This looks like a winner. I’m digging this. Planes is scheduled for an August 9, 2013. It’s the story of Dusty a cropduster who wants to compete in the big aerial race. Planes features Dane Cook, Val Kilmer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Teri Hatcher, and Cedric the Entertainer.
Image via CrunchBase
By Roxane Gay
On Tuesday, June 25, Sen. Wendy Davis of Texas stood for nearly 13 hours without food or drink, without rest, without leaning, without the ability to use the restroom, to filibuster Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), a legislative measure that would have closed 37 of the 42 abortion clinics in Texas, the largest state in the contiguous United States. Interested people from around the country, nay, the world, were able to watch this filibuster and the political maneuverings of those who tried to stop it, via a livestream on YouTube — one watched, at times by more than 180,000 people.The filibuster was a gripping spectacle that kept me rapt for hours. On Twitter, people were able to offer support, however symbolic, for Sen. Davis’ efforts. There was a sense of community. For some levity, I couldn’t help remarking on Sen. Davis’ flawless hair, several hours into her ferocious stand.Near midnight, after some intense and partisan efforts to derail Sen. Davis’ efforts, the impassioned crowd in the gallery began shouting and cheering, letting the senator know she did not stand alone. It was a sound of women fighting for their reproductive freedom in the only way they could: with their voices. I will never forget that sound. It awoke something in me I hadn’t realized had gone dormant.
And why were so many of us watching this amazing set of events happen on a YouTube stream? Because none of the major news networks, not one, carried or covered the last hours of the filibuster. The gap between old and new media yawned ever wider.
That, however, is not where this story begins.
Read More When Twitter does what journalism can’t – Salon.com.
Mr. Crunch replies to the reports that he is not a Captain. I really don’t care if he’s a Captain, Commander, or whatever! His cereal is DA BOMB!!! Have a laugh!
By Bloomberg News
Verizon Wireless is planning a sweeping upgrade of its network this year after surging congestion and deteriorating speed allowed AT&T Inc. to close the gap on service quality.
Following years of Verizon dominating the industry in speed and service, its chief rival has jumped ahead. AT&T is now the performance leader based on speed tests conducted by RootMetrics and PC Magazine, meaning its network can deliver applications, websites and other data the fastest. Verizon says its starting service this summer on a network that is twice as fast, to regain its advantage and fend off AT&T and Sprint Nextel Corp., which is being rejuvenated by money from SoftBank Corp.
Verizons challenge is congestion. The company is the most popular mobile-phone carrier and has continued to add millions more customers than any of its competitors, boosted by advertising and word-of-mouth about the speed of its network. All those users are soaking up the rich bandwidth that once gave Verizon its edge, in some cases bringing connections to a grinding halt.
By Jannell Ross
Around Atlanta, Gentry’s speeches — rife with the nitty-gritty and completely true stories of women infected with HIV collected over the course of her research career — are the stuff of legend. In no uncertain terms, Gentry, a sociologist who studies the way economic and social dynamics influence the spread of diseases such as HIV/AIDS, talks about the lifetime risk that black women — even those with decent incomes, houses, degrees, husbands and church homes — face of contracting HIV. Gentry’s stories are delivered along with epidemiological data, charts and graphs that all make one thing plain: Black women are in peril.
“You should see the faces,” said Gentry, the president and founder of Messages of Empowerment Productions, an Atlanta-based public health education company. “When they look stunned, I know that I may have reached them. What I bring, it’s not the story about sex workers and men on the down low that they’ve already grown used to hearing. What I talk about is the way that blind trust and silence, stuff that may be a part of their life, can be deadly.”
It turns out that shocking presentations like Gentry’s and a turnaround in federal HIV-prevention strategy that began near a decade ago may be saving lives. As the country marks National HIV Testing Day (click here to find a free HIV-testing location near you) today (June 27), officials with the nation’s chief health monitoring agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, say that something interesting and encouraging seems to be happening with black women and HIV.
For the first time in two decades, the number of new HIV infections reported among black women — a group bearing the brunt of one of the nation’s most disproportionately high HIV-infection rates — has declined. In fact, between 2008 and 2010, the most recent detailed data (pdf) available, the number of new infections among black women slid a full 21 percent.
Read More Black Women and HIV: A Decline in Infection Rates Brings Optimism.
By Jennifer Peltz
New York City is becoming the most populous place in the United States to make businesses provide workers with paid sick time, after lawmakers overrode a mayoral veto early Thursday to pass a law expected to affect more than 1 million workers.
With the vote, the city joined Portland, Ore.; San Francisco; Seattle; Washington, D.C.; and the state of Connecticut in requiring the benefit for at least some workers. Similar measures have failed in some other places, including Milwaukee, Denver and Philadelphia.
Supporters see the New York measure as a pace-setter, although it has some significant limits and conditions, and they envision such laws becoming a national norm in coming years.
“The catalyst will have been the successful struggle we waged here in New York City,” said Dan Cantor, the national executive director of the Working Families Party, which is among groups pushing the cause in Maryland, Oregon, Vermont and Washington states, among others.
Advocates say workers shouldn’t have to choose between their physical and financial health. And customers and colleagues shouldn’t have to be exposed to employees who come to work sick, supporters add.
Read More New York City Passes Paid Sick Time Law.
Kelly job fair in open space at 55 2nd St. (Photo credit: Steve Rhodes)
By Michael Grabell
It’s 4:18 a.m. and the strip mall is deserted. But tucked in back, next to a closed-down video store, an employment agency is already filling up. Rosa Ramirez walks in, as she has done nearly every morning for the past six months. She signs in and sits down in one of the 100 or so blue plastic chairs that fill the office. Over the next three hours, dispatchers will bark out the names of who will work today. Rosa waits, wondering if she will make her rent.
In cities all across the country, workers stand on street corners, line up in alleys or wait in a neon-lit beauty salon for rickety vans to whisk them off to warehouses miles away. Some vans are so packed that to get to work, people must squat on milk crates, sit on the laps of passengers they do not know or sometimes lie on the floor, the other workers’ feet on top of them.
This is not Mexico. It is not Guatemala or Honduras. This is Chicago, New Jersey, Boston.
The people here are not day laborers looking for an odd job from a passing contractor. They are regular employees of temp agencies working in the supply chain of many of America’s largest companies – Walmart, Macy’s, Nike, Frito-Lay. They make our frozen pizzas, sort the recycling from our trash, cut our vegetables and clean our imported fish. They unload clothing and toys made overseas and pack them to fill our store shelves. They are as important to the global economy as shipping containers and Asian garment workers.
Many get by on minimum wage, renting rooms in rundown houses, eating dinners of beans and potatoes, and surviving on food banks and taxpayer-funded health care. They almost never get benefits and have little opportunity for advancement.
Read More The Expendables: How the Temps Who Power Corporate Giants Are Getting Crushed – ProPublica.
By Richard Eskow
Bigger isn’t always better. From the Tower of Babel to Teddy Roosevelt’s trust-busting, that principle’s been enshrined in law and legend since the dawn of history. Have we forgotten the lesson?
Corporations, databases, storehouses of personal and institutional wealth all are expanding at ever-increasing speed, threatening to engulf our economy and our lives as they do. That’s the problem with Big Things: Once they reached a certain size, they keep on getting bigger.
Here are seven ways the runaway power of Bigger in finance and in data is threatening to overwhelm us all.
1. Bigger Corporations
Americans have known about the danger of overly large corporations since the founding of the Republic. “I hope that we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations,” said Thomas Jefferson, “which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
“The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity,” Abraham Lincoln observed. “The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.”
Read More 7 Institutions That Have Grown So Monstrously Big They Threaten to Destroy America | Alternet.
Recession? Depression? Does it matter what you call it? (Photo credit: Renegade98)
By Tim Mullaney
Most U.S. cities won’t regain all the local jobs lost in the recession until 2015 or later. Top performers: College towns, oil centers, military base communities.
More than half of all U.S. metro areas won’t regain the jobs lost in the recession until the second half of 2015 or later, an analysis for the U.S. Conference of Mayors says.
Less than a third of U.S. cities and their surrounding suburbs have recovered all the jobs lost since the arrival of the financial crisis. Of 363 U.S. metros, 98 now have more workers than at their pre-recession peak, with an additional 11 slated to join them by the end of the year, according to projections by IHS Global Insight, which compiled the data.
Sixty-one metros won’t see a full recovery until 2021 or later.
The data highlight how slowly most of the U.S. continues to recover from the economic crisis, said Bob Tomarelli, regional economist at IHS. Cities that recouped jobs fastest typically had universities or health care industry concentrations, major federal-agency or military employers, or exploited newly commercialized shale oil and gas, he said.
By Elise Hu
Wendy Davis in 2010 (photo: Wikipedia)
Overnight, Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis became a national political name and a hero to abortion-rights supporters around the country.
The Fort Worth Democrat stood and spoke for nearly 11 hours Tuesday to run out the clock on a sweeping bill that could have closed all but five abortion clinics in the Lone Star State. Under the quirky rules of the Texas Senate, Davis wasn’t allowed to eat, drink, sit, use the bathroom, speak off-topic or lean against any furniture for the entirety of her marathon filibuster attempt.
Procedural challenges from Republican senators — who dominate the chamber — ultimately ended the filibuster two hours shy of the midnight deadline to pass or block the bill. But Democratic lawmakers helped delay the special legislative session’s final hours with parliamentary questions, as did throngs of disruptive, screaming protesters in the gallery.
When Republican lawmakers pushed through the 19-10 vote, the clock had already struck midnight, making the bill’s passage moot. This drama unfolded in the wee hours of the morning, but 160,000 people were watching along on a YouTube live stream. Many, many more were following the #standwithwendy hashtag on Twitter.
“She stood up for her beliefs. And standing up for your beliefs on either side is commendable,” said Republican political consultant Ron Bonjean. “That is impressive and that’s why Rand Paul [recently] got a lot of attention when he stood for his beliefs on U.S. Senate floor.”
Read More The Wendy Davis Rocket Ride : It’s All Politics : NPR.
soulbrotherspeaks.com 