MikeLigalig.com

5. Well, maybe HB 2 shows a better bent than HB 1. Oops. Spoke too soon. HB 2, also by Rep. Fred Castro and Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, seeks to lower the minimum age of criminal responsibility to nine years old.

Bloodthirsty.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/

(underscoring mine)

4. And who are these convicts? It turns out, again according to FLAG, that most of them were poor. Anywhere from 70 percent to 80 percent. So the death penalty will be borne mostly by the poor.

3. The possibility of wrongful deaths is also a problem. Again, in the United States, more than 10 percent (156) of death penalty convicts were found innocent, versus 1,444 convictions. In the Philippines, FLAG chair Jose Diokno, citing Supreme Court data, said that 7 of every 10 convicts on death row (before we abolished it) had been wrongfully convicted.

2. The death penalty, contrary to popular belief, costs more than life in prison without parole. For example, “enforcing the death penalty in Florida costs $51 million a year above what it would cost to punish all first-degree murderers with life in prison without parole.” The police chiefs in the 2009 poll considered the death penalty the “least efficient use of taxpayers’ money.”

1. The death penalty doesn’t do squat about deterring crimes. Study after study gathered by the United Nations from around the world show this. And the studies that show the death penalty to be a deterrent are “fundamentally flawed,” according to the National Research Council (US). In America, the highest crime rates are in states that have the death penalty (i.e., the South) and the lowest crime rates occur in states with no death penalty (the Northeast). Huh. Also, a 2009 poll commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center found that police chiefs ranked the death penalty LAST among ways to reduce violent crime.

Even more strange is that the authors of the bill seem to think that this law, as long as it is properly implemented (which means, I suppose, that dozensâ€"nay, thousandsâ€"of executions will be scheduled and performed), will result in deterring the crimes listed as heinous. Well, I urge them to think again. Thinking seems to be a scarce commodity in the House.

If they only did their homework, or read the papers presented to the committee, such as those by Amnesty International and FLAG (Free Legal Assistance Group), or maybe even just googled “Death Penalty Pros and Cons,” it would be immediately apparent that:

So the Reader would think that very few crimes can possibly fit that description. Think again. There are 20 separate crimes listed, eight of which are drug-related, as in possession of dangerous drugs, their importation, cultivation, or unlawful prescription, and maintenance of drug dens. How these activities can be considered wicked, vicious, atrocious and perverse, and therefore “heinous,” is kind of a stretch.  The other 12 include treason, planting evidence, and car theft (with murder), which again stretches the imagination to fit the description of heinous.

Since 40 percent of these heinous crimes are drug-related, it looks like the war on drugs weighs heavily on the minds of our congressmen, as it does on our President. But why put it in the law when the police and “vigilantes” are already practicing the death penalty with impunity, sans a judge’s imprimatur? Strange.

GET REAL

A scarce commodity in the House

Solita Collas-Monsod
January 21, 2017

If the order in which problems are tackled indicate their relative priority, then the House of Representatives gives the highest importance to reimposing the death penalty for heinous crimes. Because that is what House Bill No. 1, which calls itself the proposed “Death Penalty Law,” is about. And the bill was approved by the House committee on justice more than a month ago. Action agad.

And how are heinous crimes defined by HB 1? They are “grievous, odious and hateful offenses, which by reason of their inherent or manifest wickedness, viciousness, atrocity and perversity, are repugnant and outrageous to the common standards and norms of decency and morality in a just, civilized and ordered society.”  Note that all characteristics must be present: wickedness, viciousness, atrocity AND perversity.

por santo. if true, what a shame.

Maggie dela Riva, 1967


Maggie dela Riva, latest

kun hinimo na ug apple, way problema tingali. pero kun hinimo na ug nakuratan, aw, makurat gyod ka.

These facts are suspiciously absent or ignored in your articles.

Although, your partisan accounts are predictable. Am glad, VP Leni Divinely stands in the way of reckless revisionist moves (& to get back in power with the same psyche) that may have taken place â€" had the losing candidate won.

Thank God for this.

http://www.manilatimes.net/

3. There is an underlying theme in your articles â€" the Marcos era and Martial Law was not that bad. The “yellows” are to blame for this perception and this “error” needs to be rectified â€" if not rewritten. More disturbing is the media slant that the people espousing this train of thought have the “birth right” to undo what is now written â€" with no questions asked. So, if such is the case, how then are they different from the “yellows” â€" not much, in my opinion.

4. This is where it gets messy if not convoluted â€" a subtle twist of facts. Probably in your desire to bring this (Martial Law) reasoning to the forefront, you (or your group) have zeroed in on the VP and painted her as a distrustful official just because of her strong stance against the Martial Law era and those incorrectly claiming sole rights to change it. The political attacks on her, just because of her personal and party affiliation, is unjust and uncalled for â€" specially after she has openly expressed her willingness to work with the administration.

Let’s see.

1. Except for the Dec 23 article, I see very limited constructive discussions on Pdu30â€" no mention of the pluses or minuses of his administration â€" just guarded statements on him.

2. On the contrary, there are numerous, very sharp articles written vs. Vice President Leni, with all the unpleasant and unfounded innuendos. It is clear, there is a sustained effort to discredit her.

Simply, no one must be the sole source of reason â€" otherwise it is plain propaganda. It must collective, assembled from brilliant minds (and not paid trolls masquerading as innocent, impartial obeservers). Otherwise it’s just lose and irresponsible talk.

It is appropriate at this point to bring to light a profile of your most recent articles â€" to come to a conclusion if what you have written are fair and unbiased.

I will not dwell on your inner motives but your written articles provide readers a hint of what it is â€" and the readers know who can afford to pay for trolls â€"certainly not the VP.

However responsible journalism demands ideas or opinions should be subject to intellectual challenge â€" for it is through an exchange of scholarly, well thought out ideas that we avoid “inbred, classical, obsolete and recycled” ideas complete with lots of bias and half-truths â€" characteristics of a Cold War mentality which has spilled over to our political arena. I just hope our classrooms are not contaminated by such failed thinking.

It is when we conduct a friendly scrutiny of one’s thoughts that ideas are polished â€" truth prevails and correct conclusions emerge. This is why dissenting voices must always be allowed and not curtailed.
In the end the nation comes out a winner from these creative discussions.

ANSWERING CONTRERAS IS THIS COMMENTER:

GABBY on JANUARY 19, 2017 7:54 AM

Greetings Dr. Contreras,

“Crusaders” to revise history?

I am relieved to learn you have admitted being part of a group of “political crusaders” intent on expressing your (partisan?) views on issues confronting the nation.It is definitely your Constitutional right to be heard and no democratic government can take it away from you.

However, you must also be aware such right is not limited to a few but guaranteed for all Filipinos â€" even those whose views differ from yours.

One who is politically astute will be more discerning not to piss off cyber-activists who are so committed to their politics, courageous enough not to hide their identities and are so articulate that words pour naturally from their minds into their keyboards

One who is ready to become President would not unleash a paid army of trolls who are only too willing to fight her battles from a position of anonymity using memes that do not even spell “wannabe” correctly, and whose best argument is to assault us with the trite allegation that we are paid operators and Marcos loyalists.

Copyright © 2010-2016 The Manila Times - All Rights Reserved.

http://www.manilatimes.net/

And now, she once again relies on others to fight her dirty war. Her office instructed her paid trolls, whose anonymous sites appear to be well-funded, to declare open war on all of us her critics. We are being called the worst of names.

The thing is, instead of fighting her cause these anonymous keyboard warriors further damage her. They spill enough vitriol to infect some students, faculty and graduates of UP, Ateneo and La Salle and turn them into trolls too, when they behave in exactly the same way they paint the Duterte massesâ€"allegedly uncouth and uneducated. I have seen many of my decent colleagues and former students behave in trollish ways, forgetting their moral compasses, and using words unfit for the kind of day jobs they haveâ€"as teachers of minds, animators of development and as decent citizens of this Republic.

Sometimes, I pity Leni Robredo. I wonder whether she realizes that she is sinking fast in the quicksand that her clueless politics has thrown her into.

And ranged against us are the Robredo trolls unleashed by that command from her office, which was revealed in #LeniLeaks and has effectively damned her. One columnist in the diaspora, appearing to be erudite, claimed that there is no “Leni” there, considering that the unsecured conversations were made only about her, and she took no active part in the discussions.

That is the problem with Leni Robredo. Her apologists paint her as a helpless, clueless beneficiary of political plots. She has to rely on her paid social media operators to save her failing image. This is the same Leni that is unaware that others were moving to commit a massive electoral fraud on her behalf. Pieces of evidence of this fraud have been revealed, from the mathematical disparities of an anomalous straight line, to the existence of an illegal fourth server, and now to the suspicious presence of data in the SD cards of unused VCMs.

But what do you expect from someone whose life as first lady of Naga City was one of detachment that she had to rely on a Girl Friday to do her bidding. When Typhoon Nina struck, in her absence she yielded her voice to Georgina Hernandez.

I have been accorded the honor of being included in their distinguished list of political warriors.

We are called “bayaran” but we are not the ones hiding our faces only to inflict the worst of insults on our enemies. We take responsibility for our words. We are lawyers, doctors, graduate students and writers. We are graduates of respectable schools. Our boldness to be more revealing in some of our social media profiles is evidence that we are confident not only about our minds but also our physicality.

We are fiercely independent that we do not agree on everything. Our politics is one of commitment, and not as an income-generating activity, or a mere day job. We engage our followers not with canned responses and memes, but with our own words that we prepare and craft every day as authentic expressions of what we believe in.

Robredo trolls declaring war armed only with their anonymous cowardice 


BY ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS   
JANUARY 19, 2017

THE thing about exercising a political right, if it comes from the heart, is that you pour your inner soul into it, and your words become pure, even if these may include curses, epithets and cuss words.

In contrast, a paid troll whose politics stems from a contract, whether it is as a social media conscript as a keyboard warrior working on a per-post basis, or as a regularly paid staff member of a politician, like a senator or even a Vice President, will always appear indecent even without cursing. Their words will reveal the lost cause they are paid to bear.

This is precisely why the main weapon of Robredo trolls populating the Internet is to accuse people like Mocha Uson, Sass Rogando Sasot, RJ Nieto also known as Thinking Pinoy, Trixie Angeles, Rocky Gonzales, Krizette Laureta Chu, Lorraine Badoy, Vince Rivera, MJ Quiambao Reyes and all the others who they perceive as defending the President and are critical of Leni Robredo as paid or “bayaran.” The Robredo trolls know it is demeaning because it is who they are, and they are ashamed of it, that is why they take refuge in names such as Superficial Gazette, Madam Claudia and Silent No More.

give me a break, sir. i love that wig of yours, though.

While the evidence behind apple cider vinegar seems promising, there are a few things to keep in mind before you start downing the stuff. First off, I don't recommend drinking straight vinegar. Undiluted shots have been known to wear away tooth enamel, and damage the esophagus. Also, too much apple cider vinegar may lower potassium levels in the body.

If you want to give it a go, swirl two teaspoons of organic apple cider vinegar and a teaspoon of organic honey into a cup of warm water once a day. Or simply use apple cider vinegar as a main ingredient in salad dressing, or chilled veggie side dishes, like vinegar-based slaw.

My go-to recipe: Whisk together one tablespoon each apple cider vinegar and lemon juice, add a half teaspoon of minced garlic, a dash of ground black pepper, and a few fresh basil leaves, chopped. It's fantastic drizzled over fresh leafy greens, broad beans, or cooked, chilled fingerling potatoes.

Just remember, making vinegar a daily habit won't cancel out the effects of overeating. Think of it as one piece of your wellness puzzle, and not a panacea.

http://edition.cnn.com/

Every day for 12 weeks, one group drank a beverage containing half an ounce of apple cider vinegar. Another group drank a beverage with one ounce of apple cider vinegar. And the third group had a drink containing no vinegar at all.

At the end of the study, the people who drank one of the beverages with vinegar had less belly fat, lower triglycerides and waist measurements, and a lower body weight and BMI, compared to the no-vinegar group.

Apple cider vinegar may also be a boon to digestive health, based on the results of a study done on mice with ulcerative colitis. The researchers found that when acetic acid was added to their drinking water, they had higher levels of good bacteria in their guts, such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria, and reduced symptoms of the gastrointestinal disease.

People with pre-diabetes improved their blood glucose levels with vinegar by nearly half, while people with diabetes cut their blood glucose concentrations by 25%.

Some research also suggests that apple cider vinegar may ward off scale creep. In a study published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry, mice fed a high-fat diet along with acetic acid -- vinegar's key component -- developed up to 10% less body fat than control rodents. The researchers believe the findings support the notion that acetic acid turns on genes that trigger enzymes to break down fat and prevent weight gain.

To investigate this effect in humans, Japanese scientists conducted a double-blind trial on obese adults with similar body weights and waist measurements in 2009. They divided the participants into three groups.

One promising benefit: It seems to help regulate blood sugar. A study published in Diabetes Care looked at men and women with type 2 diabetes. The researchers found that when the participants downed two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar before bed with a snack (one ounce of cheese), they had lower blood sugar levels the next morning, compared to when they ate the same bedtime snack paired with two tablespoons of water.

Another study published in the same journal compared the effects of apple cider vinegar on healthy adults, people with pre-diabetes, and people with type 2 diabetes.

Study participants in all three groups had better blood glucose readings when they consumed less than an ounce of apple cider vinegar with a high-carb meal (a white bagel with butter and orange juice), compared to when they the had the same meal and drank a placebo.

Apple cider vinegar helps blood sugar, body fat, studies say

By Cynthia Sass, Health.com
December 22, 2016

Story highlights

Research finds benefits in consuming apple cider vinegar

Don't drink it straight, and remember that it won't cancel out overeating



Apple cider vinegar has been touted as a cure-all for decades. I've seen claims that it can do everything from halt hiccups to whiten teeth, and even banish dandruff.

Whether or not it's capable of all those things, there is some solid research to back up apple cider vinegar as a healthy elixir, as long as you use it correctly.

old yarn. and the human is always a female. rumor mongering by sexists. kanta na lang ta ug 'tale as old as time'.

QuoteHe stressed, however, that Robredo could have been more productive as Vice President by “criticizing inside” rather than joining rallies and speaking to the media about her opposition to some of the President’s policies.

she did not attend rallies such as the ones she was taken to task for.

daghan dinhang wig uy, huwag isnabin...

12.

11.

10.

One more thing: Once, when I was standing around on the set one day, whining about something â€" we were gonna work through supper or the long hours or whatever â€" Tommy Lee Jones said to me, 'Isn't it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?' Yeah, it is, and we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy. We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. As my friend, the dear departed Princess Leia said to me once, 'take your broken heart, make it into art.' Thank you, Foreign Press."

http://mashable.com/

Okay, this brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That's why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution. So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the Committee to Protect Journalists, because we're gonna need them going forward, and they'll need us to safeguard the truth.

And this instinct to humiliate when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, filters down into everybody's life. Because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect; violence incites violence. When the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose.

 
It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter â€" someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. And I still can't get it out of my head because it wasn't in a movie, it was real life.

An actor's only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us, and let you feel what that feels like, and there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that; breathtaking, compassionate work. But there was one performance this year that stunned me â€" it sank its hooks in my heart, not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth.

Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian; and Dev Patel was born in Kenya*, raised in London and is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania. So Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If we kick 'em all out, you'll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts which are not the arts...


** Patel was actually born in London, but his parents were born in Nairobi, Kenya.

I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey; Viola was born in a sharecropper's cabin in South Carolina, came up in Central Falls, Rhode Island; Sarah Paulson was born in Florida, raised by a single mom in Brooklyn; Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio; Amy Adams was born in Vicenza in Italy; and Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem â€" where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, raised in Ireland, I do believe, and she's here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia.

"You'll have to forgive me, I've lost my voice, in screaming and lamentation this weekend, and I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read.

Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you, and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it, Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we and what is Hollywood anyway? It's just a bunch of people from other places.

Meryl Streep is the moral compass the world needs now

BY LAURA PRUDOM
09 January 2017



Screen icon and humanity's all around MVP Meryl Streep was awarded the Golden Globes' Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award on Sunday night, and her speech was, in a word, perfect.

Read it in full below:

9.

8.

7.

6.

5.

4.

3.

2.

1.

10+ Of The Happiest Facts Ever That’ll Make Your Day

By​ Giedrė

Did you know that according to Swiss law, social animals like guinea pigs must have a buddy with them and it's illegal to own just one? And were you aware that sea otters hold hands while sleeping so they don't drift away from one another? and believe it or not, did you know that Norway knighted a penguin? These are just some of the random happy facts that you can find in the list below. Compiled by Bored Panda, it's sure to put a smile on your face while also teaching you a thing or two.

naa miy silingan sa una nga purya ka palahubog, kada adlaw masamok ang tibuok compound tungod niya. giabot nga manira mig dali-dali ug mga bintana kun maka-hearing na mi nga naa na siya kay samukon gyod mi niya. he sowed terror in our hearts (lami gyod hinoong duslakon ug botelya bisag di buak).

nanghagad ug namugos ug painom ning palahubog ug laing silingan nga gikan pa tawon sa trabaho. and it was the nth time nga nanghagad ug nasuko kay gibalibaran. the next thing we knew, gidala atong gihagad ang iyang baby ug yaya somewhere (ang iyang asawa nagtrabaho pa tawon), dayon nibalik ug gitirahan ug pusil ang palahubog. wa kaigo, nidagan ang palahubog padung sa main road, aguy, gigukod pa gyod. pagtira otro, ang naigo ang taxi driver intawon nga igo lang niagi. maayo gani kay dunggan lang ang naigo.

ending sa istorya: nihawa atong dapit for good ang silingan nga namusil, ang palahubog namatay ra kadugayan tungod sa inom, ug wa ko kahibawo unsay nahitabo sa dunggan sa taxi driver.

well, there's always fake money for fake priests... better still, pakan-on pod sila ug snacks nga puto made of fake rice from china.

http://www.wimp.com/

A Woman Accurately And Hilariously Describes 1 Side Effect Of Aging

So, Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder might not be an actual condition ... but it certainly could be! It's a well-known (and frustrating) truth that we become more distractible as we age. But why?

The brain's frontal lobe is responsible for a variety of tasks. One section of the prefrontal cortex, for instance, is associated with activities that require concentration. The medial frontal region, however, switches on when you do something non-task oriented in a resting state, such as monitoring your surroundings. Studies have shown that, starting between 40 and 60 years of age, these two parts of your brain don't switch off according to the task at hand. Instead, both areas stay "on," contributing to a lowered ability to concentrate.

hinaot kining purple corn juice makapatuo sa atong medical doctors. they are the most cynical when it comes to newfangled health items such as this. kaayo ra kun ila ning iapil sa ilang advice. maayo pay juice na lang kay sa tambal ang atong tunlon.

calling lorenzo! tell us more about this, please. i know we can't just reach out for an aspirin regimen without a doctor's prescription...

important notice: never feed chicken bones to dogs. they're small, cannot be digested, and may pierce the intestines of dogs, causing sudden death. i know of more than one dog who had died because of chicken bones. that is one effect.

happy new year sa tanan! hapi ngew yir ispisyali to bolbuhol! nag-una ang first surprise for 2017 tungod nimo. welcome back!

please, don't let those young people experiment with something that's free. they're not going to blow these condoms up like balloons. more sex education, not an encouragement for promiscuity.

Before allowing the distribution of condoms in schools, the DepEd will also look into “how and why despite progressive mindset in other countries, this approach has not been implemented by all,” it said.

It also vowed to enrich sex education within the frameworks of human rights, safety and well-being of students through age-appropriate and developmental reproductive health education as early as Grade 1.

Pro-life groups and the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines have also opposed the DOH plan, saying the government should instead focus on educating the youth than giving away condoms. They also feared that this strategy would condone sexual activities among students.

DOH data showed that there were 38,114 HIV/AIDS cases recorded from 1984 to October 2016.

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/