Out-Foxconned

The Apple/Foxconn story just keeps getting more odious ahead of next week's expected announcement of the iPad Mini in San Jose, and there's a whole new raft of questions the tech giant will have to face now that Foxconn has actually managed to break Chinese labor laws with underage workers.

Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract electronics maker, has acknowledged hiring teenagers as young as 14 in a Chinese factory, in breach of national law, in a case that raises further questions over its student intern program.

Labor rights activists in China have accused Foxconn and other big employers in China of using student interns as a cheap source of labor for production lines where it is more difficult to attract young adult workers to lower paid jobs.

Foxconn, the trading name of Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry, said it had found some interns at a plant in Yantai, in northeastern Shandong province, were under the legal working age of 16. It did not say how many were underage.

"Our investigation has shown that the interns in question, who ranged in age from 14 to 16, had worked in that campus for approximately three weeks," it said in a statement on Tuesday.

"This is not only a violation of China's labor law, it is also a violation of Foxconn policy and immediate steps have been taken to return the interns in question to their educational institutions."

Sure it is.  And Foxconn gets busted again for awful labor practices.  One has to wonder how long Apple can keep the shine on its stock while opposition to Foxconn mounts.  At some point Apple's going to have to answer, and I don't think the company's going to be able to pretend they don't have a sweatshop issue for much longer.

We'll see.

There's A Flag On The Play

How far have the New Orleans Saints fallen since their historic Super Bowl win 3 years ago?  Ask fan David Mancina, who is suing the Saints organization for five million bucks.

In a class action lawsuit filed this week, first spotted by The Times-Picayune, Mancina calls for other Saints fans to join in free of charge to pursue a claim against the National Football League and league commissioner Roger Goodell for their roles in the suspension of several top players and members of the team’s management staff, including the head coach and general manager.

The NFL said earlier this year that the Saints had a “bounty” program that paid financial rewards to players who injured certain opponents. Defensive players were given $1,000 bonuses delivering a hit to an opponent that got him carted off the field and $1,500 if the injury was game-ending.

Four players were suspended along with members of management, and though Goodell reduced two of the players’ sentences, he said last week that he supports the league’s decision.

“Our investigation disclosed nearly two dozen players who either contributed to, or received money from, the pool operated by the Saints’ defense,” he told reporters on Tuesday, October 9. “The four disciplined players either were involved in specific bounties on an opposing player, contributed substantially to the bounty program, engaged in payments that violated League rules or were untruthful when the program was initially investigated.”

That didn’t quite wash for Mancina, a season ticket holder. He told ABC News affiliate WGNO in New Orleans on Tuesday that the league has a responsibility to inform people like him that it may suspend players and coaches at will.

“The NFL was not up front when I bought my tickets,” he said. “It’d be like buying tickets to go see ‘The Rolling Stones’ in February for a performance in the fall, and Mic Jagger’s not there.”

That seems like the suit will get dismissed out of hand, but something tells me it won't be the last time we'll see fans sue organizations like this, especially if behavior is bad enough to warrant suspensions like the Saints were slapped with after Bountygate in the off-season.

Who knows?  This guy's suit might actually go somewhere.

School Sweeps Sexual Assault Allegations Under The Rug

Laclede Co., Mo. -- Laclede County R-I School Board members met Monday night to talk about allegations of extreme bullying on a school bus full of Conway Junior High School boys.  A sixth grader told his parents group of boys forced him to take part in sexual acts on a bus during a field trip in May of last year.

"He got up and said, 'Mom, I gotta' tell you something.  It's really, really bad.' And he started telling me what happened," said the mother of the sixth grader allegedly bullied.

The child's mother said what she heard next was a disturbing account of three junior high school boys ganging up on her sixth grade son, exposing themselves, and performing sexual acts.

"It was so hard for him to tell, because he knew this group of boys was going to give him a terrible time at school for telling, and they have," she said,

The child's parents said it all happened in the back of a school bus headed to Branson for an end-of-the-year field trip.  They said the superintendent told them any disciplinary actions would happen the following school year.

"I would never, ever believe that a school administrator would hear something like this and not do anything," the child's mother said.

The actions qualify as both assault and sexual misconduct.  This was forced on a little boy, by his peers, and the school did nothing.  There was no follow-up.  In fact, the boy has had death threats made against him.  In his experience of the world, the bullies have the upper hand.  This isn't name calling or standard bullying behavior.  This is sexual assault.

The school replied with a thoughtless canned response saying they are dealing with it according to policy and student safety is a priority.  Apparently not, on both counts.  Unless it's policy to leave a defenseless kid without a safe haven and dismiss him when he shared very embarrassing things.

They should be ashamed.

Springfield, MO Local Pride

The longtime executive producer for Meet the Press, a NASA project manager and a Tuskegee Airman all got their starts in Springfield Public Schools.

The three, who soared to the top of their chosen career fields, will be inducted as the 2012 class of the Springfield Public Schools Hall of Fame.

The ceremony honoring Betty Cole Dukert, Charles Armstrong and Stewart Fulbright will be 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the White River Convention Center.

I won't be able to attend, but I am proud of our little area.  For such a small and isolated place, we have hatched more than our share of celebrities and recorded some key moments in history.  These are all role models that show we can be intelligent and hardworking people.  We can be driven and we can be surprising.  We are more than just Brad Pitt.

Red State, Blue State, Green State Debate

It wouldn't be a Presidential campaign season it seems without the most important duty of a third party candidate: getting arrested while trying to get into the televised debate.

In an act of civil disobedience to protest their exclusion from the presidential debates, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Cheri Honkala were arrested outside the site of the second debate on Tuesday.

Stein and Honkala attempted to enter the debate hall at Hofstra University, but were refused entry by police because they lacked credentials.

Stein said the presidential debate was a “mockery of democracy” because it only included Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama. Stein will appear on about 85 percent of state ballots this year. Another presidential candidate, Libertarian Gary Johnson, will also be on the ballot in at least 47 states. But neither third-party candidate will be included in the presidential debates.

After failing to outmaneuver a number of police officers who had created a blockade, Stein and Honkala sat down in the middle of the street. They were informed by an officer that if they did not move, then they would be arrested for blocking traffic.

Honkala responded that she didn’t want to block traffic, she just wanted to get into the debate. Stein and Honkala were then arrested without incident.

Well, that's certainly useful.

Look, I'm very sympathetic to the aims of the Green party, especially on global warming.  But pouting about not getting invited to the debate is just going through the motions, and it doesn't solve anything other than where Jill Stein spent Tuesday night.  What we need is a Congress willing to write legislation.  Green party needs to be focusing on Congress, not the White House.

That's just my take.

Debate Deblogging

As I said last night, President Obama got a pretty solid win last night, and the partisan Republican crowd scoring the debate at CNN agreed.

Forty-six percent of voters who watched Tuesday night's presidential debate said that the president won the showdown, according to a CNN/ORC International nationwide poll conducted right after Tuesday night's faceoff here at Hofstra University on New York's Long Island. Thirty-nine percent questioned said Republican nominee Mitt Romney did the better job.

Obama's seven-point advantage came among a debate audience that was somewhat more Republican than the country as a whole and is within the survey's sampling error.

Pundit reaction below the jump.

StupidiNews!

• A magnitude 4.0 earthquake shook Maine and New England as far away as Boston Tuesday night, but no real damage was reported.
• Saudi Arabia will finally allow women lawyers to plead cases in court starting in November, according to kingdom officials.
• One of North Carolina's largest poultry producers has been hit with large fines for allowing 17-year-olds to handle electric knives.
• Citirgroup CEO Vikram Pandit, who abruptly resigned yesterday, may be leaving up to $33 million on the table in performance money this year.
• Astronomers have discovered an Earth-sized exoplanet around our stellar neighbor at Alpha Centauri, but the planet's temperature is far closer to super-hot Venus that Earth.

Last Call

My snap score on this?  10 questions, 9-1 Obama.  And that's giving Mitt Romney generous half-point splits on the first question (jobs) and the third question (taxes.)  The real Romney loss in this debate came here:



Romney crashed in several cases, but none so awful as here.

Obama won, hands down.  And this time, I'm actually in the majority.

Today In Village Idiocy, Pre-Debate Edition

While you're waiting for the second debate tonight, remember that 90% of the problem is people like CNN's Julian Zelizer asking questions like this of the 2012 election:

"Do facts matter?"

With the presidential and vice presidential debates fully under way, and both parties claiming that their opponents are liars, websites and news shows are inundated with experts and reporters who inform voters about whether candidates are making claims that have little basis in fact.

Like the card game "B.S," in which players call fellow players when they lie about what card has been put into the collective pile, the fact-checkers shout out to Americans when they find that politicians are injecting falsehood into the news cycle.

But it is not clear what impact the fact checkers are having on the public at large or, nearly as important, on the politicians. They keep laying out the facts and the politicians keep stretching the truth. There is little evidence that the public is outraged by any of the revelations nor that it has any real influence on how the politicians conduct themselves, other than to provide more campaign fodder for attacks on their opponents.

Shorter answer:  no.  What we tell you matters here at CNN, matters.  And we say facts don't mean sheeeeeeeeeeeeit. He ends thusly:

The public lives in a world where it seems impossible to know what is fact and what is partisan fiction. Fact checkers, many of whom have legitimate and virtuous objectives to get Americans to really understand the choices before them, have trouble gaining much traction. When one of the players calls "B.S." during the political cycle, people might be listening, but it's not clear that there are lasting consequences.

Facts are hard.  Critical thought is hard.  The Village makes it easy.  We'll tell you what you should believe, right after this break.

Breaking Biden

Joe Biden couldn't have actually won the debate against Paul Ryan.  Joe must be insane or something.

No, really.  Joe Biden is insane, according to FOX.



Of course, that's ridiculous.  The notion that Biden's not fully in control of his mental faculties is, well, crazy.  You see, Joe Biden's really a coke fiend, according to FOX.



No, the notion that Joe Biden's high as an 80's Wall Street boiler room stock jockey is nuts.  He's really a Kenyan anti-colonialist.

Right?

Failed Joke Causes Airport Evacuation

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A man who prompted an evacuation of the main terminal at Anchorage's largest airport by making comments about a bomb, which he later said were jokes, has been charged with making terroristic threats and disorderly conduct.

Peter Friesema was arrested early Sunday by police at Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.

Airport manager John Parrott says Friesema was jailed at the Anchorage Correctional Complex with bail set at $5,000.

There are some things one should know not to joke about.  This is one of them.  It's hard to feel sorry for someone so thick, because "it was a joke" is a standard from the lying handbook.

Dude.  Be glad it wasn't worse, and next time use your brain.

Girl Reports Suspected Predator On School Premises, Told To Just Deal With It

ACLU Nebraska is calling for action from Crete High School after the school allegedly took no action to help a student that reported a problem with a school volunteer.

The school permitted a 52-year-old man, currently awaiting trial for first degree sexual assault of a Crete High School student, to volunteer at the school. It was at the school when his alleged victim saw him.

She says she immediately reported the problem to the school's principal, Tim Conway. She says the principal told her she would just have to deal with it.

"ACLU Nebraska is extremely concerned that a school administrator would be so insensitive to the concerns of a young woman reporting a crime," said ACLU Nebraska Legal Director Amy Miller. "Crete failed to help this young woman. When she reported to the principal, the law says the school should have immediately taken her report seriously and helped her."

Their inaction is beyond explanation, but for me their dismissal is the real issue.  This man has not been cleared for sexually assaulting a student at that school.  While I understand the concept of innocent until proven guilty I think safety of the students should be the priority.  That means until cleared a suspected predator is forbidden from access to students.  How in the world could someone possibly make an argument against that?  I tried to play devil's advocate and I got nothing.

The ACLU is being fair, just asking for a policy change so that alerts of this nature would be given a certain amount of attention.  This girl was surely uncomfortable being involved, and when she did the right thing the person she was taught to trust blew her off.  This is inexcusable.  She deserves an apology, and the policy change would make sense.  Stop being stupid and do it already, and teach how to correct and move on.

Kids have to be safe at school.  This is a no-brainer.

Whoopi Goldberg Rearing Her Head In Mitt's Airspace

CNN media critic Howard Kurtz asks the obvious question:  How can Mitt Romney stand up to foreign leaders, Tea Party nutjobs, or anyone for that matter if he's too scared to go on The View?

After Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign announced on Monday that the candidate had canceled his Thursday appearance on ABC’s The View, media critic Howard Kurtz wondered how the former Massachusetts governor could stand up to Russian President Vladimir Putin if he couldn’t even take questions from Whoopi Goldberg.

“Governor Romney was supposed to be on with us this Thursday with Ann Romney,” co-host Barbara Walters explained on Monday’s show. “We were looking forward to it. Over the weekend, his people said that he had scheduling problems and would not be coming on with us, nor at this point did he feel that he could reschedule.”

“Apparently the idea of sitting next to Whoopi Goldberg was just a little too intimidating,” Kurtz told Daily Download founder Lauren Ashburn. “Doesn’t this make Romney look like he’s avoiding a confrontation with the ladies of The View? He said he would go.”

In a secretly-recorded video released by Mother Jones last month, Romney told wealthy donors that going on The View was a “high-risk” proposition because the “sharp-tongued” co-hosts were not conservative enough. 

Defending Mitt's views (whatever they are this week) against Whoopi and Barbara is just too hard.  Not at all like being President and stuff.  Somebody might ask Mitt a question, and we can't have that.  Just shut up and give the quarter-billionaire his Presidency, you lackwit serfs.

Skewed, Screwed, And Tattooed

If we're to believe the likely voter model for the latest USA/Today Gallup poll, then Mitt Romney will win in a cakewalk.

Mitt Romney leads President Obama by four percentage points among likely voters in the nation's top battlegrounds, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, and he has growing enthusiasm among women to thank.

As the presidential campaign heads into its final weeks, the survey of voters in 12 crucial swing states finds female voters much more engaged in the election and increasingly concerned about the deficit and debt issues that favor Romney. The Republican nominee now ties the president among women who are likely voters, 48%-48%, while he leads by 12 points among men.

If that's true, Obama's dead.  Gone.  Toast.  Tied among women and a 12 point edge among men pretty much equals a Romney win equivalent to Obama's margin over John McCain in 2008.

The Obama camp doesn't buy it for a second.

"In the last election, Gallup's registered voter model — not its likely voter model — was a much more accurate predictor, with their likely model missing the mark in 2010 by 9 points right before the election," Benenson says. "That explains why Gallup's results are way out of line with a dozen recent swing state polls that show the president with a double-digit lead among women."

Among all registered voters in the survey, Obama leads by nine points among women and by two points overall, 49%-47%. 

So, Gallup's likely voter model is skewed toward Mitt Romney here by seven to nine points overall, which is the equivalent of 14-18 points with women voters.  If you believe that's how this election will play out, then yes, he'll win and win handily.

But that's ignoring the fact that Gallup's likely voter model was a disaster 2 years ago.  It looks to be equally disastrous now.

StupidiNews!

• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is taking responsibility for State Department security lapses in Libya.
• A new study by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds the Romney/Ryan Medicare/Medicaid plan would hurt Florida seniors the most.
• The second Presidential debate gets underway this evening at Hofstra University in New York in a town hall style format.
• China looks to fall from its perch as the US's chief creditor, as shrinking foreign demand for US debt makes way for Japan.
• Apple has hired Amazon.com's A9 search engine creator to tutor the iPhone's "personal digital assistant" Siri.