Friday Reads
Posted: July 13, 2012 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: Dinosaur Sex, George Zimmerman, Jerry Sandusky, Native American migrations, Paul Krugman, pedophile, race baiting, Rush Limbaugh 28 Comments
Good Morning!
There are so many headlines flying about at the moment of interest that it’s hard to pick just a few this morning. Let’s start with some big ones that won’t go away.
A 267 page internal investigation of pedophile Jerry Sandusky shows that every knew and they all concealed the horrible crimes. Gawker sums up the shameful findings.
If you don’t have time to review the full 267-page internal investigationof the Penn State scandal, here’s the gist: Everyone knew. Former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno knew. Former Penn State University president Graham Spanier knew. Former Penn State University vice president Gary Schultz knew. Penn State Athletic Director (currently on leave) Tim Curley knew. Everyone knew. As far back as 1998, when they learned of a criminal investigation of Sandusky related to an instance of suspected sexual misconduct with a boy in a PSU football locker room shower.
Here’s a paragraph from investigator Louis Freeh’s remarks sent out alongside his report that damns “the most powerful leaders at Penn State University” quite succinctly:
“Taking into account the available witness statements and evidence, it is more reasonable to conclude that, in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity, the most powerful leaders at Penn State University – Messrs. Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley – repeatedly concealed critical facts relating to Sandusky’s child abuse from the authorities, the Board of Trustees, Penn State community, and the public at large. Although concern to treat the child abuser humanely was expressly stated, no such sentiments were ever expressed by them for Sandusky’s victims.”
It’s really hard to put together the words that describe exactly how disgusted I am by this statement. That last sentence just is shameful. This sums up just about everything there is to say about how people in power with an agenda will behave when their interests are placed above everything else.
You wouldn’t know about the complete meltdown over Mitt Shady in the MSM and everyplace else if you hang out in right blogosphere or listen to Rush Limbaugh. It’s a wonderful day for race-baiting! They’re stuck on the NAACP Romney appearance and appear oblivious to the continued uncovering of Romney’s lies to every one including two federal agencies. Nope. Rush just turns up the volume and hate. Here’s more on that from MoJo.
“Obama’s the Preezy,” Limbaugh told his listeners Wednesday, (get it? Cuz that’s how black people talk). “He’s confident they’ll boo Romney, simply ’cause Romney’s white. He’s confident of that.” I’m sure Limbaugh will have an impressive rationalization for why Vice President Joe Biden was so well received by the NAACP convention Thursday. This is, put simply, the dumbest thing Limbaugh has said since the time the 61-year old radio host revealed he didn’t know how birth control works.
Romney has now said he “expected” to get booed, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi accused Romney of wanting to get booed in order to make himself look politically brave. Like Limbaugh’s ridiculous comment, Romney and Pelosi’s statements are unfair to the NAACP. There has only been one black president of the United States in history, and Mitt Romney is not the first white presidential candidate to address the NAACP. When Ross Perot (!) adressed the convention in 1992, press accounts don’t describe any boos despite Perot referring to the audience as “you people.” Then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was well received. Former Republican Senator Bob Dole (R-Kan.) declined to speak, saying he wanted to talk to audiences he “could relate to.”Both Al Gore and George W. Bush addressed the convention in 2000, and neither were booed.
There are only two instances in the past thirty years or so in which a “white guy” of comparable status to Romney getting booed at an NAACP convention. Following his appearance in 2000, George W. Bush snubbed the NAACP for years as president, but when he finally did speak in 2006, he was booed when he brought up charter schools and the war in Iraq. Prior to that, you have to go back about twenty years of white guys not getting booed to 1983, when then-Vice President George H.W. Bush was booed because of his defense of the Reagan administration’s civil rights record. Even then, ABC News describes him as being “well received” when he returned as a presidential candidate in 1988.
Here’s something interesting from Paul Krugman quoted at Politico: “I miss Bush’s ‘honesty’.”
The “radicalized” GOP has gone so far off the deep end, according to Paul Krugman, that it has the New York Times columnist wishing for the days of George W. Bush.
Only one side’s to blame for our “nightmarishly dysfunctional political situation,” he tells Business Insider.
“It’s entirely one-sided,” Krugman said. “That’s one of those things, you know, the centrists — you want to be a centrist, and you want to blame both sides, and it’s one of those almost hilarious things because you see it again and again, the pundits who say, ‘Here’s what President Obama should do, he should reach out across the divide and propose some short-term stimulus but long-term spending cuts to balance the budget, and you say, ‘He’s actually proposed that.’”
“We have a radicalized, off-the-deep end Republican Party,” the Nobel Prize–winning economist added.
Krugman puts the GOP’s latest presidential candidate in that category.
“I find myself now, watching Mitt Romney campaign, I find myself wishing for the honesty of George W. Bush,” he said.
The FBI has released its report on George Zimmerman–shooter of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin–and has determined there is no evidence of racism present. CSM reports on the findings.
After interviewing 30 people familiar with George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain charged with killing African-American teenager Trayvon Martin, FBI agents found no evidence that the shooting was driven by racial bias or animus.
Before Thursday’s release of a Department of Justice report, both sides have argued over whether smatterings of racially charged testimony should be released to the public before the trial – in particular, the testimony of “Witness 9,” whom state prosecutors say has described an “act” by Mr. Zimmerman that suggests “he had a bias toward black people.”
The report released Thursday made clear that the FBI found no one willing to go on the record as saying Zimmerman is racist. Even one of the most skeptical local investigators with the Sanford, Fla., police department, Chris Serino, suggested to the FBI that Zimmerman followed Trayvon “based on his attire,” not “skin color,” and added that he thought Zimmerman had a “little hero complex,” but is not racist, according to the Orlando Sentinel, which obtained copies of the document.
Prosecutors say Zimmerman profiled Trayvon as a criminal (though the teen was doing nothing wrong), followed him, confronted him, and then killed him after a brief scuffle. Zimmerman says he shot Trayvon in self-defense after the teen jumped him, knocked him down, and bashed his head against a sidewalk. The case caused a national uproar over racial profiling and gun laws after local police originally declined to charge Zimmerman. Forty-four days after the shooting, a special state prosecutor charged Zimmerman with second-degree murder.
The report outlines how FBI agents asked each person interviewed whether Zimmerman “displayed any bias, prejudice or irrational attitude against any class of citizen, religious, racial, gender or ethnic groups.” No one said he had.
More information is available at the paper’s website.
I want to add a few interesting links since this is Friday! First, the CSM reviews DNA evidence that shows that indigenous Americans came to this side of the world in at least three waves.
Supporting a controversial view of how humans might have populated the Western Hemisphere, geneticists have found that groups from Asia traveled over the Bering Strait into North America in at least three separate migrations beginning more than 15,000 years ago — not in a single wave, as has been widely thought.
“We have various lines of evidence that there was more than one migration,” said Dr. Andres Ruiz-Linares, a professor of human genetics at University College London and senior author of a report on the findings that was published Wednesday by the journal Nature.The discovery was made possible by the sheer volume of genetic material the team was able to assemble and analyze, he said.
Ruiz-Linares and colleagues around the world analyzed DNA samples, primarily from blood, taken from hundreds of modern-day Native Americans and other indigenous people representing 52 distinct populations. These included Inuits of east and west Greenland, Canadian groups including the Algonquin and the Ojibwa, and a larger variety of people spanning the southern regions of the Americas from Mexico to Peru.
Investigating patterns in more than 350,000 gene variants, the scientists determined that most of the groups they studied did indeed descend from an original “First American” population.
One last link! Ever wonder how dinosaurs had sex? Here’s some information on T-Rex’s Sex Life from the Daily Mail. There’s even some paintings that depict the act. Consider this!
Scientific illustrators have also attempted to capture the intriguing rituals of the huge beasts – including an illustrator who worked with Dr Halstead on a magazine article in 1988.
The physical challenges involved must have been formidable.
The penis of a tyrannosaur is estimated to be around 12 feet long.
Kristi Curry Rogers, Assistant Professor of Biology and Geology at Macalester College in Minnesota, told the Discovery Channel.
‘The most likely position to have intercourse is for the male behind the female, and on top of her, and from behind, any other position is unfathomable.’
So, that’s my offerings today! That should get us started! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
The Penn State situation is just disgusting. The school is going to be known for this going forward. Who would want to go there? They even have a statue of Joe Paterno on the campus.
They should be made to leave the statue up with some kind of apology to the victims of Paterno’s bad faith with humanity. The statue should be covered with things–including a fundraising bucket–to help the victims of pedophiles. It should read “This is what an enabler to child rape looks like …”
Ezra Klein: The world desperately wants to loan us money. Sales of treasuries are at a record high. So much for the downgrading of the U.S. credit rating.
The reek of corruption coming off Penn State is overwhelming. The containment of criminal activity on behalf of a football team and the legacy of Joe Paterno should lead to stripping that institution of its athletic involvement for a long time. Because this is what it was all about: protecting the money machine and elevating Paterno to the heights of glory when it is now quite clear that he lacked any integrity or conscience.
We are so accustomed to being fed lie after lie by from financiers, political figures, religious institutions, and a compliant press that we no longer know what to believe.
It wasn’t just that Penn State turned a blind eye to one allegation, they allowed this man to run loose for decades which makes it all the more devastating. The number of victims will never be known since he had unlimited access to young boys and no one in authority seemed to care. No different than the Catholic Church who did the same.
Those who covered for Sandusky should be frog marched out the front door of Penn State and taken directly to the closest jail and Paterno’s statue taken down since they are as equally guilty of enabling this pervert to carry out his atrocities.
There is no excuse for any of this beyond money, money, money.
They definitely should be suspended from the NCAA for at least a year. And for heaven’s sake, take down the statue!
Hear, hear!
Growing Republican Chorus Pushes Romney To Release Tax Returns
Yeah
… i am sure he has window dressed those… He needs to release about 10 -15 years worth.
“If there’s nothing there, there’s no ‘there’ there, don’t create a there,’” Steele said.
A DC police officer has been put on administrative duty after he was overheard saying he would shoot Michelle Obama then used his phone to show a photo of the weapon he would use.
Is there a “stand your ground” policy in DC too?
He didn’t approve of her “war on obesity” and decided to take her out.
Charming.
Remember, as Pierce says, “it’s never about race”.
I just would not give George Bush any credit. Either he was imcompetent or corrupt and probably both. History will not treat George Bush II very well.
I think Obama’s biggest problem is he does not have many middle of the road people who want to stand up for him and the irrational Republicans seem to be adroit in attacking him. A friend of mine is speculating that the election will be determined by last minute issues. Remember the Johnson nuclear bomb add against with the little girl picing daisy petals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63h_v6uf0Ao. Obama did a massive opposition research program with Sara Palin. How did Romney think that would not happen to him.
This was Romney’s second run for POTUS. He was probably relaxed enough to think that he had already been vetted and that whatever he chose to reveal now was enough.
I think too that he is counting on the visceral hatred of Obama to carry him across the finish line. The outrage against Obama from the emergence of the Tea Party nutjobs in 2010 was something he is actively counting on to propel him into the WH.
Obama may not be “all that and a bag of chips” but Romney is just an awful candidate altogether yet there are those out there who are willing to cast their vote for him based on nothing more than “he is not Obama”. They are even willing to return to those dastardly days of yesteryear when the Bush/Cheney policies brought us to the brink in order to prove their point.
I can sit here and see a man severely devoid of character, truth, and integrity but there are those who are willing to set that aside just to “get even” with Obama.
This is how this election will be decided. Not on the merits, the issues, or who has more money to spend. It will be based on how much hatred is out there against Obama that will determine the winner.
You can’t find a much more despicable candidate than Mitt Romney but the hatred against Obama, real or imagined, will be the determining factor in November.
That may be true but is more than passing strange, since Obama is one of the more middle of the road presidents I can remember. In fact, it may be downright nuts.
ralph, the race issue is almost palpable these days.
I bet money that away from the spotlight many refer to Obama by using the “n” word. I am just surprised that it hasn’t slipped out of someone’s mouth up to now. It has come close but is still dangling close to the surface.
“Kenyan born” is close but the underlying objective to paint him as “other” is the primary reason in calling attention to “he isn’t one of us”.
And we have yet to see one member of the GOP stand up and decry these statements. They are perfectly content to let it seap into the dialogue without reverting to the use of that dreadful word in describing their outright hatred of him.
Pat, I agree there is definitely a subset of people that fit in that mold and it may be larger than I’m willing to admit. No matter how many people say no, I still think the tea party fits it very well.
Then there’s a smaller group that just can’t put away that puma stuff so they don’t see the forest for the trees. I gotta admit that I don’t understand either group and it bothers me. I keep expecting to hear again about the “Whitey tape” 😉
TPM: After 2002 testimony surfaces, Romney campaign refuses to deny Romney attended Bain meetings or had contact with Bain post-1999.
They’d better figure out some affirmative arguments pretty soon.
There may not be any affirmative arguments that could fly. That’s a heck of a problem now.
This is interesting from Brian Beutler: Romney’s Big Tax Return Tell.
And if Republicans think the returns would look bad to voters, that does mean really and truly bad.
More new findings about the first people to migrate to North American across the Siberian landbridge:
If anyone hasn’t seen a picture of the elegantly-crafted Clovis points, here’s a good one.
Very interesting!
Can’t you just hear the complaints from certain people about wasting taxpayer money on non-corporate do-goodish projects?
Patient Cured of HIV Provides Hope for Researchers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71tGyZtAd60
Listen to Mitt speak, listen to his views. Listen to Obama speak, listen to his views. Make your own mind up – don’t vote because the media says. Vote with your head.
Exactly why I’d never vote for Romney under ANY circumstances. And which views? The ones when he was running for governor or the ones now?