The Breakfast Club 7-8-2014

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Everyone’s welcome here, no special handshake required. Just check your meta at the door.

Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

This Day in History

Breakfast News

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A Scary Super Typhoon Is Bearing Down on Japan…and Its Nuclear Plants

Japanese forecasters are calling it a “once in decades storm.” And at Kadena Air Base, a US military installation on the island of Okinawa, one commander dubbed the storm “the most powerful typhoon forecast to hit the island in 15 years.”

Super Typhoon Neoguri, currently sporting maximum sustained winds of nearly 150 miles per hour and just shy of Category 5 strength, is heading straight at Japan’s islands, and its outer bands are currently battering the island of Okinawa. Here’s the forecast map from the Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center. As you can see, the forecast for tomorrow brings the storm up to maximum sustained winds of 140 knots (161 miles per hour), or Category 5 strength (click for larger version):

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Blogging jurist to Supreme Court: ‘STFU’

“Five male Justices of the Supreme Court, who are all members of the Catholic faith and who each were appointed by a President who hailed from the Republican party, decided that a huge corporation, with thousands of employees and gargantuan revenues, was a ‘person’ entitled to assert a religious objection to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate because that corporation was ‘closely held’ by family members,” he wrote. “To the average person, the result looks stupid and smells worse.”

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Supreme Court’s civil war: Scary aftershocks of the Hobby Lobby earthquake

A few days after the Supreme Court’s disturbing Hobby Lobby decision, the court’s three female justices joined in a fierce dissent on another contraceptive case that underscored the tension and distrust that has split the court, and the country.

At issue was an order by Justice Samuel Alito allowing a Christian college to at least temporarily refuse to participate even in the “accommodation” the Affordable Care Act granted religiously affiliated organizations from the contraception mandate. Such organizations can sign an opt-out form, which then lets the insurer provide contraceptive coverage directly without the employer paying for it. Wheaton College insists that even submitting the form would make it “complicit in the provision of contraceptive coverage.”

On the heels of the Hobby Lobby decision, which seemed to say that the accommodation was a reasonable measure to protect both religious liberty and an employee’s healthcare rights, the order was surprising, to say the least.

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Noam Chomsky: Our Govt. Is Capable of Creating Total Catastrophe for Humankind

The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs.  In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons.  First, the U.S. is unmatched in its global significance and impact.  Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it.  Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the U.S. — and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices.  The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond.

There is a “received standard version,” common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse.  It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the U.S. and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat.

There are a number of ways to evaluate the doctrine.  One obvious question to ask is: What happened when the Russian threat disappeared in 1989?  Answer: everything continued much as before.

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At Some Point, Progressives Need to Break Up With the Democratic Party

At a certain point, if you have any relationship with dignity, you’re supposed to get sick of being used and abused. Speaking of which: liberal Democrats.

Democratic politicians act like right-wingers. Liberals vote for them anyway.

The Democratic Party espouses right-wing policies. Self-described progressives give them cash.

Comedian Bill Maher gave them a million cash dollars, yet Democrats don’t agree with him on anything. Why? Because he hates Republicans even more.

Why didn’t Maher save his money? Or better yet, fund a group or a writer or an artist who promotes ideas he actually agrees with? Because he, like tens of millions of other liberals, are stuck in the two-party trap.

The relationship between liberals and Democrats is dysfunctional and enabling, abused pathetics sucking up to cruel abusers.

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Must Read Blog Posts

Hellraisers Journal: Joe Hill convicted on “evidence of the flimsiest character.” IWW on trial.

by JayRaye

‘Progressive’ Headlines That Serve as Propaganda for the Wacko Right

by Don Hazen

I Was a Teenaged Fox News Robot-Sean Hannity Destroyed My Childhood

by Matthew Saccaro

SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS LITTLE CAESAR’S RIGHT TO FEED CHRISTIAN EMPLOYEES TO LIONS

by Matt Horgan

Give A BIG Shout-Out! To The Reading Buddies Program Where Kids Read To Homeless Cats!

from The Animal Rescue Site

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The Daily Wiki

Bastet

Bastet was a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion, worshipped as early as the Second Dynasty (2890 BC). As Bast, she was the goddess of warfare in Lower Egypt, the Nile River delta region, before the unification of the cultures of ancient Egypt. Her name is also spelled Baast, Ubaste, and Baset.[1]

The two uniting cultures had deities that shared similar roles and usually the same imagery. In Upper Egypt, Sekhmet was the parallel warrior lioness deity to Bast. Often similar deities merged into one with the unification, but that did not occur with these deities with such strong roots in their cultures. Instead, these goddesses began to diverge. During the Twenty-Second Dynasty (c. 945-715 BC), Bast had changed from a lioness warrior deity into a major protector deity represented as a cat.[2] Bastet, the name associated with this later identity, is the name commonly used by scholars today to refer to this deity.

(snip)

From the 3rd millennium BC, when Bast begins to appear in our records, she is depicted as either a fierce lioness or a woman with the head of a lioness.[5] Images of Bast were created from a local stone, named alabaster today.[citation needed] The lioness was the fiercest hunter among the animals in Africa, hunting in co-operative groups of related females.

Originally she was viewed as the protector goddess of Lower Egypt. As protector, she was seen as defender of the pharaoh, and consequently of the later chief male deity, Ra, who was also a solar deity, gaining her the titles Lady of Flame and Eye of Ra.

Her role in the Egyptian pantheon became diminished as Sekhmet, a similar lioness war deity, became more dominant in the unified culture of Lower and Upper Egypt known as the Two Lands.[citation needed]

In the first millennium BC, when domesticated cats were popularly kept as pets, during the 18th dynasty Bastet began to be represented as a woman with the head of a cat and ultimately, by the 22nd dynasty emerged as the quintessential Egyptian cat-goddess.[5] In the Middle Kingdom, the domestic cat appeared as Bast’s sacred animal and after the New Kingdom she was depicted as a woman with the head of a cat or a lioness, carrying a sacred rattle and a box or basket.[6]

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Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day. ~Jesus Christ

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Breakfast Tunes

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Stupid Shit by LaEscapee

In my Sleep

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