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NFL to pay $765 million to 4500+ players and widows for brain damage from hits

Democracy Now! included an ABC news report on the suicide in 2011 of former Chicago Bear and Notre Dame safety Dave Duerson:

CHRIS NOWINSKI: Football players are at a very high risk because they take, studies show, about a thousand hits to the head, each fall some—you know, at least 20 Gs, which is like a small car crash. So, essentially, your brain actually starts falling apart. Ten or 20 years later, you start getting symptoms like memory problems and emotional problems, and they eventually lead to dementia.

From Amy Goodman's report (transcript at Democracy Now!):

     JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And could you tell us about some of the most damning evidence compiled in the lawsuit that prompted the NFL to decide to settle, especially the role of a doctor who was in the lawsuit, named repeatedly, Dr. Elliot Pellman?
     BILL LITTLEFIELD: Yeah. Well, happily, Juan, a lot of that evidence is going to come out, even though there won’t be a trial, because there’s a book coming out very soon and a Frontline documentary called League of Denial, in which Dr. Pellman is featured. The charge against him, basically, is that, first of all, he was in charge of the concussion committee for the National Football League, and he had no particular specialty in neurology. He’s a rheumatologist. So, why he was even in that position has been brought into question. He was also the sideline physician, the team doctor for the New York Jets, and numbers of members of the Jets have said that they suffered concussions during games, Dr. Pellman looked at them, asked them a couple of questions, and then sent them back into the game. And for years, before this settlement, Dr. Pellman had been saying that there was no evidence at all that suffering multiple concussions would lead to any problems, brain problems, down the line.

Flashback: the Pointer Sisters' Jump

Oddly AKSARBENT had never seen the video for this hit until today. The 15 seconds between :50 and 1:05 contain some of the sexiest editing ever done for a music video — actually more erotic than some porn, without being at all indecent. Ah, the power of expertly-executed suggestion: less is more and a lesson to Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke.

Jean Stothert's less-than-zero credibility vs. reality

Here was Jean Stothert's spin during her March, 2012 rant against the eventual passage of Omaha's LGBT antibias legislation, on account of her opinion that it was unnecessary:

One female pastor testified last week that she become open with her sexual orientation after two years in Omaha — something that she stated could not be done for 36 years in Kentucky.

     Here's the reality: today, Kentucky's capitol, Frankfort, become the fifth community in the state (along with Louisville, Lexington, Covington and tiny Vicco) to pass an ordinance protecting LGBTs.
     Nebraska has only one such community.
     By the way, Vicco has a gay mayor (see video below.) Now that's an idea.

 

Here's a much better ad for insurance than those ubiquitous, relentless and crummy Berkshire-Hathaway GEICO spots

See John Lewis' ad here.

Via copyranter, who opined:

"...this spot for John Lewis home insurance actually, you know, SELLS INSURANCE.
     Because frankly, this whole “let’s get ha-ha about insurance” ad movement (I’m looking at you, AllState “Mayhem”) that Geico helped jumpstart is just getting so fucking tiresome."

     AKSARBENT thinks copyranter is wrong about Allstate, right about GEICO, the ATM for Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett's gargantuan holding company, Berkshire-Hathaway.
     How pathetic that GEICO, one of the largest insurance companies in the world, was totally outclassed by an ad for the insurance subsidiary of a British department store.

Putin moves part of Russian Navy toward Syria

Russian prosecutors cover their faces during raid of gay activist's home

(Via JoeMyGod)

Gay teen who won top 2012 Intel Science prize is working on a new project

Andraka accepting the $75,000 top prize at 2012's ISEF
(the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair)

Before he was old enough to drive, Jack Andraka developed detection tool for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancer that:

"costs 3 cents and takes five minutes to run. It's 168-times faster, over 26,000-times less expensive, and over 400-times more sensitive than our current methods of diagnosis. But it can also detect cancer in the earliest stage, when someone has close to a 100 percent chance of survival. It has extremely high accuracy, being over 90 percent accurate."

     See video of Andraka accepting his prize in this previous AKSARBENT post.
     If Andraka, who is gay, were to retire before he is old enough to legally drink in a bar (possible, given that he owns the international patent for the above device) he would have contributed more to society than Brian Brown, Maggie Gallagher, Phyllis Schlafly, Scott Lively, Brian Fischer, Pat Robertson and the rest of the the antigay-for-pay industry will have in the entirety of their destructive lives. If they were honest, forthright people, this would probably cause them to loose sleep, but AKSARBENT suspects that they sleep very well.
    Andraka is now working with other promising teen scientists and engineers to develop a smartphone-sized user friendly device to diagnose 15 conditions in pursuit of the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize. Read more at MetroWeekly.

#dumpcoke Not just Russian vodka: Queer Nation pours Coke into Times Square gutters to protest company's 'marquee sponsorship' of DADT Sochi Olympics

McDonalds, marquee sponsor of DADT Sochi Olympics, sued a 5-year-old and banned her from its restaurants after she appeared in a Burger King ad

And the small actress was Sarah Michelle Gellar. As Buzzfeed concluded, don't mess with Ronald McDonald.

Video: Gay comic and ex-NSA employee Wanda Sykes wants Edward Snowden to 'rot' in jail for disclosures of surveillance abuse of Americans

Ex-NSA employee/comic Wanda Sykes on expectations of privacy by U.S. citizens:
'How arrogant are you to think that your conversations are that important?'



NSA alumna Sykes had a lot to say about privacy

It just drives me nuts that people are all "Oh, the government's listening to my stuff." Well then get the hell off Facebook then... Oh, my privacy! Oh, my privacy! Get the hell out of here with that crap...
and about Edward Snowden
"They should get him back here, try him, and he rots in jail."
Sykes was offended that people confuse contracters like Snowden (who dropped out of high school, then got a G.E.D.) with NSA employees like the one she used to be, noting pointedly that she herself has a "college degree," which AKSARBENT supposes distinguishes Sykes from such lower class, intellectually inferior high school dropouts like Kodak founder George Eastman, directors Peter Jackson and Quentin Tarantino, writer George Bernard Shaw, Wendy's founder Dave Thomas, and fellow comedian Richard Pryor, not to mention ABC news anchor Peter Jennings.
     Speaking of ABC News, it reported in 2008 that NSA intercept operators in Ft. Gordon, Georgia, passed around phone sex conversations of soldiers and officers with their wives and girl friends.
     But AKSARBENT is sure that they were all college graduates, and not G.E.D. temps.
     Just like Wanda Sykes!

A few YouTube comments posted in response to the above video:

reelreeler
hmmm......you're a funny comedian Wanda, but having the 4th amendment shit on ain't funny, and now you seem just like another government thug talking.
Daniel P
Wow, I thought you were cool Sykes...
MegaSayitlikeitis
For the first time, I don't agree with Wanda.

The NSA has also spied on anti-Vietnam war activists and, during the Iraq war, to have spied on the those who thought we shouldn’t invade Iraq for no reason.

#NSApickupLines — 'I'd tap that'; 'You look way prettier in person than through your webcam'

There's another twitter hashtag mocking the NSA's abuse of America's privacy: #NSAlovepoems. Evidently the habit of surveilling exes is common enough at the agency that they have an gook term for it: loveint, for love intelligence. NPR covered this. So did CNN:

Brother Outsider - the Life of Bayard Rustin, March on Washington organizer

We saw this streamed on Netflix. Rustin, who organized the March on Washington for MLK, and whose homosexuality was exploited by white racists and black rivals, was a remarkable personality.

Team Robertson still trying to chase down a horse which left the barn days ago

Neb. Sen. Deb Fischer gets an environmental award!

Coke issues a press release after Queer Nation rips it for appeasing the intimidation of gay athletes and Russian citizens

Also: How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport's racist coverage of 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'; Sportswriter Frank Deford: Send U.S. athletes to Sochi but keep USOC officials at home  

Coke's response included bullet points like this:

Our Global Supplier Diversity team participates in outreach events such as the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) Awards Dinner, the NGLCC Business and Leadership Conference, and the Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce Corporate Sponsors Reception.

     Queer Nation (whose action today in NYC's Times Square was documented here) responded with the graphic at left.
     In its press release, Coke reminded readers that it has been an Olympic Sponsor since 1928. What it did not mention specifically was its cold-blooded support of Hitler's 1936 Nazi Olympic showcase and the fact that it placed ads for Coca Cola in Hitler Youth publications.

AKSARBENT is speechless

We don't much like the mayor now and didn't like her ham-fisted opposition to LGBT equality initiatives when she was on the city council (see our video below) but we never would have thought of this...

1963 March on Washington: Bob Dylan and Joan Baez

Frank Deford on Sochi LGBT controversy: send U.S. athletes to Russia, keep U.S. Olympic officials at home

Also: How Sochi officials will break gay "propaganda" law each time they play U.S. national anthem during a medal ceremony; Sovietsky Sport's racist coverage of 2013 IAAF win of Russian women's 4x400 relay team over U.S. team: 'our fair-skinned girls massively beat the black-skinned ones'

Today's installment of Sweetness and Light, sportswriter Frank Deford's commentary aired by NPR, will be available later today at 9 am EST. Here's an excerpt from the piece, entitled How About A Gold Medal For Human Rights For Gay People?

---

     It was the IOC that got us into this mess, lying down with fleas. Has the outgoing IOC president, a cipher named Jacques Rogge, stuck his neck out? There are six men running to succeed him, including Thomas Bach of Germany, the odds-on favorite. Only one has had the guts to speak out for gay rights: Richard Carrion of Puerto Rico.
     If there was any courage or decency in what is so smugly called the Olympic movement, there is one noble way to handle this. Simple: every country which opposes Russia's ugly anti-gay laws should refuse to send its officials to the Games in Socchi.
     Oh, the Games will go on, all the athletes will be there to compete. NBC will still get its ratings. Big Macs will still roll over the counter. Everybody outside Russia will enjoy the Games, but Vladimir Putin and his thuggish cronies will be sitting alone, shamed, rejected by the decent nations of the world. And thereby will one more gold medal be visible for all to see: the one for human rights for gay people.
     Would our USOC have the guts to lead that way? Well, I'll drink to that dream. A double Stoli, with tonic and a lime, if you please.

---

'64 Impala for sale. White, 2dr HT. 327 V8. Manual. AM-only radio. Miles: 4

For years, Ray Lambrecht, of Lambrecht Chevy in Pierce, NE, put all of his unsold new cars into storage at the end of each model year. Now 50 of them will be sold, along with 400 trade-ins. Most of the cars have been sitting in a field for years to decades, but the ones left inside are in pretty good shape.

Although the auction isn't for 31 days, the Impala is already up to $15,250 as of this writing. The car's sticker price (still on the window) is $3,254.70.

NE Gov. Heineman, through spokesman, blames state's antigay adoption policy on memo by 1995 HHS director, though he recently refused gay couple a waiver

Nebraska GOP Gov. Dave Heineman, pictured with a weasel.
Heineman is on the right.

Tuesday, the ACLU and ACLU of Nebraska sued on behalf of Joel Busch and Todd Vesely and two other gay couples in Lancaster County District Court over Nebraska's policy ban on gays becoming foster parents, a policy it shares with only one other state — Utah.

Jen Rae Wang

     Ever faithful to his habit of stabbing gay Nebraskans in the back without leaving any fingerprints, the state's GOP Governor, Dave Heineman, hid behind the skirt of his disinformation director, Jen Rae Wang, who saved him the humiliation of once again attempting to blame somebody else by doing it for him.
     Wang attributed the policy to a 1995 memo by an unnamed HHS director in Democratic Governor Ben Nelson's administration, even though Heineman has had the power to reverse the unjust policy for close to a decade.
     Instead, Heineman recently turned down a waiver for Busch and Vesely.

Dave Bydalek of Family First of Nebraska

     KETV's always-excellent Andrew Ozaki (who could probably explain quantum mechanics in a 2-minute segment if he had to) reported the story for KETV.
      Dave Bydalek, of Family First of Nebraska, who recently tried to sell the discredited Regnerus Study to the Unicameral's Judiciary Committee and was properly dismissed by Brad Ashford, weighed in: "Cohabitating couples provide a less stable home for kids in a foster care environment."
     Then he pretended to be even-handed and not a toxic antigay-for-pay bigot by adding: "So it doesn't matter if it's a same sex couple or a cohabitating heterosexual couple."
     Reporter Ozaki then stated the obvious: "But Nebraska doesn't recognize same-sex marriages or unions — even from other states. The always-precise Ozaki probably said "unions" rather than "civil unions" because Nebraska refuses to recognize either civil unions or domestic partnerships, much less same-sex marriage.

     Reliably homophobic Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning, who once compared gay marriage to a man marrying a chair, said he would "vigorously" defend the state.

Koch Carbon's petcoke whac-a-mole game; dusty, uncovered toxic pile moved from Detroit to Toledo

The reckless storage of Koch Carbon's mounds of toxic petcoke was ended in Detroit when authorities threatened to padlock the facility unless something was done. Now OccupyCleveland claims to have spotted the stuff moved to similarly uncovered piles in Toledo, Ohio.
     Koch family members fund ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which has legislative puppets introduce "model" legislation favorable to corporations in state legislatures and Americans For Prosperity, a teabagger astroturf front. In Nebraska, ALEC counts gubernatorial candidate Charlie Janssen among its boosters, though Janssen tried to mislead KMTV about his ALEC ties, and Americans For Prosperity, a pro-Keystone XL pipeline group in Nebraska headed by Brad Stevens.

ACLU files suit on behalf of three Nebraska couples against state ban on gay foster parents

From James Esseks, Director, ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & AIDS Project:

Greg and Stillman Stewart have a knack for nurturing children with serious needs. The two men have been together for over 30 years and are parents to five children that they adopted out of the California foster care system. Most of the kids came to them after suffering years of abuse and multiple foster home placements. When one of their children first came to live with them, at five years old, he was still in diapers, didn't know how to use utensils, and suffered from severe speech impediments. By 17, he brought home a report card with all As and one B. Another child, who had been through 17 foster home placements and three failed adoptions in three different states, is now a college sophomore.
      The whole family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska in 2011, when Greg, a United Church of Christ minister, took a position at First-Plymouth Congregational Church there. As their kids have grown and some have moved out of the house (their youngest is 13, their oldest 20), Greg and Stillman realized they wanted to open their home to more children in need. When they applied for a foster parent license in Nebraska, however, they were turned away because they're gay men.
     Nebraska bars gay people from being foster parents and also bars any unmarried couple that lives together from being foster parents. Since Nebraska screens all foster care applicants by doing a home study, checking for criminal history or past child abuse, reviewing medical and mental health records, and evaluating the family's stability and ability to care for children, this ban simply means that Nebraska is kicking out lesbians and gay men who would pass the regular foster parent screening. And it's depriving kids in the Nebraska foster care system (there are 3,854 children in that system now, 48 percent of whom have been there for more than a year) of what could be just the home they need. After all, there aren't many foster parent applicants with a record like Greg and Stillman's.
     Today the ACLU filed a constitutional challenge, on behalf of three couples to Nebraska's ban on foster parenting by gay people...

Read more on ACLU's blog. (Via OUTLinc.org)

Transphobia: what's worse, Fox News or Public Radio? AKSARBENT reports, you decide

Koch Carbon ordered to move huge pile of toxic pet coke blowing into Detroit homes

Viral Breaking Bad video parody: Hank and Marie, stupified, watch Miley Cyrus

Also: best Breaking Bad gag reel: Mr. White lectures Jesse with a dildo; later they make out



Here's the original scene.

Donald Trump throws up a site defending his "university" but the copy is a few sandwiches short of a picnic

Donald Trump has set up a web site excoriating New York State's Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who is suing Trump for $40 million, claiming that "Trump University" is a bait-and-switch scam.
      But the copy in Trump's site seems to be a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Shouldn't a published defense of its practices by a "university" be letter perfect?
     We've highlighted two obvious blunders (in a single paragraph) in red.

But don’t just take our word for it, see for yourself.  Unlike reading a newspaper article, here you can find all of the evidence to substantiate the facts: more than 10,000 handwritten surveys [images of the more than 10,000 handwritten survey's are nowhere on the site] filled out by former Trump University [students? PR reps? What?] showing a 98% approval rating, video of former Trump University students, including Tarla Makaeff, who despite stating on video that “I thought today was great.  All of the speakers were really good”, is now the named plaintiff in a class action lawsuit in California demanding a refund, and news articles documenting Eric Schneiderman’s abuse and misuse of the New York Attorney General’s Office for his own political gain. 

Atlantic: When will solar get cheap enough for everyone to use?

Link to The Atlantic here.

Breaking Bad: evil genius Walter White turns tables on DEA bro-in-law with twisted 'confession'

Also: best Breaking Bad gag reel: Mr. White lectures Jesse with a dildo; later they make out

This probably won't be on YouTube long... AKSARBENT laughed its head off. Outrageous.