The Breakfast Club (Me and Bobby McGee)

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

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. 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.

Breakfast Tune: Me and Bobby McGee – Janis Joplin Cover by Love Tyler Vocal and Nathan Hanna Banjo

Today in History: October 4th

Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, is launched into orbit; U.S. Blackhawk helicopters shot down in Somalia; Silent movie comedy star Buster Keaton born; Rock singer Janis Joplin dies of drug overdose. (Oct. 4)

Something to Think about, Breakfast News & Blogs Below

Kunduz charity hospital bombing ‘violates international law’

Sune Engel Rasmussen in Kabul and Emma Graham-Harrison, The Guardian

A US airstrike that killed up to 20 aid workers and patients in a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) hospital in Afghanistan constitutes a “grave violation of international law”, the charity’s president has said.

…

Jonathan Whittall, the charity’s head of humanitarian analysis, added: “MSF demands clarity on exactly what took place at our hospital in Kunduz and how this unacceptable event could have happened.”

The US military has been providing bombing raids to support Afghan forces fighting to reclaim control of Kunduz from the Taliban. It admitted that an airstrike may have caused “collateral damage”, a military term for civilian deaths and injuries.

Vatican fires senior priest who declares homosexuality on eve of synod

Al Jazeera and Agence France-Presse

The Vatican on Saturday fired a senior priest who publicly came out as gay on the eve of a synod of bishops at which the issue of the Church’s stance on homosexuality.

In a statement, a spokesman for Pope Francis said Polish priest Krzystof Charamsa’s action had been “very serious and irresponsible”, and that he would be automatically kicked out of his post as a theologian in the Vatican.

Flanked by his Catalan boyfriend and sporting his priest’s collar, Charamsa told a news conference in Rome he had been compelled to speak out against the hypocrisy and paranoia that he says shapes the Church’s attitude to sexual minorities. …

Bernie Sanders thrills Boston with call to fight racism and reform gun law

Alan Yuhas, The Guardian

Bernie Sanders decried “an institutional racism that allows and continues to allow unarmed African Americans to be killed by police” on Saturday night, as he preached to a huge crowd in Boston that welcomed the Democratic presidential candidate’s now familiar vision of “political revolution”.

Sanders alluded to a string of high-profile police killings of unarmed black people, and to a subsequent series of grand jury decisions not to indict officers involved in some cases.

…

“Our job is to make police departments look like the communities they serve,” he said. “Our job is to make sure non-violent offenders do not get locked up, our job is to rethink the war on drugs, our job is to demilitarize police departments, our job is to end mandatory minimum sentences.” …

Hundreds feared dead in Guatemala landslide as hopes fade for survivors

Reuters

Hopes have faded of finding hundreds of people still missing after a huge landslide in Guatemala.

At least 86 people have been killed in the disaster which struck near the capital Guatemala City on Thursday night, burying homes under tons of earth and rubble.

Authorities in Santa Catarina Pinula said 350 people were still unaccounted for as rescue worklers continued to scrabble through the debris looking for survivors.

• Major sponsors call on FIFA chief Blatter to resign
  
  Reuters
• 994 mass shootings in 1,004 days: this is what America’s gun crisis looks like
  
  Guardian US interactive team
• How Harper and the Conservatives Broke the Canadian Economy
  
  Ian Welsh
• ‘Club of One’: US Now Lone UN Member Outside Children’s Rights Treaty
  
  Andrea Germanos

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac:

Priest alleged to have pulled gun on boy because he was a Dallas Cowboys fan

Tom Lutz, The Guardian

A New Jersey priest is alleged to have pointed a gun at an eight-year-old boy because he was a fan of the Dallas Cowboys.

Bergen County prosecutors say that Kevin Carter, a priest at St Margaret of Cortona Roman Catholic church in Little Ferry, asked to see the boy in private on 13 September. Carter is a New York Giants fan and was unhappy the boy was supporting their divisional rivals, the Cowboys, later that day.

Carter reportedly told the boy to stand against a wall before pointing a civil war style musket at him. “As he raised his weapon and pointed it at the boy, he said, ‘I’m going to shoot you,'” Bergen County prosecutor John Molinelli told NBC 4 New York on Friday. …

Breakfast Quote:

I’m one of those regular weird people.

Janis Joplin