July 1, 2015

DOJ is finally going after the airlines

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is investigating possible collusion among major airlines to limit available seats, which keeps airfares high, according to a document obtained by The Associated Press.

The civil antitrust investigation by the Justice Department appears to focus on whether airlines illegally signaled to each other how quickly they would add new flights, routes and extra seats.

A letter received Tuesday by major U.S. carriers demands copies of all communications the airlines had with each other, Wall Street analysts and major shareholders about their plans for passenger-carrying capacity, or "the undesirability of your company or any other airline increasing capacity."

The Justice Department asked each airline for its passenger-carrying capacity by region and overall since January 2010.



http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/justice-department-investigating-potential-airline-collusion-32159519

July 1, 2015

Greece has asked for a new 2-year bailout

And now Greece has proposed a two-year bailout extension.

According to headlines from Bloomberg and others, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has requested a two-year bailout program from the European Stability Mechanism.

The request is to cover all of the country's financial needs over the next two years, including a debt-restructuring plan.

On Tuesday, Greece is slated to miss a €1.6 billion ($1.79 billion) payment to the International Monetary Fund.



http://www.businessinsider.com/report-greece-has-proposed-a-2-year-deal-2015-6#ixzz3ec8wtlZg

July 1, 2015

Mexico Pulls Out of Miss Universe Pageant

Donald Trump called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and “drug dealers.” Now, the country’s pageant organizers have decided they won’t send contestants to Trump’s Miss Universe pageant.

Two weeks after the real estate mogul angered many Mexicans with inflammatory remarks about immigrants to the United States, Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, which sends contestants to the pageant for the country, said in a statement that it would not be taking part in Miss Universe.

But that’s not the only Trump beauty contest losing support from its participants. The hosts of the Miss USA pageant, Thomas Roberts and Cheryl Burke, quit on Tuesday. Burke, a former contestant on Dancing with the Stars, singled out Trump’s comments in a Facebook post.

The latest double blow to Trump’s beauty pageant franchise comes a day after NBC announced it was not going to air Miss USA “due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants.” Spanish language network Univision announced earlier it too would not air the pageant, for the same reasons.


http://time.com/3942024/mexico-donald-trump-cheryl-burke-miss-universe-nbc-univision/

June 30, 2015

Ted Cruz mocked VP Biden a couple days after Beau's death

If Mr. Cruz meant those words, his sentiment was short lived. At a GOP dinner the following day, Cruz decided to take a swipe at Biden and use him as a cheap punch line.

“You know the nice thing? You don’t need a punch line. I promise you, it works. The next party you’re at, just walk up to someone and say, ‘Vice President Joe Biden,’ and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing.”

While Cruz was gleefully mocking his political opponent, Mr. Biden was preparing to bury his son. Contrast Mr. Cruz’s words with this agonizing photo of a grieving father, taken at Beau’s viewing a few days later.




http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2015/06/30/june-2015-the-worst-video-media-disaster/

June 30, 2015

Stan Lee Hospitalized On Sunday, But Makes Ant-Man Premiere

On Sunday morning, comic book icon Stan Lee was rushed to the hospital, but with a healing factor that would make Wolverine envious he was able to make tonight's premiere of Ant-Man.

Sources for TMZ say the 92-year-old was "taken from his Hollywood Hills home to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center" yesterday. As of now, the reason for the emergency call to 911 isn't clear.

Lee was feeling well enough to be interviewed at the premiere, showing no signs of being under the weather. Actually, he was very upbeat and talkative like he normally is. He even quipped, "The only reason I came was to see my cameo."


http://comicbook.com/2015/06/30/stan-lee-hospitalized-on-sunday-but-makes-ant-man-premiere/

June 30, 2015

Greece’s Troubles Attract Little Sympathy From Poorer Neighbors

SOFIA, Bulgaria — Throughout months of acrimonious haggling with creditors, Greece’s left-wing government has cast itself as the victim of an elitist financial and political order beholden to Europe’s stingy rich, notably Germans.

Some of the most resolute opponents of cutting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza Party any slack, however, have been Europe’s most deprived nations, places like Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest member, and Baltic States blighted by decades of Soviet-imposed penury.

“We are much poorer than the Greeks, but we have performed reforms,” Rosen Plevneliev, the president of Bulgaria, a northern neighbor of Greece, said in an interview. “When you have a problem, you have to address it and not shift it to Brussels or onto somebody else,” he said, deriding Syriza’s complaints that Europe had let Greece down.

The left-leaning Syriza Party has won applause from a host of mostly small left-wing groups in Europe for bucking what they condemn as the tyranny of greed-fueled markets and elitist technocrats. It has also been cheered by right-wing insurgents like Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, who rejoice at Greece’s troubles and see them as proof that Europe’s established order is crumbling.


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/30/world/europe/greeces-troubles-attract-little-sympathy-from-poorer-neighbors.html?_r=0

June 29, 2015

According to Ted Cruz, questions re. LGBT rights are all about sex.

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Sunday defended his comments from last month accusing the media of being "obsessed with sex" after he was asked whether he had problem with gay people.

The remark in question came during a confrontation with a local reporter in Beaumont, Texas on May 19, after the journalist repeatedly asked the candidate about his stance on gay rights.

"Is there something about the left — and I am going to put the media in this category — that is obsessed with sex?" Cruz responded.

Speaking with Fox News media analyst Howard Kurtz on Sunday, Cruz said that the reporter had specifically asked if he had an "animosity" toward gay people, and explained why he didn't simply deny it.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-media-obsessed-with-sex

June 29, 2015

Diaper-fetishizing David Vitter probably regrets sarcastic tweet against same-sex marriage

Twitter does not forget.

That’s what Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) learned the hard way when he lashed out at the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling Friday with this tweet:

David Vitter ✔@DavidVitter
Chick-fil-A kind of day
5:28 PM - 26 Jun 2015

Within 10 minutes, Vitter was reminded by journalist Sam Knight that those in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Vitter admitted to being a client for so-called “D.C. Madame” Deborah Jeane Palfrey in 2007, The Week reports. Facing prison time, Palfrey committed suicide while Vitter skipped along to win re-election....

Twitter users were quick to pile on Vitter after his tweet, with one recalling that part of the allegations include him wanting prostitutes to make him wear diapers, according to Wonkette:



http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/diaper-fetishizing-republican-david-vitter-probably-regrets-sarcastic-tweet-against-same-sex-marriage/

June 29, 2015

After momentous week, Obama's presidency is reborn

This came very close to being the worst week of Barack Obama’s presidency, and, effectively, the last: a possible repudiation from both Congress and the Supreme Court, from his own party, from a country struggling with the same racial tensions he’s approached with a caution that’s often come across more like muted fear.

He would have been a failed president. He would have been a failed promise.

Instead, Obama finished the week in Charleston singing, really singing, and returned to a White House lit up like a rainbow that people who wanted to celebrate just felt drawn to. Hours after the partying stopped, they stayed late into the night, just sitting and staring at the building and thinking about how much had just changed.

What Obama first represented as a half-white, half-black man of a new generation, with the middle name Hussein and all the rest, seemed to have actually arrived in America — that guy America voted for in 2008 seemed to suddenly (and to a lot of his supporters, finally) show up. So did the country they voted for.

And Obama’s voice broke through in a way that it hasn’t, maybe, since the 2004 keynote address that introduced him to America. A week that started with the media obsessing over one charged word he said ended with the country glued to his whole 25-minute eulogy in South Carolina on how the country is a whole lot more racist but also a whole lot more hopeful than it likes to admit, reverberating and replaying on the news, on iPhones and on YouTube all through the night and weekend.


http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/barack-obama-momentous-week-president-reborn-social-issues-119503.html#ixzz3eQmqIbtF

June 29, 2015

Twitter neo-Confederates express panic with #SouthernLivesMatter

In an era where police officers assault and kill black people with impunity, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” has become a racial justice rallying cry across the United States. In hashtag form, #BlackLivesMatter educates and mobilizes countless activists on Twitter and other social media platforms. Neo-Confederates have co-opted the phrase for their own purposes with a hashtag of their own — #SouthernLivesMatter.

On Saturday, Confederate flag enthusiasts protested against the flag’s removal from Alabama statehouse grounds, waving their banner and carrying signs that read: “Southern Lives Matter,” and “Secession Now.”


http://www.rawstory.com/2015/06/we-are-being-exterminated-twitter-neo-confederates-express-panic-with-southernlivesmatter/