pacino wrote:Gaza's only power plant was hit by the IDF. In addition to the loss in electricity, it will affect water.

TomatoPie wrote:We frequently make the mistake of expecting the world to adopt our standards. Impoverished places often cannot afford our standards, be it child labor or love for the environment. Our standards are largely a first-world luxury.

Our good intentions do not guarantee good results.

http://www.cato.org/publications/economic-development-bulletin/case-against-child-labor-prohibitions

GAZA CITY — Israeli artillery shells slammed into a U.N.-run school sheltering evacuees from the Gaza conflict early Wednesday, killing at least 20 people and wounding dozens of others as they slept, according to Palestinian health officials and the U.N. agency in charge of the school.

The Israeli military later announced that it would implement a temporary humanitarian cease-fire in the Gaza Strip between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. Wednesday. The cease-fire would not apply to areas in which Israeli military is currently operating, it said.

The U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), which operated the school-turned-shelter in the territory’s Jabaliya refugee camp, said the facility was shelled by Israeli forces and condemned what it called a serious violation of international law. The Israeli army said it was investigating.

The school strike came one day after some of the heaviest Israeli bombardment in the conflict, during which Israel disabled Gaza’s only electricity plant, leaving the crowded territory’s 1.8 million residents with no electricity or running water.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned his country in a televised address Monday evening to be prepared for a prolonged campaign against Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. Israel has said it cannot stop until it dismantles a network of tunnels it says are used by militants to infiltrate into Israel from Gaza.

Witnesses at the Jabaliya Primary School for Girls said shelling struck a classroom where some 50 people, mostly women and children, were sleeping. The classroom’s roof was ripped apart. Most of the dead, however, were young men, who had woken for the traditional Muslim dawn prayer, said Moen al-Masr, a doctor at the Kamal Odwan hospital. He said 10 people were seriously injured in the attack.

“We found people torn to pieces,” said Allah al-Bes, 33, who was seeking refuge at the school with his wife and three boys. “It was like hell.” Bes and his family went to the school after an earlier attack on a U.N.-run school in Beit Hanoun. “We have learned no place is safe in Gaza,” he said.

Expanding its list of targets Tuesday, Israel destroyed the family home of Ismail Haniyeh, the top leader of Hamas. Other airstrikes hit Hamas’s al-Aqsa television broadcast center, a finance building and the homes of local mayors. Haniyeh is in hiding and his whereabouts are unknown.

Near the Nusairat refu­gee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip, the shattered fuel tank of the territory’s primary power plant continued to emit flames and thick plumes of smoke hours after being hit.

The plant is Gaza’s primary source of electricity, powering sewage treatment systems, water pumps and hospitals, said Dardasawi, the Palestinian official. It is especially important, he added, because six of eight electricity supply lines that run from Israel were damaged. Egypt also supplies some electricity, he added, but hardly enough to power the border town of Rafah.

TomatoPie wrote:ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

Ryan hasn’t always held this opinion. In 2007, he voted against a bill that would have eased convicted offenders’ re-entry from prison into society. And he also voted against bills to reform juvenile prosecutions and provide alternatives to sentencing in 1999 and 2000.

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

great, but it's 180 degrees the other way around:

Ryan hasn’t always held this opinion. In 2007, he voted against a bill that would have eased convicted offenders’ re-entry from prison into society. And he also voted against bills to reform juvenile prosecutions and provide alternatives to sentencing in 1999 and 2000.

maybe this reading comprehension thing explains part of your ideological confusion

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

great, but it's 180 degrees the other way around:

Ryan hasn’t always held this opinion. In 2007, he voted against a bill that would have eased convicted offenders’ re-entry from prison into society. And he also voted against bills to reform juvenile prosecutions and provide alternatives to sentencing in 1999 and 2000.

maybe this reading comprehension thing explains part of your ideological confusion

Ryan changed his POV - not sure how you regard that as a reading comprehension issue. Maybe its with your own reading comprehension -- if so, kudos on the self-awareness. Step One for you.

Have you ever changed an opinion? Probably not, eh? We'll make that Step Two then. I'm here to help.

TomatoPie wrote:Ryan changed his POV - not sure how you regard that as a reading comprehension issue.

TomatoPie wrote: ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

RichmondPhilsFan wrote:I think he's saying that your statement should've read "Paul Ryan finds some common ground with ThinkProgress." Your way of phrasing it makes it sound like ThinkProgress changed its position or discovered a shared position with Ryan, when it was the opposite.

The Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago — hardly a hotbed of liberal or Keynesian thought — regularly surveys a number of the leading American economists about a variety of policy issues. The economists surveyed constitute a good sample of the leading economists in the nation, and the panel was chosen to be geographically diverse, to include older and younger economists, and importantly, to include Democrats, Republicans and independents. The most important qualification is that these are top-notch economists: senior faculty at the leading economics departments in the United States who are also vitally interested in public policy.

Recently each of these eminent economists was asked whether the unemployment rate was lower at the end of 2010 than it would have been without the stimulus bill. Of the 44 economists surveyed, 37 responded, yielding a healthy response rate of 84 percent.

Among those who responded, 36 agreed that the stimulus bill had lowered the unemployment rate, while one disagreed. That lone disagreeing economist, Harvard’s Alberto Alesina (who was one of my thesis advisers), has been a virulent opponent of the stimulus, although the research that he’s based this upon has come under sustained criticism, particularly from the International Monetary Fund, which views the study as flawed.
…
A follow-up question posed to the same expert panel asked whether the total benefits of the stimulus bill will end up exceeding the costs. The idea was to take account of all of the consequences, both positive and negative. On this question, there’s greater modesty, but still no raging debate. Of the 37 respondents, 25 agreed that the benefits exceeded the costs, while 10 were uncertain. Only 2 disagreed that the stimulus was worth it.

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:Ryan changed his POV - not sure how you regard that as a reading comprehension issue.

this is really not that hard:

TomatoPie wrote: ThinkProgress finds some common ground with Paul Ryan.

no; Paul Ryan finds some common ground with ThinkProgress (stand-in for anyone left of Paul Ryan's fantasyland).

Ryan decided the stupid position he staked himself to in 1999-2000 and 2007 was unworkable. ThinkProgress did not find him; he "found" ThinkProgress.

do. you. get. it. now?

Barry Jive wrote:man i hope he doesn't see that

Attendees wondered why, then, popular criticism of Israel seems to be increasing.

Strohmayer attributed it to a resurgence of anti-Semitism around the world — “we need to call it what it is” — but also said that the hate could be overcome.

“We have facts and the evidence,” Strohmayer said. “We have to shout it loud enough.”

A police officer fired for throwing a tear gas grenade into a crowd of Occupy Oakland protesters who were tending to a wounded comrade is getting his job back.

An arbitrator on Wednesday overturned the Police Department's termination of Officer Robert Roche and ordered him reinstated with back pay.

Roche became the lightning rod over police handling of the 2011 Occupy protests when he was caught on camera tossing the grenade into a crowd of protesters trying to assist Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen.

The grenade incident came less than a minute after a police officer who has never been identified struck Olsen in the head with a lead-filled beanbag, fracturing Olsen's skull and causing him permanent brain damage. Olsen received a $4.5 million settlement from the city earlier this year.

Roche's attorney, Justin Buffington, said the arbitrator determined that Roche was following orders when he deployed the baseball-sized weapon, which makes a loud sound, emits a flash of light and releases a gas irritant designed to disperse crowds.

Buffington also said the arbitrator determined that Roche could not have controlled where the grenade landed; that Roche was unaware Olsen was injured on the ground in front of him; and that, unlike the lead beanbag, the grenade blast didn't cause injuries.

Police spokeswoman Johnna Watson said the "department will abide by the decision"

Lederman, who has not seen the ruling, replied that there was no specific order for Roche to throw the grenade when he did. "Nobody ordered Roche to throw the explosive grenade at Scott Olsen when Scott Olsen was injured on the ground," she said. Lederman also said department guidelines require officers to look for injured people on the ground before they deploy weapons. "The fact that no one was badly hurt by the grenade blast in this incident was just a matter of luck," she said.

Ayn Rand wrote:The question isn’t who is going to let me eat pizza; it’s who is going to stop me from eating pizza.

pacino wrote:House GOP pulls their own border bill because speaker/majority leader can't get enough Republicans to vote for the bill