Women Born Transsexual

Check Cashing/Payday Loans are legal forms of loan sharking encouraged by the rich who love business more than the exploited poor and working class.  Other forms of robbery and exploitation of the working people and poor include rent to own furniture that cost several times what decent furniture costs.  Then you have these scum bag auto dealers with the 500 dollars down and a payment a week forever.  A loan that costs many times the value of the car.

Debt Slavery and loan sharking run by a legalized Mafia

From FireDogLake:  http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/11/02/buy-here-pay-here-the-subprime-auto-loan-scam/

By: David Dayen
Wednesday November 2, 2011

More attention needs to be paid to the LA Times’ excellent series on subprime auto loans. The first installment concerned Buy Here Pay Here used car dealerships, and how they hook low-income borrowers into high-interest loans, then repossess the car when the loans go bad and resell the car to the next mark. This is an endlessly repeating cycle, where the same lemon can be sold and resold multiple times. And if you’re current on your payments or if you worked out what you thought was a modification, well, that’s just an inconvenience.

A year and a half later, Lee fell behind on her payments and filed for bankruptcy. So she was relieved when the dealership called and offered to make her loan more affordable. The sales manager even promised to throw in a free smog check. Lee, 35, drove back to Repossess Auto on a rainy Monday evening, handed the keys to an attendant and sat down with the manager.

Moments later, she said, employees parked four cars tightly around the Ford, blocking it in.

There would be no new deal. Lee’s car was being repossessed. She and her children waited in the rain until a friend could drive them home.

Lee, who described that night as “one of the worst experiences of my life,” had stumbled into the bare-knuckle world of Buy Here Pay Here used-car sales.

The used-car dealers prey on the necessity among even low-income individuals of having a car. They will pay whatever they need to get one, regardless of the terms. And then they get locked into a rate they can’t afford. That’s the whole point for the dealership, which wants to make money off the vehicle again and again. One car has been resold eight separate times, according to the LAT investigation. The BHPH model is so reliant on repossession that they outfit the cars with hidden GPS devices and remote-control ignition blockers.

Continue reading at:  http://news.firedoglake.com/2011/11/02/buy-here-pay-here-the-subprime-auto-loan-scam/

From Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/02-11

by Yifat Susskind
Published on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 by CommonDreams.org

This week marks the beginning of the G20 summit in Paris, where representatives from the 20 richest countries will gather to discuss global economic policy. The G20 has been meeting since the late 1990s to respond to global financial crises. But the policies they espouse—from cutting back on government spending to deregulation—have only led to more poverty, inequality and instability.

Ahead of this week’s meetings, MADRE, an international women’s human rights organization, calls on the G20 states to take effective action to address financial crisis. One important step is to stabilize the market by creating a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on currency exchanges and financial transactions. MADRE stands with economic justice advocates worldwide in endorsing the call for such a tax.

In a global economy wracked by speculation and rapid-fire trading, the ‘Robin Hood’ tax would tame the profit-driven speculation that has made our world financial markets so volatile. It would curb short-sighted trading practices that move trillions of dollars each day, generating huge profits for a tiny few without reinvestment in social services, infrastructure and other necessities for the global 99 percent. By taxing these financial transactions, money could be funneled into critical social services such as health care and education.

The practices of traders and speculators in global markets have also turned basic rights like food, water, health care and education into commodities, pushing these resources out of reach for many of the world’s people. For example, this year’s famine in the Horn of Africa is in part the result of rampant speculation on grains—the world’s staple food.

Today, grassroots protests against economic injustice are growing around the world. The Occupy Wall Street movement was born in downtown New York City, but it has links that span geographies and time.

Continue reading at:  http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/11/02-11

From Alternet: http://www.alternet.org/story/152869/biometric_door_locks_and_bulletproof_windows%3A_how_occupy_wall_street_is_scaring_the_heck_out_of_the_1/

Are the sustained protests in Manhattan’s Financial District and around the country getting to the wealthy bankers who are being targeted?

By Sarah Jaffe
November 1, 2011

A giant bunch of red balloons bob outside the glass windows of the tower at 200 West Street—the headquarters of mega-investment bank Goldman Sachs. Tied to each balloon is a letter, printed out from the site OccupyTheBoardroom.org, being delivered to Goldman in rather spectacular fashion by the activists below, who are holding onto the balloons by a few balls of twine.

A small group of people, including a couple of police officers, huddle nearby. It’s clear they don’t like what’s going on, but they can’t seem to come up with a legal reason to stop it. The protesters tie more letters to more balloons and send them zipping up the string to join the others at the top, and a blonde woman mutters something like, “They want to occupy the boardroom,” into her her walkie-talkie.

Clearly, someone at Goldman Sachs has heard of the site, and while their message might not be getting through, they’re certainly unnerved at the willingness of activists to bring creative protest right to their door.

The response of the country’s financial elites to the protests in Liberty Plaza and around the country seem not all that different from the police and security guards nervously watching outside the Goldman office. They don’t want to overreact and show that the actions are working, but they clearly wish they had a way to shut them down.

It’s been over a month since New York’s financial district found a mini-society growing in one of its parks, a month of impromptu marches, organized bank withdrawals, teach-ins, arrests, and creative actions of all kinds. But aside from the snarled “Get a job!” from angry be-suited passersby, how have the financial elites who are the target of the protests reacted?

Are the occupiers, for lack of a better phrase, getting inside their heads?

A Boom for “Executive Protection”

Forbes magazine sent billionaire investor Jeff Greene, reportedly a Democratic candidate for the Senate in Florida last year, down to report on Occupy Wall Street, and he told them, “Right now it’s like a college sit-in, demonstrating middle-class frustration, but it could eventually lead to violence and that is the scary next step.”

Continue reading at:  http://www.alternet.org/story/152869/biometric_door_locks_and_bulletproof_windows%3A_how_occupy_wall_street_is_scaring_the_heck_out_of_the_1/

From The Advocate: http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2011/11/01/Chick_fil_A_Gave_Nearly_2M_to_Antigay_Groups_Just_in_2009/

By Neal Broverman

The Georgia-based fast-food chain Chick-fil-A has never hid its conservative leanings, but now the full scope of its antigay agenda is coming to light — according to Equality Matters, the charitable arm of Chick-fil-A distributed over $1.7 million to antigay groups in 2009 alone.

Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy has said that his company doesn’t carry an “agenda against anyone,” but it’s hard to believe that after considering their “philanthropy.” Some of the groups the corporation has contributed to through WinShape, the side company created in 1984 for corporate giving, include organizations that not only actively work to end marriage equality, but also groups that attempt to “convert” gay people and one that’s considered a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Here are some of WinShape’s contributions, according to tax records from 2009:

From In These Times: http://www.inthesetimes.com/duly-noted/entry/12219/personhood_proponent_predicts_initiative_26_would_ban_birth_control/

By Lindsay Beyerstein
Wednesday Nov 2, 2011

A spokesman for PersonhoodUSA predicted in a radio interview that a proposed amendment to redefine fertilized ova as persons would also ban any form of birth control that kills a fertilized ovum in Mississippi.

PUSA spox Walter Hoye is very confused about human reproduction, but he’s crystal clear about his agenda, as he told Diane Rehm of NPR:

Hoye: Any birth control that ends the life of a human being will be impacted by this measure.

Rehm: So that would then include the IUD [intra-uterine device]. What about the birth control pill?

Hoye: If that falls into the same category, yes.

Rehm: So you’re saying that the birth control pill could be considered as taking the life of a human being?

Hoye: I’m saying that once the egg and the oocyte come together and you have that single-celled embryo, at that point you have human life, you’ve got a human being and we’re taking the life of a human being with some forms of birth control and if birth control falls into that category, yes I am.

The logical follow-up question is whether women with IUDs would be prosecuted as serial killers. If fertilized ova are legally people from the second the sperm meets the egg, that would be the only just response. But that’s stupid. Even Hoye doesn’t believe that women who use IUDs are murderers.

Continue reading at:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/duly-noted/entry/12219/personhood_proponent_predicts_initiative_26_would_ban_birth_control/

From Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: http://holybulliesandheadlessmonsters.blogspot.com/2011/11/i-get-very-frustrated-with-gay.html

By Alvin McEwen
November 2, 2011

Reposted with permission

I’ll let you in on a little secret.

There are times when I get extremely frustrated with some who fight for lgbtq equality.

Yesterday, I was reading an excellent piece on Equality Matters (a really good site), which detailed the fact that Fox News was relying on the supposed expertise of religious right “experts” to comment on a situation involving a seven-year-old transgender girl who was allowed in the Girl Scouts.

The piece pinpointed two of the phony experts – Judith Reisman:

Reisman is actually a long-time peddler of anti-LGBT propaganda. She is a full-throated proponent of the claim that gay people are more likely to engage in pedophilia, as well as the myth that the Nazi party was run by gay men. She has railed against the media for failing to acknowledge “that homosexuality is correlated with disorder.” She’s also accused those who support transgender youth of “chemically violating and numbing the nation’s cruelly and unnaturally traumatized youth.”

And the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg:

FRC has been labeled as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and Sprigg is a good example of the reasons why. Sprigg is the author of some of FRC’s vilest anti-LGBT propaganda, including a pamphlet that links homosexuality to pedophilia, mental illness, disease, and violence while promoting “ex-gay” therapy. He’s stated that he would prefer to “export” gays and lesbians from the U.S. and condemned anti-bullying initiatives for trying to “indoctrinat[e]” children.

Here is the thing, though.

The piece failed to mention that Reisman is a failed researcher who was given a federal grant of more than $784,000 to study 30 years worth of Playboy magazines. These findings were dismissed as “paranoid pseudoscientific hyperbole.” Or that she wrote a book accusing sex researcher Alfred Kinsey of child abuse. When the Kinsey Institute easily batted down her charges, she sued it for defamation and emotional distress, claiming that it tried to censor her book. Not only was the case dismissed, but it was dismissed with prejudice, which means Reisman could not re-file it.

The piece also failed to mention that Sprigg’s pamphlet in question – The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality – is filled with distortions, cherry-picked work, and quotes taken out of context created to justify homophobia.

This is not a slam on Equality Matters, but rather just an outcry of frustration on the entire lgbtq movement in general. I think that the reason why it has been so difficult for us to expose the right is because we are not thorough enough.

In dealing with religious right groups, the gay community has shown an appalling degree of laziness in demonstrating why these groups and their phony analysts have no credibility.

It is simply not enough to call them hatemongerers. It is simply not enough to say that they are hate groups.

We have yet  to make any consistent effort in educating the public how they rely on lies, junk science, and distortions to make their case. Simply spotlighting their words with no explanation as to the inaccuracy of their statements is totally unacceptable.

How many of us know anything about the 11 researchers who have gone on record over the years complaining about how religious right groups take their work out of context?

How many of us know anything about Paul Cameron and the religious right’s reliance on his discredited research and methods?

There is a serious disconnect here and it’s something which constantly bothers me. The lgbtq community has so much power than we did before. We’ve got magazines. we have webpages. Hell, we even have a television channel.

Would it kill those in charge of gay media to focus at least one iota of attention on what goes into a Family Research Council anti-gay pamphlet or what criteria do these groups use to anoint someone as a “policy expert?”

If I said it once, I’ve said it a million times – if the lgbtq community is going to get any headway with combating religious right groups, the labeling of these groups as bigots without any discussion or knowledge of their techniques of deception  must stop. The lgbt community must roll up its collective sleeves and do the hard work not just to educate those in the mainstream, but also itself.

But I can’t help but wondering are we ever going to at least make an effort?

Never mind that the only constitutions these right wing scumbags like are the Nazi Constitution and perhaps the Confederate Constitution but these home grown terrorists are off to defend it and probably their perversion of a religion that replaced Jesus with Ayn Rand too.

What I want to know is, can we respect their rights the exact same way we respected the rights of José Padilla?  Which is to say rendition them to Gitmo for some seriously harsh “24’s Jack Bauer” style enhanced interrogation.

Who financed them?  Who sold them weapons?

From Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/02/georgia-militia-group-planned-ricin-attack-to-save-the-constitution/

By David Edwards
Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says that four members of a fringe militia used a book written by Fox News “expert” Mike Vanderboegh as a basis for a plot to commit domestic terrorism.

Federal law enforcement authorities on Tuesday arrested four Georgia senior citizens for allegedly plotting to kill government officials and spread terror with guns, explosives and the toxin ricin.

An FBI criminal complaint (PDF) claimed that Frederick Thomas cited Vanderboegh’s book Absolved as a model for the group’s actions.

Thomas along with Samuel Crump, Ray Adams, and Dan Roberts, who together called themselves the “covert group,” hatched the plot over the phone, at their residences and even at a Toccoa, Georgia Waffle House.

Continue reading at:  http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/02/georgia-militia-group-planned-ricin-attack-to-save-the-constitution/

Further evidence that the drug laws are not really based in health concerns or common sense.  Pot doesn’t kill yet things like alcohol lead to hundred of thousands of deaths each year.  Pot has a better record of not killing people than these ED drugs yet the ED drugs are legal because “Corporations” (Legal drug cartels) make billions off of them.  Where as anyone can grow pot or could if it were legal.

From My Health News:  http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/erectile-dysfunction-drugs-linked-to-2200-deaths-2070/

By Joseph Brownstein
Nov 1, 2011

Men who have erectile dysfunction may be eager to solve that specific problem, but a new study adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that erectile dysfunction may be a sign of other health problems.

Researchers found 2,200 deaths linked to erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs, based on reports to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Office of Surveillance and Epidemiology from 2000 to 2010.

hat number is not cause for immediate concern, given the methods of reporting and the number of men estimated to be taking the drugs, which, while hard to narrow down, is between 15 million and 84 million men in the U.S., according to the study.

Rather, the findings highlight the fact that ED may be a warning sign of heart or other conditions a patient is not yet aware of but should be concerned about, researchers said.

“These are very safe medications,” said study author Dr. Gregory Lowe, a urologist at Ohio State University Medical Center. The findings were published online Oct. 24 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

“All men over 30 years should have a cardiac risk assessment,” said Dr. Graham Jackson, a cardiologist at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London and one of the authors of the Princeton consensus, a set of guidelines for heart patients when dealing with sexual activity and erectile dysfunction.

Continue reading at:  http://www.myhealthnewsdaily.com/erectile-dysfunction-drugs-linked-to-2200-deaths-2070/

Perhaps what no one is willing to suggest is that instead of taking drugs for impotency men should consider a number of lifestyle changes including vegetarianism, stopping smking, cutting out most drinking, getting away  from the high stress lifestyles, more physical exercise and learning to expand they repertoire of sexual activity beyond teenage style fucking.

After all there is more to sex than fucking.  Impotency is a natural part of aging.  You weren’t meant too father children as an old man.  Grow up.

From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/01/anti-g20-protests-confined-nice?INTCMP=SRCH

Cannes closed to demonstrators as 12,000 police deployed to provide security for G20 summit

Angelique Chrisafis in Nice
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 November 2011

Thousands of anti-globalisation protesters marched in the French city of Nice on Tuesday, as police sealed off the nearby resort of Cannes, where the G20 summit starts on Thursday.

Protesters in Nice chanted slogans against corporate greed and in support of a counter-G20 summit, “People First, Not Finance”, led by trade unions and NGOs including Greenpeace and Oxfam.

Police said 5,500 people turned out; organisers counted 12,000. Riot police and helicopters confined the demonstrators to a working-class neighbourhood to the east of the city, which will provide a base for the alternative summit and anti-G20 protests over the next four days.

The demonstrators are to be kept in Nice, 30km up the coast from “fortress Cannes”, which was chosen as a summit venue because of the ease with which it can be sealed off. More than 12,000 police have been deployed on the Côte d’Azur to provide security for the G20 representatives meeting on the Croisette, in an operation that has seen most of Cannes’s manholes soldered shut.

France obtained special authorisation from Brussels to set up controls across the border with Italy.

Three Spanish nationals were arrested on Tuesday morning on the Nice seafront. The French interior ministry said they were carrying bolts, mountaineering axes, balaclavas and gas masks, and wearing T-shirts and badges that suggested they might be part of the Black Bloc movement which calls for violence against symbols of capitalism.

Continue reading at:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/01/anti-g20-protests-confined-nice?INTCMP=SRCH

From Robert Reich: http://robertreich.org/post/12200736000

By Robert Reich
Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Which do you trust more: democracy or financial markets?

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou decided in favor of democracy yesterday when he announced a national referendum on the draconian budget cuts Europe and the IMF are demanding from Greece in return for bailing it out.

(Or, more accurately, the cuts Europe and the IMF are demanding for bailing out big European banks that have lent Greece lots of money and stand to lose big if Greece defaults on those loans – not to mention Wall Street banks that will also suffer because of their intertwined financial connections with European banks.)

If Greek voters accept the bailout terms, unemployment will rise even further in Greece, public services will be cut more than they have already, the Greek economy will contract, and the standard of living of most Greeks will deteriorate further.

If Greek voters reject the terms and the nation defaults, it will face far higher borrowing costs in the future. This may reduce the standard of living of most Greeks, too. But it doesn’t have to. Without the austerity measures the rest of Europe and the IMF are demanding, the Greek economy has a better chance of growing and more Greeks are likely to find jobs.

Shouldn’t Greek citizens make this decision for themselves?

Continue reading at:  http://robertreich.org/post/12200736000

From San Jose Mercury: http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19235797?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

OAKLAND, Calif.—Anti-Wall Street demonstrators and Oakland city officials on Monday were preparing for a midweek strike by protesters that would include a possible shutdown of the Port of Oakland, the fifth busiest shipping container port in the U.S.

Organizers for Occupy Oakland said during an afternoon news conference that in addition to the port disruption on Wednesday, they also plan to march outside banks, corporations, foreclosed homes, schools and libraries in what they are calling a broad-based call to action.

According to its website, the local Service Employees International Union is encouraging members to seek time off work to stand in support of Occupy Oakland.

“Capitalism is pitting different people in different places. We all have really different experiences of how our lives are falling apart because of this system,” said Louise Michel, an Occupy Oakland organizer. “The key is there is no one answer. We are looking for a lot of different things.”

Another organizer, Boots Riley, said Oakland has become a flashpoint for the anti-Wall Street movement as he expects thousands to participate in the strike.

“All over the world people are marching in solidary with and looking to Oakland,” Riley said. “People are looking at Oakland, California. You know why? It’s become clear that some people in the United States have made a radical, militant connection between capitalism and labor.

“We want to show that for this one day,

Continue reading at:  http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_19235797?IADID=Search-www.mercurynews.com-www.mercurynews.com

From Shareable Net: http://shareable.net/blog/local-money-creates-real-wealth-outside-the-bubble

By Mira Luna
11.01.11

Ever since the crash several years ago, Americans have felt precarious about the nation’s economy and the value of its currency. Money seems to take inconceivable, abstract, and even magical forms, traveling around the world at lightening speed with little oversight and obvious mismanagement.

We have little control over it — the value of our currency is tied to conditions well beyond our control. It moves in directions that most of us are vehemently opposed to. We trusted that the banks, Congress, the Federal Reserve, corporations and Wall Street are managing money responsibly on our behalf, particularly with retirement funds and mortgages, but lately that trust has been broken. In response, local currencies have drawn interest from Occupy and other economic resistance groups to create an alternative to state-controlled money.

Since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 there has been a relative monopoly on money issuance by private banks through the Federal Reserve, which has drawn criticism from groups like the Monetary Reform Institute. For most of America’s history, citizens used local currencies to meet their needs through local business, which often produced their own money. Before the Civil War, there were thousands of local currencies, and during the Great Depression they made a comeback, with hundreds of currencies used by the unemployed in particular.

Local currencies generally develop for one of two reasons — the desire for local economic control (for a variety of reasons, from democracy to sustainability to social justice,) and a scarcity of national currency. In the current situation, both reasons weigh heavy.

When designed well and appropriately for the specific context, local currencies can boost a local economy and reward important work that needs to be done. Where national currency is not available because of overall scarcity or there is not enough market value for the work, local currencies can create real, tangible wealth we can see and control. Investing in community currency means investing in your community’s health for the long haul, and therefore your own security and happiness.

Continue reading at:  http://shareable.net/blog/local-money-creates-real-wealth-outside-the-bubble

From In These Times: http://www.inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12207/oakland_braces_for_general_strike/

By Allison Kilkenny
Tuesday Nov 1, 2011

As thousands of people prepare to converge downtown tomorrow in Oakland for the planned general strike, it appears as though police are going to continue their hands-off approach to the protesters and their day of action.

Mercury News reports that City Administrator Deanna Santana was prepared to quit because of the “mayor’s meddling in policing and about-face on the Occupy Oakland camp.” Mayor Quan publicly apologised for the police response in Oakland following the brutal crackdown on protesters that led to veteran Scott Olsen being hospitalized in critical condition.

Police and Quan have consistently denied the use of rubber bullets, though Police Chief Howard Jordan now admits other law enforcement agencies were called in to provide assistance, and they may have used the other ammunition even though they were supposed to follow Oakland’s rules.

What remains unclear about Wednesday’s general strike is how well-organized the event is and what level of support unions plan to lend the protesters. Major labor unions in the city have voiced support, but of course most of those workers can’t legally strike while under contract. However some say they plan to take the day off, participate during off hours, or walk off the job spontaneously.

Rebecca Band, spokeswoman for the California Labor Federation, said union members will be participating in several ways, including a march to a Wells Fargo branch. They’ll also be cooking from 4:30 to 8 p.m. for protesters.

Wells Fargo plans to “run our business on Wednesday the same way we run it any other day,” said spokeswoman Holly Rockwell.

Continue reading at:  http://www.inthesetimes.com/uprising/entry/12207/oakland_braces_for_general_strike/

From Consortium News: http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/31/michael-moore-on-occupy-oakland/

The Right got what it wanted when Bay Area police stormed the Occupy Oakland encampment touching off clashes that left one protester, Iraq War vet Scott Olsen, in critical condition. Filmmaker Michael Moore discussed the protests with Davey D and Dennis Bernstein.

 By Davey D and Dennis Bernstein

In the early morning hours of Tuesday, Oct. 25, the heavily armed Oakland Police Department in conjunction, with 16 other police departments from all over Northern and Central California, stormed the Occupy Oakland Encampment.

The police were fully dressed in helmets, and riot gear, and armed with shotguns, “nonlethal pellet guns,” teargas and concussion grenades.

The first attack on Frank Ogawa Plaza, in downtown Oakland, where about 200 men, women and children were camped came at about 4:45 a.m. Helicopters were circling and crisscrossing their spot-lights from above, and at least one armored personnel carrier was in the streets, turning downtown Oakland into an instant war-zone.

Within a half an hour or so, the police had roughed up, cuffed, and arrested over 100 of the protesters, and routed the rest away from the area. The police occupied the area all day, denying the public access.

The peaceful protesters were held on high bail, for several days, contrary to the cite-and-release policy usually employed during arrests at political demonstrations.

Police then proceeded to rip apart and shred the tent city, with people’s belongings and personal items being scattered to the wind. Buses were rerouted and downtown Bay Area Rapid Transit stations (BART) were closed for hours, as city officials and police advised workers in that area to stay away.

Continue reading at:  http://consortiumnews.com/2011/10/31/michael-moore-on-occupy-oakland/