It’s Throwball’s Superb Owl Sunday!
Now some folks watch for the super expensive commercials. But it was always all about the halftime show as far as most of my friends were concerned. At the beginning of the third quarter we’d drag ourselves back up into the stands and start to chant Let’s Go Home! Let’s Go Home! Let’s Go Home! Sadly, the football coach thought we were cheering for the home team.
These days when I’m looking to indulge in the spectacle of spectating athletic puppies and kittens, or the Bowl of Super Bread and circuses, I know I’ll find a welcoming home at the live blogging party at the park.
Halftime Show Warm Up Tune: I Kissed a Girl , A Katy Perry Banjo Cover by Susan Elizabeth
Whatever you do, don’t google wardrobe malfunctions to check the spelling.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Breakfast History, News & Blogs Below
Today in History
News
An inflation story-
‘Holy grail’ of ballooning: Pilots beat record in 7,000-mile trek across Pacific
Associated Press
January 31, 2015
Two pilots in a helium-filled balloon landed safely off the coast of Mexico early on Saturday after an audacious, nearly 7,000-mile trip across the Pacific Ocean that shattered two long-standing records for ballooning.
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Troy Bradley of Albuquerque and Leonid Tiukhtyaev of Russia lifted off from Japan last Sunday morning and by Friday they had beaten what was considered the holy grail of ballooning achievements, the 137-hour duration record set in 1978 by the Double Eagle crew of Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman in the first balloon flight across the Atlantic. They also easily exceeded the distance record of 5,209 miles set by the Double Eagle V team during the first trans-Pacific flight, in 1981.
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By Saturday morning, the Two Eagles team had smashed the records, having traveled 6,646 miles in six days, 16 hours and 37 minutes. …
A deflation story-
Greece on collision course with Brussels after Merkel backs hardline debt stance
by Jamie Doward, The Guardian
January 31, 2015
Angela Merkel has ruled out the prospect of Greece securing further debt cuts from its creditor nations, potentially putting the country’s new leftist government on a collision course with Brussels. The German chancellor’s uncompromising stance will not be welcomed in Athens, where the new ruling party, Syriza, insists that it will make good on its promises to halve the country’s €320bn (£240bn) debt obligations and scrap a range of swingeing budget measures that were imposed in exchange for the loans.
Athens is refusing to cooperate with the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund – the troika of institutions overseeing the loans, which total about 175% of Greece’s gross domestic product. Instead its new government is looking to meet with individual creditor nations as it seeks concessions that it claims are vital if Greece is to emerge from years of austerity.
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In an attempt to break the consensus among eurozone nations, the new Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, is meeting with his French counterpart, Michel Sapin, in Paris. Varoufakis appeared to rule out the prospect of ceding to the wishes of eurozone creditors. “We are not prepared to carry on pretending and extending, trying to enforce an unenforceable programme which for five years now has steadfastly refused to produce any tangible benefits,” he told the BBC’s Newsnight. …
Who counts as ‘homeless’? It depends on how you ask
by Joanna S. Kao, Al Jazeera
January 31, 2015
…Counters in some 3,000 cities and counties across the country helped quantify the nation’s homeless population this month. It’s a massive ritual overseen by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
Yet critics warn against relying solely on this “point-in-time” method and its underlying definition of homelessness. Last January, HUD counted 578,424 people on the streets and in shelters in the U.S., down 11 percent from 2007 – while the Department of Education, or DOE, which uses a different, more expansive methodology, reported that child and family homelessness doubled over the last decade.
Advocates concerned about this discrepancy are pushing for a legislative fix. On Wednesday, a bipartisan bill meant to enlarge HUD’s concept of homelessness was introduced, for the second consecutive year, in both houses of Congress. The Homeless Children and Youth Act, or HCYA, would force HUD to align its definition with those used by federal programs for low-income families and vulnerable minors and reduce the requirements for proving homeless status, backers say. Esoteric perhaps and, in the context of a new legislature, an unlikely priority. The Obama administration, meanwhile, has stuck by HUD’s current definition and emphasized services for adults. …
Guns in Schools: In tragedy’s shadow, efforts for gun reform in Newtown
by Tom Kutsch, Al Jazeera
January 31, 2015
In the two years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the town has become home to one of the nation’s most progressive grass-roots movements to tighten gun laws and fight gun violence.
Last month, marking the second anniversary of the shooting, which claimed 26 lives, including 20 children’s, family members of the victims and one survivor took to a Connecticut superior court and filed suit against Bushmaster, the private company that produced the assault weapon used by Adam Lanza in his rampage through the school.
While he used a gun purchased legally by his mother, the suit argues that the company, its owner Remington and a local gun store where the weapon was purchased – now closed – were nonetheless negligent because the weapon had no legitimate civilian use. Despite a 2005 federal law protecting most gun manufacturers from suits in which their guns were used illegally, the plaintiffs argue that the sale of the weapon amounted to negligent entrustment, a legal doctrine that holds people accountable for selling products they know can cause injury. …
Irish Water Tax Rebellion Marches on as Thirty Thousand Take to Streets
by Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams
January 31, 2015
The center of Dublin has reportedly shut down as demonstrators, joining a chorus of nation-wide protests on Saturday, came out in droves to fight government efforts to tax citizens’ right to water.
An estimated 30,000 marched in Dublin while other protests were held in cities and towns across the country including Limerick, Waterford and Donegal. According to The Irish Times, the rallies have caused major traffic disruption and road closures in Dublin, with groups marching from separate train stations and converging outside the General Post Office where speakers addressed the massive crowd.
The demonstrations, organized by local grassroots groups, are protesting threats to privatize Ireland’s water bureau, Irish Water, and its plan to charge residents some €160 per year in an effort to satisfy EU-IMF demands. The latest round of protests come as roughly 660,000 households failed to meet a Monday deadline to register for water billing, Irish Water confirmed to media. …
‘Breaking’ news: January sees five major pipeline leaks
by Renee Lewis, The Scrutineer
…”Maybe this is just how pipelines celebrate January, but all over the country, pipelines new and old are popping off like roman candles,” said MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Maddow noticed, as did the residents of several states, that there have been five major pipeline ruptures this month.
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The number of major oil- and gas- pipeline accidents has been steadily growing in recent years. A major accident is defined by the U.S. Department of Transportation as one in which a person is killed or hospitalized because of injury, an explosion or fire occurred, more than five barrels of liquid are released or the total cost of the response exceeds $50,000.In 2014, there were 73 major accidents, according to a review by the Associated Press – an 87 percent increase over 2009. …
Blogs
- Solidarity-and the Seattle Seahawks-Forever, by Dave Zirin
- Keystone XL Pipeline Gets Senate OK, by TMC
- If Elections Matter for Greece, Why Not for America?, by John Nichols
- Reality TV, by ek hornbeck
- Evangelicals’ racist “purity” culture: What’s really behind Huckabee’s Beyoncé slur, by
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac:
I don’t think there’s a punch-line scheduled, is there? Vince Lombardi
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