What is going on in Stockholm? This is nuts.

A car set on fire burns, following riots in the Stockholm suburb of Kista late May 21, 2013.(Reuters / Fredrik Sandberg)

Youth gang riots in the Swedish capital Stockholm have entered fifth straight night. Hundreds of mostly immigrant teenagers tore through the suburbs, smashing windows and burning cars in the country’s worst outbreak of violence in years.

At least six vehicles were torched throughout the city late on Thursday while the police called for reinforcements from other Swedish cities bracing for further unrest.

Firefighters were putting out flames that engulfed several cars and a school in immigrant-dominated areas of Stockholm.

The night before, the fire brigades were called to some 90 different blazes. On the fourth night of violence, youths torched over 30 cars in 15 neighborhoods along with a restaurant in Skogas, south of Stockholm. Three law enforcement officers were injured, police spokesperson Kjell Lindgren reported.

Stockholm firefighters were busy throughout the night, saying they had “never before seen so many fires raging at the same time.” Some 90 blazes were reported in total, most of them reportedly caused by the rioters. Still, the fourth night of violence was relatively quiet compared to the previous three, RT’s Peter Oliver reported from Stockholm.

Leaders of immigrant communities were out on the streets in a bid to stop young people from rioting. Despite their efforts, as soon as the night fell, groups of arsonists took to the streets to set cars on fire. RT’s Peter Oliver witnessed rioters throwing stones at police and journalists alike.

…“In Sweden you’ve got welfare, access to the educational system – up to university level, you got access to public transport, libraries, healthcare – to everything. And still they feel that they [immigrants] need to riot through stones and Molotov cocktails. It’s ridiculous and a bad excuse,” Swedish Democrats MP Kent Ekeroth told RT.

…Parents of the rampaging teenagers and community religious leaders are now spending sleepless nights on the street in an effort to prevent their children from wreaking havoc.

Quick Reference Scandal Matrix

Worse than Watergate. That’s the refrain coming from the Obama administration’s critics as it scrambles to tamp down a growing pile of scandals. “The Obama administration’s cover-up of the September 11, 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack surpasses Watergate,” states Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). The IRS-tea party scandal “is far worse than Watergate,” according to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.). And Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff Paul Babeu maintains that Fast and Furious “is a much larger scandal than Watergate.” And of course there is a hashtag: #WorseThanWatergate.

Comparing the scandal du jour to Watergate is an easy way to score political points. (Conservatives aren’t the only guilty ones here.) But if you’re interested in making a more subtle and perhaps accurate comparison, you need only refer to the United States’ long history of White House scandals, starting in the first days of the republic.

To help you keep track of them, we’ve plotted more than 25 on this matrix, organized by their relative seriousness and their place in our current collective memory. (The current crop of Obama scandals aren’t on there since it’s not yet clear where they fall on the continuum between, say, Billygate and Iran-Contra. See a missing scandal? Suggest it in the comments.)

More: Worse Than Watergate? the Ultimate White House Scandal Matrix

The 12 disruptive technologies include: mobile Internet, automation of knowledge and work, Internet of things, cloud technology, advanced robotics, autonomous and near-autonomous vehicles, next-generation genomics, energy storage, 3D printing, advanced materials, advanced oil and gas exploration and recovery, renewable energy.

More: McKinsey: Technologies That Will Disrupt Our World - Business Insider

MOBILE - U.S. Rep. Jo Bonner, R-Mobile, confirmed today that he intends to resign from Congress later this year and take a job at the University of Alabama.

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Bonner will leave Congress effective Aug. 15 for a position as vice chancellor of government relations and economic development at the University of Alabama System …

More: BREAKING: Rep. Jo Bonner Resigning From Congress

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) — Maine’s governor, who has gained attention in the past for telling the NAACP to “kiss my butt” and comparing the Internal Revenue Service to the Gestapo, has moved out of his office at the State House and says he’ll work out of the governor’s mansion because of a dispute over a television screen.

Republican Gov. Paul LePage has temporarily moved his working space, and Democratic legislative leaders said Thursday he’s threatened to move out for good by July 1.

The squabble stems from LePage’s placement of a television in the hallway outside his State House office, an area that’s under the control of legislative leadership. The TV was showing a repeated message that draws attention to two of LePage’s priorities, which he says lawmakers have been slow act on: his proposed $6.3 billion state budget and repayment of a $484 million debt to the state’s hospitals.

“What’s the holdup?” the message says. It also cites a section of the state Constitution that guarantees freedom of speech.

But no partisan or political messages are permitted to be displayed outside offices in the State House, said the executive director of the state’s Legislative Council, David Boulter, who’s an unelected, nonpartisan official.

“There’s a long history of decorum in public areas,” he added.

Democratic leaders said they were disappointed by the latest in a pattern of behavior by the blunt-speaking governor. Two years ago, LePage became the center of controversy after murals depicting scenes from Maine’s labor history were ordered removed from a state office. The matter went to federal court, and the murals were eventually displayed in the state museum. And after LePage became governor in 2011, he declined invitations to attend National Association for the Advancement of Colored People annual Martin Luther King events. Asked to respond to the group’s statement that it was disappointed, LePage told a reporter: “Tell them to kiss my butt.”

Last year, LePage attacked the Supreme Court decision that upheld President Barack Obama’s health care law, saying in a radio address that the decision “made America less free” and that people have no choice but to buy health insurance or “pay the new Gestapo - the IRS.”

In March, he reportedly pressured state Labor Department workers to decide more appeals claims over unemployment benefits in favor of businesses. Bennett said he was just encouraging them “to follow the letter of the law.”

More: Boulder Daily Camera - Boulder, CO AP NEWS

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tore into Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) on the floor Thursday over his objection to beginning House-Senate conference negotiations on the budget until a debt limit increase is taken off the table.

“Perhaps the senator from Utah doesn’t know about that — the fact that even if they did raise the debt limit, it could not become law because it doesn’t go to the president of the United States,” McCain said. “So again, maybe the senator from Utah ought to learn a little bit more about how business has been done in the Congress of the United States.”

“Budget resolutions are not signed by the president of the United States,” he said.

More: John McCain to Mike Lee: Learn How Congress Works (VIDEO)

You think they grow up watching PBS as they grow up in Nevada?

I’m just a Bill, School House Rock - Youtube

It’s been burbling up from the conservative media for nearly six months, starting with Fox News. Last year, the network’s reporter Catherine Herridge reported on a ship that had arrived to Turkey from Libya laden with weapons. Ordnance left unsecured after the fall of Gaddafi was being taken to Syria to overthrow another dictator.

This isn’t in much dispute. The dispute, and the theory, is that the weapons used to kill Americans in Benghazi were made available by bungling American gun-runners. That’s the theory floated by Roger Simon, who talks to two “Benghazi whistleblowers” (multiplying like rabbits now).

[Chris] Stevens’ mission in Benghazi, they will say, was to buy back Stinger missiles from al-Qaeda groups issued to them by the State Department, not by the CIA. Such a mission would usually be a CIA effort, but the intelligence agency had opposed the idea because of the high risk involved in arming “insurgents” with powerful weapons that endanger civilian aircraft.

It’s a nearly perfect scandal—Fast and Furious plus Benghazi, a sort of Neapolitan sundae of outrage and disgrace. If the anonymous accusers are wrong, we have plenty of other ways to explain the loose weapons in Benghazi and the transfer to Syria. And making it possible for the stray weapons to get to Syria is the sort of thing both parties in Congress largely favor. But the darkest version of the theory is gaining ground on the right.

More: The Next Benghazi Scandal

Mississippi’s state Supreme Court is currently considering a case that could lead to women being prosecuted for manslaughter if they miscarry or otherwise experience unintentional pregnancy loss, according to a report from Kate Sheppard at Mother Jones.

In 2009, two months after Nina Buckhalter’s pregnancy ended in stillbirth, a Mississippi grand jury indicted her for manslaughter, citing her use of methamphetamine while pregnant as “culpable negligence.” Buckhalter’s attorneys challenged the charge; the Supreme Court hearing began in April and a ruling is expected soon.

Buckhalter’s lawyers, as well as reproductive health advocates in Mississippi and across the country, contend that the charges, in addition to criminalizing countless women, could deter women struggling with drug and alcohol addiction during pregnancy from seeking prenatal care or treatment for substance abuse for fear of being prosecuted and create barriers to safe abortion care.

More: Mississippi Could Begin Prosecuting Women for Miscarriages

Slippery slope alert - If not taking care of yourself when you are pregnant because of the negative effects on the developing fetus be legislated then why can’t sending your kids to a school that teaches creationism so that when they grow-up, they can’t work any other place but Walmart be?

Baby Seal - is that a “forced” smile?

In case you were worried you’d ever get a good night’s sleep again, here are some stuffed animals that go way beyond wrong.

More: The World’s Most Awkward Taxidermy

Just noticed this but if you click the link, then click of the first photo (the bear) and hover over the photo with your cursor you get “annotations” (comments) left by others. Not only are they funny but an interesting technology. Anyone know what it is and how it works?

Public Infrastructure Spending - Business Insider

The big news today is that a bridge in Washington collapsed, throwing cars into the water. Amazingly, nobody died.

This may revive debate about the need to spend more on infrastructure, which would have multiple positive effects.

Nothing is likely to happen, however.

That being said, here’s a chart of public construction spending (TLPBLCONS) as percentage of GDP.

You can see, public construction spending is lower than its been in over 20 years.

More: The Collapse of Infrastructure Spending in One Chart - Business Insider

Se also Breaking: Major Freeway Bridge Collapse in Washington State - LGF