Women voters will be targeted more in red districts for the 2014 election cycle by Democrats.  This is a good add designed for attracting women voters.  If she is pulls off a win. There will be many adds like this one in the next cycle. 

John Nichols gives a run down on the current battle and pressure on Congress on the Chained-CPI cuts.  This battle is only getting started. 

 It’s a paradox of the Internet that it has found more and new readers for virtually every news source, from old-media publications to the blogger who hit Tumblr yesterday, even as it has killed the business model that once supported them. The thirst and potentially the market for actual news is as robust as ever—whether for bulletins of 140 characters or long-form journalism of the type pioneered by writers like Talese and Halberstam. Despite the tough economic odds, aspiring young newshounds, whatever their chosen medium, are entering the ranks as enthusiastically as ever, and perhaps with a more realistic sense than recent generations that job stability and an upscale income are not guaranteed.

By Emily Greenhouse, Elements @ newyorker.com, April 8, 2013

In the middle of March, a nineteen-year-old Tunisian woman named Amina Tyler posted two topless photos of herself on Facebook. In one, she looks straight at the camera, her middle fingers up, with the words “Fuck Your Morals” painted across her bare chest, the black “O” of “morals” not quite closing over her navel. In the other, she is wearing eyeliner, or maybe kohl, and bright lipstick, her mouth compressed into a tight frown. Between a book in her right hand and a cigarette in her left, scrawled down her chest in four lines are the Arabic words ”My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honor.”[.....]

In late March, Tyler told Italian journalist Federica Tourn that she believed she would be beaten or raped if Tunisian police tracked her down. She claimed that “nothing they could do would be worse than what already happens here to women, the way women are forced to live every day. [.....] On Sunday, Canal Plus broadcast the first interview with Tyler since reported death threats sent her into hiding. From a village some hours from the Tunisian capital, Tyler said, “I’m afraid for my life and the lives of my family.” She told the French station that she “must leave Tunisia.” [.....]

In Tyler’s honor, protesters declared last Thursday, April 4th, Topless Jihad Day. A petition in her defense had fifteen thousand signers, including outspoken atheist Richard Dawkins. In capital cities, university-aged women with crowns of orange and lilac flowers painted their torsos for solidarity: “Bare breasts against Islamism,” “No sharia,” “Free Amina.” [.....]

Another irresponsible gun owner, this time a sheriff. Another death. I could post something like this every day. Why read one more article about one more "accidental" gun death. Its so common its back page news or not news at all. It doesn't get the views, it doesn't get the clicks, it doesn't make money. Why even put it on the web site.

Lest we forget.

A cookout in Tennessee ended in tragedy over the weekend when a 3-year-old child accidentally shot and killed the wife of a Wilson County sheriff’s deputy.

According to WSMV, the toddler found the pistol and discharged it during a gathering at Deputy Daniel Fanning’s residence on Saturday.

Deputies said that 48-year-old Josephine G. Fanning was dead by the time they arrived on the scene. The 3-year-old child was reportedly related to the Fannings.

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) determined that the pistol belonged to Deputy Fanning.

The Tennessean reported that the deputy had been in a bedroom of the home with another relative looking at guns. The child later gained access to the firearm on top of the bed when entering the bedroom with Josephine Fanning.

 WeWe"We are headed to a catastrophic retirement trainwreck."  The author makes very good points of the problems that the elderly face in retirement.  Also points to the causes of this looming disaster and the return of old age poverty.  This ties well into our continuing discussion of Chained CPI and Medicare reduction. Please read and add your opinion.

By John Podesta, Op-Ed @ ForeignPolicy.com, April 5, 2013

At the turn of the new century, every one of the 192 member states of the United Nations committed to eight broad goals intended to radically improve the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The Millennium Development Goals, or MDGs, set an ambitious agenda to cut extreme poverty while also pursuing improved access to education, health services, and safe drinking water.

One thousand days from now -- Dec. 31, 2014 -- marks the end date for achieving these goals. Despite considerable skepticism when the MDGs were adopted that a broad and ambitious agenda would translate to concrete development impacts, we are on track to meet many of the targets laid out back in 2001 when the goals were finalized.

U.N. data indicate that the first goal, to halve the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per day, has already been achieved. As a result, more than 600 million people have moved out of the most extreme poverty imaginable. Progress on this goal has continued in every region of the world even in the aftermath of the economic crisis.

While the next thousand days are an important last push to achieve the MDGs, we need to also focus on what will happen in 2015 and beyond. [....]

By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, April 6/7, 2013

Nek Muhammad knew he was being followed.  On a hot day in June 2004, the Pashtun tribesman was lounging inside a mud compound in South Waziristan, speaking by satellite phone to one of the many reporters who regularly interviewed him on how he had fought and humbled Pakistan’s army in the country’s western mountains. He asked one of his followers about the strange, metallic bird hovering above him.

Less than 24 hours later, a missile tore through the compound, severing Mr. Muhammad’s left leg and killing him and several others, including two boys, ages 10 and 16. A Pakistani military spokesman was quick to claim responsibility for the attack, saying that Pakistani forces had fired at the compound.

That was a lie.

Mr. Muhammad and his followers had been killed by the C.I.A., the first time it had deployed a Predator drone in Pakistan to carry out a “targeted killing.” The target was not a top operative of Al Qaeda, but a Pakistani ally of the Taliban who led a tribal rebellion and was marked by Pakistan as an enemy of the state. In a secret deal, the C.I.A. had agreed to kill him in exchange for access to airspace it had long sought so it could use drones to hunt down its own enemies.

That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization [....]

US strategy to lower temperature on Korean peninsula involves containing Pyongyang and reassuring Seoul that it has its back

By Ewen MacAskill in Washington, guardian.co.uk, 5 April 2013

[....] in spite of all the military activity and bellicose rhetoric, there is a feeling in the White House and the Pentagon that any threat to the US or its allies is not imminent. The Pentagon assessment is that North Korea has not yet mastered the technology needed to accurately fire a nuclear-armed missile at the US mainland or any of its bases in the Pacific.

The danger to the US is indirect. An attack by North Korea on South Korea, as happened in 2010, shelling an island and accused of also torpedoing a navy ship, with the loss of 46 sailors, would provoke immediate retaliation by the South Korean government. The US, in a secret pact signed last month with Seoul, is believed to have confirmed it will provide support.

The Obama administration's official policy towards North Korea is officially known as 'strategic patience', containing North Korea, reassuring its neighbours South Korea and Japan and hoping for a diplomatic solution sometime in the future. [....]

Also see:

North Korea says it cannot guarantee foreign diplomats' safety after 10 April
By Dan Roberts in New York, Justin McCurry in Seoul and Haroon Siddique, guardian.co.uk, 5 April 2013

Embassies told to consider withdrawing staff as missiles are reportedly moved to North Korea's east coast

By Pam Bellock, New York Times, April 5/6,2013

A federal judge ruled Friday that the government must make the most common morning-after pill available over the counter for all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls 16 and younger. In his ruling, he also accused the federal government of “bad faith” in dealing with the requests to make the pill universally available.

[....] the judge, Edward R. Korman of Federal District Court, ruled that the government’s refusal to lift restrictions on access to the pill was “arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.”

Judge Korman ordered the F.D.A. to lift any age and sale restrictions on the pill, Plan B One-Step, and its generic versions, within 30 days.

“More than 12 years have passed since the citizen petition was filed and 8 years since this lawsuit commenced,” the judge wrote. “The F.D.A. has engaged in intolerable delays in processing the petition. Indeed, it could accurately be described as an administrative agency filibuster.”

He added, “The plaintiffs should not be forced to endure, nor should the agency’s misconduct be rewarded by, an exercise that permits the F.D.A. to engage in further delay and obstruction.” [....]