SAR #15145

If you are black, calling the cops for help is generally contraindicated. The odds are they won't do much to help but are fairly likely to shoot you or one of your kids. If you are white the odds are somewhat better.

Bad News/Good News: Senate Republicans approved giving Obama 'fast-track' authority to ram a totally secret trade agreement through congress with no debate and no consideration of changes even though the TPP cedes sovereignty to non-state, non-elected corporate-driven boards. The good news is that the bill contained a provision that prohibits the TPP from being signed by any nation involved in human trafficking – which includes specifically Malaysia and quite reasonably several other East Asian nations. Obama continues to maintain, falsely, that there is no treat to US sovereignty, even though the WTO – under similar wording – has ordered the US to essentially revoke US regulations pertaining to labeling the country of origin on imported meats. Ministerial level talks on finalizing the TPP treaty have been postponed indefinitely. 
 
Second Thoughts: An Archbishop in Ireland says God is re-evaluating the question of Adam & Dave.

To Bed Without Suffer: JPMorgan has officially apologized for being a criminal enterprise, however the $5.89 billion in fines the 5 too-big-to-flail banks are paying for cheating nearly everyone in the world amounts to 3% only of their annual earnings. If anyone seriously wanted to stop this sort of chicanery, all that would be required would be to send just one of these CEO's to jail. Ain't gonna happen.

Magic Disappearing Act: Late last week a Yemeni group of hackers released thousands of top secret Saudi government files. Not a word of this or their content has appeared in/on any US news media. Wonder why. 
 
Land Of Milk And Honey: In none of the United States can a single minimum wage earner afford a one-bedroom apartment. It takes between 60- and 80 hours a week of minimum wages to afford a “market-rate” place. And 44% of these low-wage workers have at least some college. Should they be dumb enough to have a kid, it'll take them $19.35 an hour for a two-bedroom place. It could be worse; in Missouri the legislature over-rode the Governor's veto of a “welfare reform” bill that will let 6,400 children go hungry. That's why America's poor are 'envy of the world,' says Congressman Darrell Issa, our richest Congresscritter.

The Way We Were. And Are: A few more white folks are beginning to realize that the criminal justice system isn’t broken. It’s fixed. It's been fixed for generations. Against the poor and the black, which is nearly always redundant.

Wording: The 'new' Cameron government in Great Britain has lost no time in settling scores and imposing its will after an impressive thin-margined win. He proposes a “working man's budget”, which assumes the working man makes upwards of £50,000 a year, and promises to pay for it by cutting taxes on the rich and cutting payments to the poor as part of a plan to cut £30bn in spending including £12bn in welfare under the rubric of “social justice.” He's also directing the police to confiscate the wages of illegal workers, prior to shipping them off to penal colonies – maybe in the EU, if they are successful in convincing the voters to accept Britain's pulling out of the union next year. And with their surprising victory, they've renewed their attack on the National Health Service as a prelude to privatizing and looting the last bit of British socialism and planning to require TV programs to get government approval before broadcasting a show.

Them vs. Us: The panicked, blood-crazed cop who stood on the hood of a car and pumped 49 shots into a car with two unarmed passengers was acquitted, even though he had to stop and reload several times to get off that many shots. The Judge felt that the people in the car were already dead by then from the 95 rounds other cops had already poured into the car. This is Cleveland, where the cop that murdered Tamir Rice six months ago has not even been questioned about the shooting.