JEFF DEENEY: The drug game is considered one of the few viable money makers here where fewer than half of the local kids graduate from high school, many don’t speak English, and the local manufacturing economy that might once have hired unskilled labor died decades ago. Many settle for less risky ventures like selling barbecue and bottled water in the streets in the summer, but it’s hard to raise a family on that kind of chump change. Local kids, often under pressure for financial support from their own moms, seek out The Owner. Every dope block in the Badlands is […]
WAR ON WIMMINS: Arizona Birth Control Bill Would Make Women Prove To Their Employers That They Are Not Using Birth Control For Birth Control
HUFFINGTON POST: After the Republican sponsor of a controversial Arizona contraception bill hijacked a Democratic news conference and called her opponents “liars” on Wednesday, heating up an already contentious battle over the legislation, her Democratic colleague has responded, saying he was appalled by her behavior. House Bill 2625, which passed the state House of Representatives and will now go before the Senate, would allow Arizona employers to refuse to cover the cost of contraception for women who plan to use it for non-medical reasons. In order to have their birth control prescriptions covered, those women would have to “submit a […]
This Is Your Brain Election On Citizens United
Actually, if Rick Santorum were president America would be exactly like this, except we’d all wear sweater vest hair shirts and chastity belts, pedo priests would hold the keys and we’d all come together for regular pogroms of the poor and lazy.
THE HORROR, THE HORROR: How Family Court And DHS Left 6-Year-Old Khalil Wimes To Die
INQUIRER: When doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia laid their eyes on Khalil Wimes on Monday night, they saw a broken and emaciated little boy.He was unconscious, sunken, and sallow, 6 years old but weighing only 29 pounds.His mother, Tina Cuffie [pictured, lower right], 44, had five other children who were removed from her care. She had taken her son to the hospital, saying he had slipped in the bathroom. She could not explain the sea of scarring along the boy’s arms, face, back, and neck. Khalil died within the hour of blunt-force trauma to the head, a medical examiner […]
THIS JUST IN: Cheney Gets Heart From Wizard
[Illustration by PADRAIC O’REILLY] CBS NEWS: Former Vice President Dick Cheney received a heart transplant on Saturday, his office announced. A statement from the former vice president’s office said Cheney is now recovering in the Intensive Care Unit of Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., outside of Washington. The statement said Cheney had been on the transplant list for 20 months and did not know the identity of the donor. “Although the former Vice President and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” the statement read. MORE […]
CINEMA: Game Changer
BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Better than a stuffy old press screening, I experienced the full dystopian impact of the Hunger Games by attending the Thursday night midnight debut of the anxiously-awaited adaptation of the juvenile fiction favorite. Even more than the movie itself, the horrendous pre-show advertising made me feel that I’m living in some Sci-Fi author’s nauseous future with ads encouraging impressionable young audiences to join the Marines and march proudly into a desert dust storm, watch mean-spirited TV comedies, and, in a seemingly counter-productive move for theaters, endless commercials inviting the assembled crowd to stay at home […]
DEENEY: OccupyPhilly Has Its Head Up Its Ass About Feeding The Homeless On The Parkway
[Photo by ROBIN ODLAND] BY JEFF DEENEY Back in 2007 part of my job as a social worker was doing street outreach on the Parkway where I encouraged the homeless to come to the day center where I worked to access social services. The agency I worked for was always sure to have an outreach person on scene during the public feedings by local faith groups and other volunteers. The crowds for feedings were thick, and since my instructions were to never interrupt people who were eating or rouse people who were sleeping, working the lines of people waiting for […]
AFPAK: The Darkness At The End Of The Tunnel
BY WILLIAM C. HENRY At best, two of our highest-level politicians are loonies. However, it’s the “at worst” (I’ll leave it up to the reader’s imagination) characterization I fear is by far the more befitting. In any event, if you see either of them or know of their whereabouts, DO attempt to contact! Here’s the inescapable reality, Mr. President and Mr. #1 Wannabe: With each passing day it’s becoming more and more evident that the American people are finally fed up — they want us out of there NOW, not next year or the year after — with the incessant lies, obfuscations and […]
WORTH REPEATING: The 13th Floor Elevators
The 215’s de facto Mr. Manners, aka Philly Mag’s Victor Fiorillo, made us all laugh until we cried — or cry until we laughed — with his rules of etiquette for beating your children on public transit. On today’s Philly Post he presents a six-point plan for curbing the sociopathology of office building elevator riders. To wit: Elevator Etiquette Rule #3: Don’t Talk on Your Damn Cell Phone This is, perhaps, the most obvious elevator etiquette rule that there is, and yet, ignorant types choose to violate it daily. I am, of course, talking about the basic tenet of elevator […]
WHY WE CAN’T HAVE NICE THINGS: Point Breeze Residents Quite Happy In Their Rut, Thank You
DAILY NEWS: BY NOW, they know the name Ori Feibush in Point Breeze. Some praise it. Others curse it. Feibush, 27, is a real-estate developer. In the last four years, by his estimate, his company – OCF Realty – has built more than 150 homes in the neighborhood. Now he wants to build a coffee shop and a pharmacy, to revitalize a long-neglected corridor. But not everyone likes his plans. Windows on buildings owned by Feibush have been shot out. A dead pitbull was tossed onto the steps of his Point Breeze home. And a flier circulating recently in the […]
PLEASE DON’T FEED THE BEARS: Nutter Is Lying About New Homeless Feeding Rules Not Being About Tourism, But Who Could Really Blame Him?
INQUIRER: Despite a raucous disruption by Occupy Philadelphia protesters, the city Board of Health approved amended regulations Thursday for groups that feed the homeless outdoors. Groups will be required to obtain a permit from the city and to have at least one member receive free food-safety training from the Health Department. Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz said he expected the new rules to be enforced around May 1. The regulations come as the city proceeds with a ban in city parks on feeding the homeless and others who want free meals. Critics say the city wants to move the homeless […]
LAST LAUGH: The Onion Pulls Up Stakes In Philly
BUZZ FLASH: Bad news for parody-lovers: the print edition of The Onion has ceased distribution in Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, the company confirmed to BuzzFeed. “The business model we had set up in these places didn’t wield the results we were looking for, which was sustainability,” said spokeswoman Anne Finn. The free weekly started its first D.C. run in April 2007, and Finn said distribution in Philadelphia began in May 2011.The news comes at a rocky time for the company. The Atlantic Wire reported Thursday that all but a handful of the paper’s comedy writers are quitting rather than enduring […]