Incredible story... a female bus driver was harassed physically and verbally by a male passenger who appeared drunk and/or crazy, and after trying to deal with him verbally, and after repeated threats and assaults such as choking and spitting, she hit him and threw him off the bus physically. Then he re-boarded the bus and assaulted the driver again. And can you believe it, she declined to press charges against him for his outrageous behavior. Now, strangely enough, the bus company (Greater Cleveland RTA) she works for has suspended her and denounced her actions despite him putting her and her passengers in danger. I think this is nuts. Click here to go to Change.org to sign a petition expressing your dissatisfaction to the bus company for their difficult-to-understand actions. What you say, the link doesn't work? You're right, it doesn't. That's because it isn't a hyperlink. That's because there is no such petition. That's because the foregoing story is not true. However if you re-read the story and reverse the genders, the story will in fact be true. Read it here. GCRTA contact info is posted in one of the comments below, if you would like to let them know how you feel. Excerpt:

'OCTOBER 12--The Cleveland bus driver who delivered an uppercut to an unruly female passenger told cops that he struck the woman after she grabbed his throat and spit in his face as he was driving, according to police reports.
...
Video of the fight (see below) went viral online this week, prompting RTA officials to suspend Hughes, a 22-year veteran, and characterize his behavior as "absolutely unacceptable."

When cops responded to the stopped bus around 4 PM, Hughes and three passengers described Lane (pictured at right) as the incident's aggressor. Hughes told cops that Lane initially boarded the bus without paying, claiming, "I left my bookbag."

Article here. Login required, registration is free. Excerpt:

'Germany's parliament may soon approve a law to protect religious circumcision, this to counteract a Cologne court ruling last June that pronounced the practice unlawful.

This is wrong - the German government should rethink. I say this as a Jewish parent from a proud rabbinic lineage, with relatives killed in the Holocaust; I say this as the maker of "It's a Boy!" - the 1995 British TV documentary that first broke the taboo on showing the hidden toll of circumcision. It demonstrated how a rite ingrained in Jewish and Muslim culture, and said to be divinely commanded, regularly results in acute suffering, injuries, mutilation and deaths.

From Marc A.:

Roseanne Barr, Presidential candidate for the Peace & Freedom Party, is the only candidate I have seen who was fair and honest about domestic violence. She flat-out said women are as violent as men in relationships. That is precisely what the majority of the independent surveys show, all over the world, as opposed to the unreliable crime data. She said this in the context of the Chris Brown/Rihiana incident, in which CNN admitted the court records say Rihianna was slapping Chris around before he attacked her, but the mass media and Oprah all attacked Chris 100% without ever mentioning Rihianna's vioence.

Quoting Roseanne:

Article here. Excerpt:

'DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – The North Texas mom who pled guilty to gluing her toddler daughter’s hands to a wall, kicking her in the stomach and beating her over “potty training” issues has been sentenced to 99 years in prison.
...
In handing down the stiff sentence, Mitchell told Escalona that in spite of the ‘heartbreaking’ and ‘compelling’ evidence presented on both sides, “to me, it comes down to a single, salient fact: you savagely beat your child to the edge of death… for this you must be punished.”

Pleading for leniency Escalona took to the stand Thursday where she admitted that she’d behaved “like a monster” but also said she deserved to be given “a second chance.”'

Via an IA email:

Just as we were about to send you the email below, we received a letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics, telling us that INTACT AMERICA HAS BEEN BANNED FROM HAVING A BOOTH AT NEXT WEEK’S AAP CONFERENCE! It’s clear they are afraid of our message, but we’re still going to New Orleans, and we need your help. We have an opportunity to place two Open Letters in the New Orleans Times Picayune to reach the thousands of pediatricians visiting the conference!

---

Next week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is meeting in New Orleans for its annual conference. Given the AAP’s recent Task Force Report on Circumcision, it is more important than ever that Intact America be there—especially now that we've been banned from exhibiting inside the Convention Center.

The spotlight is now on us to stage a major press conference and demonstration, because we must get our message out to America's pediatricians: circumcision is medically unnecessary and harmful to the babies they are bound by oath to protect.

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV) has announced their current fundraising campaign, "Every Home a Safe Home." While SAVE agrees that every home should be safe, we are getting a little tired of their ongoing gender bias. Take a look at the t-shirt they've chosen to sell.

It's bad enough that the shirt only shows a mother and daughter, perpetuating the myth that only women and girls are victims. You should see the gender bias they've added to the website you have to visit to order the t-shirts!

The campaign on Charity52 completely disregards male victims, even in the statistics. No images of men or boys, other than t-shirt models. Not one word about abused men or boys (Half of all DV victims.)

Today we're asking you to contact NCADV. Tell them to tell the ENTIRE truth about DV. Demand that they end their gender bias!

Email Exec. Dir. Rita Smith: rsmith-at-ncadv.org.

Story here. Excerpt:

'The skeletal remains were discovered in 2005 in a wooded area in central New Jersey. They belonged to a girl of grade-school age, a girl who had probably died three years or so before she was found. But there was little else for investigators to go on; her case, unlike some that were called Baby Hope or Baby Faith, was simply referred to as Baby Bones.

Seven years later, investigators finally put a real name to the girl.

Her name was Jon-Niece Jones, prosecutors in Monmouth County said Wednesday, as they charged the girl’s own family in New York City with dumping her body in the wooded area off the New Jersey Turnpike in Upper Freehold before trying to cover their tracks with fire. Officials said Jon-Niece’s sister told them this summer that she had been killed in 2002 by their mother, who died the same year.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Rita Zimmer, the founder of Housing Plus Solutions, the nonprofit that runs the program, said it costs $34,000 annually to house a woman and her children at Drew House. It costs nearly four times as much to incarcerate a woman and put her children in foster care.

Some prisons allow women to keep their infants with them, and some drug treatment programs allow children, but no other program allows women arrested on other felonies to live with their children instead of prison.

The idea came from prosecutors working with Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes and took nearly a decade to get off the ground, until Zimmer came on board. The house opened in 2008, and was named for Hynes' mother, a victim of domestic violence.

"There's just a lot more to public safety than locking people up," Hynes said.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'Deputy opposition leader Julie Bishop accused Gillard of using sexism as a weapon against criticism and said women deserved better.

“The prime minister is setting back the cause of women decades by using sexism as a shield against criticisms of her performance,” she said.

“Instead of being remembered as Australia’s first female prime minister, she’ll be remembered as the prime minister who let down the women of Australia when she was put to the test.”

Abbott also weighed in, saying it was time “everyone in this parliament moved on from the gender card which so many members of the government have been playing”.'

Article here. Excerpt:

'WASHINGTON, Oct. 9, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Today The Boys Initiative, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization, characterized an October 9 article appearing in the New York Times as "profoundly disturbing". The article examines the widening diagnosis of ADHD in children and the use of prescription drugs to treat symptoms that may or may not be related to that diagnosis. Studies show that boys are diagnosed with ADHD at two and a half times the rate of girls.

"It has been apparent for some time now that there is widespread confusion on the subject of ADHD diagnosis among parents as well as health care providers", said Dennis Barbour, Co-Founder and Executive Vice President of The Boys Initiative. "The damage we are inflicting on young brains may well be life-long as well as unnecessary," he said, "in the end we may be creating a largely male cohort of robots".

Article here. As we all know, this issue primarily affects boys. Excerpt:

'CANTON, Ga. — When Dr. Michael Anderson hears about his low-income patients struggling in elementary school, he usually gives them a taste of some powerful medicine: Adderall.

The pills boost focus and impulse control in children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Although A.D.H.D is the diagnosis Dr. Anderson makes, he calls the disorder “made up” and “an excuse” to prescribe the pills to treat what he considers the children’s true ill — poor academic performance in inadequate schools.

“I don't have a whole lot of choice,” said Dr. Anderson, a pediatrician for many poor families in Cherokee County, north of Atlanta. “We've decided as a society that it’s too expensive to modify the kid’s environment. So we have to modify the kid.”'

Wow... just re-watching some of these, and WOW. Would this even be attempted with the genders reversed? Wake up, Dougs of the world!

Portlandia - Claire gets a sitter for Doug

Story here. Excerpt:

'A 23-year-old Texas mother who beat her daughter and glued her hands to a wall told a Dallas judge on Wednesday that she was a monster a year ago, but she has changed.

"Elizabeth Escalona is not a monster," she said of herself, according to a tweet by Dallas Morning News' crime reporter Scott Goldstein. "I want everybody to know that I'm not a monster. I love my kids. I love my babies."

Escalona pleaded guilty in July to first-degree injury to a child, a felony. Prosecutors are seeking a 45-year prison sentence.
...

She cried as she recounted what she did to her daughter, according to Goldstein: "I hit her, I kicked her constantly and she didn't deserve that.”

Article here. Excerpt:

'Researchers at the University of Michigan compared data from four-year public high schools across the country, including schools that do and do not offer interscholastic sports. They broke the data down by regions, what type of communities the schools were in (rural vs. city, etc), and how much money the schools spent on athletics. Then they compared data from the 2009-10 school year with data from school years 1993-94 and 1999-2000.
...
The studies' authors warn that their findings indicate that progress towards gender equity has reversed over the past decade thanks to a false sense that girls were finally receiving an equal chance to play sports and less funding due to the recession. "One sociological tenet contends that, during times of economic hardship, social inequalities tend to grow more marked rather than diminish," the researchers explained. "This dynamic may be playing out with regard to gender equity in high school sports."

Link here. Excerpt:

'Opposition Leader Tony Abbott says he won't be retreating from his criticism of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and called on Labor to stop playing the gender card.

Ms Gillard on Tuesday accused Mr Abbott in parliament of having a record of sexism and misogyny.

The comments came in a debate over whether to sack Speaker Peter Slipper, who is facing court action by a former male staffer over alleged sexual harassment.

Mr Abbott said the attack was "a bit rich" coming from the person who was "prepared to knife Kevin Rudd, but wasn't prepared to sack Peter Slipper".

The prime minister should be prepared to accept fair criticism.

"Just because the prime minister has sometimes been the victim of unfair criticism doesn't mean she can dismiss any criticism as sexism or she can dismiss any criticism on gender grounds," Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.'