PostíMollyringwald commemorative: Snooki / Snooki is pregnant / Apocalypse is nigh / la vie Jersey / put your makeup on fix your hair up pretty & meet me tonite in atlantic city

Click on stamp to enlarge maybe

click HERE for ethereal cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Atlantic City" by The Band




Reality TV World
(self-explanatory website)
Wednesday 29 February 2012

Snooki reportedly actually
pregnant and expecting
despite denials

by Reality TV World staff

Snooki is reportedly expecting a more pint-sized version of herself despite her prior denials. While she denied it earlier this month, Jersey Shore star Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi is "indeed pregnant" and expecting her first child with boyfriend Jionni LaValle, the New York Post reported Wednesday.

According to the Post, Snooki, who is about three months along, hopes "to bankroll her mommy-to-be status into becoming 'the next Kourtney Kardashian'" and has already landed a deal to announce her pregnancy on the cover of Us Weekly.

Snooki's representative declined comment when contacted by the Post.

Although MTV also declined comment, the network is reportedly privately concerned how Snooki's pregnancy will impact the new Jersey Shore spinoff she recently began filming with Jenni "JWoww" Farley.

"MTV went into crisis mode after they found out," a source told the Post. "They're trying to hide it because it would greatly affect the creative direction of the show."

Star Magazine reported Snooki was pregnant with LaValle's child on February 1, however both she and her rep quickly denied it.

"There's no truth to the reports," her representative told MTV News later that same day.

"I definitely do want kids, but I'm not pregnant ... being pregnant should be a real thing and a happy thing, and I'm not," the Jersey Shore star said during a February 2 appearance on Good Morning America.

DISCUSS AND COMMENT ON THIS STORY
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OTHER RECENT ENTERTAINMENT NEWS HEADLINES
• 'American Idol' reveals Jermaine Jones as 25th eleventh-season semifinalist
• Snooki reportedly actually pregnant and expecting despite denials
• 'The Biggest Loser' eliminates contestant Isaac "Chism" Cornelison
• 'Dancing with the Stars' announces celebrity and pro dancer pairings
• Courtney Robertson appearing on 'The Bachelor: Women Tell All'
• 'The Bachelor' star Ben Flajnik: I truly felt in love with Lindzi Cox
• MTV orders new 'Teen Mom 3' spinoff of 'Teen Mom' reality franchise
• 'The Voice' completes coaches' teams and determines Top 48 artists
• Jennifer Hudson to be called as witness in her family's murder trial
• 'Dancing with the Stars' fourteenth-season celebrity cast announced
• 'The Bachelor' star Ben Flajnik cuts Nicki Sterling, selects his final two
• Natalie Portman and Benjamin Millepied wed in unknown ceremony
• Lucy Liu to play Watson to Jonny Lee Miller's Sherlock Holmes on CBS

COMMENTS:

    Bob Merkin · 65 years old
    surely this spawn of Snooki is one of the prophesied signs that the Apocalypse is nigh ... the Trailer Park Trash will inherit the Earth.

    Reply · Like · Unfollow Post · about an hour ago

    Adam Donn
    Ew She's spawning!

    Reply · 9 · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

        Jean Segers
        Good Lord!! Let's hope she doesn't breastfeed, the baby will get wasted!

        Reply · 10 · Like · about an hour ago
    Marilyn Benitez · New York, New York
    a lil snooki... If its true I hope she stops drinking.

    Reply · 6 · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

    Jonathan Nikki Snook
    I wish she would change her nickname...I hate being called Snooki now!

    Reply · 1 · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

    Buster Ford · Top Commenter
    She will be as wide as she is tall!

    Reply · 1 · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

    Marion Nigro · Wantagh, New York
    I AM SO HAPPY TO REPORT - I SAW THEM DOING IT - AND MOST OF HER COOCH. I HAVE NEVER BEEN SO PROUD OF THAT DRUNKEN HOAR. NOW THE SITUATION IS GOING TO ASK FOR A PATERNITY TEST.

    Reply · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

    Kristoffer Dana Phoenix
    Don't people believe in getting married first anymore?

    Reply · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

    Natasja Nicole Currier
    Not surprised, she wanted a little Guiddo.

    Reply · Like · Follow Post · about an hour ago

View 15 more

The Bartered Bride / Prodana Nevesta by Smetena

Click score to enlarge.

Click HERE for 1978 Metropolitan Opera version (in English) starring Teresa Stratas.

Publicke Notice: the annoying little lines and unwanted ads in my blog

Publicke Notice

VleeptronZ has recently been plagued by annoying little underlines under words in the text. (You'll probably see a few of them in this post.)

If you put the cursor over the lines, little advertisements pop up.

This is NOT an intentional feature of VleeptronZ. 

It is a kind of malware / adware which some fucking creeps called text-enhance slipped into my computer.

VleeptronZ is endeavoring to purge this annoying crap as soon as possible.

If you know the solution to this crap, please let me know. If you know anyone associated with text-enhance, please run them over with your car.

 

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik: the fool in a yarmulke

Click image, it gets larger and uglier.

Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
Associate Rabbi
Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun

New York, NY

 

Rabbi Soloveichik --

 

Re your appearance on the all-male panel before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee:

 

I have never been so offended by the public act of an American rabbi, and I have never been so embarrassed to be an American Jew.

 

In America, women vote, have (in theory) legal rights equal to men, and have the same rights as men to have their opinions heard.

 

You assisted Rep. Issa in suppressing and silencing the voice of American women.

 

Your duty as a steward of Jewish ethics was clear: The instant you saw you were there to stooge for Issa's rigged male-supremacy hearing, you should have walked out and removed your name from the hearing.

 

You're a fool in a yarmulke. You're certainly not an American Jew.

 

Robert Merkin
Chesterfield, Massachusetts USA

 

Muslim college students spied on in Northeast USA by New York City police

Click photo to enlarge.

The Associated Press
(USA newswire)
Tuesday 21 February 2012
 
New York City police
monitored Muslim students
all over Northeast

by Chris Hawley, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) -- One autumn morning in Buffalo, N.Y., a college student named Adeela Khan logged into her email and found a message announcing an upcoming Islamic conference in Toronto.

Khan clicked "forward," sent it to a group of fellow Muslims at the University at Buffalo, and promptly forgot about it.

But that simple act on 9 November 2006 was enough to arouse the suspicion of an intelligence analyst at the New York Police Department, 300 miles away, who combed through her post and put her name in an official report. Marked "SECRET" in large red letters, the document went all the way to Commissioner Raymond Kelly's office.

The report, along with other documents obtained by The Associated Press, reveals how the NYPD's intelligence division focused far beyond New York City as part of a surveillance program targeting Muslims.

Police trawled daily through student websites run by Muslim student groups at Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and 13 other colleges in the Northeast. They talked with local authorities about professors in Buffalo and even sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip, where he recorded students' names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Asked about the monitoring, police spokesman Paul Browne provided a list of 12 people arrested or convicted on terrorism charges in the United States and abroad who had once been members of Muslim student associations, which the NYPD referred to as MSAs. They included Jesse Morton, who this month pleaded guilty to posting online threats against the creators of the animated TV show "South Park." He had once tried to recruit followers at Stony Brook University on Long Island, Browne said.

"As a result, the NYPD deemed it prudent to get a better handle on what was occurring at MSAs," Browne said in an email. He said police monitored student websites and collected publicly available information in 2006 and 2007. But documents show other surveillance efforts continued for years afterward.

"I see a violation of civil rights here," said Tanweer Haq, chaplain of the Muslim Student Association at Syracuse University. "Nobody wants to be on the list of the FBI or the NYPD or whatever. Muslim students want to have their own lives, their own privacy and enjoy the same freedoms and opportunities that everybody else has."

In recent months, the AP has revealed secret programs the NYPD built with help from the CIA [USA Central Intelligence Agency] to monitor Muslims at the places where they eat, shop and worship. The AP also published details about how police placed undercover officers at Muslim student associations in colleges within the city limits; this revelation has outraged faculty and student groups.

Though the NYPD says it follows the same rules as the FBI, some of the NYPD's activities go beyond what the FBI is allowed to do.

Kelly and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg repeatedly have said that the police only follow legitimate leads about suspected criminal activity.

But the latest documents mention no wrongdoing by any students.

In one report, an undercover officer describes accompanying 18 Muslim students from the City College of New York on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York on 21 April 2008. The officer noted the names of attendees who were officers of the Muslim Student Association.

"In addition to the regularly scheduled events (rafting), the group prayed at least four times a day, and much of the conversation was spent discussing Islam and was religious in nature," the report says.

Praying five times a day is one of the core traditions of Islam.

Jawad Rasul, one of the students on the trip, said he was stunned that his name was included in the police report.

"It forces me to look around wherever I am now," Rasul said.

But another student, Ali Ahmed, whom the NYPD said appeared to be in charge of the trip, said he understood the police department's concern.

"I can't blame them for doing their job," Ahmed said. "There's lots of Muslims doing some bad things and it gives a bad name to all of us, so they have to take their due diligence."

City College criticized the surveillance and said it was unaware the NYPD was watching students.

"The City College of New York does not accept or condone any investigation of any student organization based on the political or religious content of its ideas," the college said in a written statement. "Absent specific evidence linking a member of the City College community to criminal activity, we do not condone this kind of investigation."

Browne said undercover officers go wherever people they're investigating go. There is no indication that, in the nearly four years since the report, the NYPD brought charges connecting City College students to terrorism.

Student groups were of particular interest to the NYPD because they attract young Muslim men, a demographic that terrorist groups frequently draw from. Police worried about which Muslim scholars were influencing these students and feared that extracurricular activities such as paintball outings could be used as terrorist training.

The AP first reported in October that the NYPD had placed informants or undercover officers in the Muslim Student Associations at City College, Brooklyn College, Baruch College, Hunter College, City College of New York, Queens College, La Guardia Community College and St. John's University. All of those colleges are within the New York City limits.

A person familiar with the program, who like others insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it, said the NYPD also had a student informant at Syracuse.

Police also were interested in the Muslim student group at Rutgers, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 2009, undercover NYPD officers had a safe house in an apartment not far from campus. The operation was blown when the building superintendent stumbled upon the safe house and, thinking it was some sort of a terrorist cell, called the police emerency dispatcher.

The FBI responded and determined that monitoring Rutgers students was one of the operation's objectives, current and former federal officials said.

The Rutgers police chief at the time, Rhonda Harris, would not discuss the fallout. In a written statement, university spokesman E.J. Miranda said: "The university was not aware of this at the time and we have nothing to add on this matter."

Another NYPD intelligence report from 2 January 2009 described a trip by three NYPD officers to Buffalo, where they met with a high-ranking member of the Erie County Sheriff's Department and agreed "to develop assets jointly in the Buffalo area, to act as listening posts within the ethnic Somalian community."

The sheriff's department official noted "that there are some Somali Professors and students at SUNY-Buffalo and it would be worthwhile to further analyze that population," the report says.

Browne said the NYPD did not follow that recommendation. A spokesman for the university, John DellaContrada, said the NYPD never contacted the administration. Sheriff's Departments spokeswoman Mary Murray could not immediately confirm the meeting or say whether the proposal went any further.

The document that mentions Khan, the University at Buffalo student, is entitled "Weekly MSA Report" and dated Nov. 22, 2006. It explains that officers from the NYPD's Cyber Intelligence unit visited the websites, blogs and forums of Muslim student associations as a "daily routine."

The universities included Yale; Columbia; the University of Pennsylvania; Syracuse; New York University; Clarkson University; the Newark and New Brunswick campuses of Rutgers; and the State University of New York campuses in Buffalo, Albany, Stony Brook and Potsdam; Queens College, Baruch College, Brooklyn College and La Guardia Community College.

Khan was a board member of the Muslim Student Association at the University at Buffalo at the time she received the conference announcement, which went out to a mailing list of Muslim organizations.

The email said "highly respected scholars" would be attending the Toronto conference, but did not say who or give any details of the program. Khan says she never went to the conference, was not affiliated with it and had no idea who was speaking at it.

Khan says she clicked "forward" and sent it to a Yahoo chat group of fellow students.

"A couple people had gone the year prior and they said they had a really nice time, so I was just passing the information on forward. That's really all it was," said Khan, who has since graduated.

But officer Mahmood Ahmad of the NYPD's Cyber Intelligence Unit took notice and listed Khan in his weekly report for Kelly. The officer began researching the Toronto conference and found that one of the speakers, Tariq Ramadan, had his U.S. visa revoked in 2004. The U.S. government said it was because Ramadan had given money to a Palestinian group. It reinstated his visa in 2010.

The officer's report notes three other speakers. One, Siraj Wahaj, is a prominent but controversial New York imam who has attracted the attention of authorities for years. Prosecutors included his name on a 3 ½-page list of people they said "may be alleged as co-conspirators" in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, though he was never charged.

The other two are Hamza Yusuf and Zaid Shakir, two of the nation's most prominent Muslim scholars. Both have lectured at top universities in the U.S.. Yusuf met with President George W. Bush at the White House following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

There is no indication that the investigation went any further, or that Khan was ever implicated in anything. Browne, the NYPD spokesman, said students like her have nothing to fear from the police.

"Students who advertised events or sent emails about regular events should not be worried about a 'terrorism file' being kept on them. NYPD only investigated persons who we had reasonable suspicion to believe might be involved in unlawful activities," Browne said.

But Khan still worries about being associated with the police report.

"It's just a waste of resources, if you ask me," she said. "I understand why they're doing it, but it's just kind of like a Catch-22. I'm not the one doing anything wrong."

The university said it was unaware its students were being monitored.

"UB does not conduct this kind of surveillance and if asked, UB would not voluntarily cooperate with such a request," the university said in a written statement. "As a public university, UB strongly supports the values of freedom of speech and assembly, freedom of religion, and a reasonable expectation of privacy."

The same Nov. 22, 2006, report also noted seminars announced on the websites of the Muslim student associations at New York University and Rutgers University's campus in Newark, New Jersey.

Browne said intelligence analysts were interested in recruiting by the Islamic Thinkers Society, a New York-based group that wants to see the United States governed under Islamic law. Morton was a leader of the group and went to Stony Brook University's MSA to recruit students that same month.

"One thing that our open source searches were interested in determining at the time was, where (does the) Islamic Thinkers Society go — in terms of MSAs for recruiting," Browne said.

Yale declined comment. The University of Pennsylvania did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Other colleges on the list said they worried the monitoring infringed on students' freedom of speech.

"Like New York City itself, American universities are admired across the globe as places that welcome a diversity of people and viewpoints. So we would obviously be concerned about anything that could chill our essential values of academic freedom or intrude on student privacy," Columbia University spokesman Robert Hornsby said in a written statement.

Danish Munir, an alumnus adviser for the University of Pennsylvania's Muslim Student Association, said he believes police are wasting their time by watching college students.

"What do they expect to find here?" Munir said. "These are all kids coming from rich families or good families, and they're just trying to make a living, have a good career, have a good college experience. It's a futile allocation of resources."

- 30 -

View the report at: http://apne.ws/zLpfdM
 
Associated Press reporters Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman and Eileen Sullivan contributed to this report.

Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org

Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies! ( -- Ned "Scotty" Scott: "The Thing from Another World")

Click to enlarge.

Screw Darrel Issa, screw Syria and Iran, screw the government of Israel, screw North Korea, screw all the GOP presidential candidates, screw the government of Honduras.

Looking down at its surface, Earth seems ugly, brutish, hopeless, dirty, polluted, a notorious slum and embarrassment in a bad part of the Milky Way.

But Earth is constantly drowning in Beauty.

To see the Beauty, Wonder, the magnificent Creation, look up at the night sky.

Required Equipment: eyeballs, binoculars, cheap telescope. (Or expensive telescope.)

Subscription Fee: $0

Age Range: 2 or 3 years old or older.

Offer lasts only until the End of Time. (Offer began at the Beginning of Time, 13,700,000,000 years ago.)

Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
God speaks to Job
Job 31-33, King James Version

================

National Geographic
(USA multimedia empire defying accurate description)
Friday 17 February 2012

Night Sky News:
Gaze Up at a 
Planetary Showcase

by Andrew Fazekas

While winter is not usually thought of as a great time to gaze at the starry heavens, some of the brightest planets are putting on a show not to be missed. Starting off with Venus, you can find the goddess of love dominating the early evenings in the southwest starting right after sunset. Look to its upper left and you cannot miss the king of all worlds, Jupiter. Not quite as bright as Venus it still looks impressive, especially through binoculars and telescopes.

Despite its 650,000,000 km distance, Jupiter’s brilliance is due to its monster size -- more than 11 times the diameter of Earth.
 
You can expect binoculars will show off Jupiter’s four main moons which look like a row of ducks beside the planet, while a telescope will reveal atmospheric details like brown cloud belts straddling the equatorial region. If you have good viewing conditions while using at least a 6 to 8  inch sized telescope you could even catch the Big Red Spot -- a hurricane three times the size of the Earth, raging for at least three centuries.

Over the next month keep an eye on Venus-Jupiter planetary duo as they quickly begin to converge in the sky. This weekend the two will be separated by about 23 degrees; by the end of the month it will be half that, and by mid March they will be less than 3 degrees. That’s equal to the width of your three middle fingers held at arms’ length!

Saturn dominates the southern sky before dawn.

Meanwhile for those late night owls, the ringed planet Saturn will be on display in the southern sky after midnight until dawn. It shines like a yellowish bright star more than 1,500,000,000 km away and is in the middle of the constellation Virgo. Look carefully and you will notice just to the lower right of Saturn is Virgo’s brightest star, Spica, shining away at more than 260 light years away. They really make a pretty pair to the unaided eye being only 7 degrees apart -- less than the width of your fist held at arm’s length.

By the way, if you have a chance, check out Saturn thru a telescope, and the rings will knock your eyes out -- especially now that they are tilted towards Earth at nearly 15 degrees!

========================




SPACE.com
Friday 17 February 2012

Elusive planet Mercury
shines bright in evening sky

by Joe Rao, SPACE.com Skywatching Columnist

The planet Mercury is often cited as the most difficult of the five brightest naked-eye planets to see. I've always thought this was a bad rap because there are some times during the year when Mercury is surprisingly easy to see.

Mercury is called an "inferior planet" because its orbit is nearer to the sun than that of the Earth. Since it always appears from our vantage point to be in the same general direction as the sun, relatively few people have set eyes on it. There is even a rumor that the famed scientist Copernicus, living in northern Poland, never saw it.

Yet the planet Mercury is not really that hard to spot in the night sky. You simply must know when and where to look, have a night of good weather, and find a clear western horizon.

And for those living in the Northern Hemisphere, we're about to move into a very fine "window of opportunity" for seeing Mercury in the evening sky. That window, which will open on Feb. 22 and close after March 12, will provide several good opportunities to see this so-called "elusive planet" with your own eyes. The sky map of Mercury with this column shows how it will appear on Wednesday 22 February alongside the bright planets Venus and Jupiter.

- 30 -

left-wing gazillionaires battle right-wing gazillionaires to buy the next USA president / the finest president money can buy

The San Francisco Chronicle
California USA daily broadsheet
Saturday 18 February 2012

Obama joins crowd 
trying to buy the election

by Robert Reich © 2012 Robert Reich

How many billionaires does it take to buy a presidential election? We're about to find out. The 2012 campaign probably will be a battle between one group of millionaires and billionaires supporting President Obama and another group supporting his GOP rival.

Perhaps this was the inevitable result of the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission in 2010, which opened the floodgates to unrestricted campaign money through super PACs. But I'm not sure. What if Obama had stuck to his guns and eschewed super PACs?

Sadly, this month the president caved. He endorsed a super PAC set up to funnel unrestricted campaign money from fat cats into his campaign. And he's made a total mockery of the court's naive belief that super PACs would remain separate from individual campaigns, by allowing campaign manager Jim Messina and even Cabinet officers to speak at his super PAC events. Obama will not appear at such events, but he, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will encourage support of the Obama super PAC.

Why did he do it? His campaign aides explained that they had been surprised by how easily Mitt Romney's super PAC delivered Florida to him and pushed Newt Gingrich from first place to fourth place in Iowa. They also took note of the fact that Republican super PACs outspent the GOP candidates themselves in several of the early primaries. Messina said they didn't want to "unilaterally disarm" by failing to use the same technique.

I don't believe Obama's refusal to play the billionaire election game would have been unilateral disarmament. Obama has proven himself a hugely successful fundraiser, especially with small donors. He cobbled together an unprecedented U$745,000,000 for the 2008 election, including an unprecedented amount of small donations, and has already raised more than $225.000,000 for 2012.

Had Obama continued to eschew his own super PAC, he might have had a rallying cry that nearly all Americans would get behind: "More of the nation's wealth and political power is now in the hands of large corporations and fewer people than since the era of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. I will not allow our democracy to be corrupted by this! I will fight to take back our democracy!"

Obama could have highlighted the starkest choice facing America in a century -- an economy and a democracy dominated by great wealth, or an economy and a democracy that work for everyone. What better way to dramatize this choice than by offering America a choice between a political campaign financed by millions of small donors, and a Republican campaign underwritten by a handful of America's most powerful and privileged?

Romney's friends on Wall Street and in the executive suites of the nation's biggest corporations have the deepest pockets in the nation. Romney's super PAC got U$18,000,000 from just 200 donors in the second half of last year, including million-dollar checks from hedge-fund moguls, industrialists and bankers. If Romney is the Republican nominee, more money will come into his presidential campaign from the smallest number of super-rich than ever before in American history.

Had Obama taken a strong stand against this, my guess is that average Americans would have flooded the Obama campaign with enough small donations to overwhelm Romney's billionaire friends. The people would have been given a chance to be heard, and the people would prevail.

But we'll never know. Now that Obama has decided to embrace super PACs, big money is flowing as never before.

The president has called Citizens United a threat to democracy. If he is re-elected, and he's sincere about his concerns, he should go to bat for a system of public financing that will make it possible for candidates to raise enough money from small donors and matching public funds that they won't need to rely on a few billionaires pumping unlimited sums into super PACs.

In addition, he should fight for public disclosure of all donations, including those to super PACs. He should commit himself to nominating Supreme Court justices who will reverse Citizens United. And he should give his unbridled support to a constitutional amendment that would limit the vote to American citizens, not corporations.

And I hope he shows the public that, despite support from some of the fattest cats in the land, he'll still fight for a tax system that requires millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of the nation's bills.

One Obama adviser crows that Obama's decision to openly endorse his super PAC has had an immediate effect. "Our donors get it," the official said, adding that they now want to "go fight the other side."

That's exactly the problem. When a relative handful of super-rich Democrats want to fight a relative handful of super-rich Republicans, the rest of us are left on the sidelines. And if we're sidelined in the election, we could be left on the sidelines of our democracy.

As the great jurist and Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis said, "We can have a democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

Robert Reich, former U.S. secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at UC Berkeley and the author of "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future." He blogs at www.robertreich.org. To comment, go to sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1.

- 30 -

Great Moments in Racism and Disgusting Political Ads

Lisa Chan, a USA-born American, acts the role of a Chinese woman bicycling through a rice paddy, thanking the U.S. Senate race foe of U.S. Pete Hoekstra for votes which sent USA jobs to China. Hoekstra's ad aired on Michigan stations broadcasting the [USA football] Super Bowl, the most watched television show in USA history.

The Detroit [Michigan] Free Press
USA daily broadsheet
Thursday 16 February 2012

Asian-American actress says
role in Pete Hoekstra ad
was 'absolutely a mistake'

by Todd Spangler, Detroit Free Press Washington Staff

WASHINGTON -- The Asian-American actress who played a role in a controversial campaign ad says it was "absolutely a mistake" to take the role, which was criticized as portraying cultural stereotypes.

Lisa Chan, a 21-year-old who lives in the San Francisco area, posted a message on her Facebook page Wednesday saying, "I am deeply sorry for any pain that the character I portrayed brought to my communities."

Former U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a Holland Republican running for the U.S. Senate, aired the ad on Super Bowl Sunday in Michigan.

In it, Chan is seen bicycling along a rice paddy, making it seem as though she is in China. In broken English, Chan then thanks Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow for supporting policies the Hoekstra campaign suggests have helped create jobs overseas.

Critics blasted Hoekstra for perpetuating cultural stereotypes with the ad, which received national notoriety. Hoekstra has since taken the ad down from his website.

Chan was also singled out for criticism by commentators who wondered why she agreed to such a role.

In her Facebook post, Chan wrote, "As a recent college grad who has spent time working to improve communities and empower those without a voice, this role is not in any way representative of who I am. It was absolutely a mistake on my part and one that, over time, I hope can be forgiven."

The Hoekstra campaign declined to comment directly on the post, with spokesman Paul Ciaramitaro saying only that the ad deals with issues "we will continue to address."

According to a report in the Napa Valley Register in December, Chan is a recent graduate of University of California, Berkeley, with a sociology degree who last year named herself Miss Napa Valley USA in order to enter the 2012 Miss California competition.

- 30 -

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty Bare / okay okay I owe you 50,000 goddam trees, okay okay / in 28 days, bake & eat a pi(e)

Click on images if you want to make any of them bigger.

e-mail to my nephew in Patagonia. Yes, he lives in Patagonia, Punta Arenas (Sandy Point) to be precise.


=======================

Hola D** y L***,

Once upon a time my response time to interesting and/or important communications was near-instantaneous, but as I have recently surpassed the 23741 day milestone, things is a-slowing down and I am easily distracted by all sorts of Alarums and Diversions and Hautboys in Another Part of the Forest.

Indeed, as you have so surprisingly brought to my attention,

[see topmost image above]

 which, despite my careful calculation of the days I have been alive, escaped my attention -- and I love Prime Numbers the way normal people love chocolate and Lady Gaga.

The mathematician Hardy recalled of the self-taught number theorist Ramanujan

"Every positive whole number was one of his personal friends."

Everpresent at the fringes of Number Theory -- you can't get rid of it even if you use Lysol or Clorox or Dettol -- is Numerology, the conviction that within the Set of the Positive Whole Numbers lurks a powerful Sacred Magicke -- beginning with elementary crap like the number 13 (I am told some skyscrapers and office buildings are designed to have no 13th Floor, the elevator buttons just go 11 12 14 15), and then stuff like 666, but Numerology can get far more obtuse and arcane then that. Kabbalah may be the High-Water Mark of Numerology, and for about the last ten years this aberrant, verkakte bad neighborhood of Judaism has gone viral with the Celebrity Elite, chiefly Madonna, who is now an avowed Kabbalist. I got a pal in Lisboa who tells me her synagogue just hired a Kabbalist Rabbi, the whole joint now guides its adult and child members toward Kabbalah Truth, Wisdom and Sanctity.

The inventors of all modern Number Theory, the guys and gals who put it on the map, the Pythagoreans, were drunk on Numerology, so the Magickal Properties of Our Friends the Positive Whole Numbers has a very sexy and ancient provenance. One can only scoff at Numerology just so much, after which one is scoffing at The Master -- and The Master's adherents were so serious about this stuff that they flung a guy over a cliff to his death for proving that one of The Master's fundamental tenets was Wrong. (Such was their devotion to mathematical Truth that they notified the world of his discovery, but they were so pissed off that the moment he finished his blackboard demonstration, they hauled him out of the temple and threw him over the cliff.)

(Details of what The Master got wrong on request.)

So by what Engine or Craft did you discover that

[see topmost figure]

? My ability to program is currently Off-Line, so I had to resort to this cheesy site, and how they do it I haven't the foggiest notion.

When I was at Alice Deal Junior High School, my classmates and I were selected to be los Conejitos des Indies for an experimental curriculum which eventually became The New Math. There I learned the most amazing, bizarre Magicke Trick: The Sieve of Eratosthenes. This old dead Greek fart (c. 276 BC – c. 195 BC) cranked out a method to find all the Primes up to any desired number, and the goddam thang worked so goddam fast and so goddam well that the world's biggest supercomputers still use it to find huge primes and test themselves. Were you ever taught The Sieve? When the lightbulb dimly began glowing in my junior-high brain, I was just astonished, gobsmacked. This was One Very Smart Guy.

[see middle image]

Eratosthenes was no 1-Trick Pony. Using the lengths of shadows of sticks at Alexandria and Syene (modern Aswan), he computed the first accurate circumference of the Earth. (Of course he, and all sailors, knew it was a sphere.) He was the Librarian of the Great Library and Museum at Alexandria, and a pen-pal of Archimedes in Syracuse.

Okay, at your slightest urging, I will be delighted to Prove To You that there is an Infinitude of Primes, that there exists no greatest Prime, beyond which there are no more primes. It's my fave Euclid proof. It's also a real gobsmacker.

[Abraham] Lincoln's birthday is coming up. For doing some electioneering for the local Illinois political boss, he was appointed a state surveyor -- a slight embarrassment, as he knew totally zilch about surveying. They gave him a theodolite and a crude Surveying Primer, and off he went to lay out Illinois' roads and county boundaries. (Most of his roads and boundaries remain as he surveyed them.)

He noticed that all over the Primer, on nearly every page, was

(cf. Euclid)

and he asked around about this Euclid guy, and was eventually lent a copy (in English) of "The Elements." Late in life he told an interviewer that he eventually completed every proof and demonstration and construction in Euclid, and that it was the most profound intellectual experience of his life. I've always been convinced that forcing himself to master Euclid (a feat best accomplished with a big bottle of aspirin) made him the undefeatable trial lawyer and debater he became.

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare,
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease
To ponder on themselves, the while they stare
At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere
In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese
Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release
From dusty bondage into luminous air.
O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day,
When first the shaft into his vision shone
Of light anatomized! Euclid alone
Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they
Who, though once only and then but far away,
Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oh! Speaking of which -- you have 28 days to prepare for the world's most important fiesta:

[See bottom image]

 which of course falls on 3/14 . (Traditionally you're supposed to bake and eat a pie.)

Unkie Munkie

 

Saturday 11 February 2012

Israeli reaches Chile plea deal to plant trees

(AP)  SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile has settled its criminal case against an Israeli hiker accused of negligently causing a fire that destroyed much of the Torres del Paine national park.

Under Chile's obsolete Forests Law, pyromaniacs or negligent tourists can be fined no more than $300 for setting fires in national parks.

So instead of seeking a conviction, prosecutors worked out a deal with Israeli hiker Rotem Singer designed to restore much of the area destroyed after he allegedly set fire to toilet paper and it burned out of control.

The 23-year-old Singer has agreed to pay $10,000 and raise other money for an environmental group that will buy 50,000 native trees that will be used to replant the park by Chile's national forestry agency.

© 2012 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

350+ prisoners die in Honduras prison fire

Reuters (UK newswire)
Wednesday 15 February 2012

Honduras prison fire 
kills more than
350 inmates

by Gustavo Palencia

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) -- A massive fire swept through an overcrowded prison in Honduras and killed more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

A senior official at the attorney general's office, Danelia Ferrera, said 357 people died in the blaze that began late on Tuesday night at the prison in Comayagua, about 75 km / 45 miles north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

"It's a terrible scene ... Our staff went into the cells and the bodies are charred, most of them are unrecognizable," Ferrera told Reuters, adding that officials would have to use dental records and DNA in many cases to identify those killed.

It was one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America.

"We heard screaming from the people who caught on fire," one prisoner told reporters, showing the fingers he fractured in his escape from the fire. "We had to push up the roof panels to get out."

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, and there are frequent riots and clashes between rival street gangs in its cramped prisons.

But it was not yet clear if the prison fire was started during a riot or if it was an accident.

Worried and angry relatives surrounded the prison on Wednesday morning, at one point throwing rocks at police and trying to force their way inside the prison.

Police responded by firing shots into the air and shooting tear gas at protesters, most of whom were women.

President Porfirio Lobo said he suspended the director of the Comayagua prison and the head of the national prison system to ensure a thorough investigation.

He promised to "take urgent measures to deal with this tragedy, which has plunged all Hondurans into mourning".

There was confusion over the death toll, with some reports that more than 100 inmates had escaped and could have been mistakenly counted among the dead and others that the dead and missing totaled 402 people -- almost half the prison's inmates.

Lucy Marder, head of forensic services in Comayagua, said police reported that one of the dead was a woman who had stayed overnight at the prison and the rest were inmates, but she said some of the presumed dead could have escaped.

Local media reported that the Comayagua fire department chief also died in the blaze.

VIOLENT GANGS, DRUGS

Honduras' notoriously violent street gangs, known as 'maras', gained power inside Hispanic neighborhoods in the United States in the 1980s and then spread down into Central America. Their members wear distinctive tattoos and are involved in drugs and weapons trafficking, armed robbery and protection rackets.

The Comayagua prison housed more than 850 inmates -- well above its capacity. A local police chief read out the names of 457 survivors outside the prison, but relatives were not appeased.

"This is desperate, they won't tell us anything and I think my husband is dead," a crying Gregoria Zelaya told Canal 5 TV as she stood by a chain link fence.

Local firemen said they were prevented from entering the prison due to gunshots. But Daniel Orellana, head of the prison system, said there was no riot.

"We have two hypotheses, one is that a prisoner set fire to a mattress and the other one is that there was a short circuit in the electrical system," he said.

Across Honduras, prisons are filled to double their capacity with about 12,500 prisoners in jails meant to hold 6,000. More than 100 prisoners were killed in a fire in the textile manufacturing town of San Pedro Sula several years ago, and survivors said later that guards fired on prisoners trying to escape the blaze.

Honduras had more than 80 homicides per 100,000 people in 2009, a rate 16 times that of the United States, according to a United Nations report last year.

The country is a major drug trafficking transit point for South American cocaine moving north to consumers in the United States, and authorities say there is increasing presence of violent Mexican drug cartels in the country.

A political crisis ripped through Honduras in mid-2009 when a widely-condemned coup toppled the democratically elected president but the country has been trying to heal divisions since Lobo was elected later that year.

(Additional reporting by Cyntia Barrera and Mica Rosenberg in Mexico; Editing by Kieran Murray)
- 30 -

============
Wikipedia
============
Comayagua prison fire

    This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

Location     Comayagua, Honduras
Date     February 14–15, 2012
Ignition source     Suspected electrical fault or riot
Fatalities     357+

Between February 14 and 15, 2012, at least 357 inmates were killed in a fire in the National Prison of Comayagua in Honduras.[1] Many were trapped in their cells and either suffocated or were "burned beyond recognition".[2] The fire in the prison started late in the evening of February 14.[3] According to one prisoner, calls for help went out almost immediately and "for a while, nobody listened. But after a few minutes, which seemed like an eternity, a guard appeared with keys and let us out."[4] Rescue forces did not arrive until about 40 minutes later.[5]

Reuters termed the incident as "one of the worst prison fires ever in Latin America."[6] The Associated Press added that this was "the world’s deadliest prison fire in at least a century."[4]

Casualties

There were 856 prisoners officially listed on the roster for the prison.[7] The Comayagua prison is considered a medium security facility, but of the inmates were being housed for serious crimes, such as murder and armed robbery.[4][5] Around 475 prisoners escaped, many through the roof of the facility, while 357 are missing and presumed dead.[2][4] According to firefighters, around 100 inmates burned to death or suffocated in their cells as the keys to release them could not be located.[7] Around 30 prisoners were transported to the capital to receive specialist treatment for severe burns.[2]

The chief of forensic medicine for the prosecutor's office stated that it would take at least three months to identify all of the victims, mainly from DNA samples.[8]
[edit] Cause

The exact cause of the fire is not yet know.[5] It was initially believed to have been the result of a riot, during which a mattress was ignited. This was denied by prison authorities who blamed it on an electrical fault.[9] Survivors reported that an inmate was responsible for the fire.[4] The unidentified man reported shouted "We will all die here!" and then set the place on fire.[4] His motives are unknown.[4]

Prison overcrowding, which is common in the region, has been cited as a contributing factor in death toll.[4] According to one survivor, 60 people were packed in a single cell.[4] Honduras has repeatedly been criticized for poor prison conditions by human rights groups in recent years.[4] The Comaygua fire is the fourth prison fire in Honduras since 1994 to result in 70 or more casualties.[4]
[edit] Aftermath

Relatives of the prisoners gathered outside the facility to discover the fate of the incarcerated, eventually leading to clashes with the police. Angry family members attempted to storm the prison to claim the remains of their loved ones and had to restrained with tear gas.[4] Some were seen hurling rocks at police officers.[4] The President of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, has demanded a full inquest into the disaster.[2]

whoopee Georgia USA gonna get 2 brand new nuclear power plants! Wheeeeeee! / There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight!

The USA Nuclear Regulatory Commission has just issued the first new nuclear power plant license -- two of them, in the Southern state Georgia -- since 1978.


Part of an exchange on the e-List Ionizing Radiation Affacionadi:


=================

Between issuing the first new USA nuclear power plant licenses since 1978, and the startup of any of these plants, there exist potential barriers that have proven effective many times in the past in preventing the startup of a new nuclear plant: massive construction cost overruns, and the increasingly unenthusiastic investors who react to the eventual disclosure of massive overruns.

 

These barriers are entirely independent of a poorly informed public, or assaults by anti-nuclear activist-ideologues.

 

The bottom line, figuratively and literally, is the willingness of investors to support the long and hyperexpensive construction process for several years. When, for any reason, sufficient capital ceases to fertilize the plant project, the plant dies, or begins to thrash around in an unfocused investment market that may involve bankruptcy and reorganization, or quick and bargain-basement sale to other entities.

 

There is also an ever-changing "weather" to nuclear power: The fluctuating regional market price of electricity generated by non-nuclear means. If it becomes significantly cheaper than the price the new nuclear plant would sell watts for, a collapse in demand for more expensive watts can kill the project.

 

Every new plant needs the blessings of the NRC and the federal authorities above it.

 

But they dwarf in significance compared to the blessings of Wall Street. When investors try to prophesy what their profits will be over the next 5 or 10 years, a historical absence of clear and accurate investment prophesy on billion-dollar-plus nuclear plant constructions can significantly dampen investor enthusiasm.

 

In the USA, the benchmark investment meltdown is (Wikipedia:)

 

 

The Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant was a completed General Electric nuclear boiling water reactor  located adjacent to the Long Island Sound in East Shoreham, New York. The plant was built between 1973 and 1984 by the Long Island Lighting Company (LILCO), but never operated.

 

 

Eventually, LILCO sold the completed Shoreham plant to the state of New York for $1, and efforts were made to retro-convert the plant to a coal-burning generation facility -- with what success or investor satisfaction I don't know.

 

This list has been one of the Internet's most detailed and accurate chronicles of almost all aspects of the Fukushima incident. But one phenomenon this list has not discussed or "monitored" has been the behavior of the investment and capital market in the nuclear power industry for the decade before and the 11 months since Fukushima (commenced 11 March 2011). Surely this curve must be as interesting, significant and informative as ionizing radiation levels before and since Fukushima.

 

All investment takes and accepts risk, and runs the risk of partial or complete loss.

 

But some games in the casino are riskier and more volatile than others. (Best: blackjack. Worst: slots.)

 

One of the most stable and carefully monitored industries -- accurate government records date to at least the 18th century -- is Death, so in theory, investing in Death Futures should be the gold standard of stable prediction and investments.

 

About ten years ago, Canada's largest chain of funeral homes suddenly and without warning went bankrupt because of a freakishly mild winter. The vulnerable and the old die in usually predictable numbers during the stress of winter, and the funeral home chain had, as it always had, made its operating and purchasing plans on this known fact. When Canadians failed to die in the predicted numbers, the entire chain collapsed.

 

There's also a new "player" in town who wasn't playing the stock market the last time lots of nuclear plants were licensed and built in Western capitalist nations.

 

A huge amount of investing is now the result not of what humans think is a good bet, but is placed by computer programs, whose decisions to buy or dump huge blocks are triggered (within a hundredth of a second) by the behavior of dozens of fluctuating market conditions. This is called Programmed Trading. So a great deal of the behavior of the investment market results from the behavior of non-human intelligence. (We seem to be naturally and instinctively greedy; computers must be specifically instructed to try to make profit.) It's unlikely human investors can prophesy how computer programs will support the construction and eventual startup of a newly licensed nuclear power plant with much accuracy.

 

Bob / Massachusetts USA

 

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: bcer_eh

To: GeigerCounterEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 9:05 PM

Subject: [GeigerCounterEnthusiasts] Re: 2 new nuclear plants in Georgia USA

 

You Americans. It wasn't mindless CNN drones that destroyed
chernobyl or Fukushima to prove that nuclear energy is not safe. It was highly-trained, highly-paid nuclear engineers. Not only did they prove that reactors are unsafe, they threatened the lives of millions of people and polluted the air and oceans.
Paranoia results in crazy thinking and bad decisions, not watching TV.

--- In GeigerCounterEnthusiasts@yahoogroups.com, "jp2cbyou" wrote:
>
> Even if CNN is correct, and one is fully approved; it will be cancelled now because CNN informed their army of mindless drones followers. Expect P.I.T.A and N.A.M.B.L.A and the like crazies to show up at the construction site wearing suicide bomb vest to kill contractors and destroy equipment. Perhaps they will wait until the reactor is online to destroy it to prove nuclear energy is not safe. That is how they think.
>
> Justin

Murdoch scum tabloids settle phone-hacking lawsuits

 ..............................Click photos to enlarge.

The Associated Press
USA newswire
Wednesday 8 February 2012

Rupert Murdoch's 
tabloid empire
settles 9 more 
hacking suits

by Raphael Satter

LONDON -- Rupert Murdoch's News International has settled nearly all the cases against the company in the first wave of lawsuits for phone hacking by its journalists, with a new round of apologies and payouts announced Wednesday in a London court.

But a potentially damaging claim lodged by British singer Charlotte Church is still headed to trial later this month and a wave of new lawsuits -- as many as 56 in all -- is looming, lawyers told London's High Court.

News International, a division of News Corp., has tried hard to keep phone hacking cases from going to trial, launching its own compensation program overseen by a respected former judge and paying out millions of pounds/dollars in all in out-of-court settlements for about 60 cases.

On Wednesday, lawyers announced that nine more lawsuits filed on behalf of about a dozen different people had been settled, including cases brought by comedian Steve Coogan, former soccer star Paul Gascoigne and maverick lawmaker George Galloway.

"This has never been about money," said Coogan, who received a settlement of 40,000 pounds (U$63,500). "Like other people who have sued, I was determined to do my part to show the depths to which the press can sink in pursuit of private information."

Gascoigne received 68,000 pounds ($108,000), while Simon Hughes, deputy leader of Britain's Liberal Democrat party, received 45,000 pounds ($71,500). Galloway, known for his uncompromising opposition to the Iraq war, received 25,000 pounds ($39,700) and an admission from News International lawyer Michael Silverleaf that the company had intercepted five of the lawmaker's voicemails around the time of the 2003 invasion.

Sally King, a friend of former British Home Secretary David Blunkett, received 60,000 pounds ($95,300), while her husband, Andrew, received 50,000 pounds ($79,400). Silverleaf acknowledged that a News of the World journalist even followed the pair to the U.S. as they tried to find refuge there from the press.

Her father and brother also received substantial damages, as did former Labour Party strategist Alastair Campbell and a series of other claimants.

After each settlement, Silverleaf said the Murdoch company had accepted responsibility and regretted the damage it had caused. The company also agreed to pay the claimants' legal fees.

The lawsuits stem from revelations of phone-hacking and other illegal tactics at the now-defunct Murdoch tabloid, the News of the World, where journalists routinely intercepted voicemails of those in the public eye in a relentless search for scoops.

Murdoch closed the 168-year-old paper in July amid a wave of public revulsion over its 2002 interception of voicemails belonging to a missing 13-year-old girl, Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. Murdoch and his company paid millions to the Dowler family.

But the lawsuit by Church, a former child singing prodigy, heads into court beginning 28 February. It is one of the more embarrassing cases for Murdoch, who had the angel-voiced singer perform at his wedding when she was 13.

Silverleaf said Church's lawsuit was "one of the more complicated cases, and one where the claimants have taken a particularly polarized view."

Last year Church testified before a British media ethics inquiry that Murdoch's newspapers and other British tabloids had spent years tormenting her, often while she was just in her teens, blowing her credibility "to bits" and damaging her career. She detailed how cameramen had tried to take photos up her skirt and how reporters had published details about her sex life when she was just 17.

Wednesday's arguments between Church's lawyer David Sherborne and Silverleaf largely focused on how the court would measure the toll that journalists' attention took on her mental health and her family's business.

A lawyer for the News of the World's private investigator, Glenn Mulcaire, who Church is also suing, asked that the case be heard at least in part in secret to avoid prejudicing any potential criminal case against Mulcaire. Judge Geoffrey Vos, however, indicated such a move would be unlikely.

Vos said he was "extremely hostile" to imposing blanket reporting restrictions on the Church case because of the public interest in letting the facts be known. He said he might consider an "appropriate, limited order" at a later hearing.

Despite the latest Murdoch settlements, there's no end in sight yet to the scandal. Victims' lawyer Hugh Tomlinson told the court that six more people had decided to sue and that 50 others were at various stages in preparing their lawsuits.

At the same time, three parallel police investigations are under way into wrongdoing not only at the News of the World but also at two other Murdoch papers in Britain, The Sun and The Times. More than a dozen ex-Murdoch employees have been arrested and several executives have resigned.

British politicians and police also have been ensnared in the scandal, which exposed the cozy relationship between senior officers, top lawmakers and newspaper executives and the bribery of police for information.

The government-commissioned ethics inquiry is currently investigating British media practics and media links to police and politicians. Heather Mills, the former wife of musician Paul McCartney, is expected to testify before that inquiry Thursday.
..............- 30 -

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

anti-Planned Parenthood hatchetwoman Karen Handel resigns from Komen for the Cure [for breast cancer]

Karen Handel

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
daily broadsheet, Atlanta Georgia USA
Tuesday 7 February 2012

Karen Handel resigns 

from Komen for the Cure

by Jim Galloway, Political Insider

Karen Handel, the former GOP candidate for [Georgia] governor, just announced her resignation as a senior vice president for public policy of Susan G. Komen for the Cure -- one week after the breast cancer charity reversed itself on a decision to sever financial ties with Planned Parenthood.

Below is the letter. Note that Handel says she is declining the offer of a severance package from Komen -- which might have required her to keep silent.

=============================

February 7, 2012

The Honorable Nancy Brinker
CEO, Susan G. Komen for the Cure

VIA EMAIL
5005 LBJ Freeway, Suite 250
Dallas, Texas 75244

Dear Ambassador Brinker:

Susan G. Komen for the Cure has been the recognized leader for more 30 years in the fight against breast cancer here in the US -– and increasingly around the world.

    As you know, I have always kept Komen’s mission and the women we serve as my highest priority -- as they have been for the entire organization, the Komen Affiliates, our many supporters and donors, and the entire community of breast cancer survivors. I have carried out my responsibilities faithfully and in line with the Board’s objectives and the direction provided by you and Liz.

    We can all agree that this is a challenging and deeply unsettling situation for all involved in the fight against breast cancer. However, Komen’s decision to change its granting strategy and exit the controversy surrounding Planned Parenthood and its grants was fully vetted by every appropriate level within the organization. At the November Board meeting, the Board received a detailed review of the new model and related criteria. As you will recall, the Board specifically discussed various issues, including the need to protect our mission by ensuring we were not distracted or negatively affected by any other organization’s real or perceived challenges. No objections were made to moving forward.

    I am deeply disappointed by the gross mischaracterizations of the strategy, its rationale, and my involvement in it. I openly acknowledge my role in the matter and continue to believe our decision was the best one for Komen’s future and the women we serve. However, the decision to update our granting model was made before I joined Komen, and the controversy related to Planned Parenthood has long been a concern to the organization. Neither the decision nor the changes themselves were based on anyone’s political beliefs or ideology. Rather, both were based on Komen’s mission and how to better serve women, as well as a realization of the need to distance Komen from controversy. I believe that Komen, like any other nonprofit organization, has the right and the responsibility to set criteria and highest standards for how and to whom it grants.

    What was a thoughtful and thoroughly reviewed decision -- one that would have indeed enabled Komen to deliver even greater community impact -- has unfortunately been turned into something about politics. This is entirely untrue. This development should sadden us all greatly.

    Just as Komen’s best interests and the fight against breast cancer have always been foremost in every aspect of my work, so too are these my priorities in coming to the decision to resign effective immediately. While I appreciate your raising a possible severance package, I respectfully decline. It is my most sincere hope that Komen is allowed to now refocus its attention and energies on its mission.

    Sincerely,

[Karen Handel]