Ouch. Univision wasted no time in firing this fella.  Univision is also about to conduct an IPO to raise money for expansion.

Los Angeles (AFP) – The United States’ largest Spanish-language television channel has fired a key presenter who said First Lady Michelle Obama looked like a cast member from “Planet of the Apes,” Univision said Thursday.

Venezuelan host Rodner Figueroa made the comment Wednesday during the evening “El Gordo y La Flaca” program, as moderators discussed a make-up artist who had transformed himself into a variety of female celebrity figures, including Obama.

As images of the man plus Obama appeared on the screen, Figueroa commented in Spanish that “Michelle Obama looks like a cast member of ‘Planet of the Apes.'”

Univision moved swiftly to fire Figueroa. (more…)

On the same day the World Health Organization announces the 10,000th death from Ebola….

(Via The Hill) An American healthcare worker who tested positive for Ebola is being flown to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for treatment, the agency announced Thursday.

The healthcare worker will be flown in isolation from Sierra Leone through a chartered plane, NIH said. The patient will be treated in the agency’s high-level containment clinic, which has previously treated Ebola patients.   The individual is the second Ebola patient to be treated at the NIH. The previous patient fully recovered from the disease. (read more)

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Within a rather extensive article in Time Magazine of Hillary Clinton’s disposition toward political truth and fact-finding the following paragraph strikes a rather disconcerting message:

TIME – […] All this once made sense to Clinton. As a candidate for President in 2008, she included “secret White House email accounts” as part of her critique of the Bush Administration’s “stunning record of secrecy and corruption.” Now, however, Clinton is leaning heavily on “Trust me.”

For more than a year after she left office in 2013, she did not transfer work-related email from her private account to the State Department. She commissioned a review of the 62,320 messages in her account only after the department–spurred by the congressional investigation–asked her to do so. And this review did not involve opening and reading each email; instead, Clinton’s lawyers created a list of names and keywords related to her work and searched for those. Slightly more than half the total cache–31,830 emails–did not contain any of the search terms, according to Clinton’s staff, so they were deemed to be “private, personal records.” (read more)

No new information has been released by officials in Courtland, Mississippi, regarding the investigation into the December 6th murder of Jessica Lane Chambers. However, the social media chatter has picked up extensively since District Attorney John Champion announced the timeline of Ms. Chamber’s activity on the day she was killed.

It is the community discussion around the missing hour of 6:30pm to 7:31pm which has brought clarity to events leading up to the tragic night she was killed.

For a person who is new to the entire case much of what is going on might seem disjointed, disconnected or rather innocuous. However, for those people who have followed the case, and the severely bizarre investigative practices within it, there is actually a clarity emerging.

A clarity which may even explain the bizarre statements of the chief investigator, DA John Champion. (more…)

I’ve tried three times to write this… but the knot in my throat keeps blocking the keystrokes.  There’s a couple of pictures that everyone needs to see today.

Especially today.

The first picture to see is 6-year-old Marcus Johnson. Marcus was a kindergartner at Highland Elementary in the Riverview Gardens School District.

[…] The shooting happened about 7:30 p.m. [last night] as the family was leaving O’Fallon Park, just south of Interstate 70 in north St. Louis. Inside the van were three adults and five children.

The family said that a black vehicle pulled alongside their minivan on West Florissant Avenue and someone inside opened fire, Green said. The father of the child was driving the minivan grabbed a firearm and returned fire, police said.

After realizing three people in the minivan had been shot, the driver called police.

A 15-year-old boy and a 69-year-old man in the minivan were also hit. Both were being treated at a hospital. Police would not give their conditions, but said they were stable.

The child’s mother and three other children, ages 7, 10, and 11, were also in the minivan, police said. They were not hurt. (link)

Marcus was rushed by police to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Which brings me to the second picture. (more…)

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just released the full text of their net neutrality rules. The rules were approved two weeks ago amid much controversy. The exhaustive document they have released includes statements from the five FCC commissioners.

The rules are 313 pages, and were approved on a 3-2 vote. The FCC essentially has reclassified broadband Internet as a telecommunications service in order to regulate. Internet service providers are now regulated – they may not block, slow or prioritize any part of Internet traffic above another.

[scribd id=258495851 key=key-Rgn12YKonvsyM0WHjHA2 mode=scroll]

Video of Jon Belmar update below article

(Via Saint Louis Post Dispatch) Officers swarmed a home in Ferguson Thursday morning in a search for those responsible for the shooting of two police officers outside the Ferguson police department about midnight.

The two officers shot early Thursday are expected to survive, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said. They were treated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and released Thursday, though one still had a bullet lodged behind his ear.

Belmar called the shooting as protests outside the department dwindled an “ambush” on police. At least three shots were fired at police just after midnight as police faced protesters who had gathered outside the police station, police said. (more…)

Part of that vast right-wing conspiracy to make the Ferguson thugs look bad:

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Here is video of the Ferguson Police Shooting last night.

[ustream id=59800575 hwaccel=1 version=3 width=560 height=347]
Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Here is an embedded rotatable streetview of the same location and angle.

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m0!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1426148248675!6m8!1m7!1sAeQNT6JofK_wj0o0x36qKA!2m2!1d38.741089!2d-90.303722!3f114.1017443726372!4f-11.704512393926435!5f1.5775704524774418&w=600&h=450]

Where do you think the shots came from?