Here’s your news this evening, Firepups!

International Developments

❖ Syria reportedly shelled a Turkish town this morning, killing 5 and injuring 8, so Turkey began firing “warning” shots back. Locals in the Turkish area hit by Syrian shelling are now very upset: “People here are rising up, there is no security. People were chanting for the local governors to resign.”

❖ 34 people reportedly killed, dozens injured as a series of bombs exploded in the square in Aleppo, Syria.

❖ 35 Code Pink members are preparing “for an unprecedented march and political rally in South Waziristan.” Local authorities are leery that the marchers can be adequately protected. Code Pink is also considering a hunger strike in front of the US Embassy in Islamabad, protesting US drone strikes.

❖ Oh, my, my.”Rupert Murdoch faces shareholder revolt at News Corp annual meeting: Group says News Corp has not addressed board structure and corporate culture and call on Murdoch to step down as chairman”

International Finance

❖ “Video: Madrid on the brink“. Scroll down.

Money Matters USA

❖ DDay on the Mortgage Fraud Task Force. Good vIdeo.

❖ MI Republican Gov Rick Snyder and his GOP legislators “had estimated Michiganians would save more than $2 billion as a result of the repeal of the requirement stores put price stickers on each item.” Turns out, prices rose after the repeal–but “grocery store wages dropped 3.5 percent”, apparently due to fewer hours for clerks.

❖ Another sorry tale of a bank, Wells Fargo in this case, working hard to foreclose on a family whose finances took a big hit when a family member, Ana Wilson, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, also developed breast cancer. Protests have been held in front of the Los Angeles County, CA home of the bank’s CEO, Tim Sloan. When Wilson tried to deliver a check to Sloan at his house during a protest, she ended up being arrested–check undelivered.

❖ “Immigrant entrepreneurship” experienced a boom in the 1980s and 1990s, but now is slowing. Since economics recognize that “young businesses–rather than small businesses in general–represent the most reliable, consistent source of job creation”, this is troubling sign.

Politics USA

❖ Bill Black rips into the Romney-Ryan treatment of the 47%, then raises the key quesion: “why do Romney and Ryan (and Obama) refuse to support the immediate creation of a jobs guarantee program so that everyone who wishes to work and is able to do so can work and pay additional taxes?” Good read.

❖ Did we hear an “Ouch!”? Some “Wall Street analysts are publicly predicting that President Obama is likely to be re-elected.”

❖ Back in 2007, conservative Tucker Carlson treated his tee vee audience to a speech by Obama about racism and its consequences, including “quiet riots”. Not much was made of the tape at the time. Now, that same tape is being portrayed as an election-changer. Matt Drudge even had it on his web site last night. It’s received the same ho-hum reaction as in 2007, however.

❖ Conservative groups are waging an effort to install the kind of activist judges they like, by installing right-wing judges on the Florida Supreme Court.

❖ An Obama super PAC, Priorities USA Action, is moving $4.5 million from ads in FL and WI to CO, IA, NV and VA.

❖ Martin Bashir: “Stuck at the corner of 47th and Bain“.

❖ Paul Ryan on the division of Americans into “takers” and “makers” and other hurtful stuff: “30 Percent ‘Want Welfare State’, 70 Percent “Want The American Dream”. Video.

❖ It’s even worse. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin some four years ago claimed women who weren’t even pregnant were getting abortions at abortion clinics.

❖ A judge has refused to prevent emails from being used in the trial of one of WI Republican Gov Scott Walker’s former aides. The aide, Kelly M. Rindfleisch, has been charged with 4 felony counts for working on Walker’s campaign while both she and he were employed by Milwaukee County.

❖ Nathan Sproul, favored contractor of Republicans to get Republicans registered to vote around these United States, has gained notoriety and he is talking. “In essence, Sproul is asserting that the Republican National Committee knew of his sordid reputation and told him to disguise his involvement in his legally questionable strategies . . ..”

❖ Newly recognized member in the popular array of Republican sugar daddy billionaires: Peter G. Peterson. Commerce Secretary under Nixon, CEO of Lehman Brothers, co-founder of Blackstone Group. “His particular targets are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid . . . which he wants to cut back in a manner that would strike deeply at the middle class.”

The War on Women

❖ Sunset Park clinic in Brooklyn, which provided abortion among its outpatient surgeries, has shut down after 22 years due to continuous harassment of doctors and patients by anti-abortion zealots. It will reopen this month, but abortion will no longer be provided at the clinic. “Catholic leaders” were celebrating their victory.

Health, Homelessness & Hunger

❖ $400 – $700 checks will be distributed at several homeless sites in Sacramento, CA result of a successful lawsuit brought against the police who seized and destroyed bicycles, tents and other property of the homeless during raids on illegal campsites.

Planet Earth News

❖ Seems fracking in Pavillion, WY has contaminated the groundwater–and the contamination might have moved up through bedrock, not earlier thought likely.

❖ Those earthquakes around Dallas do “appear to be connected to the past disposal of wastewater from local hydraulic fracturing operations,” according to a geophysicist.

❖ Earth’s oceans are absorbing huge amounts of carbon dioxide from humans, leading to ocean acidification “unlike any other in the Earth’s history”.

❖ If this list making the rounds on the internets is accurate, it’s small wonder CA’s GMO-labelling ballot initiative is being fought so hard. Here’s a shopping guide for non-GMO foods that you can download. Here’s another non-GMO list.

Latin America

❖ A trial on-going in Brazil “is seen as a key test of holding Brazil’s politicians to account for corruption.” Several of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party are on trial for corruption before Brazil’s Supreme Court.

❖ A plan to deport undocumented immigrants to Mexico City instead of overcrowded border towns has been scaled back.

Mixed Bag

❖ That didn’t take long. Last week, we saw a video about software being developed that, using a 3D printer, would print out a gun. That is now on hold after Stratasys, the 3D printer supplier, said its printers are not to be used for “illegal purposes”.

❖ Follow-up on yesterday’s American Airlines item: Three AA flights in the past week have had problems with seats being loose on Boeing 757 airplanes. AA has now inspected 47 of the 102 Boeing 757s and found 6 where seats were loose or potentially so. Outside contractors installed the seats.

❖ Why is “innocence of Muslims” filmmaker Nakoula Basseley Nakoula in jail? For the film or for parole violations? Civil liberties issues are being raised.

Break Time

❖ Seeing dark matter.