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Moved: Stand Your Ground: Click Here

In the matter of the murder of Trayvon Martin…

Moved: Stand Your Ground: Click Here

Nearly two years ago we told you how  the once venerated Goldman Sachs Group, a full-service global investment banking and securities firm, is comprised of a bunch of piggies…greedy, smack-talking piggies.  We even told you how their behavior reminds us of the Beatles’ tune, penned by the late George Harrison, about greedy little piggies.

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Earlier this month, Greg Smith, in his role as New York Times Op-Ed contributor, very publicly announced to the world, and his employer, Goldman Sachs,  he is leaving and his reasons why. We took to the article, authored by a financial insider, as confirmation of what we knew to be true and published in 2010. (more…)

The creator of this piece, R.J. Matson, gave the title “The  Stand Your Ground Before He stands His Ground Defense…so our staff came up with sub-caption: “The Future of  ‘Stand Your Ground’ Laws”.

The Future of "Stand Your Ground" Laws

A few words about the creator of this cartoon: (more…)

Readers who live in the Washington, D.C. Metro area are familiar with news anchor Jim Vance, the man in the following video.

Vance is also known on the Internet for appearing in a video with the late sports anchor George Michael where they laughed at a model who fell, not once but twice, on a fashion show runway.

This time you will find him somber as he expresses his point of view on the matter of Trayvon Martin.

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 Mounting pressure in the Trayvon Martin tragedy has succeeded in bringing forth the following result:

Just moments ago the federal  Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division and the FBI announced they will be investigating the murder of Miami Gardens teenager by a neighborhood watch volunteer.

The department announced late Monday it has begun an investigation into the fatal shooting death of an unarmed black teen, Trayvon Martin, in Sanford, Florida by a self appointed neighborhood watch captain. (more…)

The following video is one African American intellectual’s take on the murder of seventeen year-old Trayvon Martin of Miami, Florida. Reports of his February 26, 2012 murder, while completely unarmed, is making headlines around the world. His confessed shooter has not been charged or arrested due to a technicality in the law called “stand your ground”. ( Read more about the so-called “stand your ground law” in a future post.)
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In the current issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, writer Matt Taibbi has contributed a very strong investigative piece on everyone’s favorite banking institution Bank Of America. The article is
“Bank Of America: Too Crooked To Fail“.  Around here we affectionately refer to the bankster company as “Bank Of The UNIVERSE”,  for obvious reasons.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The  Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, Local 38010 of the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO, CLC, plans to fight layoffs of 19 Philadelphia journalists, after 21 take buyouts offered by Philadelphia Media Network, (PMN) owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com.

Photojournalist Sarah Glover decided to take the buyout rather than being laid off. Glover is president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. In a note to Facebook friends she stated her concern that “by the end of the staff reduction process at PMN this week that the newsrooms will take another step back to looking like 1962 rather than more like what a newsroom should look like in 2012.” (more…)

You may wondered , like many members of our staff at YouThinkWhat,  just what Sandra Fluke actually said to cause the popular fat windbag guy on the radio to call her out of her name. What in the world could she have said to cause the person who currently enjoys hosting the most listened to radio talk show in America, broadcast on over 600 radio stations nationwide, to say the hateful disrespectful things he has, and now attempt to apologize for saying them? Did he not arrive on this planet by way of a woman?

We present Part 2 of “What Sandra Fluke REALLY Said To The Democrats”, based on a report from Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner.com. This is the text of Sandra Fluke’s opening statement, given February 23, 2012, when she testified before a House Democratic panel in support of the HHS contraception mandate.

A friend of mine, for example, has polycystic ovarian syndrome, and she has to take prescription birth control to stop cysts from growing on her ovaries. Her prescription is technically covered by Georgetown’s insurance because it’s not intended to prevent pregnancy.

Unfortunately, under many religious institutions and insurance plans, it wouldn’t be. There would be no exception for other medical needs. And under Sen. Blunt’s amendment, Sen. Rubio’s bill or Rep. Fortenberry’s bill there’s no requirement that such an exception be made for these medical needs.

When this exception does exist, these exceptions don’t accomplish their well-intended goals because when you let university administrators or other employers rather than women and their doctors dictate whose medical needs are legitimate and whose are not, women’s health takes a back seat to a bureaucracy focused on policing her body.

In 65% of the cases at our school, our female students were interrogated by insurance representatives and university medical staff about why they needed prescription and whether they were lying about their symptoms.

For my friend and 20% of the women in her situation, she never got the insurance company to cover her prescription. Despite verifications of her illness from her doctor, her claim was denied repeatedly on the assumption that she really wanted birth control to prevent pregnancy. She’s gay. So clearly polycystic ovarian syndrome was a much more urgent concern than accidental pregnancy for her.
<blockquote>One woman told us doctors believe she has endometriosis, but that can’t be proven without surgery. So the insurance has not been willing to cover her medication – the contraception she needs to treat her endometriosis.

Recently, another woman told me that she also has polycystic ovarian syndrome and she’s struggling to pay for her medication and is terrified to not have access to it.

Due to the barriers erected by Georgetown’s policy, she hasn’t been reimbursed for her medications since last August.

I sincerely pray that we don’t have to wait until she loses an ovary or is diagnosed with cancer before her needs and the needs of all of these women are taken seriously.

Because this is the message that not requiring coverage of contraception sends: A woman’s reproductive health care isn’t a necessity, isn’t a priority.

One woman told us that she knew birth control wasn’t covered on the insurance and she assumed that that’s how Georgetown’s insurance handle all of women’s reproductive and sexual health care. So when she was raped, she didn’t go to the doctor, even to be examined or tested for sexually transmitted infections, because she thought insurance wasn’t going to cover something like that – something that was related to a woman’s reproductive health.

As one other student put it: ‘This policy communicates to female students that our school doesn’t understand our needs.’

These are not feelings that male fellow student experience and they’re not burdens that male students must shoulder.

In the media lately, some conservative Catholic organizations have been asking what did we expect when we enroll in a Catholic school?

We can only answer that we expected women to be treated equally, to not have our school create untenable burdens that impede our academic success.

We expected that our schools would live up to the Jesuit creed of ‘cura personalis‘ – to care for the whole person – by meeting all of our medical needs.

We expected that when we told our universities of the problem this policy created for us as students, they would help us.

We expected that when 94% of students oppose the policy the university would respect our choices regarding insurance students pay for – completely unsubsidized by the university.

We did not expect that women would be told in the national media that we should have gone to school elsewhere.

And even if that meant going to a less prestigious university, we refuse to pick between a quality education and our health. And we resent that in the 21st century, anyone think it’s acceptable to ask us to make this choice simply because we are women.

Many of the women whose stories I’ve shared today are Catholic women. So ours is not a war against the church. It is a struggle for the access to the health care we need.

The President of the Association of Jesuit Colleges has shared that Jesuit colleges and the universities appreciate the modifications to the rule announced recently. Religious concerns are addressed and women get the health care they need. And I sincerely hope that that is something we can all agree upon.

Thank you very much.

You may be, like our staff at YouThinkWhat, wondering just what it is Sandra Fluke actually said to cause the fat windbag guy on the radio to call her out of her name.

According to Charlie Spiering of the Washington Examiner.com this is the text of Sandra Fluke’s opening statement, given when she testified before a House Democratic panel in support of the HHS contraception mandate.

My name is Sandra Fluke, and I’m a third-year student at Georgetown Law School. I’m also a past-president of Georgetown Law Students for Reproductive Justice or LSRJ. And I’d like to acknowledge my fellow LSRJ members and allies and all of the student activists with us and thank them so much for being here today.

(Applause)

We, as Georgetown LSRJ, are here today because we’re so grateful that this regulation implements the non-partisan medical advice of the Institute of Medicine.

I attend a Jesuit law school that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its student health plan. And just as we students have faced financial, emotional, and medical burdens as a result, employees at religiously-affiliated hospitals and institutions and universities across the country have suffered similar burdens.

We are all grateful for the new regulation that will meet the critical health care needs of so many women. (more…)