President’s Name and Swastika Carved into Golf Course

Golfers finish their round on the 18th hole at the Lakeville Country Club, where a swastika was found carved into the green next to President Barack Obama's name on Sunday.

Seven News Boston—Police along with the Secret Service are investigating after a local country club discovered a symbol that represents eastern religious beliefs carved into the green.

Lakeville Country Club workers discovered the vandalism early Monday morning.

Police believe the vandals meant to carve a swastika next to President Barack Obama’s name on the 18th hole; however, the symbol was backwards and means hope and peace in some Eastern countries.

The vandals snuck in at night to carve their message, according to the owner of the country club.

“We don’t know if they did it with some type of cleated shoe, or they had some type of tool and this time of year to have that happen, it’s a problem it’s much harder to fix now,” said Lou Mincone, the assistant manager of the Lakeville Country Club.

The carving is about 10 feet by 10 feet.

The manager is trying to figure out the best way to get rid of it.

Workers attempted to cover it temporarily with green spray paint; however, the symbol was carved too deep. They will now try to get turf from another area to fill in the message.

Work is scheduled to begin on Tuesday morning.

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BREAKING: Baucus Bill PASSES Committee 14-9 GOP Sen. Olympia Snowe Supports Bill…

The Real Female Maverick In GOP: Olympia Snowe
Move Over Palin! Maine’s Snowe Is The Female Maverick In The GOP

Olympia Snowe

WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe says she will vote for a Democratic health care bill, breaking with her party on President Barack Obama’s top legislative priority.

This is a no brainer awarded to Olympia Snowe:

Full Story:

The Senate Finance Cmte. is now meeting for a final vote on its $829B health care bill. Though Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) is considered a swing vote, most members of the Cmte. are likely to vote along party lines. Before voting, each member is commenting on the legislation.
Senate Finance Cmte.: NOW on C-SPAN 3 LIVE STREAM

CLICK ABOVE IMAGE FOR LIVE SENATE HEARINGS

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WASHINGTON – A Senate committee moved Tuesday toward a pivotal vote on a sweeping health care bill that fulfills President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority. “It’s time to get the job done,” Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus declared as he convened his panel for the long-anticipated action. — Read more here: ‘Time to get the job done’ on health care

A Woman’s Nation: A Project of Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress

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Maria Shriver

Forbes/Karlyn Bowman—Maria Shriver and NBC Universal are teaming up for a week long programming series on the state of 21st-century U.S. women. (Starting Sunday night Oct 23rd)

The programs, which will be distributed on NBC Universal TV channels and online, are based on “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything.” Shriver, the first lady of California and a former NBC News correspondent, conducted the study with the Center for American Progress. The series will premier this Sunday October 18th and run through the 23rd.

This week Maria Shriver will star in an NBC media extravaganza about women in today’s economy. In an interview with MSNBC, Shriver explained her interest, saying that her uncle John F. Kennedy had commissioned a study on women’s status half a century ago (which Eleanor Roosevelt chaired until her death), and she decided to update it.

In presenting the commission’s final reports in 1963, President Kennedy said “[W]e have an obligation to the skilled, the trained, the unusual women … [the] thousands of women getting out of college … to make full use of their powers.”

The nation had a long way to go. A few years after the president’s report, a Gallup poll reporter that 55% of those polled approved of a married woman earning money in business or industry if she has a husband capable of supporting her, but 40% still disapproved. A sea change in attitudes and in the preparations young women would make for the new world was in the offing.

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Center for American Progress—“We will take a hard look at how women are doing in the United States today and consider the central question of the role government, business, and faith organizations, as well as individual women and men should play in supporting women’s role now in the workforce and the U.S. economy,“ said John Podesta, president and CEO of the Center for American Progress. “We look forward to teaming up with Maria Shriver on this important work.”

Eleanor Roosevelt and President John F. Kennedy discuss the Peace Corps, 1961.

The last expansive government project centered on women was conducted under the presidency of John F. Kennedy, who appointed Eleanor Roosevelt in 1961 to chair a commission to report on the status of women. A Woman’s Nation will report its findings to the nation, Congress, and President Obama, who recently signed an executive order to establish a council to coordinate the federal government’s efforts to address the needs of women and girls.

“Examining ways to improve the lives of women in this country is a noble cause, and I congratulate Maria Shriver and CAP on launching this new venture,” said White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. “As a true leader in this area, Maria brings the perspective of a professional journalist, a working mother, and a caretaking daughter. Maria’s contributions to better understanding American women today are invaluable, and we look forward to the results of this work.”

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‘Daily Show‘ Destroys CNN For Fact-Checking ‘SNL‘ Instead Of Their Guests

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DNA tests on skull fragment cast doubt on Adolf Hitler suicide story

Bone with bullet hole found by Russians in 1946 came from an unknown woman, not the German monster

Research on a skull fragment thought to be Hitler's has cast doubt on the circumstances of his death/ Reuters

Guardian.co.uk/Uki Goñi—In countless biographies of Adolf Hitler the story of his final hours is recounted in the traditional version: committing suicide with Eva Braun, he took a cyanide pill and then shot himself on 30 April 1945, as the Russians bombarded Berlin.

Some historians expressed doubt that the Führer had shot himself, speculating that accounts of Hitler’s death had been embellished to present his suicide in a suitably heroic light. But a fragment of skull, complete with bullet hole, which was taken from the bunker by the Russians and displayed in Moscow in 2000, appeared to settle the argument.

Until now. In the wake of new revelations, the histories of Hitler’s death may need to be rewritten – and left open-ended. American researchers claim to have demonstrated that the skull fragment, secretly preserved for decades by Soviet intelligence, belonged to a woman under 40, whose identity is unknown. DNA analyses performed on the bone, now held by the Russian State Archive in Moscow, have been processed at the genetics lab of the University of Connecticut. The results, broadcast in the US by a History Channel documentary, MysteryQuest: Hitler’s Escape, astonished scientists.

According to Connecticut archaeologist and bone specialist Nick Bellantoni, it was clear from the outset that something was amiss. “The bone seemed very thin; male bone tends to be more robust,” he said. “And the sutures where the skull plates come together seemed to correspond to someone under 40.” In April 1945 Hitler turned 56.

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History Channel’s Mysteryquest: Hitler’s Escape

Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, Part Five

Schwarzenegger Signs Two Gay Rights Bills and Creates Day Honoring Harvey Milk

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Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

The Dessert Sun/Nicole C. Brambila—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed into law a bill recognizing gay civil rights leader Harvey Milk and another recognizing the rights and benefits of legally married same-sex couples.

Schwarzenegger signed the two pieces of legislation as he dealt with nearly 700 bills on his desk. Sunday was the deadline to sign legislation passed in regular session.

Schwarzenegger attached the following statement to the same-sex couple law:

“As required by Proposition 8, California will not recognize such couples as ‘married.’ However, Senate Bill 54 will provide the same legal protections that would otherwise be available to couples that enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships out-of-state. In short, this measure honors the will of the People in enacting Proposition 8 while providing important protections to those unions legally entered into in other states,” Schwarzenegger wrote.

The Harvey Milk Day bill calls for a day to honor of the slain, gay civil rights leader. It also seeks to educate Californians about the former San Francisco City Supervisor, the nation’s first elected openly gay person.

Advocates considered both necessary for advancing gay civil rights.


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Associated Press/Don Thompson— Slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk will get a special day of recognition in California, making him only the second person in state history to gain such a designation.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s signing of the bill establishing “Harvey Milk Day” each May 22, Milk’s birthday, was announced Monday.

The Republican governor vetoed similar legislation a year ago. In the interim, Milk was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in August and was the subject of a movie for which Sean Penn won the Academy Award for best actor.

In this file photo from June 26, 1978, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk is seen in San Francisco's seventh annual gay freedom parade. Milk was assassinated 30 years ago.

Penn spoke out in favor of the bill last spring, saying he didn’t want to insult Schwarzenegger’s intelligence by assuming the governor would again oppose creating Harvey Milk Day.

“He has become much more of a symbol of the gay community than he was a year ago because of those things,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said. “That may be the difference from last year: he’s really come to symbolize the gay community in California”


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The Mary Rose Artifacts: Tudor Manbag, Compact Mirror To Be Displayed In Britain

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The sole known image of the Mary Rose, depicted in the Anthony Roll

Reuters/Georgina Cooper—Curators of King Henry VIII‘s flagship the Mary Rose, a Tudor time capsule likened to a British Pompeii, have revealed thousands of artefacts never before seen by the public, including a nit comb complete with nits from 1545 when the vessel sank.

The fabled warship went down in the Solent off England’s southern coast during an engagement with the French fleet, with the loss of more than 400 crew.

The sinking is thought to have been an accident, but exactly what happened has vexed historians for years.

The vessel was spectacularly raised from its watery grave in front of a global audience of some 60 million in 1982.

What remains of the hull has been on display behind glass ever since, but the thousands of personal items found in the wreckage have been hidden from public view due to lack of a suitable space to show them.

A Tudor manbag

The artifacts include a well preserved leather “manbag” complete with compact mirror and cut-throat razor — the height of Tudor fashion, a giant 4 foot long wooden spoon used to stir the crew’s porridge pot and 70 nit combs, some even holding dead nits.

The Mary Rose Trust displayed the items to reporters to launch a cash appeal for a 35 million pound ($55 million) hi-tech museum, scheduled to open in 2012, in which all the objects will be on show.

“Nowhere else in the world is a single moment in Tudor life captured as it is with the Mary Rose,” said Rear Admiral John Lippiett, Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust.

Also recovered was a violin and its bow — which the trust says is Europe’s oldest example — along with blood-letting bowls, canon balls and Tudor tankards.

Rat bones

“It gives us window into a period in time where we have very little organic survival but here we have wonderful very personal mundane objects that would have been thrown out,” curator Alexandra Hildred told the BBC.

“We’ve even got rat bones from the rats that didn’t leave the sinking ship,” she said.

The new museum will house all of the 19,000 Mary Rose artifacts. Its designers say it will resemble a finely crafted wooden jewelry box, clad in timber planks invoking the original ship.


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Life Aboard the Mary Rose Re-enactment

The story of the Tudor warship the Mary Rose, complete with re-enactments of what conditions were like on board, plus information about the historical finds yielded after its sunken remains were excavated and raised: almost half of the many finds excavated have now been either restored or conserved; it is a true example of a time capsule as many of the artifacts would not have survived anywhere else; a number of dice and coins were found indicating that gambling was a popular pastime for the crew; the longbows recovered are probably the only surviving examples of the weaponry used to such devastating effect against the French in many of the battles of the time; animal bones excavated from the wreck suggest the food consumed by the crew – beef, pork, fish and venison were all eaten; a gallon of watered-down beer per day was given to each crew member; the officers had music as an extra with their meals.

The History of the Mary Rose

Artists impression of the Mary Rose

The Mary Rose was one of the first ships built during the early years of the reign of King Henry VIII, probably in Portsmouth. She served as Flagship during Henry’s First French War and was substantially refitted and rebuilt during her 36 year long life. The Mary Rose sank in 1545 whilst defending Portsmouth from the largest invasion fleet ever known, estimated at

King Henry VIII

between 30,000 and 50,000 individuals and between 150 and 200 vessels. This number is nearly twice the number estimated within the fleet of 1588, latterly known as the Spanish Armada. At this time Mary Rose was the second largest and most heavily armed vessel within the fleet; she carried 91 guns deployed over three decks, her main gun deck carried fourteen large guns including two cannons which fired 64lb cast iron shot. The Mary Rose marks a transition between the use of a vessel to support guns and a vessel built to carry large guns close to the waterline, her structure is undocumented in historical sources and there are no shipwright’s plans. The Mary Rose is an extremely important vessel to study in order to understand the evolution of the fighting ship.

Meet Elinor Ostrom: The First Woman to Win the Nobel Prize in Economics

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It is an honor to be the first woman, but I won’t be the last~Elinor Ostrom

Elinor Ostrom, Nobel in Economic Science Laureate

Elinor Ostrom, the Arthur F. Bentley professor of political science and professor of public and environmental affairs at Indiana University, will receive this year’s Nobel in Economic Science. The announcement was made Monday morning in Stockholm, Sweden. Ostrom is the first woman to win the prize in Economics since it was founded in 1968, and the fifth woman to win a Nobel award this year — a Nobel record.

She will share it with Oliver E. Williamson, who is at the Walter A. Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. The two will share the prize for their separate work on economic governance, organization, cooperation, relationships and nonmarket institutions.

Ms. Ostrom’s work focuses on the commons, such as how pools of users manage natural resources as common property. The traditional view is that common ownership results in excessive exploitation of resources — the so-called tragedy of the commons that occurs when fishermen overfish a common pond, for example. The proposed solution is usually to make users bear the external costs of their utilization by privatizing the resource or imposing government regulations such as taxes or quotas.

Women in Nobel Prize History

Two-Time Nobel Winner and Scientist Marie Curie

The Nobel Prize in various categories has been awarded to women 41 times between 1901 and 2009.

Marie Curie is the only woman to win two Nobel prizes; one in Physics, 1903 and one in Chemistry, 1911. Marie Curie is considered the most famous of all women scientists. In 1903, her discovery of radioactivity earned her the Nobel Prize in physics. In 1911, she won it for chemistry.

Irene Curie was the daughter of Marie Curie. She furthered her mother’s work in radioactivity and won the Nobel Prize in 1935 for discovering that radioactivity could be artificially produced.

A total of 40 women have been honored with a Nobel Prize since 1901, with the latest recipient, Elinor Ostrom, the only woman in the category of Economic Sciences.

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New White House Line Against Fox: It’s War by Ari Melber

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The Nation/Ari Melber—The White House’s battle with Fox News reached a new high on Sunday, when Communications Director Anita Dunn went on national television to blast Fox as a partisan organization that functions as an appendage to the Republican Party.

“Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party,” Dunn told CNN, adding, “let’s not pretend [Fox is] a news organization like CNN is.” Dunn also took her beef to the New York Times, saying in a Sunday interview that Fox is “undertaking a war against Barack Obama and the White House [and] we don’t need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave.”

In the most significant exchange on CNN, Dunn stressed that President Obama now personally views Fox as a partisan opponent, rather than a journalistic organization. “When he goes on Fox he understands he is not going on it as a news network at this point,” she explained, “he is going on it to debate the opposition.”

That’s a big departure from how most of the Democratic establishment engages Fox. It’s been a long time coming.

While rank and file Democrats view Fox News as an obviously hostile force, elected Democrats have long struggled over whether to engage or fight the channel. In fact, the Democratic establishment even agreed to empower Fox as an official host and moderator of a debate during the presidential primaries — but that bit of self-handicapping was scuttled after a coalition of progressive bloggers and activists objected. By the homestretch of the presidential campaign, Obama’s campaign dialed up the heat, aggressively confronting Fox with pointed barbs from senior staff, surrogates and sometimes the candidate. (And who can forget Robert Gibbs turning the tables on Sean Hannity on Fox last October?)

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Ari Melber’s commentary has appeared in The Nation Online, The Baltimore Sun, The New York Post, The Times Union, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Kirkus Reviews, The Huffington Post, The Forward, Alternet.org and TomPaine.com. Melber served as a legislative aide in the U.S. Senate and as a national staff member on the 2004 presidential campaign of John Kerry. He was born and raised in Seattle and he currently lives in New York.