC that lobsters to President Obama's Priorities USA Action shrimp, is complaining that Demoratic strategy for the election campaign will remind its voters that prejudice, exclusivity and an entire set of supposed values having nothing to do with capacity determine income and create social status in this country. He calls it a "dystopian vision" and a "narrative" that "has some gravitational pull." In the meantime, yesterday President Obama was extolling the virtues of natural gas versus oil dependency, which is all fine and dandy, unless one takes into account that fracking as a means of extraction creates one hell of an inflammable and chemically redolent dystopian reality for those whose only access to water is from aquifers in the general area of gas deposits.Why not find a better technique?

FEDERAL FUNDS FOR JOB TRAINING AT RISK. The New York Times reports that the amount contributed by the Federal government to job training programs was 2.1 billion a year, in a country that currently has 12.7 million job searchers. For two years the stimulus plan contributed 1.5 billion, bringing the total up to 3.6 billion. Then funds were reduced to 1.2 billion. In the meantime, the new presidential budget wants to allocate 2.8 billion, still a loss from the stimulus year amounts that already is affecting many who are being turned down for assistance due to lack of funds.

Previous post reedited. Much better. Cheers.

THE TEA PARTY MARINE AND THE PRESIDENT CONTINUED AND EXISTENTIAL COMPLAINTS. The internet is circulating this composition as President Obama's words: "Because I was kind you thought I was a lamb; because you went too far you will see I am a lion, And I will rise" which, in a world shaped by the mythology of hagiographic absolute monarchs one worse than the other still strikes a key in some who confuse rules of order with a belittling patronizing kindness and the power concerns of a man compared to a rampant limb mauling animal with justice. Kind of a jeremiad, all to say you thought I was weak, but I'm strong and I'll rise above, even though for a man who is the president of the United States where is there to go? This trend is not surprising since the Bush presidency photographs had their subject illuminated by behind, and included even Clinton,perhaps less heroically, who as a Democratic centrist thought for Republicans by believing with Justice Ginsburg that it's a tough deal for "us" to pay for those without health insurance,economic disparity be damned, by seeing foreign aid as a good platform for future business opportunities, which in itself is not inherently bad, by trying to privatize social security but failing because it brought an unproar, and who as one of the richest presidents we have ever had (Kennedy being another; all self made) narrates how he like all those who know how to accrue capital was in debt at the end of the presidency. This did not impede an attempt to impeach him for sexual impropriety by a team of Republicans who, as a party, said absolutely nothing when the first President Bush had been discovered having an affair at the end of his presidency, why is anybody's guess since now both he and George Bush the second head a charity to bring aid to Haiti. He did much good as well; is working to help people with AIDS and to improve the living conditions of people in Africa, creating extra income that helps educate children. Perhaps if he had been more of a president with New Deal plans in times of less Republican opposition than today, more would have been done. But Hillary Clinton did have a plan for universal health care and that failed, criticized by car stickers as being socialist. So centrist it was, and centrist is what Barack Obama is, promising not to bow down to the right wing inspired individual mandate, then ceding, only to have the same conservatives claim it anti constitutional and universal healthcare an affront to American freedom. Same process in promising not to build the XL pipeline one day, then the next inaugurating its southern states construction. So with this whole new debacle involving the Free Speech rights being sustained by the ACLU for a political thought that sustains discrimination in its ideology, isn't it truly "bipartisan" if you coalesce further power to the presidency by legitimizing the Tea Party constitutionally while also scaring away Democrats from satirists with Darrell Issa? And allowing for the lives of marines to be endangered by a Californian Republican claiming that all marines think alike in a case involving the burning of the korans? And, as an aside, why do emails requesting set amounts to contribute to President Obama and not only vary in amount, seemingly depending on the income of the recipient? Isn't that too much information to have? And who else is doing what with that information, if it's so readily available, information which may amuse giggling social calvinists doing God's work by impoverishing the wretched, so as to have a repository of convenient help Columbus for one exploited, as long as it is not those directly involved, because the draw to get something for nothing until there's nothing left because it isn't you is a powerful lure from which no group has ever been exempt, and after all, isn't you builds the complicitness needed for exploitation. Interesting days, these. Things have been getting on my nerves. By coincidence, the day of the Supreme Court decision to body search, I was stared at by a cop in a bad mood as I ate my meal, this as he went back to his car not the same way he had taken in, for whatever reason. I'm sure he thought of mixing business with his own lunch break, as overdiligence allows. Crime, after all, lurks everywhere. I can't wait until they declare eating a hamburger by someone they don't like a felony, with the full blessing of the Supreme Court, who instead of being concerned with how universal health care will affect us the people, mostly asked questions on whether the expenses would be too elevated for the Health Insurance companies. It'll be a ground breaking decision, based on the one instance a man who flung his patty on the ground and stepped on it kidnapped and serially stabbed loaves of bread from supermarkets at a later date. And for that matter, when I was in the same general area where Occupy Wall Street took place, I was asked by a chatting stranger if I had been around "those parts", gesticulating toward the general direction of Zuccotti Park. The person seemed unconnected to them, vaguely unsympathetic, and the place I was in had nothing to do with Occupy, but there you have it. Never hurts to ask out of the blue. Or for that matter,lately everybody's in a state. I recently went to bookstores where the staff suddenly finds something to do in the area you're in, and shouts they're walking by, or looks at you with hostility, with you left wondering what exactly it is you did to elicit such a response besides browse, when other areas depleted of customers would beckon their restocking as mine would the courtesy of waiting until I moved on out of the way. This at the Barnes and Noble on 18th and Fifth, which also cut its return time in half of what it usually is: no longer 14 days, now seven.Tomorrow just about fifteen minutes. And at Saint Marks Bookstore.So I usually make their jobs easier for them and leave the store to allow them to cherish the customers they deserve.

RED BAITING. Those specialized in red baiting must have undergone one hell of a check on their capacity to harm with Gorbachev and Glasnost, the push for transparency by the Soviet Premier allowing them to save some face. But, to this day, even those who organize their extremism religiously cannot give up the ghost.

ASSBACKWARDS PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE. It is beyond all comprehension how one could claim to be upholding the constitution of a democracy and rule that just because one person stuffs a warehouse inlcuding tattoo needles up his ass the entire country should be punished by having their human rights violated by declaring strip searches constitutional. Besides which, it's an insult to anybody's intelligence not to think that there could be a better way to handle the question, in a world loaded with scanners and xray machinery.

NEO NAZIS are parading in Sanford, protesting that they experience a disadvantage to African Americans protesting about race, sadly unwilling to comprehend that in this country race supremacy of any kind is equally unconstitutional because their political thought tells them not to. What's implied is is that they consider our country racially inferior to them ,with all the privilege, torture and mass murder that implies.

In Italy there's a big brouhaha raised to try to modify a labor law that protects workers from being fired without just cause and orders those laid off to be rehired. The answer is no modification necessary, thank you very much.

AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION: " I was invited over to a dinner by an Italian woman who was fat. Her husband came downstairs, and he was fat too. Then her son, and so was he. They had a chihuahua and even it was fat." The only question being why someone would go through the grief of striking up a friendship with someone else she considered "Italian" and "fat".

MALDIVES COUP D' ETAT 2. Nasheed, the ousted democratically elected president, had developed a program to switch all of the country's energetic consumption to clean sources in twelve years. It would have been the first country in the world to do so.

DID YOU KNOW that you could legally file to have control over a woman or a man's for that matter "well-being" as well as her or his money? It's happening even to doll smushing Britney Spears. Her fiance is applying for the former, while her father already has the latter.

AVON, the door to door wholesomely feminine cosmetics company, is being investigated from bribing foreign officials.

"YOU'RE EITHER quick with your wits or quick on your toes." My grandfather, Francesco De Cristofaro

A TEA PARTY MARINE AND THE PRESIDENT. A Tea Party marine is facing a dishonorable discharge for superimposing the president's image on two film posters, one Jackass and the other The Incredibles, which he renamed The Horribles and for declaring he would not follow presidential orders if they were illegal, all this within the context of a debate on whether NATO forces should try US military personnel for having burned the Koran.Representative Duncan Hunter,Republican from California, an ex marine, says he knows that this (what? support for book burning? Support for constitutional rights?) is an opinion shared by most marines, even though he hasn't even taken the slightest poll, conducted even a superficial interview, and seems to have decided unilaterally that he can speak for all United States marines. Darrell Issa, other Republican, is in support of not dishonorably discharging the marine, for unknown reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union is concerned that this dismissal for the superimpositions limits free speech rights overall. What I don't understand is why the interest in turning this into a free speech issue for a thought so extreme as that of the tea partiers, who already support anticonstitutional positions like unionbusting for one, instead of investigating who supports the burning of the koran, or bookburnings in general, and determining whether the political ramifications of that though are constitutional, or support equality among all of us. For that matter, there's nothing anticonstitutional about interfaith, but plenty about religious extremisms, and faith is not what the burnings could be about anyway. Why the push to legitimize Tea Party speech, since Republicans are taking up the issue? Why have a Tea Party issue determine whether free speech should be limited or not?

COUP D'ETAT IN THE MALDIVES. In February 2012 the Vicepresident of the Maldivian Democratic Party Mohammed Waheed was part of a coup d'etat supported by forces loyal to Maymoon Abdul Gayoon, an anti-democratic former president who consolidated power for thirty years and was responsible for human rights violations, such as political arrests of opposition members, torture, including hanging people upside down and covering them with a substance that attracted ants, or exposing them to the elements. A man murdered by torture sparked the democratic revolution which led to the presidency of Mohamed Nasheed, who had been imprisoned twenty times by Gayoom and tortured twice. Nasheed ran against Gayoom and his political system for democracy,is a pacifist who quotes Gandhi as saying that an eye for an eye only creates more blind and was also instrumental in securing commitment to reducing emissions at the Copenhagen conference, since the Maldivians stand to die from the consequences of global warming. He also stated that he was forced to leave the presidency at gunpoint and risks his life returning to the Maldives. Waheed, who was recognized almost instantaneously by the United States as the new president, already appointed Gayoom sustainers to posts in the government, including Gayooms' daughter to the cabinet,and claims this is "unity" by teargassing Nasheed supporters. He has also stated that Nasheed resigned willfully and without pressure and promised to appoint a commission to sustain just that.

Isn't it outrageous to seek complete impunity by mentioning what mostly fascist sympathizers culturally built up as war crimes against ethnicities at a confence on the Holocaust?

Doesn't all this mentioning of communism and socialism by the extreme right make people curious about what exactly it is in them that threatens those who would like nothing more than to prevaricate violently on others until there's nothing left?

What I don't understand is how the cost of health care for those without health insurance coverage is reflected in higher health insurance premiums, since it's a governmental expense.

What the Supreme Court did 5 to 4 in deciding that body searches are allowed even in the case of a minor violation is erode our constitutional protection against the reality of false arrests and unethical police officers.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: GIOVANNI PALATUCCI AS RIGHTEOUS AT CENTRO PRIMO LEVI AND NYU'S CASA ITALIANA ZERILLI MARIMO'. The main point seemed to elaborate a new strategy in the representation of a man who is documented as having saved one Jewish woman from nazifascist persecution,may or may have not saved at least a ship of refugees, while claims to his having saved 5,000 were mostly unpheld without substantiation by several cross the board organizations, from the Italian police, the Jewish Anti Defamation League and the Catholic church. This could be understood as a post war necessity, since US foreign policy at the time unconstitutionally and mistakenly did not support a denazification of Italy, and integrated many fascists through the Catholic church, which was the favored power organization to organize Italy by, rather than favor the more democratically inclined partisans, of whom Primo Levi was one. The lugar of the conference was telling and usual: the Casa Italiana, an institution founded by an aristocratic Italian donor, has been following the shifting sands of twenty year old Mussolini lauding Berlusconi politicking that seems resistant to its very demise: the Casa has in fact recently held an exhibition on poet Gabriele D' Annunzio, a fascist inspiration to many and this event has also been a veritable balancing act trying to make democracy and fascism compatible bed partners, much as naziism and communism have come to be portrayed as being structurally similar. In a world of unconstitutional extremisms wanting and paying for their place in the sun, the person who stuffs most his or her pockets agrees with them all. That organizational strategy was important was reiterated by the welcoming staff at the Casa, who asked me if I was part of an organization. When I replied I wasn't, I was relegated to the last two rows of seats in an entire small auditorium. Also, all questions were answered but mine, and most questions were non controversial with the presentation. As the stage was being set after the beginning time, two maidens carried a small side table and a pitcher of water on the premises. For that matter the Director of the Primo Levi Center saw it as her responsibility to fill two glasses of water for the guest speakers, who could have done so themselves.One question by Casa Italiana Director Stefano Albertini, who is conscious of the power inherent in being filmed by the Italian National Television, and whoever controls it politically for the season, asked if a member of the Nazifascist state of Salo', created as an alternative to Italian government in Italy to sustain the Nazi invasion after Mussolini fell from power could be considered righteous. This follows the current center rightist support for a law wanting to give pension benefits to those who participated in this anti government government, which was also responsible for war crimes and deportations to concentration camps as governmental policy. The Centro Primo Levi had a hard time of it: the moderator Alessandro Cassin posited Palatucci both as a fascist hero, hero intended as nation builder (last I checked, Italy was a democracy) and a savior of Jews. The Consul General of Italy, Natalia Quintavalle, brought up the usual even communists are responsible for warcrimes by mentioning the foiba executions, an ethnically cleansing crime that occurred in Yugoslavia after the fascist, who had slaughtered thousand for not being fascists, lost.It is currently being represented as a communist crime. What this had to do with Palatucci is uncertain, except for the geographical proximity of the crimes, but in that whole debacle all mention of the Chetnicks was lost, a pro Serbian monarchic group fighting at the time by ethnically cleansing all non Serbians from Serbian soil, while Tito's communist partisans fought to unite ethnicities.Another historian, Marco Coslovich, who has reservations as to the authenticity of Italian commitment to the day of memory and other celebrations of opposition to the holocaust, posited a Mussolini who let sail ships with Jewish refugees as being simpathetic to the plight of Jews, twice. He then proceeded to tell us that Mussolini did so because he found the situation an embarassment. I'd think at the time he couldn't get out of it, since he deported with confidence later. Coslovich also is mentioned in the program as a scholar of what he calls some concentration systems not as deathly in Italy as in Germany,with the exception of San Sabba and concentration systems existing both in Nazi Germany and Communist Yugoslavia. Palatucci, while the moderator speculated he could not join the Jugoslavian partisans because they were communists (part of the allied forces then) was sent to Dachau for contacting the British allied forces. There also was a mention of allied bombing in Southern Italy by the area of an interment camp for Jews, no specifics offered. The Catholic hurch is intent on canonizing Palatucci, even though nothing is known about his religious commitment.

Pension funds have turned to riskier investments with considerably higher fees, such as real estate, hedgefunds and private equity, but the interest collected is still way beneath what is needed for the funds. Some investments yielded higher interests for a longer period, as expected, but that still does not take into account the time the interest was lower.

MILITIAS AND THE JUDICIAL. Federal District Court Judge Victoria A. Roberts ruled that evidence collected by the FBI that led to the arrest of seven Hutaree militia members that were planning on killing a police officer, and then sniping away at funeral attendees was circumstantial since no one was killed, and aquitted them.

E.P.A. and emissions. The Environmental Protection Agency set a new rule limiting carbon dioxide emissions to 1,000 pounds per megawatt hour, which is easily reached by new natural gas powered plants. The thing is that the rule applies only to newly built plants which are gas powered, not the old coal burning plants. Should one feel inclined to build more coal fueled plants there's a thirty year time frame to reach the emissions goal, since lack of technology to make that possible now may suddenly change.

Al Jazeera's decision not to publish the videotapes of the murders of seven people in France was based on internal logic. They stated:" We don't aspire to be politically correct; we aspire to be editorially correct."

NEW ELECTION LAWS. In Florida new election laws require registration forms to be turned in within 48 hours, if not groups face fines. The law was a Republican project meant to avoid gluts and has already caused lesser voter registration.

The new JOBS bill would have allowed new businesses to issue stock without listing the names of those involved in running the company. Senate Democrats made the listing possible.