Brad Pitt: “I don’t feel safe without a gun, it’s in my American DNA”

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The ‘Killing Them Softly’ actor is protective of his fiancee Angelina Jolie, and the children they raise – Maddox, 11, Pax, nine, Zahara, seven, Shiloh, six, and four-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne – and feels owning a weapon is ‘in his DNA’ as an American.

He told the Daily Mail’s Live magazine: ‘America is a country founded on guns. It’s in our DNA. It’s very strange but I feel better having a gun. I really do. I don’t feel safe, I don’t feel the house is completely safe, if I don’t have one hidden somewhere.

‘That’s my thinking, right or wrong.’

Brad, 48, points out how he was exposed to guns from an early age but still turned out to be a responsible adult.

He added: ‘I got my first BB gun when I was in nursery school. I got my first shotgun by first grade, I had shot a handgun by third grade and I grew up in a pretty sane environment.’

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California Legislature Authorizing Midwives, Other Non-Doctors, to Perform Abortions

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The California Senate passed a bill September 6 that would make it legal for non-physician medical professionals such as midwives to perform abortions under a statewide training program. The measure now awaits Democratic Governor Jerry Brown’s signature. (Gov. Brown pictured to the left of the state seal, Sen. Christine Kehoe to the right.)

According to LifeSiteNews.com, the bill (S.B. 623), introduced by Democratic State Senator Christine Kehoe, “extends a program run by the University of California at San Francisco [UCSF], in which nurse practitioners, midwives, and doctors’ assistants are trained to perform abortions without any further training in medicine. Kehoe argues the bill is necessary because there aren’t enough doctors performing abortions in California.”

The Sacramento Bee reported that the bill extends a UCSF program, begun in 2007, that “evaluates the safety and effectiveness of allowing certain non-doctor medical providers to provide abortions…. The goal is to increase access to the procedure in parts of the state where doctors are scarce.” Kehoe noted that the program is “an existing study that’s been extended several times, [and] this is an additional extension. Otherwise the study would cease at the end of this month and the practitioners participating in the city would no longer be able to perform this procedure.”

The Life Legal Defense Foundation (LLDF), a California-based pro-life group that has been pressuring the UCSF for its records on the controversial program, explained that the measure was hidden in an unrelated bill at the end of the state’s legislative session after previous attempts to pass it had failed. “This bill was originally created to regulate boat paint,” Dana Cody, LLDF’s executive director, said of the bill carrying the abortion measure. “Now it’s regulating and destroying human lives.”

The Bee noted that several Republican lawmakers criticized the bill, hidden in the boat paint measure, as a last-minute “gut and amend” bill. “I don’t understand the germaneness” of boat paint and training for abortions, confessed Republican State Senator Bob Dutton, one of the bill’s opponents. “I’m questioning whether this is even appropriate to be brought up.”

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Communist Leader’s Absence Sets Off Rumor Mills in China

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The strange disappearance from public view of China’s presumptive new leader is turning a year that was supposed to showcase the Communist Party’s stability into something of an annus horribilis.

Over the past week, the new leader, Xi Jinping, has missed at least three scheduled meetings with foreign dignitaries, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton last Wednesday and the prime minister of Denmark on Monday. So far officials have declined to provide an explanation for his absences.

That set off furious speculation on the Internet that the 59-year-old Mr. Xi’s health, either physical or political, has taken a turn for the worse. Some diplomats say they have heard that Mr. Xi suffered a pulled muscle while swimming or playing soccer. One media report, since retracted, had it that Mr. Xi was hurt in an auto accident when a military official tried to injure or kill him in a revenge plot. A well-connected political analyst in Beijing said in an interview that Mr. Xi might have had a mild heart attack.

Whatever the actual reason, Mr. Xi’s unexplained absences are conspicuous on the eve of what is supposed to be China’s once-in-a-decade transfer of power. It also adds to a litany of woes that have disrupted the Communist Party’s hopes that a seamless political transition would send a signal of stability to the Chinese people and the world at large.

Two unusual political scandals have sidelined people considered contenders for seats on the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee, most recently including a close ally of President Hu Jintao’s. China’s economy has fallen into an unexpectedly deep slump, confounding government forecasts for a measured slowdown. Party leaders have also yet to announce a date for the 18th Party Congress, the event to mark the retirement of this generation of leaders and the accession of the next, though it is supposed to take place as soon as next month.

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Unemployment High, But Dropping For Government Workers

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Photo credit: US Department of Labor

While a record number of Americans are not currently in the labor force, according to the Department of Labor, unemployment for government workers drops to 5.1 percent, the lowest among all industries.

In a report issued by the Department of Labor, the number of Americans counted as “not in the civilian labor force” in the month of August reached a record high figure of 88,921,000.

CNS News explains, “The Labor Department counts a person as not in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16 years old, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and have not actively looked for a job in the last four weeks.”

Those considered by the Department of Labor to be “in the civilian labor force” meet the same characteristics but either have a job or have been actively pursuing a job in the last four weeks.

Between the month of July and August, 368,000 Americans dropped out of the labor force and did not look for a job. In August, there were 119,000 fewer Americans employed then there were in the month of July.

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Sea Ice Halts Shell Alaska’s Drilling of its Landmark Oil Well in Chukchi Sea

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Photo credit: NASA Goddard

Only a day after Shell Alaska began drilling a landmark offshore oil well in the Arctic, the company was forced on Monday to pull off the well in the face of an approaching ice pack.

With the ice floe about 10 miles away, the Noble Discoverer drilling rig was disconnecting from its seafloor anchor Monday afternoon in the Chukchi Sea, about 70 miles from the northwest coast of Alaska.

Company ice trackers had been carefully monitoring ocean ice and, when the wind direction changed and the ice floe began moving closer, they advised that the rig shut down and disconnect from the well, Shell spokeswoman Kelly op de Weegh told the Los Angeles Times.

Op de Weegh said that the ice floe, 30 miles long and about 10 miles wide, wasn’t an immediate threat but that engineers elected to halt operations as a precaution.

“The Arctic if anything is dynamic,” she said. “That’s why we have the capabilities we have to monitor sea ice, as well as the ability to safely alter our operations.”

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First Murder in Disney-Planned Florida Town Involved Popular Teacher Who Allegedly Molested Male Students for Years

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The first homicide in the Disney-developed community of Celebration, Florida, grabbed headlines around the world. While the Walt Disney Company had largely divested control of its model town by Thanksgiving weekend 2010, when Matteo Patrick Giovanditto was found murdered in his condominium, Celebration was still widely seen as existing in a Disney bubble. With its picture-perfect streets, lined with homes fronted by porches, picket fences, and manicured lawns, Celebration is, by design, bathed in nostalgia, almost an extension of Disney World’s idealized Main Street U.S.A., which stretches out a few miles away.

Any murder would likely have pierced the bubble. But the lurid violence of the town’s first killing was especially shocking. Giovanditto, 58, was a retired teacher who had a longtime love of all things Disney; according to neighbors, he claimed to be counseling troubled youth. David-Israel Zenon Murillo, a 30-year-old transient who is currently awaiting trial on charges of first-degree murder, told police that Giovanditto approached him and offered him money to wash his Corvette. Murillo said Giovanditto gave him a beer and that Murillo then fell asleep, awaking to find Giovanditto “on top of me,” attempting to sexually assault him as he lay face down. Believing, because he felt groggy, that the beer had been laced with drugs, Murillo told police he became enraged. He said he discovered an ax in a closet, which he used to bludgeon Giovanditto three times before strangling him with a shoelace to ensure that he was dead.

I never met Giovanditto, but I know many people who were his students in the early 1980s. Giovanditto, always known as Mr. G at school, was raised in Boston. He began his teaching career at the now defunct Villa Oasis boarding school in Eloy, Ariz., in the 1970s. He relocated to Florida in 1981 and began teaching 7th- and 8th-grade social studies at Lehrman Day School, a private Jewish school in Miami Beach. From there he became headmaster at the Crossroads School, now the Kentwood Preparatory School, which was for kids with ADHD and was located in Davie, Fla.

I am a Miami Beach native, and several of my friends at Miami Beach Senior High came to the school from Lehrman, which went up to eighth grade. I remember hearing about Mr. G with a mixture of wonder and envy as they described a fun-filled—and toy-filled—classroom and weekend trips with their teacher to Disney World and the Everglades. Students who received top grades were invited to sleepovers at Mr. G’s house at the end of the semester and on outings to concerts, amusement parks, video arcades, and go-carting courses. Girls, however, were rarely part of these adventures.

One of my friends, Peter Klein, was Giovanditto’s student at Lehrman, and was later his faculty colleague at Crossroads: Klein, now a journalist, taught math and science at the school after graduating from college. He remembers Giovanditto as “a wonderful, inspiring teacher,” but says that as years passed, he was troubled when he looked back on the time and attention Giovanditto lavished on his students. “Once you become an adult and you’re in a role similar to his, I could never imagine anything close to the kinds of trips and relationships he had with kids,” he said. “And that made me uneasy.” Klein also wondered about his background, with Giovanditto’s fancy sports cars and frequent travel suggesting an income source beyond a private-school salary. Over the years, Klein was unable to find any information about Giovanditto online—strange, since Giovanditto was an early adopter to home computing. A couple of times, Klein also “checked the sex registry to see if he popped up.”

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Jim Rogers: Eurozone Certain to “Pay Terrible Price”

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A “terrible price” will be paid for the euro zone crisis eventually, whether the European Central Bank (ECB) embarks on mass bond purchases or not, Jim Rogers, investor and co-founder of the Quantum Fund with George Soros, told CNBC Monday.

Rogers said: “These guys have been saying the same old garbage for a long time. It’s not a game-changer – it’s good for the market for maybe a month. The debt keeps going higher and higher and eventually we’ll all going to pay a terrible price.”

He warned that the market rally, which many have seen as an opportunity to get back into riskier assets, would only be a short-term rebound.

“It’s not an opportunity to make money for me. This is not good for the market and it’s not going to last. Every three or four months they have a summit and they say: Ok guys, everything is ok now. The market goes up. But we’re getting a little tired of this and the market is getting a little tired of this,” Rogers argued.

There should be some opportunity to make money in the short term, Peter Toogood, director of investment, Old Broad Street Research, said. “There is a little window for risk trade – not a sustainable one, but there’s some stability to the short-term outlook,” he argued. He pointed out that ECB President Mario Draghi “has already been expanding the balance sheet through disguises.”

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Alaska Feed & Food Prices Set to Soar

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I’m pretty sure that most readers here, don’t really live under rocks. And, they most certainly do not swallow the mainstream media news bites for everything. Nope, I am positive you all are very good at ferreting out your own news sources for reliable news and information.

So it should come as no shock to you that the drought, coupled with market factors, is going to have a deep and lasting effect on local food prices. In addition to a very poor harvest in some areas, the effects may cause problems with the coming growing seasons too, based on what I am reading lately. Read at AgWeb and other farming websites to gain an idea of the scope of the problems. There is also an excellent map showing drought conditions HERE.

So here is a tidbit that might have escaped your attention: The EPA issued new emissions standards a while back…..this time, they apply to maritime traffic. To lessen these emissions, they are requiring that the cargo ships use a low sulpher fuel mix, in place of the more typical (and much cheaper) bunker fuel that is typically used. TOTE has reached an agreement that allows them to continue to use the normal fuel, based on their promise to overhaul the ships…they are planning on converting to LNG over the next four years. What do you suppose it costs for such a conversion? We, the end consumers, will end up paying for that compliance to the new EPA rules, it’s a given.

Now, if you don’t know the intracacies of shipping to Alaska, that’s fine-but it helps to know a few things, so that when you hear about freight rates, surcharges, and so on, you’ll have an idea what it means on the grocery and feed store shelves. First, the major shipping companies establish a rate for containers, usually twice a year. I believe that this rate may be governed by regulation, but I am not positive. In addition, there is usually an added fuel surcharge. This is applied in addition to the rate, and has been running about 32 percent for the past couple of years. That is, base ship rate, plus 32 percent. (A few years back it was over 35, btw) So if the container costs you $5000 to ship, you will pay an additional $1600, or, $6600 for that container. Most containers have a limit as to weight, but in general, if you can “make weight” you will end up with the cheapest per pound price. Bulky, lightweight items end up costing more, on a per pound basis, due to volume. (Also known as cube if you are shipping LTL, or “less than load”) Now, there is an additional charge being added: Another 32 percent. What their rationale is for adding this, I have no idea but I presume it ties into the increased fuel and expected conversion costs.

So what does all this really mean? Scarce or nonexistent harvest, coupled with very high freight basically means we’re screwed. Royally and completely. Alaska gets over 90% of products through the port, via shipping containers. If you ask the folks working at the local WalMart, they are telling their customers to expect a price increase of as much as 40 percent on the very next shipment. This is due in small part to scarcity from the drought, but mostly due to freight charges. Just yesterday, a family member was told to expect as much as 140 percent increase in feed by spring. And no, that it not a typo. When the full effects of the drought are seen….it’s going to be pretty ugly. Many head of cattle were culled, meaning a temporary drop in price as the market was glutted-this is still ongoing, by the way. Same thing for hogs, and chickens. Now would be a very good time to stuff the freezer if you can. Next year, there will be a reduced number of livestock available, because much of what was slaughtered were producing females-due to either not having pasture, or no hay available, or feed costs prohibitive if shipped into a drought area.

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Romney vs. Obama: Troubling Rumblings from the South

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Sheryl Harris, a voluble 52-year-old with a Virginia drawl, voted twice for George W. Bush. Raised Baptist, she is convinced — despite all evidence to the contrary — that President Barack Obama, a practicing Christian, is Muslim.

So in this year’s presidential election, will she support Mitt Romney? Not a chance.

“Romney’s going to help the upper class,” said Harris, who earns $28,000 a year as activities director of a Lynchburg senior center. “He doesn’t know everyday people, except maybe the person who cleans his house.”

She’ll vote for Obama, she said: “At least he wasn’t brought up filthy rich.”

White lower- and middle-income voters such as Harris are wild cards in this vituperative presidential campaign. With only a sliver of the electorate in play nationwide, they could be a deciding factor in two southern swing states, Virginia and North Carolina.

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Mandarin Chinese Now Mandatory in U.S. Kindergartens

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Photo credit: storyvillegirl

Bibb County sits smack-dab in the center of Georgia, and 150 years ago it was at the very center of the Confederacy. Its foundries supplied weapons and ammunition to the rebel army, and no county supplied a larger percentage of its men to the cause. Toward the end of the Civil War, the only local men not carrying a musket for the South were elderly, blind or disabled.

Times are still tough in Bibb County. Some 20 percent of the residents live below the poverty line, and its public schools are among the lowest performing in the state. About half the kids don’t graduate from high school.

But the county has just embarked on a bold plan to have all its children fully bilingual — in English and Mandarin — by the time they graduate from high school. In recent weeks, children from pre-kindergarten through third grade began mandatory Mandarin classes, part of a curriculum that in three years will include middle school and high school students.

“Students who are in elementary school today, by 2050 they’ll be at the pinnacle of their career,” the school superintendent Romain Dallemand said in an interview that aired Saturday on NPR. “They will live in a world where China and India will have 50 percent of the world GDP. They will live in a world where, if they cannot function successfully in the Asian culture, they will pay a heavy price.”

The new curriculum has had some pushback, to say the least, and the word communism has often been raised. Jane Drennan, a deputy superintendent, told a TV station in Macon, the county seat, that she and other school officials had heard from many parents who said, “I don’t want my kid learning Chinese.”

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