It’s nice to see the president finally standing up to Republicans now that he doesn’t have to run for re-election ever again. He’s insisting that taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans must rise, while rich, white Republicans are trying to protect their hoards of cash. I’ve been greatly disappointed by Democrats the past four years, as they’ve let the ultra-right-wing so-called TEA Party minority scare them into acquiescence. The Democrats have acted like wimps, and the president has led the way. I’m not holding my breath, but maybe now we can see them force the ultra-rich to give back some of that money they’ve so happily taken from the rest of us. We know they’re not going to do it willingly, regardless of what Republicans claim.

They should be happy they don’t live in France, where the government is proposing a 75% tax rate on people making more than $1 million a year.

The most surprising part of this story is that Germany explicitly legalized bestiality in 1969. I guess that decade was even wilder than I thought.

I’ve said it before: I think it’s stupid to waste resources trying to stop people from ending their own lives. This guy obviously just wanted attention, since he spent an hourthreatening to jump. Even if he had jumped and had died in the cold waters of the river, his death would not have been a great loss for this overpopulated society of ours.

Demonstrates the influence of religion on our culture. In some cultures, suicide has even been considered an honorable death – that is, until modern Western religion gets in the way. I’ve noticed that it’s only Christians who seem to fear death, despite their insistence that the afterlife will be far better than this one. They spend their lives worried about getting to heaven, then they do everything they can to postpone it, even to the point of not letting anyone else die. (Never mind that these same people support state-sanctioned executions and the murder of thousands in wartime.)

It was obscene – yes, obscene, if that’s even strong enough – that in Illinois it was illegal to record police officers on the job. There have been numerous examples of police abuses that likely would have gone unpunished if someone hadn’t recorded them. (The UC Davis pepper spray incident comes to mind.) And Chicago has a long history of police torture.

Now the US Supreme Court has struck down Illinois’ attempt to imprison people for up to 15 years for recording the police. Kudos to the ACLU (yes, I’m a card-carrying member) for fighting back against the police state this country is fast becoming.