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By Peter Schwartz
» More Columns
It wasn’t easy for Chris Armas to sit in front of his television Wednesday night and watch Toronto beat Montreal to advance to the MLS Cup. In fact, it was extremely tough for the Red Bulls assistant coach because in a perfect world he would have been on the sideline at Red Bull Arena coaching in the Eastern Conference finals.
“I’m not a sore loser, but I’m a bad loser,” Armas told WFAN.com. “I hate losing, and it’s been painful. I could hardly finish watching (Wednesday) night, but of course I did. Watching teams playing past the time that we did and watching teams get to be in that moment and celebrating … it’s been difficult, to be honest.”
It’s a second straight tough pill to swallow for Armas and the entire Red Bulls organization. Last year, the Red Bulls won the Supporters’ Shield, but lost to the Columbus Crew in the Eastern Conference finals. This year, the Red Bulls repeated as Eastern Conference regular season champs, but were ousted by the Montreal Impact in the Eastern Conference semifinals.
While both losses still sting, the silver lining is that the Red Bulls have established themselves as an elite team in Major League Soccer over the last two seasons. This year, they overcame a 1-6 start and closed the regular season by going unbeaten in 13 games. They fell short of their ultimate goal, but there was plenty to build on for next season.
“When the dust settles, we find some comfort in looking back on the season and then maybe the two years as a whole,” Armas said. “If you just judge success by winning MLS Cup, you’ll feel like a failure more years than not. Just seeing how our guys stuck together was incredible, so for me there’s so many positives.”
Those positives start at the top with the new regime that took over following the 2014 season. Ali Curtis was brought in as sporting director and promptly made one of the most controversial decisions in MetroStars/Red Bulls history when he fired fan favorite head coach Mike Petke and replaced him with Jesse Marsch.
Many of the Red Bulls’ supporters were not happy with the move, but there’s no denying the success throughout the organization the last two years.
“I think it’s clear to see that there’s a real foundation in place,” said Armas, now in his second season as Red Bulls assistant coach. “It’s a clear playing style. Everyone’s in on it, and we think it’s going to be everlasting. You can see our academy progressing and our USL team thriving.”
Coming off of back-to-back first-place finishes in the Eastern Conference, as well as the Red Bulls II club winning the USL championship, there is reason to be optimistic about the first team’s chances of hoisting the MLS Cup in the not-so-distant future. With a core led by MLS Golden Boot winner Bradley Wright-Phillips, captain Dax McCarty and goalkeeper Luis Robles, the Red Bulls are not about to rebuild but just tinker with an already quality roster.
“We do feel good about what’s been built and what’s in place,” Armas said. “We see much success in the way we play and the quality of players that we have. But we are realistic. We’ve fallen short a couple of times, so I think we’re going to come back hungry to bolster the squad.”
The state of the Red Bulls wasn’t the only subject that I covered with Armas, an MLS Best XI player five times and a member of the 1998 Chicago Fire MLS championship team. The six-time MLS All-Star was also a member of the U.S. national team and was on the roster for 2002 World Cup, but was unable to play because of injury.
The head coach of that 2002 team that went to the quarterfinals was Bruce Arena, who is now back in charge of the national squad after Jurgen Klinsmann was let go. Having played for Arena, Armas thinks it’s a good move for the United States as it tries to earn a spot in the 2018 World Cup.
“(Arena) knows the American player, CONCACAF, what winning looks like and about getting to World Cups,” Armas said. “He’s a great leader and motivator. He’s probably one of the best managers that I’ve been around. I think he’s a great person for the job. I expect nothing but success and winning.”
Armas was a star player for St. Anthony’s High School on Long Island before playing college soccer at Adelphi University. After graduating from Adelphi, Armas turned pro in 1994 and played two seasons with the Long Island Rough Riders and won a USISL Pro League championship with them in 1995.
A teammate of his on that club was Giovanni Savarese, who is now the head coach of the New York Cosmos. Savarese has guided the Cosmos to back-to-back NASL titles and three championships in the last four years, but the future of the league and the team is very much in doubt. From a distance, Armas is hoping that the Cosmos can stay afloat.
“We always want the best for our friends and colleagues,” Armas said. “I’ve been to some Cosmos games. I wouldn’t want to see that slip away. I wish the Cosmos the best, but obviously I’ve heard some rumblings.”
But the main concern for Armas is to do his part in helping the Red Bulls reach their objective of winning the MLS Cup. That will have to wait at least until next season, as Toronto FC will host Seattle in this year’s match on Dec. 10.
Once again, it will be tough for Armas to watch on television, but it will certainly fuel the fire for 2017.
You can follow me on Twitter @pschwartzcbsfan. | {
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When an employee has decided to part ways with your company, they are simultaneously opening a window of opportunity for you, as the employer, to gain valuable insight into why they have decided to move on, what went wrong (if anything), and what can be done in the workplace to improve retention and company culture.
Considering the disappointing nature of employee termination, many employers fail to recognize this opportunity, and wave goodbye to their former employees without learning anything.
“Let’s just get it done with and move on” is a way of summarizing this attitude.
Furthermore, they fail to close the relationship on a positive note by showing the individual that they care about listening to their thoughts, and taking action to improve employee morale in the future.
This is a grave mistake, because not only are you missing valuable, actionable insights which will help you attract and retain top talent, but you are also leaving a trail of disappointed, perhaps bitter former employees that can damage your reputation amongst job seekers.
Not to mention, employee turnover is expensive, and failing to take preventative measures is nothing short of shooting yourself in the foot, financially as well as in terms of your brand reputation.
“Experts estimate that the cost of a lost employee is anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to 1.5-2.0 times an employee’s annual salary. The bottom line for organizations: Turnover, if not systematically studied and understood, can impede achievement of organizational outcomes.” – Jack Altman, How Much Does Employee Turnover Really Cost?
And so, conducting a structured exit interview with a departing employee is an incredibly important, often overlooked part of the offboarding process.
In this Process Street post, we’re going to be looking at:
What the purpose of an exit interview is, the best time to conduct one, choosing the right method, and important data points to gather
Examples of excellent exit interview questions
How to establish a process for flawless execution every time
How to effectively leverage exit interview data
Understanding what you can and cannot control
Before we get into it, I’d like to mention a thought that may already be ringing in your mind.
This thought is something along the lines of “but we already consistently conduct structured exit interviews and rarely extract any actionable insight from them due to the employee’s lack of interest in sharing information”.
That is a good point.
Some departing employees don’t see any reason to be open and honest about their feelings, and that you cannot control. But you can address this issue by going all the way back to evaluating your onboarding process, and taking action to engage in candid conversations with current employees to make them feel comfortable with sharing their honest feelings.
However, that is a complex, separate topic of discussion altogether.
“Too often EI programs fail to either improve retention or produce useful information. We’ve identified two reasons why. The first is data quality. The usefulness of an EI depends utterly on the honesty and forthrightness of the departing employee.The second reason is a lack of consensus on best practices. The goals, strategies, and execution of EI programs vary widely, and the findings and recommendations from empirical studies are often vague or conflicting. But in our view, the deepest problem is that many organizations use EI programs as an excuse not to have meaningful retention conversations with current employees.” – Everett Spain, Making Exit Interviews Count
We’re going to be addressing the second reason why the HBR article claims exit interview programs fail to improve retention or produce useful information, by providing the tools to document and follow a structured, formal process for effective interviews that enable you to get it right, every time.
Focus on optimizing what you can control, and the unpredictable human element will be just that, rather than a reflection of the shortcomings of your company culture and offboarding process.
What is an exit interview?
An exit interview (also known as termination or separation interview) is simply an interview conducted with an employee who is leaving a company.
The purpose of this interview is to learn. In other words, to gain insight into how you can go about reducing unwanted turnover by leveraging the information provided by the employee, while showing that you value their insight and intend on taking action to make improvements wherever necessary.
When is the best time to conduct one?
There is some debate around when is the best time to conduct an exit interview.
Many companies choose to conduct them as a routine part of the offboarding process during an employee’s last week on the job. Some employers do them several weeks or even months after the individual leaves, either by phone or online survey.
The most important point to consider regarding timing is how heated the departure was in terms of emotions and conflict with other members of the organization. If the exit was, shall we say, rough, then it might be a good idea to conduct the interview a few weeks after the employee has left, so the dust has settled and they can provide their feedback with a calm perspective.
If it was a smooth departure, then conducting the interview during the employee’s final week is suitable.
What is the best method to conduct an exit interview?
There is a range of different ways to collect the information necessary for a good exit interview, as listed below:
Face-to-face discussion
Short questionnaire
Long questionnaire with customized, open-ended questions
Telephone interview
Online video interview
Online survey
You can also use a combination of methods. For example, an online survey can be used to complement a face-to-face interview. Also, a short questionnaire sent to the employee prior to a face-to-face discussion can clarify talking points and the general direction of the meeting so that in-person time can be used more effectively.
What are the most important data points to gather?
The first thing to acknowledge before beginning the exit interview process is that it’s not just about understanding why the individual is leaving. There’s a lot more that goes into it if you want to do it right.
These are some of the important data points you should gather:
The employee’s overall experience of working at the company (role, team dynamics, relationship with manager/supervisor, advancement and development opportunities etc.)
Their opinion of the company culture, if and why they feel distanced from the work environment
Whether or not the job training/onboarding process was sufficient
Reasons for joining the company in the first place, as well as reasons they considered leaving and then chose to follow through
What they liked most and least about the job
Professional goals (aspirations, what excites and motivates them to work)
Perceptions of the workplace that the employee is joining (if applicable)
Examples of good exit interview questions
The foundation of any interview is, of course, the questions.
Always bear in mind that when formulating questions for an exit interview, the purpose is to understand how and why the employee feels the way they do, not merely to extract business-valuable information in the most efficient way possible.
“The benefits of conducting exit interviews depend on asking the right questions. Exit interviewing may seem like something anyone can do, but survey design is easy to bias unintentionally. Questions need to be refined to minimize bias and to probe to uncover rich insights.” – Camille Patrick, The Real Value of Getting an Exit Interview Right
Below is a list of 10 tried and tested questions that you should consider integrating into your interview process. Some of them only apply if the employee is transitioning to a new job.
How would you describe the relationship with your manager? How would you describe our organizational culture? What did you like most about your job? What did you like the least? Do you think management adequately recognized employee contributions? If not, how do you think recognition could be improved? Do you feel you had the resources and support necessary to accomplish your job? If not, what was missing? What circumstances led you to start looking elsewhere for work? What was the biggest factor that led you to accept this new job? What could have been done for you to remain employed here? What would you recommend to help us create a better workplace? Do you have any concerns about the company you’d like to share?
I mentioned that the purpose is to understand how and why the employee feels the way they do. This statement is directly linked to the importance of listening.
You are conducting the interview to learn, and without listening you cannot learn anything. As obvious as that may sound, many interviewers push their agenda, sometimes without even realizing, and therefore significantly limit the insight they gain.
Be sure to give the employee plenty of time to consider each question. Do not rush them or breeze through the questions in a way that makes them feel like your more focused on other tasks you need to address following the meeting.
Establishing an exit interview process for flawless execution
We’ve gone over the basic components of an exit interview, now we’re going to focus on how to apply them in practice.
Executing the interview flawlessly every time begins with establishing a formal, structured process to manage the termination end-to-end, in other words, from the moment the employee notifies you that they will be leaving the organization to hosting a farewell party!
Process Street has put together a template that will enable you to do just that.
The Employment Termination Checklist will guide you through each and every step and can be integrated into your processes for free. Just sign up for a free Process Street account and add the checklist to your library.
Once you’ve added the checklist, you can customize it however you want to suit your existing processes.
We also encourage you to integrate the checklist with your HR tools through our integration with Zapier, which connects Process Street to over 1000 applications. That way you can automate various tasks such as requesting a letter of resignation from the employee and scheduling the exit interview.
As you can see, the exit interview section starts at task 23 and contains 3 tasks. This is a very basic framework that is intended to be built out by your HR team.
For example, you can add a file upload form field to task 24 to upload the meeting’s agenda, a list of questions and other important documents.
Here’s an example of how you could structure the tasks with form field recommendations:
Determine method of the interview (multi-choice form field to select a combination) Face-to-face discussion Short questionnaire Long questionnaire with customized, open-ended questions Telephone interview Online video interview Online survey
(multi-choice form field to select a combination) Schedule the interview (date form field & email widget to instantly contact the employee)
(date form field & email widget to instantly contact the employee) Clarify important data points to gather (long text form field or sub-checklist with pre-written options) The employee’s overall experience of working at the company Their opinion of the company culture Whether or not the job training/onboarding process was sufficient Reasons for joining the company in the first place, and reason(s) for leaving Recommendations for improving the work environment
(long text form field or sub-checklist with pre-written options) Prepare the list of questions (file upload or long text form field) How would you describe the relationship with your manager? How would you describe our organizational culture? What did you like most about your job? What did you like the least? Do you think management adequately recognized employee contributions? Do you feel you had the resources and support necessary to accomplish your job? What could have been done for you to remain employed here?
(file upload or long text form field) Hold the interview (sub-checklist form field) All questions were asked All data points have been gathered
(sub-checklist form field) Record responses (long text form fields)
(long text form fields) Evaluate data to create action items (long text form fields)
(long text form fields) Share insight and recommendations with senior management (sub-checklist form field) Discussed all feedback Presented suggestions/action items Scheduled follow-up meeting to monitor progress
(sub-checklist form field)
Beyond employee termination, we have a selection of other HR-related templates for onboarding and a range of other processes.
How to effectively leverage exit interview data
Fantastic! You’ve nailed the process for conducting exit interviews. Now it’s all about leveraging the information you collect to continuously improve employee morale and the work culture in general.
Here are 3 key ways to leverage exit interview data:
1. Act on reasons for departure and monitor progress
Following the interview, spend some time evaluating the information you’ve gathered to identify the root cause of the employee’s departure and list a few ways that they could be addressed.
For example, perhaps they felt that the training was inadequate, or they were not given enough opportunity to collaborate and contribute to projects they were interested in but lied outside their scope of work.
Such insight can enable you to discuss ways to improve certain aspects of the job with managers and senior management, so action can be taken and progress monitored.
2. Create a targeted employee retention program
According to Workable, there are a number of components that go into creating an employee retention program.
The first is accurately measuring your turnover rate so you have a good understanding of where you stand compared to industry benchmarks.
Then develop an employee compensation strategy based on the value of each employee. Make sure you are rewarding the right employees to build loyalty. Offering stock options can be an effective way to do this, or simply providing extra benefits like discounts and tickets when the employee exceeds expectations.
A third, and arguably the most important component, is the working environment.
“Although compensation is a factor, ultimately, people stay in jobs they enjoy. You should, therefore, make sure that your work environment attracts, retains and nourishes great people. Casual dress codes or free lunches, snacks and gym memberships are great perks that don’t cost much.” – Christina Pavlou, How to Create an Employee Retention Program
Also, consider employees work-life balance. Listen to employees needs and offer flexible work schedules to ensure they are not being overworked.
Other components of an employee retention program include relationship with managers, personal development, and recognition. You can read more about them here.
3. Share information with executives
You want to make sure that exit interview data reaches key decision-makers in your organization who can implement changes as effectively as possible.
“It’s helpful if HR leaders maintain a consistent schedule for periodically sharing exit interview data and important trends with executives. Quarterly updates work well for many organizations. Time these updates to be in sync with an annual board meeting or other important dates in corporate decision-making. Most importantly, don’t let any valuable data go to waste.” – Deb Muller, Exit Interview Data Analysis Strategies & Best Practices
Sometimes executives are skeptical about how honest departing employees were in their statements, so it’s essential that you prepare by carefully evaluating all of the data and anticipating objections from decision-makers prior to presenting them with the information and your suggestions.
The bottom line
The primary purpose of the exit interview process is to gain valuable insight that enables you to continuously improve employee morale, productivity, and the work environment as a whole.
The secondary purpose, which I would argue is equally as important, is clearly showing departing employees that you value the contributions they have made during their employment and the ideas/feedback they have to offer.
Never overlook the importance of listening. Only by giving the employee the space to process their thoughts and express themselves honestly will you gain the insight you are looking for.
Finally, always document action items, share them with decision-makers, and monitor their progress to get the most out of the interview.
I hope you found this article helpful! If you have any thoughts on why exit interviews are important to your business or have ideas on refining the process, let me know in the comments below! | {
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Rescuers found the bodies of the mountaineers roped together on a steep slope.
Authorities said Saturday they have abandoned the search for an eighth climber presumed killed in a deadly avalanche that struck near India's second-highest Himalayan peak last month.
Seven bodies were retrieved from an altitude of 6,500 metres (21,300 feet) during a month-long operation that involved aerial surveillance and elite mountaineers trekking the treacherous Nanda Devi mountain peaks.
The group that went missing in late May included four Britons, two Americans, one Indian and one Australian.
Rescuers found the bodies of the mountaineers roped together on a steep slope, but have so far only been able to bring them part-way down the mountain on foot to a "safe place" due to bad weather, officials said.
The body of the eighth person could not be found, with authorities fearing he may have fallen into a gorge after an avalanche hit the group, who were attempting to summit one of Nanda Devi's peaks that has not yet been conquered.
Vijay Kumar Jogdande, top civil administrator of Pithoragarh, where the peaks are located, told AFP that they anticipate heavy rains in the region as the annual monsoon sets in, making the aerial retrieval impossible.
"We had to retreat from the area because of the anticipated bad weather in the coming days. The monsoon rains are around and it will become impossible to fly to the region," said Mr Jogdande.
"We have called off the search for the eighth person," he said, adding that the mountaineering team and the recovered bodies will be airlifted off the mountain in the next few days.
Officials have not confirmed the identity of the missing climber.
The operation has been repeatedly hampered by bad weather and difficult terrain.
The climbers were part of a 12-member expedition, but four Britons were rescued after breaking away.
The missing climbers last communicated on May 26, a day before heavy snow fell and massive avalanches hit the slopes.
The expedition -- led by experienced British mountaineer Martin Moran -- had permission only to climb the eastern peak of Nanda Devi, which has been summited by climbers before, according to authorities.
But families of the climbers have disputed this. | {
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„Fleisch wird das nächste Tabu“: Was es tatsächlich bedeutet, Tiere zu essen, führt eine neue britische Realitysendung vor Augen. Eine Familie soll über Wochen mehrere Tiere zu Hause aufziehen – und dann in den Ofen schieben.
Werde Vegetarier oder iss dein Haustier: Dieses Ultimatum stellt eine neue britische Realitysendung ihren Protagonisten. In „Meat the Family“ lässt der Sender Channel 4 eine Familie hartnäckiger Fleischesser ein Tier über Wochen bei sich zu Hause aufziehen. Sind sie dann immer noch nicht bereit, auf Steaks und Wurst zu verzichten, müssen sie ihr Haustier zubereiten und essen.
Dass viel Fleisch nicht nur schlecht für die Gesundheit ist, sondern auch fürs Klima, predigen Wissenschaftler schon lange. Was Tiere zu essen tatsächlich bedeutet, führt „Meat the Familiy“ drastisch vor Augen.
In keiner anderen Show würden derart Grenzen überschritten, sagt Branchenkennerin Virginia Mouseler auf der TV-Messe Mipcom im französischen Cannes. „Es geht nicht mehr um Sex oder Drogen. Fleisch wird das nächste Tabu“, fügt die Gründerin von The Wit, einer Agentur für Fernsehsendungen, hinzu. Die Produzenten stellten „die Frage: Wie kann man seinen Hund knuddeln und gleichzeitig ein Tier in den Ofen schieben?“
In der ersten Folge von „Meat the Family“, die zum neuen Jahr auf Sendung gehen soll, geht es um ein Lamm, ein Schwein, ein Huhn und ein Kalb. „Drei Wochen lang müssen diese Tiere wie ein Familienmitglied behandelt werden“, sagt Mouseler. „Und am Ende muss die Familie entscheiden, ob es in den Ofen wandert.“
Die dreistündige Show zeige den Weg eines Tieres von der Weide bis auf den Teller, beschreibt Channel 4 die Sendung. Sie befasse sich mit „dem Verhalten und der Intelligenz von Tieren, der Praxis der Tierhaltung und den Auswirkungen der Fleischindustrie auf die Umwelt“.
Die Show greife „das wirklich aktuelle Thema ethischer Ernährung“ auf und stelle schwierige Fragen, sagt Daniela Neumann von der Produktionsfirma Spun Gold. „Warum finden wir es akzeptabel, ein Lamm zu verspeisen, wohingegen wir niemals unseren Hund essen würden? Kann man Fleisch essen, wenn man dem Tier zuvor einen Namen gegeben hat?“
Serie zu Rassismus in der Schule
„Meat the family“ ist eine aus einer ganzen Reihe neuer Shows, in denen es um soziale Verantwortung geht. Ebenfalls von Channel 4 kommt eine Reality-Sendung zu Alltagsrassismus: In „Segregation Experiment“ erlebt eine britische Schulklasse, wie sich rassistische Ideen unbewusst verbreiten. „Hier werden rassistische Vorurteile in einer Klasse elf und zwölfjähriger Kinder getestet“, sagt Mouseler. „Können wir rassistisch sein, ohne es zu wissen?“, sei die Frage.
Das niederländische Format „The Cocaine Trials“ wie auch „Doing Drugs for Fun?“ des britischen Senders Channel 5 konfrontieren Kokainkonsumenten mit den Auswirkungen, die ihr Verhalten auf die kolumbianischen Gemeinden hat, in denen das Kokain illegalerweise produziert wird.
Mehr zum Thema 1/
Ebenfalls aus den Niederlanden kommt die Serie „Take Over, Take Care“, in der Promis die Pflege kranker und alter Menschen übernehmen, um deren Angehörigen Urlaub zu ermöglichen. Andere Shows bringen einsame alte Menschen in viel zu großen Wohnungen mit jungen zusammen, die sich die hohen Mieten nicht leisten können. | {
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MELBOURNE, Australia -- The World Cup is a week away, and the United States is no lock for gold.
Australia delivered that message to the world Saturday.
For the first time in nearly 13 years, a U.S. roster of NBA players played an international game -- and lost. Patty Mills scored 30 points, and Australia rallied from a 10-point deficit in the second half to stun the Americans 98-94 and snap a 78-game U.S. winning streak that started with the bronze-medal game at the 2006 world championships.
"They wanted it more than us tonight,'' U.S. guard Kemba Walker said. "Lesson learned for us.''
It was the first loss for the U.S. in a major international tournament or exhibition since the 2006 world championship semifinals against Greece. The Americans won the bronze there, then were unbeaten through the cycles for the 2007 FIBA Americas, 2008 Olympics, 2010 World Cup, 2012 Olympics, 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.
Add all that up, along with wins over Spain and Australia with this team, and it was a 78-game winning streak for the U.S. -- the longest in program history.
And it's now over.
"It was awesome,'' Mills said.
Australia had never beaten the Americans, and the U.S. national team had been 30-0 all time in Australia.
"Some of it is expected with a new group that's trying to learn about each other and learn a system,'' U.S. coach Gregg Popovich said. "So it's not surprising. But the Aussies gave us a great lesson as far as where we want to be and how you have to play in this kind of a competition.''
A World Cup where Serbia has already made very clear it expects to win gold, where NBA MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo will lead Greece, where France figures to have a medal shot and now with the Australians absolutely knowing they can beat the U.S. will begin next week with no shortage of realistic title hopefuls.
USA Basketball is No. 1 in FIBA's world rankings, but so far in the run-up to this World Cup -- with most of the top NBA stars deciding to not play this summer -- the Americans have not looked like a lock for more gold. They beat Spain by nine in Anaheim, California, on Aug. 16, needed a big second half to defeat Australia by 16 on Thursday, and then let a sizable second-half lead slip away Saturday.
"Obviously, this was a great step for us,'' Australia guard Joe Ingles said.
Mills plays for San Antonio, so ordinarily Popovich -- the longtime Spurs coach -- would enjoy seeing what the veteran guard did down the stretch. Mills scored Australia's last 10 points, doing it all from banking in 3-pointers to slicing through for a layup that put the hosts up by six with 1:50 left.
"As I told you all after the last game, Patty's a pain,'' Popovich said.
Walker scored 22 points for the U.S., while Harrison Barnes had 20. Donovan Mitchell's 3-pointer with 1:05 left got the U.S. to within 97-94. The Americans then forced a stop on the ensuing possession and had two chances to tie -- but Mitchell's 3-pointer was off, Joe Harris missed a corner 3 a few seconds later and Mills iced the game with a free throw.
Aron Baynes left the floor with his head back, screaming in celebration as he slapped hands with delirious countrymen. Ingles and Andrew Bogut grabbed their kids and brought them onto the floor for a look.
Patty Mills scored Australia's last 10 points and finished with 30 on the night to lead all scorers. Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images
Bogut scored 16 points, Ingles had 15 and Baynes scored 13 for the Australians.
Baynes powered in for a score that put Australia up 82-76 with 8:25 left, just before Barnes answered with a three-point play for the U.S. to start an 8-0 run that put the Americans back on top. There were four lead changes in the final quarter, the last coming when Ingles made a step-back 3 with 3:35 left for an 88-87 lead.
Mills did the rest.
He banked in a long 3 for a four-point lead, added a layup to put his team up six with 1:50 left and clinched it with the last free throw.
The U.S. led by one at the half and went up 68-58 midway through the third on a dunk by Jayson Tatum, but the Australians got right back into the game. Mills scored eight points in 45 seconds, including a pair of 3-pointers, to get Australia to within one with 2:40 left in the third.
"That's a great team and they've been together a long time,'' Barnes said. "They play a great style of basketball.''
TIP-INS
United States: Barnes, Marcus Smart (who had been out because of a calf strain), Khris Middleton, Mitchell and Myles Turner started for the Americans. The U.S. has now used different starting lineups in its three exhibitions, with only Mitchell opening all three contests. In all, the U.S. has given nine different players at least one start on the pre-World Cup tour. ... Kyle Kuzma (left ankle soreness) did not play.
Australia: Attendance was 52,079, the biggest crowd to watch a basketball game in Australia -- breaking the record of 51,218 set Thursday. ... The Australians went with the same starters for the second straight game, opening with Ingles, Matthew Dellavedova, Mills, Baynes and Jock Landale. ... Ingles and Mitchell weren't the only Utah Jazz guards at Marvel Stadium -- Dante Exum was in the stands.
SHAKEN UP
U.S. guard Derrick White of the San Antonio Spurs was tripped up as he dribbled downcourt midway through the fourth quarter and hit his forehead on the court. He left with a sizable ice pack on the left side of his head.
UP NEXT
USA: Faces Canada in an exhibition on Monday at Sydney.
Australia: Faces Canada in its World Cup opener on Sept. 1 at Dongguan, China. | {
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Stormy Daniels deflects Kimmel's questions on alleged Trump affair
Adult film star Stormy Daniels dodged questions Tuesday night about her alleged affair with President Donald Trump, playing coy about the relationship that she has recently denied but previously had talked about in great detail.
Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, hedged and shrugged Thursday as ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel read a summary of her 2011 interview with In Touch magazine in which she detailed her alleged relationship with the president. That relationship came to light earlier this month when The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump’s private attorney paid Daniels $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement one month before the 2016 election.
As Kimmel recalled Daniels saying in her 2011 interview that Trump had asked for her autograph on one of her DVDs, the actress said “I guess he does have good taste then.” When the late night host recalled a meeting between Daniels and Trump where the president was engrossed in Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week” programming and declared his fear of sharks, Daniels interjected “aren’t we all?”
Once Kimmel finished his summary of Daniels’ interview, he asked “is any of that true?” To which Daniels replied, “define true.” Kimmel also handed Daniels a puppet version of herself, asking the puppet Daniels about the reported relationship with Trump.
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Asked by Kimmel if she had a nondisclosure agreement related to her reported relationship with Trump, Daniels replied “do I?” But when Kimmel responded that “if you didn’t have an non-disclosure agreement you most certainly could say you don’t have an non-disclosure agreement, yes?” Daniels replied “you’re so smart, Jimmy.”
Daniels was relatively clear in disputing her signature on a statement that purportedly came from her in the hours leading up to her appearance on Kimmel’s show. The statement, attributed to Daniels, reads in part: "I am not denying this affair because I was paid 'hush money' as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened.”
But the signature on the Thursday statement does not appear to match other examples of Daniels’s signature, something Kimmel pointed out during his interview with the actress. “That doesn’t look like my signature, does it?” she said. | {
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A powerful explosion outside the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) camp, where the National Investigation Agency (NIA) officials probing Bardhaman blast case are staying, damaged a bus shelter in Kolkata’s Salt Lake on Monday. However, no one was reported injured.
The probing agency suspects that the blast was carried out in retaliation to the recent arrest of Jamaat-ul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) suspects in connection with the Bardhaman blast on October 2. Two suspected top members of the module, Sheikh Rahmatullah and Amjad Sheikh, have so far been arrested along with five others.
“Three of them are presently in our custody,” said a senior official. The NIA camp office is located inside the CRPF campus in Sector 5 of Salt Lake, close to the Border Security Force campus.
Preliminary reports suggested that the incident took place around 7-30 p.m. “A sentry posted at the CRPF campus gate saw a man hurling an object from a moving vehicle.
The object hit the nearby bus shelter, after which there was an explosion. While initial reports indicate that no one was injured, the bus shelter was badly damaged. It appears to be a crude but power bomb,” said the official, adding that the local police have launched a hunt for the suspect. | {
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Lauri Love hacking case: Suffolk man re-arrested Published duration 16 July 2015
image copyright Other image caption Lauri Love's solicitor said he would be fighting extradition to the US
A British man accused of hacking into US government computer networks has been re-arrested by police in the UK.
Lauri Love, 30, of Stradishall in Suffolk, faces charges in the US of hacking into agencies including the US Army, Nasa and the US Federal Reserve.
The Met Police executed an extradition warrant, on behalf of the US, at his house on Ash Walk on Wednesday.
He appeared at Westminster Magistrates' Court and was bailed until his next hearing on 1 September.
image caption Mr Love is accused of being involved in hacking computers, including those of the US Federal Reserve
Mr Love was first arrested in 2013 and had computer equipment seized by British police who then released him on bail.
His solicitor Karen Todner said his bail was cancelled over a year ago with no further action having been taken at that time.
Mr Love had begun legal proceedings to get his computer equipment returned by the UK's National Crime Agency.
Twenty-five of 31 items - including laptops, computer towers, memory sticks and hard drives - were given back to him before a court hearing and he withdrew his action. | {
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Baby Insanity Wolf
if you ask me to tell someone hello or thanks for you
i probably won't | {
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Republican administrations dating back to the Reagan era have sought to reduce the number of abortions around the world by requiring that overseas family planning groups refrain from performing or promoting the procedure as a condition for receiving U.S. aid.
One of President Trump’s first acts in office this week was to bring back the ban, but the effect might not be what was intended. When the policy was last in effect, abortion rates increased in some sub-Saharan African nations, researchers found.
Then, as now, some of the biggest providers of reproductive healthcare around the world — groups such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International — decided to forego U.S. funding rather than limit the services they provide and risk exposing more women to unsafe abortions.
That meant cutting staff, scaling back services and shutting down clinics that had provided some of the only access to modern contraception in remote corners of the globe. The result: more unintended pregnancies and more abortions.
“Attempts to stop abortion through restrictive laws — or by withholding family planning aid — will never work, because they do not eliminate women’s need for abortion,” Marjorie Newman-Williams, who directs Marie Stopes International’s international operations, said in a statement. “This policy only exacerbates the already significant challenge of ensuring that people in the developing world who want to time and space their children can obtain the contraception they need to do so.”
Some abortion opponents, however, take issue with the argument that the policy denies women access to family planning services.
“The money is there,” said Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life Committee in Washington. “It will just go to organizations that agree to limit their abortion activities.”
She applauded Trump for “putting an end to taxpayer funding of groups that promote the killing of unborn children in developing nations.”
Even without the policy, U.S. law does not permit federal aid dollars to be used for abortion services under most circumstances. But Tobias said that U.S. grants for non-abortion-related programs allow family planning groups to execute a “bookkeeping” maneuver and allocate more of their non-U.S. money for abortion.
The ban first introduced by the Reagan administration in 1984 was an attempt to overcome that, requiring that international aid groups certify that they will not use money from any other source to perform or “actively promote” abortion as a family planning method.
In the past, this has been interpreted broadly to include counseling or providing referrals to women who are considering the procedure. Exceptions were made in cases of rape, incest or when a mother’s life was in danger.
Known officially as the Mexico City policy, after the city where it was announced, it has become a political football, rescinded by Democratic presidents and restored by Republican ones. Critics refer to it as the global gag rule.
Its return has alarmed public health experts in a number of African nations, where thousands of women die every year as a result of complications from unsafe abortions.
“You don’t reduce abortions by not making them accessible,” said Rachel Dukes, of the South African Medical Research Council. “You make women sick and make women die from the consequences of backyard abortions.”
Researchers at Stanford University found that abortion rates rose sharply in 20 sub-Saharan African countries that had previously relied heavily on U.S. family planning support after President George W. Bush reinstated the Mexico City policy in 2001. Elsewhere, they remained relatively stable.
The authors of the study, published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization in 2011, did not draw any “definitive conclusions.” But they said, “If women consider abortion as a way to prevent unwanted births, then policies curtailing the activities of organizations that provide modern contraceptives may inadvertently lead to an increase in the abortion rate.”
Officials at Population Action International, which studied the effects of the policy in six African and Asian countries, said their findings support that conclusion.
The U.S. is the world’s largest provider of bilateral assistance for family planning, and providers who were cut off after 2001 struggled to find alternative funding, said Jonathan Rucks, director of advocacy for the group, which campaigns for reproductive rights.
In Kenya, the two leading reproductive healthcare organizations, Marie Stopes Kenya and the Family Planning Assn. of Kenya, had to close eight clinics. Those facilities were often the only local sources for reproductive healthcare and also acted as an entry point for a wide range of primary care services, the study found.
The Family Planning Assn. of Nepal laid off 60 staff members and lost access to the $400,000 worth of contraceptives normally funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Activists worry that Trump’s version of the policy could be even more far-reaching, jeopardizing programs that combat child and maternal deaths as well as diseases such as malaria and Zika.
The previous iterations applied only to family planning support, currently worth about $575 million, according to an analysis by Population Action International.
Trump’s memorandum extends the policy to all global health assistance provided by the U.S. government, “to the extent allowable by law.”
Although the details have not been spelled out, Population Action International estimates that it could apply to as much as $9.5 billion in funding.
The government in the Netherlands has said it will set up a fund to help fill the gap, but will need help from other donors.
The wording of Trump’s memorandum is so broad that some public health experts are wondering whether it might also apply to programs operated by multi-national corporations and foreign governments that offer abortions through their public health systems.
That could be devastating for a country like South Africa, which has received more than $5 billion in assistance from the U.S. over the last 11 years for its HIV programs.
“In some provinces, most of the training of health workers and most of the monitoring and information is all carried out by USAID-funded programs,” said Dr. Eddie Mhlanga, a gynecological specialist with the Mpumalanga provincial department of health who serves as the country co-lead for Global Doctors for Choice.
A particular problem exists with HIV patients who take anti-retroviral drugs, because the medicines can reduce the effectiveness of some contraception methods, he said.
“Those people might say, ‘I’m not looking forward to another baby,’” Mhlanga said. “In this situation, these people cannot be given advice or cannot even be referred for services.”
[email protected]
Twitter: @alexzavis
[email protected]
Twitter: @RobynDixon_LAT
Times staff writers Zavis reported from Los Angeles and Dixon from Johannesburg, South Africa.
ALSO
The latest battlefront in the abortion wars: Some states want to require burial or cremation for fetuses
Analysis: Trump makes for an odd champion for abortion foes, but his latest moves give them reason for optimism
U.S. abortion rate drops to a new low, but there’s a fight over why | {
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The Diablo Valley College philosophy program gives you the opportunity to study basic questions about the meaning and purpose of human life. Studying philosophy is a great way to sharpen your critical thinking skills and gain a better understanding of one’s self and humanity as a whole. Read more...
Our philosophy program offers:
an associate in arts degree philosophy,
an associate in art in philosophy for transfer,
a certificate of achievement philosophy.
You can learn more about these options and the requirements in our catalog.
We know that navigating degrees and certificate requirements can be tricky. Once you have enrolled at DVC, you can schedule an appointment with a counselor to discuss which option is best for you.
Although some students are able to get an entry-level position after completing the program, most students transfer to a four-year university to gain a bachelor's degree. Those interested in a career in philosophy often teach or research at the university level. These careers often require more than a bachelor’s degree.
Career options with additional education:
Teaching
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For more information on possible career options, please visit the Career Center, schedule an appointment with a counselor, or contact one of our faculty and staff members. Please note that you cannot meet with a counselor or staff member until you are enrolled at DVC.
Diablo Valley College offers degree and certificate programs in a variety of subjects. For a complete listing, see certificates and degrees.
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We knew Google was part of the liberal mafia when they allowed George W. Bush to come up first when you searched “miserable failure” (but the editors did away with this search result in 2007).
But a conservative at the Red State blog has taken it one further: he believes that Google is manipulating “auto-suggest” results to hide an email scandal that skeptics say undermines the science of climate change.
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“Google wants us to believe nobody is searching for Climategate despite it being such a big story, but I have evidence that it’s merely a coverup for political purposes,” Red Stater Neil Stevens wrote Thursday. “My evidence is in the behavior of the feature itself. Watch what happens if you type in Climatega, nearly typing in the entire word Climategate.”
This image follows.
“Well that’s odd,” he continues. “Nobody’s searching for climategate at all. But wait: It’s not showing me words that start with Climatega. Rather, it’s showing me words that start with Climategua. Seems like a bug, right? Like those letters got pointed to the wrong place, almost.”
“Let’s back it up a letter,” he adds, “and type in Climateg.”
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Stevens reports that he tried one more time — simply typing in climate.
“Well what do we have here?” he remarks. “Climate gate scandal. Oops. They erased climategate but didn’t erase climate gate. Somebody did an incomplete job of sending the story down the memory hole. Too bad, so sad. You are exposed, Google. People are trying to get to the truth, but Google is actively trying to hide that fact.”
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He concludes, “Talk about an inconvenient truth.” | {
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Halo 5 turns three years old today.
Having written a novel-length level-by-level analysis of the campaign, along with countless other articles on the story, I feel like my well of criticism has run pretty dry.
As a result, I find myself turning to something a little different. Where I have responded to Halo 5 critically, I now want to do so creatively.
To celebrate Halo 5‘s successes and critique some of its failures, to expand on some of its half-formed ideas and moments of genius, I have written five short stories that will be going up every Saturday over the next few weeks. These will come in different formats: some will be scripts, some will be prose.
All, I hope, will be enjoyable reading material for you.
These are the five untold stories of Halo 5: Guardians… This first story is Meridian Approach.
It takes place at the start of the third mission’s opening (Glassed), as Fireteam Osiris approaches Meridian’s space elevator.
Something that has never sat well with me is how each member of Fireteam Osiris has a scene with Locke, except Holly Tanaka.
Buck has a nonversation about the mission to bring the Chief and Blue Team in; Vale has a discussion with Locke about his past with Thel ‘Vadam, how he signed up to assassinate him during the war…
Tanaka did not get a one-to-one scene with Locke.
One of my favourite live action Halo trailers (The Hunt Begins) features a tender moment of camaraderie between them, as he bumps his helmet against hers when they approach Meridian.
It’s strange to see that not reflected in the game, which I felt the need to remedy.
And so, the first scene I have chosen to write was inspired by that – giving Locke and Tanaka a ‘getting to know you’ moment that covers some of her emotionally-loaded backstory.
MERIDIAN APPROACH
INT. PELICAN TROOP BAY
Black screen. The date, time, and location fade in (similar to the beginning of each mission in HALO 3: ODST).
OSIRIS
1100 Hours, October 25, 2558
En Route to Meridian
Dissolve to a wide shot of FIRETEAM OSIRIS inside the troop bay of their Pelican.
We see LOCKE actively preparing for the mission. He examines his weapons and gear, his helmet rests on the seat next to him. BUCK and VALE are in the cockpit, chatting idly.
TANAKA sits with her helmet on. She is motionless. The sound of the scene gradually fades out as the camera closes in on her, subtly emphasising her breathing as she tries to keep herself under control.
LOCKE
Tanaka? You okay?
LOCKE gently places a hand on TANAKA’s shoulder, the sound returns to normal. She responds stiffly.
TANAKA
Fine thanks, Locke.
The tension of uncertainty is written all over her. Though their team has been together for a few missions, they have not emotionally opened up to one-another.
Not yet.
LOCKE
It’s just, you seem…
TANAKA
Not fine?
TANAKA takes a deep breath. The camera is framed behind her as LOCKE takes the seat opposite, leaning forwards.
She does not lift her gaze to meet his.
TANAKA (cont’d)
Bit of everyone died the day the Covenant came and glassed their homes. Even if you survived, you never really escaped.
LOCKE
It takes years to come to terms with everything you lose. Friends, family, childhood…
(A beat.)
I know.
TANAKA looks up a little.
LOCKE has decided it is time to begin forming this team into a family, given the nature of their mission and BUCK’s earlier statement that they will be hated when word gets out about what they’ve been tasked to do.
At the very least, they need to have each others’ backs.
For LOCKE, this requires the courage to open up to his team – to grow love them, as he loved his team in HALO: NIGHTFALL.
LOCKE (cont’d)
First six years of my life, I was raised on Jericho VII. I grew up in a state orphanage after the Covenant attack.
TANAKA
Then you joined the UNSC? ONI?
LOCKE
No. I was angry. Alone. I blamed them.
A beat.
TANAKA
Blamed ’em too.
LOCKE
How’d you deal with that?
TANAKA
Good at fixin’ things. Engines and equipment, mostly. Figured it’d be worth trying to help fix people too – as a Spartan.
The scene dissolves to a Terminal-style flashback.
We see a glassed world from orbit. This is CLEYELL, from the HALO: ESCALATION arc THE GLASS HORIZON.
TANAKA (V.O.)
Went to a world called Cleyell, glassed in ’56 by some Covenant remnant. War just wasn’t over for some folks…
Mutliple CCS-class battlecruisers begin glassing the planet.
Fade to the aftermath. Complex FORERUNNER glyphs appear as deep, black scars on the surface.
TANAKA (cont’d) (V.O.)
Survivors set up a distress beacon. Crew of the ship I served on didn’t believe anyone had survived, most don’t more than a month.
A glimpse at the glasslands, ruined buildings submerged with barely any light breaking through thick clouds of ash.
LOCKE (V.O.)
But you convinced them otherwise?
TANAKA (V.O.)
Made it three years on Minab. Might not have mattered to the UNSC, but the captain was convinced the right thing to do was to follow that signal.
LOCKE (V.O.)
Survivors?
A dark cave. Men, women, and children are huddled together. They look up to see TANAKA, flanked by two ODSTs.
TANAKA holds out her hand. A young, dark-skinned girl with frizzy black hair takes it – she looks just like TANAKA did as a child.
TANAKA (V.O.)
Jackal pirates planned to sell ’em off.
Fade back to the present.
TANAKA (cont’d)
But, just this once, everybody made it out.
There is a brief pause as TANAKA realises something.
TANAKA (cont’d)
But you knew all that. File must’ve told you everything.
A warm smile appears on LOCKE’s face.
LOCKE
I did. But I wanted to hear you tell the story.
TANAKA finds the hint of a smile tugging at her own mouth behind her helmet. She finds herself more at-ease with her leader than she was and feels better for talking.
The camera cuts to a wide shot, briefly lingering on the moment.
VALE enters the troop bay.
VALE
We’re coming up on the space elevator. Thirty seconds.
The atmosphere immediately changes.
LOCKE
Affirmative. Game faces on, Osiris.
LOCKE and VALE put on their helmets.
LOCKE stands and approaches TANAKA, knowing what going to MERIDIAN means for her. He bumps his helmet against hers (as seen in HALO 5’s THE HUNT BEGINS trailer).
Rear shot, we see the figures of LOCKE, VALE, TANAKA, and BUCK silhouetted against the back door of the PELICAN.
Cut to the PELICAN approaching the orbital tether. this is the opening cutscene for GLASSED – the third mission in HALO 5.
Fade to black.
NEXT TIME…
AXIOS | {
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West Bromwich Albion have completed the signing of the Manchester United defender Jonny Evans.
The 27-year-old centre-half has penned a four-year deal and joins Albion after making 198 appearances in all competitions for United.
It is understood the fee for the Northern Ireland international will be an initial £6m, rising to £8m with add-ons.Evans won three Premier League titles after making his United debut in 2007 and has won 42 caps for his country.
“This is a great signing for the club,” head coach Tony Pulis told the official West Brom website. “Jonny brings a lot of experience and will be a big player for us - he’s a player I’ve been watching for some time. We are delighted to have him on board.”
Evans fell out of favour under United manager Louis van Gaal, playing only 17 times last season, and did not make a single first-team appearance at Old Trafford this term.
“I hope to push the Albion up the league,” said Evans. “It’s a new, fresh challenge for me. One I’m looking forward to.
“I know a few of the lads already and I spoke to a couple, who highly recommended the club.” | {
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Parks and Recreation type TV Show network NBC
So this is what the end of Pawnee looks like. Hugs upon hugs, each longer than the last. Announcement after announcement that another actor—Henry Winkler as Dr. Saperstein! Helen Slayton-Hughes as Ethel Beavers! Jon Glaser as Jeremy Jamm!—has just finished his or her last day of shooting, resulting in more hugs. Amy Poehler sweetly coaching her young sons to say into the camera, “That’s a wrap on Parks and Recreation!” Nick Offerman’s parents sitting stoically in director’s chairs. (“One last chance to see our clumsy magic,” explains the good son.) Aubrey Plaza in zombie makeup. Jim O’Heir sobbing through his final lines as the cast reads the finale script aloud. (Dammit, Jerry! We’re trying to hold it together here!)
And this is what one of the last-ever group scenes of NBC’s Parks and Rec looks like. It’s a November morning on the Studio City, Calif., soundstage containing Tom’s Bistro—an actually successful business venture by once-flailing entrepreneur Tom Haverford (Aziz Ansari)—and the actors are in upbeat denial, riffing on everything from Black Friday to Fitbits to the sheer idiocy of Chris Pratt’s happy-go-dopey Andy Dwyer. “He may be mentally stupid, but he’s also emotionally stupid,” mock-defends Pratt. “IQ is just a number, and his is really low.”
As the cameras roll, Poehler’s pathologically cheery Parks leader Leslie Knope shares bittersweet job news before Mercedes-driving former office manager Donna Meagle (Retta) drops her own bomb. Can anyone lighten the mood? Ultra-literal anchor Perd Hapley (Jay Jackson) appears on the TV hanging above: “Good evening. I come to you tonight with some good news…is not a sentence I will be saying right now. Because [SPOILER] has died.”
We can’t tell you which beloved Pawneean has passed away—though it’s not Bucky, impersonator of departed tiny horse Li’l Sebastian—but life will go on. As will the jokes. Pratt veers off-script as Andy and whispers to O’Heir, who plays gracious punching bag Jerry/Garry/Larry/Terry: “Did you kill him?” Declares Adam Scott, a.k.a. nerdy voice of reason Ben Wyatt: “You need to call the police.” Adds Poehler: “We need to dispose of his body.” “Can I cut it up into a million little pieces?” chimes in Plaza, a.k.a. scowling April Ludgate. “I have sharp blades,” responds Offerman as mustachioed survivalist Ron Swanson. Everyone breaks character to reference the cast’s running joke about a crazy-salacious version of this comedy: “Dark Parks!”
Things, of course, were about to get really dark on the set. A few weeks later, the lights on the soundstage were switched off and workers began to tear down Pawnee City Hall. It’s the ultimate government shutdown: After charming fans and critics for six seasons, this ragtag collection of civil service employees is calling it quits after season 7. No more three-ring binders brimming with plans, quadruple-bypass meat celebrations, world-saving by a windbreaker-wearing FBI superagent, or jokes involving de Tocqueville. Parks and Recreation‘s final 13 episodes begin airing Tuesday, Jan. 13, at 8 p.m., the show’s seventh time-slot move on NBC’s schedule. Treat yo’-self to saying goodbye while you can; the network is churning through (or “eventizing”) back-to-back episodes each week before Feb. 24’s two-part finale.
Among the 2015 class of departing shows, Parks won’t be the one that sparks countless essays on authenticity (Mad Men) or rings up big ratings (Two and a Half Men). But the tale of this Midwest-modest underdog-gone-good is still worth revisiting. An early version of its 2009 pilot tested weakly. It was dismissed as a knockoff of The Office. (The mockumentary series was created by two Office producers, Michael Schur and Greg Daniels, with Schur later assuming primary command.) And it never quite measured up in the Nielsens—last season’s episodes averaged 3.8 million viewers—often just a notch above cancellation.
But Parks dug itself out of that pit, found its own jaunty, homespun rhythm, and grew into one of the sharpest and warmest comedies in years. Laced with a savvy, topical wit with just right amount of bite, it has birthed two of TV’s most indelible characters, Poehler’s dare-to-dream liberal Knope and Offerman’s keep-your-dreams-between-you-and-your-pillow libertarian Swanson; their ideal-clashing friendship served as the show’s bread and butter—or, rather, steak and waffles. It has become a cultural reference point on college campuses and on social media. It has expanded Pawnee into a richly detailed folksy-weirdo universe almost as colorful as The Simpsons‘ Springfield. It has often challenged its characters (Leslie gets her dream job… only to get recalled) as well as the audience’s expectations (two surprise weddings in the middle of seasons instead of the end? The three-year time warp?). Perhaps most impressive, in an age of jaded, everything-in-quotes comedy, Parks chose optimism over irony, espoused unsexy virtues like community and hard work, and wasn’t afraid to double down on heart.
Now all that these local government employees have left to do is secure their comedy legacy. And Poehler knows just the right small-town Indiana analogy to invoke as the clock runs down: “We’re like Hoosiers, in that we stuck to our fundamentals, we put our head down and played our game. We didn’t get distracted by the noise. We had a team filled with clutch players that everybody underestimated…. And Michael Schur is the Gene Hackman of television. At least that’s how he introduced himself to me when we first met.”
All right, coach, what’s the plan for the last play?
“We decided, ‘Well, screw it—go big or go home,’ ” says Schur. “And we’re going home, so go big anyway.”
••••
Image zoom Chris Haston/NBC
Home for Schur is a third-floor office tucked above the City Hall set, just a few feet away from a series of corkboards that are covered with story ideas we can’t reveal here and others that never came to fruition (Larry falls into a well and becomes baby Jessica, Tom has a “tuxt”—a tuxedo that can text). It stayed bare the first four seasons, because, as the affable, unflappable 39-year-old showrunner notes: “I felt like as soon as I hung a photo on the wall, the show was going to get canceled.” Finally he relented, and now it looks almost like a Pawn(ee) shop. There is a framed sequence of photos of Ron Swanson with microscopically different expressionless expressions. Game jerseys from Indiana pro athletes-cum-guest stars Roy Hibbert and Reggie Wayne. A Ya Heard with Perd mug. A fan carving of Ron Swanson and Mose Schrute, Dwight’s weird neck-bearded cousin that Schur played in many Office episodes. A gushing letter from Aaron Sorkin after Schur asked permission to liberally reference The West Wing in an episode. (“Getting an email from Aaron Sorkin that Aaron Sorkin liked our show was pretty awesome,” says Schur.) A Hillary Clinton chia head, which Poehler gave as gifts to all the writers. Stacks of academic files and books about local government and society, such as Robert Putnam’s The Collapse and Revival of American Community. “I would flip through it when I was looking for inspiration to strike,” he says.
Schur, who also serves as co-creator/executive producer of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, consulted no text to divine the right time to pack it all in; rather, it was simply a conversation he had with Poehler early last season. They decided that Season 7 seemed like a logical point to wrap up Leslie’s curveball-heavy story, and the actors’ contracts were set to expire then as well. “Leslie [was taking] a job in the season 6 finale working at the National Park Service, and it felt like ‘How many more jobs can she have? How many changes can there be in her life?'” he explains, adding, “Our only hesitation was ‘But we won’t get to hang out all the time!’ That was the beginning and end of the argument not to end the show at season 7.” But in case NBC wanted to wrap it up sooner, Schur did something he’d done four (four!) times before: map out a season finale that doubled as the series finale. (Cancellation fears prompted the writers and him to script one in season 3, another in season 4, and two more in season 5, for the 14th and 22nd episodes.) Fortunately, plan B wasn’t necessary; when Schur & Co. pitched a season 7 sign-off to NBC, the network was on board. “It was a 30-second conversation,” he recalls. “We felt very lucky.”
Instead of scrapping the season 6 finale, the writers removed the closure from it and goosed it with a time-warping cliff-hanger. (They debated jumping ahead anywhere from eight months to ten years before settling on three, which felt appropriately distant but wouldn’t require an entire season of everyone in age make-up. Plus, 2017 happened to mark the bicentennial anniversary of Pawnee’s founding.) In the season’s final moments, audiences saw Leslie as a harried mother-of-triplets running a National Parks regional office that has been relocated to Pawnee City Hall and firing bumbling employee Ed, played by surprise guest Jon Hamm. “It not only allowed us to skip common tropes in late-season sitcoms like new babies or new jobs,” says Schur, “everywhere we looked, it gave us possibilities to drop in interesting things for the characters.” The time skip wowed Plaza (“It’s a baller move”), reinvigorated Ansari (“We need that B12 shot in the butt”), intimidated Poehler (“I was kinda scared at first”), and pleased Scott (“Battlestar Galactica had done something similar and I love Battlestar Galactica, so I was all for it”).
The time jump also energized the writers, perhaps a bit too much at first. “When we did the first week of [story] pitching, it felt a little bit like one of those things where a power line is knocked down and it’s just flopping around and sparking in every direction,” says Schur with a chuckle. “It was very exciting, but it was also very unfocused and so the challenge became constantly reminding everyone—myself included—that it’s the same people in the same building… There were so many thousands and thousands of pitches of jokes about what life is like three years in the future. We had to really reign it in.”
So, who’s still with the parks department? Who’s moved on? Who’s working with whom? Audiences will spend the premiere adjusting to the flurry of changes. “The first episode of the year is almost like a pilot,” says Schur, seen with Poehler below. “[Characters] have to explain what is happening to them, what job they have.” The action picks up exactly where we left off, with Ben and Leslie heading to a high-stakes meeting in City Hall that will inform a decent chunk of the season. “Her argument has always been that public space has real value and that it’s very important to preserve land for public use, not for private use,” hints Schur. “When she sees a large opportunity like that, she’s going to really sink her teeth into it.” Adds Poehler: “There’s an opportunity for Leslie to make a big impact in Pawnee, and she has to fight to get it, and everybody comes in and helps her in various ways. It’s local-government Avengers. It’s like the Avengers if the Avengers did more walking than running.”
That three-year leap generates drama on the personal front, too: “One of Leslie’s old friends is no longer a friend,” says Schur, “and in fact, she would consider [that person] to be an enemy.”
Image zoom Ben Cohen/NBC
Life in Pawnee looks different as well. Gryzzl—the super-chill technology company run by Mike Bean (Blake Anderson), whom Ben persuaded to give Pawnee free WiFi—is using the city to beta test its drones, phones, and tablets. “Our special-effects budget has gone up 15,000 percent, from $1 to $15,000,” notes Schur. Upcoming episodes address people’s obsession—and privacy concerns—with technology, as evidenced by events like Apple’s free U2 album download debacle. “We all oscillate between being like, ‘What an amazing incredible world we live in,’ and then going, ‘Wait a second, the people who make Candy Crush know where I’m standing right now,'” says Schur. “That became the central tension and dynamic of the way we use Gryzzl.”
The future brings other revelations: The Bourne franchise has been rebooted with a highly unlikely person, and Morgan Freeman is feuding with Shailene Woodley.
Prepare to see a few new faces—such as Leslie’s weary nanny Roz (Rachel Dratch) and Gryzzl’s vice president of cool new shizz (the Lonely Island’s Jorma Taccone)—but far more familiar ones, like Craig (Billy Eichner), who learns a new rage-control technique, hella douchey hanger-on Jean-Ralphio (Ben Schwartz) plus sister Mona Lisa (Jenny Slate) and father Dr. Saperstein (Winkler), man-child Bobby Newport (Paul Rudd), porn star Brandi Maxxxx (Maria Marini), Ed (Hamm, in another cameo), and even animal rights activist Manrico Della Rossa (Gary Carlos) and the doomsday cult Reasonablists. Don’t worry: Former Pawneeans-turned-Ann Arbor residents Chris (Rob Lowe) and Ann (Rashida Jones) also pop in. “When they show up,” says Schur, “it’s one of about 50 huge surprises that happen in that episode.”
Actually, a number of surprises are scattered throughout the season, including several “form-breaking, brand-new-idea episodes,” says Schur. Hints Pratt of one such installment: “It’s like a Twilight Zone episode of Parks and Rec… It’s super-meta. It’s going to f— people’s brains out.” Another episode will bring Leslie, Ben, and April to D.C., while a different one sends Tom and Andy to Chicago, where Tom tracks down ex-girlfriend Lucy, played by Natalie Morales. (“He hits a point in his life where he’s like, ‘Okay, I’m doing well career-wise and I have friends, but there’s a missing piece,'” says Ansari.)
He’s not the only member of the Pawnee doing some soul searching. Ron faces a “personal crisis with what to do with himself,” according to Offerman, while April melts down when she faces down a younger version of herself at work. “She’s for the first time dealing with feeling old because she’s always been the cool young kid,” says Plaza, “so her reaction to having an intern that’s exactly like her five years ago or whatever is pretty hilarious.”
In other news, Ben will be drawn into the Gryzzl story as their presence in town causes complications, unveil his geeky fantasy board game sequel to Cones of Dunshire, and after over-imbibing at a formal event, “he loosens up maybe a little much in front of a large group of people and shows what he can do on the dance floor,” says Scott. Andy’s persona as children’s entertainer Johnny Karate has landed him his own kick-ass public-access program called Johnny Karate Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show. You’ll also meet another deadly serious Andy character, Johnny Karate’s brother—named… Jonathan Karate. “He wears a black karate gi, so it’s different,” explains Pratt. “When he wants to teach a kid a lesson about not talking to strangers or not holding in farts, that’s Jonathan Karate. He’s the true sensei. He’s a total Miyagi.”
Speaking of a man who goes by a lot of different names, Jerry, aka Garry, aka Larry, will reveal in the premiere why he’s now called Terry in 2017, and later he will eagerly become a notary. (“It’s something he’s always dreamt of,” gushes O’Heir, “and of course they’re just like, ‘That is the worst thing we’ve ever heard in our lives.’ But he doesn’t care because he’s sooo proud.”) Meanwhile, single and-proud-of-it Donna sees her relationship with Joe (Keegan-Michael Key) heat up. (“Does she keep it together?” asks Retta rhetorically. “Does that player gene rear its ugly head?”)
The design of the final season is to give each of these characters a final story with Leslie—and hopefully to wind down their arcs with satisfactory closure. But they won’t be going gently into the Indiana night. “By the time the series finale is over, the characters will have gone through as much upheaval and change in one season as in the previous six seasons,” says Schur. “Everyone’s lives are up in the air.”
Image zoom Greg Gayne/NBC
Walk into Amy Poehler’s trailer on the set and immediately you realize: You just got Jammed! The man who plays Councilman Jamm—Leslie’s crude, horrific adversary—is chilling on her couch. “That’s right: Knope and Jamm are friends! Just hanging out!” says Poehler with a giggle. “I remember when I was listening to the DVD [commentary] on The Wire about a really important scene, and Idris Elba, who plays Stringer Bell, was like, ‘Me and Michael went out that night,’—he was talking about being hungover—and I was like, ‘I don’t want to know that Stringer and Omar go out to bars!‘ And in a way, Jamm, we are the Stringer and Omar of this show.”
After joking that this point will be of interest to at least one college student, John Glaser excuses himself so Poehler can tend to her last cleanup project on Parks. It’s something she has been tackling one pile at a time. “I’m going through stuff,” she says, studying the mess of memories in her trailer, “and starting to…say goodbye.” There’s a newspaper article trumpeting her post-SNL transition (“From Hillary to Parks Bureaucrat”). Nearby are a book given to her by returning guest Kathryn Hahn titled Power Dressing: First Ladies, Women Politicians & Fashion, a Pawnee beer cooler, and a roll of Eagleton toilet paper. “We like to wipe our ass with the Eagleton seal,” she says, winking at Pawnee’s rivalry with its bankrupt upscale neighbor. Asked how she’s approaching the end, she says, “Nick and Schur and I know a little more about how rare this experience is, how lucky we are. Nick’s a real big softy. Schur and I are just kind of pretending it’s not ending.”
It’s clear that everyone is relishing these last morsels of togetherness. “We’re really making this ending tantric,” chuckles Pratt during the finale shoot. “Slowing it down, enjoying every thrust, breathing deeply, looking into our lover’s eyes…” There’ve been group dinners at people’s houses and the usual dance parties in the hair-and-makeup trailer, with Poehler serving as DJ. “Everyone is so funny, it’s too much,” says Plaza. “I’m so spoiled. Anywhere else I go I’m like, ‘Where’s all the funny people?’ because I’m just surrounded by too much… I can’t take it. I’m going to kill myself when it’s over.”
Offerman is already mourning it, even crying a bit. (So much for only “at funerals and the Grand Canyon.”) Reading the finale script, “I kept it pretty quiet, and Megan [Mullally, his real-life wife and onscreen ex-wife Tammy 2] came in from the other room and said, ‘Are you okay?’ ” he recalls. “I played it off pretty well and said, ‘Yeah, yeah…the script is really good.’ She went back in the other room and I had a great purging, racking series of sobs.”
When the cast assembled to read through that last script, there were more waterworks—and a big moment of silence. “It’s not often that I’m speechless,” says Pratt. “I always seem to have some shit coming out of my mouth. But I was a little speechless. I just didn’t know quite how to handle it. No one wanted to get up after the table read was over. Everyone was just sitting there silently, and finally Nick got up and then we all got up and that was it. Then we all walked away and said, ‘That wasn’t too bad.’ And it’s like, ‘Oh yeah—that’s just the very beginning of saying goodbye. The table read is over but there’s shooting an entire episode still.'”
That last episode—written by Schur and Poehler—is a teary-eyed, full-hearted feast, according to the cast. “You wouldn’t think that a show like this would have a quote-unquote epic finale,” says Ansari, “but that’s what it is. It’s an epic episode of Parks.” Explains Poehler: “We always wrote these big endings because we were like, ‘Well, this may be our last season.’ And because we wrote these big endings, we were constantly forced to change. And because we were forced to change, the characters were complex and funny. So the finale is a celebration of not being afraid of what’s next…. And then I’m going to spend the next 10 years slowly dismantling the public persona of me as Leslie Knope and just doing really out-there, avant-garde, dangerous sexual projects.”
Indeed, opportunity has been increasingly knocking outside of this small town. When Parks launched, Poehler was its lone shiny star; six years later, Ansari is packing Madison Square Garden with stand-up concerts, Scott has four upcoming movies, Plaza is an indie-comedy darling, Offerman is his own handcrafted, stone-faced brand, and Pratt has become a swashbuckling movie star (see: Guardians of the Galaxy and Jurassic World). “I would have done this show for more years, but the cast is busy, they’re getting pulled in directions, because they’re so good,” says Poehler. “It’s a lot to commit to the show, and people have a million other things they’re working on. Me and Nick always joke, ‘Could maybe Leslie and Ron just hang out in the office together?’
Offerman would be more than game. Which is why he was glad that the decision to pull the plug on Parks was out of his hands. “I know that our show is this way because of [Schur’s] creative power, and I’ve been so blessed to rest childlike in the blanket of that power and say, ‘Sure, you wanna shave my mustache? You want me to jump off a building? Yeah, whatever. I know it’ll be great. I’ll try to make a funny face, or I’ll try to say things in a monotone way the way you like them, and I think together we’ll prosper.’ So if I were ever to question it or when people question me, I say, ‘Well, if Mike wants to wrap it up, then that’s what I want too.” Or, as Scott sums up: “I think the show had a couple more seasons in it, but all the more reason to stop.”
••••
Image zoom Greg Gayne/NBC
Last day. The cast has gathered at City Hall. Misty crew members sign Pawnee High yearbooks. (Poehler won Best Laugh, BTW.) Founding father Daniels, who directed an episode earlier this year, watches from the wings. O’Heir is dressed in an absurd costume; a crew member cools him off with a fan. “It’s fitting this is how it should end,” he deadpans.
As the cameras roll on a quick Leslie-and-Ben hallway scene, she tells him: “I have to savor every moment we have left. I’ve got comfort food, scrapbooks, and plenty of tissues.” The camera pans over to a full pallet of Kleenex.
The cast moves into the parks-department bullpen to shoot this final group scene—which will air at the beginning of the episode—and jokes are being deployed to stop up any tears. Getting ready for the next take, Scott asks Schur, who’s directing: “Want me to blast one down the barrel?” a reference to his signature look-to-camera move. “I’m not going to miss Adam,” Poehler deadpans. As she and Retta settle into a hug (that’s in the script) they sing “Memories…” (that’s not).
The cast stretch the final improv-heavy take of this poignant-yet-goofy, it-all-comes-full-circle scene as long as possible. Pratt says goodbye to Andy in his own fitting way during the scene: “You know what I’m going to miss? Dumping desks over,” he says before upending one.
When Schur calls “Cut!” for the last time, the celebration begins. Poehler takes a tissue and keeps exclaiming, “Whewwwww!” as if 125 episodes of emotion are draining out of her. “It’s weird, ” says a misty O’Heir, looking around City Hall. “This will all be gone next week. It’s sad but amazing. 125 episodes, that’s a gift… There’s no downside…”—his tears are starting again—”other than leaving these people.” A weepy Plaza is comforted by Offerman, who lends a shoulder, and then by a kneeling Pratt on her trailer steps. Minutes later, she quips meekly: “So, now what happens?”
Everyone crowds back on set to watch Offerman and Poehler shoot a pickup moment for a different episode. Then they party some more. Later that night, when the hubbub died down, Offerman couldn’t bring himself to drive off the studio lot just yet—because then it would be over—so he wandered down to the stage and sat there by himself on a City Hall bench in the dark, taking time to think about each character, even Jean-Ralphio, who once had “put his mouth all over me.”
As for Poehler, her final task was to record a voice-over line for an episode about a presidential landmark. By chance, the last thing she uttered as Leslie Knope was “What great historical moments took place within these hallowed halls?” Parks fans bore witness to some pretty good ones over the past six seasons. Time to find out what the future holds.
Image zoom Greg Gayne/NBC
A version of this article appears in Entertainment Weekly‘s Jan. 9 issue. | {
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Hundreds of Housing New Zealand properties have been left empty and millions squandered on methamphetamine testing, Housing Minister Phil Twyford says.
Photo: RNZ/ Nick Munro
Mr Twyford apologised on Checkpoint with John Campbell today for the treatment of a man who spent 58 weeks in emergency housing in a motel - costing the government $44,000, after traces of methamphetamine were found in his home.
Mr Twyford pledged to make changes to the existing regime.
Last night Checkpoint reported that Robert Erueti was evicted from his state house where he lived for more than 15 years in February last year.
Mr Twyford said yesterday Mr Erueti should never have been evicted from his HNZ home.
"I wanted to tell him that Housing New Zealand are changing their policy and they are moving to a new approach for dealing with this issue that I think is more compassionate and more considered."
The minister said if methamphetamine traces were found now support, not eviction, would be the first approach.
"Over the last three years Housing New Zealand, on behalf of the tax payer, has spent $75 million on testing and remediating houses that are or were allegedly contaminated."
Mr Twyford said this had left hundreds of properties empty.
Photo: RNZ / Claire Eastham-Farrelly
"Some 900 properties have been left vacant in the middle of a housing crisis on the basis of a methamphetamine contamination standard that cannot distinguish between a place that is genuinely contaminated from the manufacture of methamphetamine, and would endanger the health of someone living in that house, and an infinitesimally small residue that would pose no risk."
He said a kind of moral panic over methamphetamine had taken hold.
"I think that has been drummed up and exploited by a meth testing industry that saw an opportunity to make a dollar.
"Put that together with the fact we had a standard that was patently not fit for purpose."
Mr Twyford met Mr Erueti and his daughter Casey in Auckland and apologised.
"The eviction of Robert made his life immeasurably more difficult … I apologised to them on behalf of the government." | {
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Image copyright Science Photo Library
Dozens of babies are shaken or otherwise injured by their parents in the UK every year, children's charity the NSPCC says. But why does it happen and how can it be prevented?
Joanne Senior's son Charlie was shaken by his father when he was 15 weeks old, causing injuries that left him disabled and almost blind.
"It left him fighting for his life, they didn't think he would make it through the night and told us to call anybody we wanted there.
"He was having seizure after seizure and had to be put into an induced coma."
Her ex-partner, Paul Sykes - who admitted causing grievous bodily harm and was jailed for four years - had shaken Charlie. Miss Senior says only Sykes will ever know why.
He "just seemed to have it in him", she adds.
Nine years on, Charlie "can't do anything for himself" and needs constant care, and Miss Senior says she has suffered depression due to his situation.
"I manage to stay strong most of the time but I do have moments where it still hits me.
"I can only describe it as mourning for the child you were supposed to have."
Image copyright Joanne Senior Image caption Joanne Senior says she hates Charlie's father for harming him
Estimates for the number of babies suffering "non-accidental head injuries" in the UK each year range from 14 to 33.8 per 100,000, the NSPCC says.
Based on a population of about 800,000 babies, this would mean 112 to 270 cases annually.
The NSPCC says these figures are "likely to be an underestimate", although some experts say many parents may have been wrongly accused of shaking their babies.
Injuries like Charlie's are sometimes referred to as "shaken baby syndrome", but the medical term is abusive head trauma (AHT).
Sabine Maguire, of Cardiff University, says the "peak age" for AHT cases happening is two to six months.
She says US research shows a peak in crying by babies at three months old - when healthy babies can cry for five hours a day - and she says this can be a "trigger" for violence.
'Darkness and pain'
Babies have softer brains, weaker neck muscles and relatively larger heads than adults, meaning a "sudden shake" can cause serious harm, she says.
She adds that it is "never safe to shake an infant", no matter what their age.
Coping with Crying is an NSPCC film designed to "influence the way parents react to their baby's crying" by helping them deal with the "frustration" it causes.
More than 50,000 UK parents have seen the film as part of a pilot, and the charity has found a "positive impact on knowledge, attitudes and behaviour".
Mae Pleydell-Pearce appears in the film, and says she is grateful to the NSPCC for the campaign.
When her son Ellis was three months old, her partner shook him "so hard he stopped breathing".
"Both of Ellis's eyes haemorrhaged, he had three broken ribs, a broken leg and his brain was severely damaged," she says.
Ellis was left disabled - in a world of "darkness, pain and the inability to move" - and in need of constant care.
He died in 2009, aged almost 14, and a coroner said his death had been caused by the injuries he suffered as a baby.
Image copyright Mae Pleydell-Pearce Image caption Mae Pleydell-Pearce says her son Ellis was frequently admitted to hospital
Asked whether the NSPCC film might have prevented her ex-partner's attack, Mrs Pleydell-Pearce says she would "like to think it would've helped".
She has "no way of knowing" why her ex-partner shook Ellis, but she supposes it was due to anger at him crying.
She urges parents not to underestimate "how precious babies are".
"In the blink of an eye you can lose your temper and do something that will change not only your baby's life but also yours and your family's life forever."
Official figures show children under 12 months old are proportionately the most likely victims of homicide - murder, manslaughter and infanticide - in England and Wales.
In the year to March 2015, 25 baby deaths were recorded as homicide. That's a rate of 36 per million - four times higher than the homicide rate across all age groups.
NSPCC policy analyst Alice Haynes says "most if not all" baby killings could be prevented by giving parents more support.
'Impulsive act'
Caring for a baby puts parents under pressure, changes their relationships and leaves them sleep deprived.
And this period is even harder for people facing other problems such as poverty, substance abuse and poor mental health, she says.
Peter Sidebotham, of Warwick Medical School, says baby killings are "almost exclusively" carried out by family members, with the largest proportion resulting from an "impulsive act" by a father or stepfather.
He says such killings are often triggered by stress from factors like sleep deprivation and a baby crying, and perpetrators do not usually intend to kill.
But he says these killings usually occur against "a background of violent behaviour including domestic violence" - a situation which makes a baby "very vulnerable", he adds.
Despite research suggesting men are responsible for just over twice as many AHT cases as women, Dr Maguire says new fathers get very little education and support.
She says society is "quick to point the finger" at fathers, some of whom will suffer post-natal depression and many of whom become concerned about their mental health.
"We ignore fathers at our peril," she adds.
'10-minute timeout'
Father-of-three Neil Sinclair says caring for a baby takes people "completely out of their comfort zone".
His oldest child - now 14 - cried "from the moment he was born until he was about two", and Mr Sinclair remembers thinking he must either "run for the hills" or work out how to cope.
He says men who feel angry and frustrated should ask for help.
"I remember how horrible I used to feel when those feelings came over me," he says.
But he understands why many fathers do not talk about these feelings, as they risk being viewed as a "potential abuser".
He says he used to ask his wife to take the baby, or simply put him down somewhere safe so he could take a "10-minute timeout". | {
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Rani Hong was born in Kerala, India. She was kidnapped from her family, sold into slavery, and then sold into adoption.
She now works as a Special Advisor to the UN Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking.
This is her story.
Produced by Greg Brosnan, Sara Al Wajih and Mandeep Rai. | {
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Sometimes, when a political campaign has run out of ideas and senses that the prize is slipping through its fingers, it rolls up a sleeve and plunges an arm, shoulder deep, right down to the bottom of the barrel. The problem for John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republican Party is that the bottom was scraped clean long before it dropped out. Back when the polls were nip and tuck and the leaves had not yet begun to turn, Barack Obama had already been accused of betraying the troops, wanting to teach kindergartners all about sex, favoring infanticide, and being a friend of terrorists and terrorism. What was left? The anticlimactic answer came as the long Presidential march of 2008 staggered toward its final week: Senator Obama is a socialist.
Illustration by Tom Bachtell
“This campaign in the next couple of weeks is about one thing,” Todd Akin, a Republican congressman from Missouri, told a McCain rally outside St. Louis. “It’s a referendum on socialism.” “With all due respect,” Senator George Voinovich, Republican of Ohio, said, “the man is a socialist.” At an airport rally in Roswell, New Mexico, a well-known landing spot for space aliens, Governor Palin warned against Obama’s tax proposals. “Friends,” she said, “now is no time to experiment with socialism.” And McCain, discussing those proposals, agreed that they sounded “a lot like socialism.” There hasn’t been so much talk of socialism in an American election since 1920, when Eugene Victor Debs, candidate of the Socialist Party, made his fifth run for President from a cell in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where he was serving a ten-year sentence for opposing the First World War. (Debs got a million votes and was freed the following year by the new Republican President, Warren G. Harding, who immediately invited him to the White House for a friendly visit.)
As a buzzword, “socialism” had mostly good connotations in most of the world for most of the twentieth century. That’s why the Nazis called themselves national socialists. That’s why the Bolsheviks called their regime the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, obliging the socialist and social democratic parties of Europe (and America, for what it was worth) to make rescuing the “good name” of socialism one of their central missions. Socialists—one thinks of men like George Orwell, Willy Brandt, and Aneurin Bevan—were among Communism’s most passionate and effective enemies.
The United States is a special case. There is a whole shelf of books on the question of why socialism never became a real mass movement here. For decades, the word served mainly as a cudgel with which conservative Republicans beat liberal Democrats about the head. When Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan accused John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson of socialism for advocating guaranteed health care for the aged and the poor, the implication was that Medicare and Medicaid would presage a Soviet America. Now that Communism has been defunct for nearly twenty years, though, the cry of socialism no longer packs its old punch. “At least in Europe, the socialist leaders who so admire my opponent are upfront about their objectives,” McCain said the other day—thereby suggesting that the dystopia he abhors is not some North Korean-style totalitarian ant heap but, rather, the gentle social democracies across the Atlantic, where, in return for higher taxes and without any diminution of civil liberty, people buy themselves excellent public education, anxiety-free health care, and decent public transportation.
The Republican argument of the moment seems to be that the difference between capitalism and socialism corresponds to the difference between a top marginal income-tax rate of 35 per cent and a top marginal income-tax rate of 39.6 per cent. The latter is what it would be under Obama’s proposal, what it was under President Clinton, and, for that matter, what it will be after 2010 if President Bush’s tax cuts expire on schedule. Obama would use some of the added revenue to give a break to pretty much everybody who nets less than a quarter of a million dollars a year. The total tax burden on the private economy would be somewhat lighter than it is now—a bit of elementary Keynesianism that renders doubly untrue the Republican claim that Obama “will raise your taxes.”
On October 12th, in conversation with a voter forever to be known as Joe the Plumber, Obama gave one of his fullest summaries of his tax plan. After explaining how Joe could benefit from it, whether or not he achieves his dream of owning his own plumbing business, Obama added casually, “I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” McCain and Palin have been quoting this remark ever since, offering it as prima-facie evidence of Obama’s unsuitability for office. Of course, all taxes are redistributive, in that they redistribute private resources for public purposes. But the federal income tax is (downwardly) redistributive as a matter of principle: however slightly, it softens the inequalities that are inevitable in a market economy, and it reflects the belief that the wealthy have a proportionately greater stake in the material aspects of the social order and, therefore, should give that order proportionately more material support. McCain himself probably shares this belief, and there was a time when he was willing to say so. During the 2000 campaign, on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” a young woman asked him why her father, a doctor, should be “penalized” by being “in a huge tax bracket.” McCain replied that “wealthy people can afford more” and that “the very wealthy, because they can afford tax lawyers and all kinds of loopholes, really don’t pay nearly as much as you think they do.” The exchange continued:
YOUNG WOMAN: Are we getting closer and closer to, like, socialism and stuff?. . . MCCAIN: Here’s what I really believe: That when you reach a certain level of comfort, there’s nothing wrong with paying somewhat more.
For her part, Sarah Palin, who has lately taken to calling Obama “Barack the Wealth Spreader,” seems to be something of a suspect character herself. She is, at the very least, a fellow-traveller of what might be called socialism with an Alaskan face. The state that she governs has no income or sales tax. Instead, it imposes huge levies on the oil companies that lease its oil fields. The proceeds finance the government’s activities and enable it to issue a four-figure annual check to every man, woman, and child in the state. One of the reasons Palin has been a popular governor is that she added an extra twelve hundred dollars to this year’s check, bringing the per-person total to $3,269. A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that “we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs.” Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it (“collectively,” no less), but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist. ♦ | {
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Changes in the local political landscape have prompted two groups to nix a project to build 265 apartments for seniors on Holy Hill.
The Pacific School of Religion and Mather LifeWays have decided to withdraw their application to build 265 apartments for seniors on Holy Hill.
PSR and the Illinois-based nonprofit builder said “changes in the local political landscape” led to the decision.
“While both organizations believe in the significant benefits the community would have provided to the City of Berkeley, changes in the local political landscape have increased uncertainty regarding the project,” according to a statement released jointly by the two organizations.
The November election ushered in a development-skeptical City Council majority and a new mayor, Jesse Arreguín, who campaigned on the promise to extract more in community benefits from developers than the previous mayor and council did. Arreguín’s opponent for the mayoral seat, former City Councilman Laurie Capitelli, had predicted that Arreguín’s election would lead to less development.
PSR and Mather LifeWays had proposed a “continuing care” facility that featured apartments, a memory care unit, and nursing facilities for people at the end of their lives. Some of the seniors would have been housed in 5- to 6-story buildings on PSR’s main campus along Scenic Avenue. The complex would also have included the construction of a string of three-story high, Mediterranean-style buildings along Virginia Avenue.
There has been opposition to the plan from the time the two groups announced their intentions in August 2016. A number of neighbors formed the group, Save Holy Hill, to fight off the development, which they called out of scale and out of character with the residential neighborhood. The group said the complex was being built for the “very wealthy,” not ordinary seniors, and would destroy too many old and architecturally significant buildings on the PSR campus. It would also destroy prized open space in the middle of the city, they said.
“Our mission is to stop this massive development from being built as proposed,” reads the Save Holy Hill website…. This project is wrong for Berkeley.”
Daniella Thompson, a preservationist and past president of the Berkeley Architectural Association, has been leading tours through the bucolic PSR campus to drum up opposition to the $400 million project.
“This is a scorched-earth campaign,” Thompson said when the project was first announced. “They want to demolish everything and start from scratch… It’s a nice idea to provide senior housing, but this is demolishing wholesale a whole neighborhood. It’s horrible. It’s terrible.”
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Mather LifeWays and PSR had argued that the project would fill a need. About 25% of Berkeley property owners are older than 55 and many professors from PSR, other schools affiliated with the Graduate Theological Union, and UC Berkeley move out of Berkeley after they retire because there are no senior centers to move into. The new complex would have provided them a place to live, according to the two groups.
The project also would have benefited Berkeley by returning tax-exempt land to the tax rolls, the groups said.
The Pacific School of Religion sought a partnership with Mather LifeWays because its campus is underutilized, according to David Vásquez-Levy, president of the Pacific School of Religion. The campus, constructed on the old model of seminary study, has evolved, In the 1940s and 1950s, mostly male students would come to PSR to live and study for three years. Then they would then go off and lead a congregation, he said.
Today, fewer students live on campus. Instead, they come for classes and leave. The institution has been discussing what to do with its campus for about 10 years, he said.
While the deal with Mather LifeWays is off, PSR will still seek to develop portions of the land, according to the statement. PSR is in discussions with potential buyers and expects to announce next steps in the coming months.
“Given the changes in our educational programs, we do not fully utilize all of the property we own,” said Vásquez-Levy. “Our intent is to leverage our real estate property towards a partnership that will strengthen our financial ability to fulfill our mission to prepare theologically and spiritually rooted leaders for social transformation within and beyond the church.”
The Save Holy Hill group said it recognizes that the PSR property will be developed one day but said the neighbors should play a larger part in the planning process.
Some people in the community have speculated that the campus would be a good place for UC Berkeley to build more housing for its students. If Cal developed the property it would not have to comply with local zoning laws since it is a state agency. Cal would have to go through the CEQA process, however, which requires community input, according to Christine Shaff, the communications director for Cal’s Real Estate Division.
However, UC Berkeley has no plans to acquire the PSR campus, said Shaff.
Frances Dinkelspiel is co-founder and executive editor of Berkeleyside. | {
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FRANKFURT/MAIN. In der Wahrnehmung der Bundesbürger ist die AfD in den vergangenen Jahren deutlich nach rechts gerückt. Zu diesem Ergebnis kommt eine Studie des Meinungsforschungsinstituts Allensbach im Auftrag der Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung. Demnach halten nur 18 Prozent der Deutschen die AfD für eine normale, demokratische Partei. 74 Prozent sind der gegenteiligen Auffassung. Vor zwei Jahren hielten noch 22 Prozent der Befragten die Partei für demokratisch, 62 Prozent verneinten dies.
Anders als noch im Jahr 2014 sehen die meisten Bürger demnach in der AfD heute primär eine Anti-Einwanderungspartei. 79 Prozent nehmen die Partei als solche war (2014: 58 Prozent). Die Wirtschaftskompetenz der Partei hat nach Ansicht der Menschen in dieser Zeit gelitten. Glaubten 2014 noch 25 Prozent der Deutschen, die AfD werde die Wirtschaft stärken, sind heute noch 10 Prozent dieser Meinung. Daß sich die AfD für eine Reduzierung der Staatsverschuldung einsetzt, meinen 12 Prozent (2014: 29 Prozent).
Kluft zwischen AfD-Anhängern und dem Rest
Die Kluft zwischen AfD-Sympathisanten und dem Rest der Gesellschaft illustriert die Frage nach der künftigen Ausrichtung der Partei. Die These, die AfD solle sich darauf konzentrieren, „eine konservative Alternative zu den etablierten Parteien“ zu sein, „aber rechtsextremen Positionen eine Absage erteilen“, befürworteten alle Befragten zu 57 Prozent, AfD-Anhänger hingegen nur zu 28 Prozent.
Hingegen wünschten sich 14 Prozent der Bundesbürger, aber 60 Prozent der AfD-Wähler, die Partei als eine „deutsch-nationale Alternative, die Deutschland gegen zu viele Ausländer und zu viele ausländische Einflüsse verteidigen“ soll. Besorgen muß die Partei, daß 20 Prozent ihrer potentiellen Wähler die AfD durch die Kursänderung der Bundesregierung in der Flüchtlingspolitik für nicht mehr notwendig erachten. (tb) | {
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india
Updated: Feb 22, 2019 08:30 IST
Less than a fortnight after its last meeting, the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposition bloc will again hold talks in New Delhi on February 26 to discuss the Lok Sabha poll strategy, in a calculated move to emphasise its unity and mark its presence in the national capital.
Senior Opposition leaders indicated that Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Andhra Pradesh chief minister Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, socialist leader Sharad Yadav and representatives from the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party (BJP) are expected at the meeting.
On February 13, all these leaders came together in a major show of unity in Delhi and also participated in a rally, hosted by Kejriwal. The meetings assume importance as many of the parties would be fighting against each other in the states during the Lok Sabha poll.
“A grand alliance ahead of the polls is not an idea we would like to pursue. We are keeping in touch with each other and meeting regularly to keep the possibilities of a post-poll alliance alive,” a senior opposition leader said on condition of anonymity.
Another opposition leader added that earlier, the plan had been to meet in Guwahati but the venue was shifted keeping in mind the fast-changing political scenario in Delhi.
A group of Congress and Telugu Desam Party leaders are in charge of organising the event in Delhi. | {
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Grashros 42 - Read Grashros Chapter 42
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New foreign policy delusions I am afraid the president and his party, once more, are getting it wrong in terms of international relations. I understand that the aim of the recent discourse on “diplomatic victories” and the rosy picture on foreign relations is to convince the public that the government has not taken a step back from its earlier stance and that it is not making a U-Turn, but is rather improving relations with yesterday’s foes as part of a great diplomatic achievement.
However, it doesn’t seem to be mere propaganda; I think the ruling party and its leader really believe the words coming out of their mouths. Besides, it seems the rulers of Turkey have not only started to “think pink” but also to “think big” again! The weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw must have given Recep Tayyip Erdoğan more confidence to believe Turkey is regarded as a major player. It is true that Turkey is an important country in the region and, therefore, it can play a role in order to improve the regional situation. Nonetheless, it is all about “what kind of role” Turkey intends to play and is capable of playing. Besides, foreign policy may not always require coherence with the past, but it needs coherence and credibility concerning new deals.
So far, Turkey is eager to make a deal with Russia, mostly to compensate for deteriorating relations with its Western allies, but also to carve out a greater role at the NATO summit, which is focusing on solidarity against the “Russian threat.” Well, it could be claimed that it is not only the paradox of Turkey, since despite a rivalry and disagreements on some matters, the United States, the European Union and Russia are most willing to work together against “terrorism,” and indeed Erdoğan also made a call to exert more efforts to combat terrorism at the NATO Summit. However, Turkey’s definition of “terrorists” not only includes but even puts more emphasis on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Gülenists, whereas the U.S., EU and Russia see the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) as the most dangerous theat.
As for regional developments, Turkey has improved relations with Israel mostly as a move against its significant neighbor Iran, which recently came in from the cold after a successful deal with the West. Finally, Turkey is trying to make it up with Cairo to find an accord with the Saudi-led coalition after denouncing Egypt’s military regime and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood against it. As such, Turkey’s is not only too ambitious in its foreign policy attack when it actually needs masterful diplomacy, but also needs credibility that it has so far lacked. It seems that the rulers of Turkey are once again swinging toward unjustified overconfidence after major foreign policy defeats on many fronts in the last few years.
Once again, Turkey’s governing politicians are beginning to consider themselves cleverer than all other countries that they are dealing with. Once again, the rulers of Turkey are starting to underestimate the complexity of regional and global politics even though this attitude was the basic reason it got into foreign policy trouble in the first place. The supporters of the governing party have already started to evaluate the recent foreign policy change as a recognition by Turkey’s “enemies” of the country’s importance and determination. There are those who claim that the call to prayer from Hagia Sophia on the first day of Eid was taken as a message by the West as “Turkey’s leadership of the Muslim world” and that they needed to respond in panic.
According to this view, it is not Turkey which needed to change and soften its foreign policy out of necessity and even of desperation, but that all these countries finally needed to acknowledge the power of Turkey and its leadership.
It was a delusion of grandeur which led Turkish foreign policy into disaster; now we are expecting to overcome past failures through another set of delusional policies. That is why I am very concerned about the possible shortcomings of the recent foreign policy change and cannot consider myself optimistic. | {
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The Atlanta Falcons knew Cam Newton would run the ball. That was no secret.
They dissected his designed runs on film and practiced for them. They braced for the unscheduled scrambles, too.
Cam Newton's virtual dunk for a touchdown over Desmond Trufant in Week 9 summed up the Falcons' problems in stopping the Panthers' quarterback in the teams' first meeting. AP Photo/Mike McCarn
Despite the preparation, the Falcons still found themselves playing catch-up when they faced the Carolina Panthers quarterback in Week 9. One of the primary reason the Falcons lost 20-17 was their inability to contain Newton, who ran the ball nine times for a team-high 86 yards, including a 9-yard touchdown run.
With the playoffs at stake in Sunday's season finale, the Falcons can't afford to let Cam be Cam.
"Cam's going to do what he do," Falcons linebacker Deion Jones said. "You just gotta get him on the ground."
Sure, the Falcons may not be able to totally shut down Newton, the Atlanta native who would love nothing more than to come home and spoil his hometown team's playoff hopes. But the key word is "contain." Newton, who is averaging 5.4 yards per rush, is third all-time in rushing yards by a quarterback with 4,261 and counting, right behind former Falcon Michael Vick (6,109) and Randall Cunningham (4,928). In 13 career games against the Falcons, Newton has seven rushing touchdowns and has averaged 50.9 rushing yards per game --- more than Panthers running back Jonathan Stewart has averaged against the Falcons (50.7) in 15 career games.
In the November matchup, Newton broke loose for a 34-yard run off a play fake to Stewart; Falcons outside linebacker Vic Beasley Jr. succumbed to the trickery, giving Newton the edge. Fortunately for the Falcons, a forced fumble by Keanu Neal and subsequent recovery by Desmond Trufant negated that drive.
Later, Newton picked up 10 yards and a first down on a third-and-1 read-option play in which the Falcons missed two tackles. The Falcons were fortunate to force a punt on that drive. However, three other Newton runs -- including his touchdown scramble on third-and-5 when he virtually dunked the ball on Trufant -- were tied to scoring drives.
"I think it was more just playing the call out and not messing up; having mental errors," Beasley said of Newton's plays. "That's [what happened], especially on that big run that he had against us last time."
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Beasley, who made a tremendous read in last week's game against the New Orleans Saints to drop running back Alvin Kamara for a 7-yard loss, acknowledged that he might be called upon to "spy" on Newton. Whatever strategy the Falcons use, it won't be easy to corral the 6-foot-5, 245-pound Newton. Not to mention Newton, although not always accurate, has the potential to beat you down the field with his arm.
"Cam, he's just different," free safety Ricardo Allen said. "He's big. He's strong. So do you take power to him or do you take finesse? And they have other players who are tough tackles, too."
This would be the wrong time for the 9-6 Falcons to be undisciplined with their reads and tackling technique. A loss, coupled with a Seattle Seahawks win over the Arizona Cardinals, would knock them out of the final wild-card spot and leave the Saints and Panthers as the NFC South's postseason representatives.
Such an outcome would give Newton even more reason to gloat. | {
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Image copyright Jake Hanrahan twitter Image caption Jake Hanrahan and a colleague were filming clashes between pro-Kurdish youths and security forces, Vice said
Two British reporters and a translator have been formally charged by a Turkish court with "working on behalf of a terrorist organisation".
Vice News journalists Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury were detained by police as they filmed in the south-east region of Diyarbakir on Thursday.
Their lawyer told the BBC police interrogated them about alleged links to Islamic State and Kurdish militants.
They deny the charges, which Vice News calls "baseless and alarmingly false".
The trio had been in the region filming clashes between police and Kurdish militants, Vice News said.
Violent exchanges between security forces and youths from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) have erupted in recent days. Turkey has limited journalists' access to the region.
Analysis
By Selin Girit, BBC News, Istanbul
The two British journalists and their translator were detained on Thursday at their hotel, their lawyer told the BBC.
He said they were initially accused of filming a military base nearby without permission. Then the material on their computers and cameras was investigated.
The lawyer said the journalists were subject to questions of whether they were working on behalf of the IS or the Kurdish militant group PKK. They denied the accusations, saying they were only doing their job.
The Vice News journalists were working in the predominantly Kurdish south-eastern town of Diyarbakır when they were detained, which has seen intense clashes between militants and security forces recently - it's increasingly difficult for journalists to report from the area.
Turkey was dubbed as "the biggest prison for journalists" in 2012 and 2013 by journalism organisations. In general though, detained foreign journalists would either be released or deported.
The journalists' lawyer told the BBC they had a right to object to the court ruling within a week, but that they do not expect an overturn of the decision.
The journalists' lawyer said the trio were detained at their hotel and initially accused of filming a military base without permission.
Their camera and computers were seized and investigated, he said.
They were then asked questions about whether they had been collaborating with the PKK or the so-called Islamic State group, before being formally arrested by a local court. They have denied all charges.
Kevin Sutcliffe, Vice News's head of news programming in Europe, said the Turkish government had levelled "baseless and alarmingly false charges" in an attempt to intimidate and censor its coverage.
"Vice News condemns in the strongest possible terms the Turkish government's attempts to silence our reporters who have been providing vital coverage from the region," he said.
No further court dates have yet been set.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Masked anti-government protesters have been clashing with police in Istanbul | {
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The Website of Carlos Whitlock Porter
The Myth of Japanese Atrocities at Nanking
By C. W. Porter
The tropical landscape of the Tokyo Trial transcript is rich in strange fauna and flora. A variety prevalent on the lowlands of Central China is known for the hypertrophic development of its organs of locomotion and perception, (particularly hearing). He is called the Universal Witness.
Despite its name, (Ah See in Chinese), the vision of this specimen is quite poor.
Like the Indestructible Witness, the Universal Witness is immune to shooting, bayonetting, and other forms of capital punishment; however, the Universal Witness is everywhere and sees everything; he sees though doors, walls, and obstacles.
I SAW JAP ATROCITIES IN 12 CITIES AND WAS BAYONETTED TEN TIMES BUT ONLY HAVE ONE SCAR
I was the eye-witness... in such places as (list of 12 Chinese place names)... many others were killed in various other places... ten Japanese stabbed the left side of my abdomen with bayonets... The scar on the left side of my abdomen is an evidence (pp. 4,650).
(Note: affidavit was written in English in 1946 describing events in China in 1937, translated orally into Chinese prior to signature).
THE JAPS TOOK ME ALONG AS A WITNESS, THATS WHY I SAW SO MANY ATROCITIES
I and another were put to one side, and the Japanese used light machine guns to kill the rest... I helped throw the bodies in a pond by order of the Japanese... the same day in the afternoon I saw three Japanese rape a dumb girl... I was taken by Japanese soldiers again... they killed with the bayonet... on the same day in the afternoon I was taken to... and saw three Japanese soldiers set a fire... I saw another raping case... (p. 2,609).
(Note: this affidavit was written in English in 1946 describing events in China in 1937, complete with names of the Japanese responsible, with the names of their units, and was translated orally from English to Chinese prior to signature).
I SAW JAPS HANG AROUND AFTER RAPING
I see with my very eyes the Japanese soldier raping a woman in a bath room, and his clothes outside, and then afterwards we discovered the bathroom door and found a woman naked and also weeping and downcast...
Now we went to the camp to try to get... to catch two Japanese who were reported to be living there... we saw one Japanese still sitting there, with a woman on the corner and weeping... and that man was sitting there with his head low there... once we caught a Japanese raping, and he was naked. He was sleeping... I know another case where because of the boatman... he told me this: where he saw that too on his boat, it happened on his boat... after raping, the Japanese asked the old man in that family, isnt that good?... I forgot to say that when the Japanese asked the older man whether it is good or not, he wanted the old man to rape that young girl so all the girls -now I saw this - they all jumped into the river. So the whole family jumped into the river and all drowned. This is not second-hand story. This is real, real and genuine, and we have, we know that, the boatman has been with us for a long time (pp. 2,569-2,573).
(Note: the witness claimed to have a Ph. D. from the University of Illinois at the age of 13).
I TREATED A BEHEADING VICTIM AND HEARD ABOUT MASS RAPES AT NANKING
I can say the few instances of patients that I treated during the time immediately following the fall of Nanking, but I will not be able to give their names, except in the case of two... one case... is that of a young woman of forty, who was brought to the hospital with the back of her neck having a laceration severing all the muscles of her neck, and leaving the head very precariously balanced... there was no doubt in our minds that the work was that of a Japanese soldier...
Q: You say that the woman of about 40 had a wound in her neck and the muscles were cut and were hanging loose. But what was this caused by?
A: A Japanese sword... (pp. 2,534; 2,552-3).
(Testimony of Dr. Robert O. Wilson).
THEY CUT MY HEAD OFF BUT I CRAWLED TO THE HOSPITAL
They attempted to cut off her head. The muscles of the neck had been cut but they failed to sever the spinal cord. She feigned death but dragged herself to the hospital... Dr. Wilson is trying to patch her up and thinks she may have a chance to live... (p. 4,476).
Note: this is the same woman. First quotes are from Dr. Wilson. Wilsons hospital at Nanking had 180 beds. Wilson claimed that 500,000 people were in Nanking at this time; many patients were turned away, but he could not say how many. If the Japanese injured 200 people, Wilsons testimony is true.
Second quote is from mimeographed diary of James H. McCallum; McCallum was an unknown person who did not appear to testify; one of the American defense attorneys had defended a James H. McCallum on a charge of mail fraud in Ohio; the defendant jumped bail and was never caught. It was never learned whether this was the same James H. McCallum).
HOW THE JAPS KILLED 200,000 OR MAYBE 260,000 OR MAYBE 278,586 OR MAYBE 300,000 OR MAYBE 500,000 AFTER MASS RAPES AT NANKING
... approximately 260,000 dead... over 300,000 victims were reported... it is believed that over 200,000 more are yet to be confirmed... more than 200,000 were murdered... more than 300,000 people killed... the total number of victims killed totalled - I wish to say there is a typographical error there - the number should read 278,586... the total number of bodies buried... totalled more than 155,300....
OBJECTION: Mr. Brooks calls my attention to the fact that in another portion of the affidavit is contained the statement that 300,000 were killed in Nanking, and as I understand it the total population of Nanking is only 200,000...
THE PRESIDENT: ... the judges will be just as vigilant as the defense to see that evidence which is indefinite or vague, or sweeping assertions which are not supported by evidence, are rejected (pp. 4,537-51).
(Note: the quotes are from two war crimes reports prepared by the Nanking Procurator Generals office in 1946 relating to events of 1937. Material on which conclusions are based are not attached to the reports. Also included are several reports of burial societies. The reports are quite short.
According to the defense, 20 cases of rape by young recruits were reported to headquarters in Tokyo, 3 trials were held; 1 officer was executed and 2 soldiers imprisoned. Elsewhere it is stated that up to 100 trials of Japanese soldiers were held; elsewhere, that 180 cases per week were being reported from possibly hostile sources. One defense witness admitted that atrocities in Nanking were very severe; what this means in terms of numbers is hard to guess.
Mass rape was a crime allegedly committed by Japanese in all theatres of war as part of a Common Plan. It seems obvious that such a plan would be incompatible with discipline and that any army following such a plan would be immediately defeated.
At the time of these events, the Chinese Nationalists were co-operating with the Communists under the terms of the Shan Agreement to expel the Japanese from China, and the Japanese were the victims of considerable Communist propaganda, not only in China, but elsewhere.
It appears that Japanese atrocities at Nanking (to the extent to which they have any reality at all) were a reprisal for Chinese atrocities against Japanese residents in China at Tung Chow on July 29, 1937, atrocities which included rape. It was pointed out by the prosecution that murder could be justified on the grounds of reprisal, but that rape could not be.
See also:
The Tokyo War Crimes Trial by C.W. Porter
Japs Ate My Gall Bladder by C. W. Porter
Translation of the above into Russian NEW IN RUSSIAN
The Myth of Japanese Atrocities Against Prisoners in Mukden by C.W. Porter
Japan was Provoked into a War of Self Defense by C.W. Porter
The Myth of Japanese Atrocities at Nanking by C. W. Porter
Affidavits in Foreign Languages by C.W. Porter
Recommended site for Japanese revisionism: http://www.jiyuushikan.org/e/
CARLOS W. PORTER
1989
See also:
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED AT NANKING: The Refutation of a Common Myth, by Tanaka Masaaki
THE ALLEGED NANKING MASSACRE: Japan's Refutation to China's Forged Claims, by Tadao Takamoto, Yasuo
NANKING: ANATOMY OF AN ATROCITY, by Masihiro Yamamoto
MADE IN RUSSIA - THE HOLOCO$T
Return to ARTICLES PAGE
Return to CONTENTS PAGE | {
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You’ll soon have two chances in Las Vegas to sample the self-proclaimed "best hot dog in New York since 1932." Papaya King debuted its most western expansion last November, taking over a prominent and hard to miss mustard and ketchup colored locale at Harmon Square, across the street from the Hard Rock Hotel.
Now comes confirmation the restaurant is also heading to the Strip. Signage is already in place at the Hawaiian Marketplace, ready for the Manhattan institution to take over the indoor and outdoor casual spot most recently occupied by Pacific Creationz Hawaiian Kitchen. Previous tenants include Fukuburger and for a longer stretch, Zingers.
Papaya King will be able to take full advantage of the large, very open patio area and offer its famed tropical drink selections to guests wandering along Las Vegas Boulevard, with flavorful choices like banana daiquiri, coconut champagne, papaya and piña colada,
Serving more than a dozen specialty hot dog variants, sides include knishes, curly fries, onion rings, "Kings Tots" and a downtown Las Vegas fast-food staple, fried Oreos and Twinkies.
An opening date or official reveal of the expansion has yet to be be announced. | {
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Arijit "Poop Strong" Guha has died of colon cancer
Arijit "Poop Strong" Guha (Twitter), a really sweet guy who took on a dirty rotten insurance company and stood up to TSA "Flying While Brown" bullying (while wearing a t-shirt designed by Boing Boing's own Cory Doctorow) has died.
He was 31, and had metastatic colon cancer.
I did not know Arijit in person, but we exchanged a number of internet messages since we met online as cancer-compadres. His wife posted this today to their Facebook page.
It is with the deepest sadness I have ever known that I share the following: Arijit Guha—the bravest, kindest, most compassionate man to grace this planet—died earlier today. He went peacefully, at home, surrounded by love and free from pain. He lived his life, even up to the very end, with warmth, humor, and positivity, and his boundless capacity for hope and love gives me strength. He will be greatly missed, but I know that his beauty, goodness, and desire to make the world a better place will continue on through all of the people and lives he has touched. My heart is aching, but the pain is eased a bit knowing that he has the support of such an amazing community of people, so many of whom have never met him. I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart, for all you have done for him. He is truly an inspiration (though he hated being told so), and I will be eternally grateful to have had him in my life, and to have been able to share him with all of you. Love, Heather
Here's a Facebook memorial page for him: "Celebrating Arijit, Life, and Hope."
Arijit Guha—rabble rouser, do-gooder, mustache enthusiast—died on March 22, 2013, after a spirited, graceful, and inspirational bout with cancer. His life was one of love, optimism, joy, humor, and compassion, and this page is to celebrate that life.
My heart goes out to you, Heather, and to all who knew and loved this kind young man.
Fuck cancer. And fuck injustice. Long live love.
(via Arizona Daily Star and @KinkyCancer) | {
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From Conservapedia
Draft of Conservapedia Response to PNAS Article by Lenski
Title:
Identification of flaws in the following paper published in PNAS: Blount ZD, Borland CZ, and Lenski RE, "Historical contingency and the evolution of a key innovation in an experimental population of Escherichia coli," 105 PNAS 23, pp. 7899–7906 (June 10, 2008).
Author:
Andrew Schlafly, B.S.E., J.D.
Author Affiliations:
www.conservapedia.com, teacher of pre-college students
Text:
The following flaws in this PNAS paper negate its claim that E. Coli bacteria evolved through a beneficial mutation:[1]
1. Figure 3 depicts an "historical contingency" hypothesis around the 31,000th generation, but the abstract states that mutations "arose by 20,000 generations." The paper fails to admit that the Third Experiment disproved the contingency hypothesis depicted in Figure 3. 2. Both hypotheses propose fixed mutation rates, but the failure of mutations to increase with sample size disproves this. If the authors claim that it is inappropriate to compare for scale the Second and Third Experiments to each other and to the First Experiment, then it was also an error to treat them similarly statistically. 3. The paper incorrectly applied a Monte Carlo resampling test to exclude the null hypothesis for rarely occurring events. The Third Experiment results are consistent with the null hypothesis, contrary to the paper's claim. 4. It was error to include generations of the E. coli already known to contain trace Cit+ variants. The highly improbable occurrence of four Cit+ variants from the 32,000th generation in the Second Experiment suggests an origin from undetected, pre-existing Cit+ variants. 5. The Third Experiment was erroneously combined with the other two experiments based on outcome rather than sample size, thereby yielding a false claim of overall statistical significance.
The underlying data for this publicly (NSF) funded research have not been publicly released, despite requests for such release and NSF policy that "data collected with public funds belong in the public domain."[2]
cc:
Randy Schekman, Editor-in-Chief, PNAS, University of California at Berkeley (by email and postal mail) New Scientist (by fax - 0171 261 6464) Rep. Brian Baird, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Research and Science Education of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology (by postal mail) Judicial Watch (by email)
References
↑ Detail is at http://www.conservapedia.com/Flaws_in_Richard_Lenski_Study and its talk page. ↑ http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/ses/common/archive.jsp
The word count for the above letter is precisely the PNAS limit of 250 for the Text section, excluding the cc: list. The foregoing letter is to be sent by postal mail, return receipt requested, to PNAS, 500 Fifth Street, NW, NAS 340, Washington, DC 20001, by email to [email protected] , and by posting it in its feedback form at http://www.pnas.org/feedback . | {
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As expected, Motorola has launched a new Motorola G budget phone for 2016. For the first time, a more premium option for the Moto G range. It’s called the Moto G & Moto G4 Plus. It comes better features than Motorola G4. The phone seems a perfect device which can last long & deliver stunning performance. We have already seen Motorola’s build quality which is simply great. Most of us prefer Android device because of it’s great level of customisation & never ending way to amaze you with its feature.
But in term of customisation and optimization options, Stock ROM doesn’t have too many possibilities. Most of us prefer to go beyond the Stock features & gain main access to your device i.e Super user access. Today we’ll guide you step by step How to Unlock Bootloader of Motorola G4 Plus, Installing TWRP in G4 Plus & Rooting Motorola G4 Plus. Rooting your device is not only for performance but to get tones of new features. You can find some of the features of rooting your device.
Prerequisites:
Follow the Procedure to setup & install Minimal ADB files. – Minimal ADB Tool & Setup. Official TWRP Recovery for Motorola G4 Plus (athene): Download SuperSU to Root Motorola Moto G4 Plus: Download (Nougat Root file: Download)
How to Root Moto G4 & G4 Plus 2016:
Stage 1. Unlocking Bootloader of Motorola Moto G4 Plus: In this step, we’ll unlock bootloader which will allow us to install custom softwares & TWRP recovery.
Stage 2. Installing TWRP Recovery in Motorola Moto G4 Plus: In this step, we’ll install a custom recovery named as “TWRP”. It allows flashing custom zip files. We can install TWRP recovery only if bootloader is unlocked.
Stage 3. Gaining Root Access in Moto G4 Plus: In this step, we’ll flash SuperSU.zip from TWRP recovery. SuperSU hooks into your system files & acts as bridge between system files & other Apps which require Root access.
How to unlock Bootloader of Motorola Moto G4 Plus
Step 1. Enable USB debugging mode in your Motorola Moto G4 Plus, Goto Settings > About Phone > Tap on build Number 7 times. Now go back to Settings, you’ll find a new option as ‘Developer options’. In Developer options, enable USB Debugging mode.
Step 2. Follow the Minimal ADB Tool setup guide. Connect your device to PC using a USB cable. Launch the ADB.exe file which will open up as a command window.
Step 3. Type “adb reboot bootloader” in command window. This would boot your device into Bootloader mode. (If it return any error like no device found, check if you have installed USB drivers properly.)
Step 4. Type “fastboot oem get_unlock_data” in command window. It will return a code which will look similar to this:
Unlocking Bootloader of Motorola Moto G4 Plus
Example: On a Windows Desktop, the returned string format would be
$ fastboot oem get_unlock_data (bootloader) 0A40040192024205#4C4D3556313230 (bootloader) 30373731363031303332323239#BD00 (bootloader) 8A672BA4746C2CE02328A2AC0C39F95 (bootloader) 1A3E5#1F53280002000000000000000 (bootloader) 0000000
Example: On a Mac OS Desktop, the returned string format would be
INFO0A40040192024205#4C4D3556313230 INFO30373731363031303332323239#BD00 INFO8A672BA4746C2CE02328A2AC0C39F95 INFO1A3E5#1F53280002000000000000000 INFO0000000
Step 5. Paste together the 5 lines of output into one continuous string without (bootloader) or ‘INFO’ or white spaces. Your string needs to look like this:
0A40040192024205#4C4D355631323030373731363031303332323239#BD008A672BA4746C2CE02328A2AC0C39F951A3E5#1F532800020000000000000000000000
Step 6. Now, Goto Motorola’s Boot loader unlock site & login with Google. Paste the entire code in the input box which says, Check if your device can be unlocked by pasting the string by pasting the string in the field below & clicking can my device be unlocked.
Motorola G4 Plus unlocking
Step 7. After pasting click on “Can my device be unlocked.” After that, you’ll see a request unlock key option at the bottom of the page. Check I agree and click Request Unlock Key. You’ll receive the unlock key in your Gmail.
Step 8. Copy the key from your Gmail Account and paste in a notepad file, Open the previously opened Command prompt / Terminal & type:
fastboot oem unlock "YOURKEY" (Replace YOURKEY with the key you received)
It will unlock your device. Congratulation you have successfully unlocked your device.
You can also refer this video to understand things much better:
How to Install TWRP Recovery in Motorola Moto G4 Plus
Step 1. Transfer the TWRP recovery image file in installed ADB folder. You can refer the below image:
Motorola G4 (2016) TWRP Recovery
Step 2. Boot your device into fastboot mode (Switch off your device. Press & hold, Volume down button and power button).
Step 3. Open adb.exe file & type “fastboot flash recovery twrp.img” (If the file name is something different like twr232.img, just replace twrp.img with twr232.img in the command). This will flash the TWRP recovery in your device.
Moto G4 Flashing TWRP Recovery
How to Root Motorola G4 Plus
Step 1. We are going to use the Systemless Root procedure.
Step 2. Make sure you boot or install TWRP. Boot into it.
Step 3. TWRP -> Advanced -> Terminal -> type this:
echo "SYSTEMLESS=true" > /data/.supersu
Step 4. Now return to TWRP & flash SuperSU.zip file as per your Android version. (different file for Nougat, check download section)
Now as you have rooted your device, you can checkout our list of Top 10 Apps for Rooted Smartpones. You can also install Xposed Framework & change System files without installing Custom ROMs. Soon we’ll update new Custom ROMs for Motorola G4 Plus as soon as their are out. If you are stuck at any point, you can comment your query below. | {
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The accustomed shape of the house is slabbed together with clean white-concrete walls quietly in an intimate environment in the outskirts of Leiria, Portugal. In addition, a large squared opening on one side of the roof giving natural light to the living room and darkness for stargazing at nightfall. | {
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MANILA — Taking advantage of the peso trading at over 10-year low levels, Filipinos living or working overseas sent more money home in March, such that cash remittances that month hit a record-high of $2.615 billion.
Cash coursed through banks last March exceeded by 10.7 percent the $2.362 billion in remittances a year ago, reversing the 1.4-percent year-on-year decline during the same month last year, the latest Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas data released Monday showed.
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March marked the 14th straight month that cash remittances breached the $2-billion level.
The March figure surpassed the previous high of $2.559 billion recorded last December. Remittances historically peaked during the month of December amid the Christmas holiday season.
To recall, the peso slid to the 50:$1 level since mid-February before returning to the 49:$1 level in April.
As such, a weaker peso translated into more value for the local currency when exchanged with dollars.
In a statement, BSP Governor Amando M. Tetangco Jr. said remittances from land-based overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) rose 12.8 percent year-on-year to $2.1 billion in March, while those of sea-based OFWs increased 3.4 percent to $500 million.
Tetangco said the top five countries that contributed the bulk of remittances growth last March were the United States, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Japan and Hong Kong.
At the end of the first three months, cash remittances reached $6.953 billion, up 7.7 percent from $6.457 billion last year, a faster year-on-year growth compared with 3.2 percent a year ago, BSP data showed.
During the first quarter, cash sent home by land-based OFWs jumped 10.4 percent year-on-year to $5.6 billion, while money from sea-based OFWs declined 2 percent to $1.4 billion, Tetangco said.
Nearly four-fifths of the first-quarter cash remittances were from OFWs in Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the UAE, the United Kingdom and the US, Tetangco added.
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For 2017, the BSP had projected a 4-percent growth in remittances.
In 2016, cash remittances totaled a record $26.9 billion, up 5 percent from $25.607 billion in 2015.
Remittances are the largest source of foreign exchange income for the country, helping insulate the domestic economy from external shocks by ensuring the steady supply of dollars into the system.
These cash transfers are also a major driver for domestic consumption, which contributes to robust economic growth. SFM
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LUCKNOW: Close on the heels of renaming the iconic Mughalsarai railway station after Bharatiya Jana Sangh cofounder Deendayal Upadhyay, the Yogi Adityanath government has approached the Centre for its approval to rename three airports—those in Bareilly, Agra and Kanpur.
Of these, the Agra airport is also proposed to be named after Updahyaya. The Bareilly airport is proposed to be named ‘Nath Nagri’ airport. Nath Nagri is believed to be an ancient name of the city for its history of having ardent worshippers of Lord Shiva—a feature closely associated with the Nath sect, to which Yogi belongs. Kanpur’s Chakeri airport is proposed to be named after freedom fighter Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi .
“We have reached out to the Centre to get the airports renamed,” UP civil aviation minister Nand Gopal Nandi said
| {
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DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke is investigating whether an NCAA recruiting rule was violated when coach Mike Krzyzewski reportedly offered a scholarship to a recruit during a summer tournament.
Forward Alex Poythress told CBSSports.com that Krzyzewski spoke to him earlier this week while he was in Orlando, Fla., for a tournament with his AAU team, the Georgia Stars, and offered him a scholarship.
NCAA rules prevent coaches from contacting recruits before they are finished playing in tournaments.
Duke spokesman Jon Jackson said in a statement Saturday that the school is gathering facts and that "proper adherence to NCAA bylaws has always been, and will continue to be, a cornerstone of Duke Athletics."
Poythress is a 6-foot-7 forward from Clarksville, Tenn. He is considered one of the nation's top high school seniors. | {
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On Channel 4 News, scientists have found a new treatment for Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. "A study in the Lancet today shows a drug injected weekly for three months appears to have reduced the symptoms" they say. "While it's not a cure, it does appear to reduce the symptoms."
Unfortunately, the study shows no such thing. The gene for making a muscle protein called dystrophin is damaged in patients with DMD. The Lancet paper shows a new treatment led to some restoration of dystrophin production in some children in a small unblinded study.
That's not the same as symptoms improving. But Channel 4 reiterates its case, with the mother of two participants in the study. "I think for Jack … it maintained his mobility … with Tom, there's definitely significant changes … more energy, he's less fatigued."
Where did these positive anecdotes come from? Disappointingly, they come from the Great Ormond Street Hospital press release (which was tracked down online by evidence-based policy wonk Evan Harris). It summarises the dystrophin results accurately, but then, once more, they present an anecdotal case study going way further: "Our whole family noticed a marked difference in their quality of life and mobility over that period. We feel it helped prolong Jack's mobility and Tom has been considerably less fatigued."
There are two issues here. Firstly, anecdotes are a great communication tool, but only when they accurately illustrate the data. The anecdotes here plainly go beyond that. Great Ormond Street deny this is problematic (though they have changed their press release online). I strongly disagree (and this is, of course, not the first time an academic press release has been suboptimal).
But this story is also a reminder that we should always be cautious with "surrogate" outcomes. The biological change measured was important, and good grounds for optimism, because it shows the treatment is doing what it should in the body. But things that work in theory do not always work in practice, and while a measurable biological indicator is a hint something is working, such outcomes can often be misleading.
Examples are easy to find, and from some of the biggest diseases in medicine. The Allhat (Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial) was vast, comparing various blood pressure drugs. One part compared 9,000 patients on doxazosin against 15,000 on chlorthalidone. Both were known to lower blood pressure, and people assumed they would also lower the risk of real-world outcomes, such as stroke and heart attack.
But patients on doxazosin turned out to have a higher risk of stroke, and cardiovascular problems, than patients on chlorthalidone – even though both lowered blood pressure – to such an extent that the trial was stopped early. Blood pressure, in this case, was not a reliable surrogate outcome for assessing the drug's benefits on real-world outcomes.
This is not an isolated example. In the treatment of diabetes, HbA1c is often monitored, as it is an indicator of blood glucose levels over the preceding few weeks. Many drugs, such as rosiglitazone, have been licensed on the grounds they reduce your HbA1c level. But this, again, is just a surrogate outcome: what we really care about in diabetes are real-world outcomes such as heart attacks and death. And when these were finally measured, it turned out rosiglitazone, while lowering HbA1c levels effectively, massively increased your risk of heart attack. (It has now been suspended.)
So improvements on surrogate biological outcomes that can be measured in the body are a strong hint that something works – and I hope this new DMD treatment does turn out to be effective – but even in the most well-established surrogate measures, and drugs, these endpoints can turn out to be misleading. People writing press releases, and shepherding misleading patient anecdotes into our living rooms, might want to bear that in mind. | {
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Here are some screenshots from tonight’s conference regarding new titles for the PS4
Killzone: Shadowfall
Deep Down:
The Witness:
InFamous: Second Son
Driveclub: | {
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WASHINGTON — Nearly the entire Democratic presidential field will be stopping by the Iowa State Fair (and its famed fried foods and Butter Cow) over the next few days.
It’s a good reminder that — no matter what’s going on at a national level — it will be Iowa Democrats who deliver the first real results of the 2020 election when they caucus on February 3.
Here’s what we know about the landscape in Iowa so far (with more than 175 days to go).
Joe Biden leads, but Elizabeth Warren is gaining ground fast: A new Monmouth poll of Iowa out yesterday showed Biden still leading among likely caucus-goers at 28 percent support, and Warren jumping by double digits into second place at 19 percent. Harris is third at 11 percent, with Sanders slipping to fourth at 9 percent. Obviously, it’s just a single poll, but it mirrors what we’ve seen in national surveys lately, too: Biden is holding steady after the first two debates, and Warren is closing the gap and enjoying the highest favorability rating in the field.
Cory Booker is leading the endorsement race: Per our team on the ground in Iowa (NBC’s Maura Barrett, Priscilla Thompson and Ethan MacCumber), Cory Booker has the support of more than 40 Iowa elected officials and key activists, leading the rest of the pack by a pretty comfortable margin. But that backing hasn’t yet translated into statewide polling yet; the Monmouth poll found him with just one percent support.
Kamala Harris and Tom Steyer are going big on ads early: As NBC’s Deepa Shivaram reported yesterday, Kamala Harris is the first top-tier candidate to hit the TV airwaves in Iowa, reserving close to $200,000 for a 60-second ad running until August 14. According to the ad trackers at Advertising Analytics, the only other candidate with future TV time scheduled is Tom Steyer, who’s booked $386,000 through early next week. And the only other candidate who’s spent significantly on TV time so far in the state is John Delaney.
The candidates spending the most time on the ground in Iowa aren’t necessarily seeing dividends — yet: Our Iowa team also reports that the candidate who’s appeared at the most individual events in Iowa (over 170!) is Delaney —although he’s been in the race since summer 2017, more than a year before any other candidates. Also toward the top of the list are Beto O’Rourke (at least 67 individual events), Andrew Yang (66) and Amy Klobuchar (56). But so far, none of those candidates are seeing that time translated into a top-tier spot in polls.
The virtual caucus is still a big question mark: This cycle, for the first time, the Iowa Democratic Party will host six virtual caucuses, which means that participants won’t have to go in person to their designated caucus sites. But so far, it seems that voters aren’t sure at all how the process will work, and campaigns are still trying to figure out how to target those who might participate. (Not to mention it’s also a big challenge for pollsters trying to get their samples right.)
A word of caution: Reading into Iowa polls this early might turn out to be just spinning our wheels, so take it all with a Butter Cow-sized grain of salt.
Hillary Clinton’s dominance in 2016 Iowa polling wasn’t seriously in question until two months before the caucuses; the last Iowa GOP winner, Ted Cruz, mostly ran behind Donald Trump in public polling all the way until the caucus; and 2012 caucus winner Rick Santorum didn’t lead in a single Iowa poll in the run-up to his victory.
What’s next on guns?
It’s looking more clear that there’s sufficient pressure on the White House and Congress to pass some kind of gun legislation.
But what shape that takes is still a big unknown — and it pretty much comes down to the president.
During an interview on a Kentucky radio program, Mitch McConnell signaled that he’s open to considering background check legislation along with possible “red flag” bills, acknowledging that “there is a lot of support for that.” And he said this: “[W]hat we can't do is fail to pass something. By just locking up, and failing to pass, that's unacceptable.”
Meanwhile, Trump tweeted this morning that “Serious discussions are taking place between House and Senate leadership on meaningful Background Checks.” And/but: He also acknowledged that he’s been talking to the NRA, which made clear again yesterday where it stands on this.
(One thing about the NRA worth noting: With their current financial problems, this is probably a fight that they want — to fire up their members and reengage their donors.)
At the end of the day, whatever Trump’s willing to sign is what Republicans will try to do on the Hill. And the fact that they’re open to discussing background checks at all shows just how much pressure they’re feeling.
By the way, the White House is set to meet today with officials from tech companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter to discuss the rise of extremism online. But as the Washington Post writes, there’s lots of skepticism that the president’s taking that effort all that seriously.
Confronting corruption is a winning 2020 issue. But neither party has it locked down.
Concern about political corruption may not be a central issue every day on the 2020 campaign trail, but it’s a thread that runs through Democratic candidates’ criticisms of Trump’s business dealings, their lamenting of money in politics, and their rejection of super PACs.
And it’s still sort of a talking point for Trump, whose “Drain the Swamp” call resonated with swing voters in 2016. (Although we wonder what those voters think of his recent comments about a potential commutation for former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.)
So… who’s winning on this issue for 2020?
Democratic-affiliated group End Citizens United argues that neither party has won the argument with voters.
A poll of likely 2020 voters in 12 battleground states, conducted by Global Strategy Group on behalf of End Citizens United, found that “cracking down on political corruption” was a top priority for 83 percent of voters — right up there with health care affordability. But here’s how a series of messages tested when it came to which party is more trusted to take on the problem:
“Cracking down on political corruption”z
30% trust Democratic presidential candidates more
31% trust Trump more
39% neither/don’t know
“Limiting the influence of money in politics”
27% trust Democratic candidates more
26% trust Trump more
47% neither/don’t know
“Draining ‘the swamp’ in Washington”
27% trust Democratic candidates more
35% trust Trump more
38% neither/don’t know
That’s sure a lot of “pox on both their houses” voters — or at least ones who aren’t confident that the Democratic field is addressing this issue adequately.
But if one party can win over voters on this between now and November, it could make a significant difference up and down the ballot box.
Tweet of the Day
Joe Biden in Iowa: “We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it. Poor kids are just as bright, just as talented, as white kids." He quickly added, "Wealthy kids, black kids, Asian kids, no I really mean it”https://t.co/LFWwbax6uB — Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) August 9, 2019
2020 Vision: Up on the soapbox
It will be a busy few days at the Iowa State Fair, with almost all of the 2020 candidates making speeches at the famed Soapbox. (Biden and Steve Bullock spoke there yesterday.)
Today, it’s Julian Castro (10am ET), Andrew Yang (11:30am ET), John Delaney (1pm ET), Marianne Williamson (2:30pm ET) and Tulsi Gabbard (3:15pm ET).
And tomorrow, it’s Jay Inslee (10am ET), Kamala Harris (11:30am ET), Amy Klobuchar (1:45pm ET), Joe Sestak (2:30pm ET), Kirsten Gillibrand (3:15pm ET), John Hickenlooper (4pm ET), Elizabeth Warren (4:45pm ET) and Cory Booker (5:30pm ET).
And Sunday, it’s Republican Bill Weld (12:15pm ET), Tom Steyer (2:30pm), Michael Bennet (4pm ET), Bernie Sanders (4:45pm ET) and Bill de Blasio (5:30pm ET).
Pete Buttigieg and Seth Moulton also appear there next week.
On the campaign trail
Today: Aside from the fair, most of the other candidates campaign throughout Iowa as well… And at 6pm ET, Biden, Booker, Bullock, Castro, Delaney, Gillibrand, Harris, Hickenlooper, Klobuchar, Warren and Sanders all appear at the Democratic Wing Ding Dinner in Clear Lake, IA.
Saturday: Other than the state fair festivities… nine candidates are slated to speak at a gun reform town hall in Des Moines — Warren, Sanders, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, Inslee, Castro, Biden and Harris.
Dispatches from NBC’s embeds
While in Iowa, Sen. Elizabeth Warren was asked what would happen to individuals who are working in the private insurance industry under her Medicare for All plan, NBC’s Benjamin Pu reports: “Warren said that some people would be hired by the federal government to help administer the Medicare for all program, saying: ‘A lot of pieces to move but we can make it work.’”
Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Sen. Booker and Gov. Bill Weld addressed black journalists in Miami. NBC’s Gary Grumbach reports: “Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was received warmly by the crowd of journalists here at NABJ. Sanders was clearly in a good mood, joking around with event moderators including NBC’s Craig Melvin about the always awkward ‘do I sit or stand while answering questions’ decision. … Even thought it was a room of journalists, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker was a clear favorite, receiving numerous rounds of applause for lines on criminal justice reform and white supremacy.”
Data Download: The number of the day is… nine
Nine.
That’s the number of Democratic candidates who appear to have qualified for the September debate — so far — after yesterday’s Monmouth University Iowa poll gave Andrew Yang the support he needed to make the cut.
The others who have qualified to date, per a tally by NBC’s Ben Kamisar: Joe Biden, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
Reminder: In order to qualify, candidates need to hit 2 percent in at least four qualifying polls, and they have to raise money from 130,000 unique donors.
The Lid: Fried food til the (butter) cows come home
Don’t miss the pod from yesterday, when we looked at the colorful political history — and cuisine — of the Iowa State Fair.
ICYMI: News clips you shouldn’t miss
Joseph Maguire, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, will serve as the acting director of national intelligence rather than deputy DNI Sue Gordon, who’s resigning.
Former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe is suing the agency and DOJ, saying his firing was political.
Bill Clinton is calling on lawmakers to reinstate the assault weapons ban.
What would a law that covers “domestic terrorism” look like?
NBC’s Alex Seitz-Wald reports that allies of “The Squad” are preparing to get primary challenges.
Trump Agenda: Vacation nation
ICE officials didn’t inform the White House about the Mississippi immigration raids before they began.
How interested is the president — really — in background check legislation?
Trump is headed to a 10-day vacation at his Bedminster golf club.
An armed Trump supporter was detained and released after showing up outside a community center for immigrants in El Paso.
The president complains he hasn’t gotten help from the Fed on the economy. The New York Times says that’s not the case.
2020: Rockin’ the suburbs
Suburban voters in red states are becoming a huge threat to the GOP’s grip on even its bedrock states.
One way to tell if gun violence will sway the 2020 races? The Virginia elections THIS November.
Elizabeth Warren is doubling down on calling Trump a ‘white nationalist.’
In a private memo, the DCCC says it’s still fighting hard in the NC-9 special election.
POLITICO Magazine reports on how Kamala Harris used San Francisco’s big-money scene to build her political career. | {
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Hollywood Studios! We’ve already shared our photos of the transformation of Toy Story Land for the season — complete with a 10-foot-tall cookie! Now we have photos of the rest of the park decked out in its holiday best!
Even though it’s still in the 80s here in Florida, Disney has managed to infuse some traditional “snowy” scenes around the park.
These holiday helpers look like they are up to no good — wonder if they’re on Santa’s naughty list this year?
Meanwhile, these candy cane parasol toting girls look like they definitely should be on Santa’s nice list!
We are also treated the most festive pink poodles we’ve ever seen! I swear my grandmother had these, or something very similar, as knickknacks when I was a little girl!
How about this for a creative way to decorate a sun umbrella?
Hollywood and Vine, the home of Minnie’s Holiday Dine this season, is all decked out on the restaurant’s deck.
On Hollywood Boulevard you’ll find the return of the always popular Minnie ornament window at the 5 & 10 shop.
We always enjoy this view of Hollywood Boulevard and the Chinese Theater.
On Sunset Boulevard you’ll find stars on the lamps and 21 palm trees dressed up with programmable, color changing LED lights!
Rosie’s All-American Cafe is also ready for Christmas. Plus, this is where you can pick up some holiday-time only treats: a Spiced Chocolate Verrine, Prep and Landing Gingerbread Cupcake, and Frozen Hot Cocoa.
You’ll find decorations — and special guests all around the park!
Be sure to stay in the park to see the Christmas Tree on Echo Lake lit up — and watch Sunset Seasons Greetings on Sunset Boulevard!
On your way in or out of the park be sure to stop by the Sorcerer Mickey Topiary and take a close look at the “water” bucket the brooms are emptying!
We have always enjoyed this park during the holidays and are really excited about the addition of Toy Story Land to the holiday fun! Are you going to be in Hollywood Studios this season? What are you looking forward to seeing most here? Let us know in the comments below!
For more ideas of what to see and do this holiday season, be sure to check out our Ultimate Guide to Having a Happy Holiday at Disney World!
Subscribe to the AllEars® newsletter so you don’t miss any exciting Disney news!
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STAR West Coast forward Jack Darling has avoided a long spell on the sidelines but will be out of action for between four-to-six weeks after suffering a hairline fracture and ligament damage to his ankle against St Kilda.
Darling looked in serious trouble when he crumpled to the ground after landing on Saints defender Logan Austin's foot in a marking contest during the first term of Saturday night's 13-point win at Optus Stadium.
"After initially fearing the worst, we’ve received some reasonably positive news from our doctors, all things considered," general manager of football Craig Vozzo said.
"He’ll be out for probably a four-to-six-week period, so factoring in the bye he hopefully won’t miss too much football.
"Jack is a real professional in how he approaches all facets of his football, so we’ve got every confidence that’ll he’ll be back sooner rather than later."
While the 25-year-old's injury is not as severe as initially suspected, it is still a blow for the League-leading Eagles, who face a tough stretch after their bye.
West Coast travels to take on top-four rival Sydney next before facing Essendon (Optus), the Crows (Adelaide Oval), Giants (Optus) and Collingwood (MCG).
Darling's career-best form has been a major factor in West Coast's surge to 10-straight wins, with the maturing big man sitting third in the Coleman Medal race (28 goals) and leading the competition for contested marks (31).
The Eagles could turn to their top pick in last year's NAB AFL Draft, mobile tall Jarrod Brander, to replace Darling.
However, high-flying Liam Ryan is also a chance to return against the Swans after his long-term ankle injury and West Coast could field a smaller forward line with Jake Waterman shuffled into a role as a tall marking target.
Speaking after the Saints win, coach Adam Simpson said the Eagles would rely heavily on spearhead Josh Kennedy to cover Darling's loss.
Kennedy bagged six goals in a match-winning display against St Kilda and is building his form after pre-season ankle surgery.
"He missed all pre-season, so we've been really cautious about his minutes and I'm really glad he's getting more and more like himself," Simpson said.
"Jack's been holding up his end of the bargain with JK coming back. Now we're going to have to lean on Josh." | {
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Question
There is a Donut shop in Canada popularly known as Tim Hortons. This shop sells donuts, pastries, coffee, tea and a variety of other foods and hot beverages. Recently, some Muslim brothers had seen me drinking one of their hot beverages; a type of flavored coffee/cappuccino popularly known as a “French Vanilla”. The brothers approached me and told me that there is an alcohol product in this drink and advised me not to purchase this drink again due to the fact that there was alcohol in it. At first I was skeptical, but then I thought I should call Tim Horton’s head office to verify whether this claim was true or not. Upon speaking to a representative at Tim Horton’s head office that specifically deals with ingredients in their products I found out the following, as directly stated by the representative without any hesitation:
1. All of their hot beverages except regular coffee and tea products contain ethyl alcohol which is an ingredient within the artificial ingredients section of these drinks. They further stated that there is a high probability that the ethyl alcohol in these drinks is not evaporated and that one who drinks them is likely consuming the ethyl alcohol.
2. All of their pastries including muffins, strudels, croissants, turnovers etc… contain ethyl alcohol as an ingredient within the artificial ingredients section of these products. They further stated that most if not all of the ethyl alcohol in these pastries is evaporated as a result of the baking process
3. All of the fillings in their donuts contain ethyl alcohol as part of the artificial ingredients section of these filling. They further stated that the ethyl alcohol in the fillings is definitely present upon consumption because no baking or heating occurs to the filling since they are injected into the donuts after the donuts have been baked.
The following is a list of questions I had:
1.Is Ethyl Alcohol permissible or impermissable to consume?
2. In the situation where ethyl alcohol is not permissible to consume – does it make a difference regarding how much of this alcohol is in the product (i.e. if it is in very small amounts in the product can one still consume the product). If small amounts are permissible how much is considered a “small amount” (i.e. after what amount does it become impermissible to consume this product).
3. In the situation where ethyl alcohol is not permissible to consume – does is make a difference if it has evaporated from the product or not? If one knows for certain that it has evaporated can one consume the product it was originally put in. What if one is not certain if “all” of the alcohol has been evaporated and there is a chance that there may be some trace amounts in the product – can we consume this product at this point?
4. As a general question: is it permissible to consume any of these products based on the ingredients and the conditions of the state of the ingredients listed above?
Answer
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
As-salāmu ‘alaykum wa-rahmatullāhi wa-barakātuh.
According to the principles of Hanafi Madhab, the prohibition of Khamr is restricted to the alcohol derived from grapes [and dates]. Those alcohols derived from non date and grape sources are permissible for consumption provided that:
It is not used for intoxication. It is not used in vain for futility. It is not used to such a level which intoxicates.
The alcohol (ethanol) used in most of commercial products in our times is not derived from dates and grapes. Hence consumption of such non-khamr alcohol is permissible when used within the bounds of above conditions.
With the above guidelines in mind, your question refers:
Ethyl Alcohol (ethanol) is the base intoxicating chemical. It can be derived either through fermentation of grapes, dates or other glucose rich sources. It can even be made synthetically. The ruling of ethyl alcohol will depend on its source. If it is derived from grapes or dates, then its consumption will be strictly haram (prohibited). While, if it is derived from non grapes or non date source, then it’s consumption will be permissible as long as the conditions are met.
The above will apply to all the products of Tim Hortons.
Since Tim Hortons facilities also provide other products which are from haram sources, I would also caution you to keep a lookout for cross contamination in these stores.
And Allah Ta’āla Knows Best
Mufti Faisal bin Abdul Hameed al-Mahmudi
Darul Iftaa wal Irshaad, Montreal
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Pensioni, lo scenario. Macché APE social: lavoreremo fino a 70 anni. Pensioni news choc
Drammatico scenario per le pensioni. In pensione a 70 anni e forse oltre o condannati a ricevere assegni previdenziali minimi. Sulle pensioni ecco l'analisi del World economic forum secondo cui il gap pensionistico (tra contributi versati e prestazioni) nei principali sei sistemi pensionistici occidentali più Cina e India passerà dai 70mila miliardi di dollari del 2015 a 400mila miliardi nel 2050. Una crescita esponenziale legata a doppio filo all'incremento dell'aspettativa di vita.
Pensioni, APE social? Precoci? Macché: lavoreremo fino a 70 anni. Pensioni news choc
Secondo le stime dell'organizzazione - che si basano su un assegno pensionistico del 70% dell'ultima retribuzione - i sei più grandi sistemi pensionistici del mondo (Stati Uniti, Regno Unito, Giappone, Olanda, Canada e Australia) registreranno un gap di 224mila miliardi, mentre il resto riguarderà sostanzialmente Cina e India. Questa prospettiva dovrebbe determinare, quindi, un buco pari a 300mila dollari a persona nel 2050, tutto a carico degli Stati, dei dipendenti e dei datori di lavoro.
PENSIONI: APE SOCIAL, SCADE IL 15 LUGLIO TERMINE DOMANDE. RIFORMA PENSIONI NEWS
Andranno presentate entro il 15 luglio le domande per l'Ape social di chi matura i requisiti previsti. E' quanto indica il decreto attuativo firmato dal presidente del Consiglio, Paolo Gentiloni. Il provvedimento prevede che verranno però considerate anche le richieste arrivate dopo la scadenza e che verranno soddisfatte limitatamente nel caso avanzassero fondi. Chi raggiungerà i requisiti nel corso del 2018 avrà invece tempo per presentare la domanda fino al 31 marzo dell'anno prossimo.
Pensioni, APE SOCIAL E NON SOLO: Renzi, presto quattordicesima per pensioni minime
"Prossimamente in arrivo la quattordicesima per le Pensioni minime, come da risorse stanziate in Legge di Bilancio". Lo scrive su Facebook il segretario del Pd, Matteo Renzi.
PENSIONI APE SOCIAL E APE PRECOCI: RENZI, "OTTIMO LAVORO GENTILONI, ALTRA PROMESSA MANTENUTA". ANTICIPO PENSIONISTICO SVOLTA
"Ottimo lavoro, Presidente! Un'altra promessa mantenuta. Passo dopo passo". Così Matteo Renzi su Twitter commenta la firma del premier Paolo Gentiloni sui decreti per l'anticipo pensionistico.
Pensioni APE SOCIAL domande al 15 luglio. APE E PRECOCI, RIFORMA PENSIONI NEWS
Migliaia di persone potranno anticipare i tempi della pensione con i decreti su Ape social e Ape precoci firmati dal premier Paolo Gentiloni. Le domande per l'accesso all'anticipo pensionistico sociale con i requisiti raggiunti entro il 2017 andranno presentate entro il 15 luglio. Chi raggiunge i requisiti nel 2018 dovrà fare domanda entro il 31 marzo 2018.
PENSIONI APE SOCIAL LE NOVITA' DELLA RIFOMA PENSIONI
Riguardo l'Ape social, il provvedimento è un'indennità di natura assistenziale a carico dello Stato erogata dall'Inps a soggetti in stato di bisogno che abbiano compiuto almeno 63 anni di età e che non siano già titolari di pensione diretta. L'indennità è corrisposta fino al raggiungimento dell'età prevista per la pensione (di vecchiaia o anticipata). Il beneficio dell'Ape social è riconosciuto nel limite 300 milioni di euro per il 2017, 609 milioni di euro per il 2018, 647 milioni di euro per il 2019, 462 milioni di euro per il 2020, 280 milioni di euro per il 2021, 83 milioni di euro per il 2022 e 8 milioni di euro per il 2023.
PENSIONI APE SOCIAL MISURA SPERIMENTALE
L'Ape social, evidenzia una nota, è una misura sperimentale (fino al 31 dicembre 2018) intesa ad agevolare la transizione verso il pensionamento per soggetti svantaggiati o in condizioni di disagio ed è soggetta a limiti di spesa.
PENSIONI APE SOCIAL PER I LAVORATORI DISOCCUPATI
La misura è rivolta ai lavoratori disoccupati che hanno finito gli ammortizzatori sociali, ai lavoratori dipendenti e autonomi che assistono al momento della richiesta e da almeno sei mesi il coniuge o un parente di primo grado convivente con handicap in situazione di gravità, ai lavoratori dipendenti e autonomi che hanno una riduzione della capacità lavorativa superiore o uguale al 74%.
PENSIONI APE SOCIAL: LE CATEGORIE DI LAVORATORI
L'Ape social riguarda anche i lavoratori che svolgono da almeno sei anni in via continuativa una delle seguenti attività: operai dell'industria estrattiva, dell'edilizia e della manutenzione degli edifici; conduttori di gru o di macchinari mobili per la perforazione nelle costruzioni; conciatori di pelli e di pellicce; conduttori di convogli ferroviari e personale viaggiante; conduttori di mezzi pesanti e camion; personale delle professioni sanitarie infermieristiche e ostetriche ospedaliere con lavoro organizzato in turni; addetti all'assistenza personale di persone in condizioni di non autosufficienza; insegnanti della scuola dell'infanzia e educatori degli asili nido; facchini, addetti allo spostamento merci e assimilati; personale non qualificato addetto ai servizi di pulizia; operatori ecologici e altri raccoglitori e separatori di rifiuti. La platea per il provvedimento: 34.000 (2017), 43.000 (2018), 36.000 (2019), 23.000 (2020), 13.000 (2021) e 3.000.
PENSIONI APE PRECOCI: ECCO PER QUALI LAVORATORI
L'Ape precoci, invece, prevede la possibilità, per i lavoratori che hanno iniziato a lavorare prima del compimento dei 19 anni, di accedere con un requisito contributivo ridotto alla pensione anticipata. Il beneficio spetta ai lavoratori dipendenti e autonomi iscritti all'Assicurazione Generale Obbligatoria (Ago) e alle sue forme sostitutive ed esclusive, con almeno 12 mesi dicontribuzione per periodi di lavoro effettivo svolti prima del compimento del 19° anno di età e che sono nelle seguenti condizioni: lavoratori disoccupati che hanno finito gli ammortizzatori sociali; lavoratori dipendenti e autonomi che assistono al momento della richiesta e da almeno sei mesi il coniuge o un parente di primo grado convivente con handicap in situazione di gravità; lavoratori dipendenti e autonomi che hanno una riduzione della capacità lavorativa superiore o uguale al 74%. Stesse condizioni previste dall'Ape sociale riguardo l'Ape precoci per i lavoratori dipendenti addetti a lavori usuranti o che svolgono da almeno sei anni in via continuativa una delle seguenti attività. Le stime della spesa per l'Ape precoci sono 360 milioni (2017), 550 milioni (2018), 570 milioni (2019), 590 milioni ogni anno dal 2020 al 2026, mentre la platea è 20.000 (2107), 22.000 (2018), 24.000 (2019), 26.000 ogni anno dal 2020 al 2026. | {
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The scene at the Thunder Rapids ride after the accident. Credit:AAP On Wednesday, Queensland specialist engineers and scientific police turned their investigation to all aspects of the 30-year-old water ride, including machine components, maintenance logs, ride engineering and the theme park's policies and procedures. Lawyers say they are bracing for several lawsuits that may cripple the park's existence and exacerbate the massive hit looming for the Gold Coast's international tourism industry, which is heavily reliant on its theme parks. Fairfax Media has uncovered several claims of serious safety mishaps, including revelations that the Thunder River Rapids ride had malfunctioned twice in three days, leaving riders stranded for up to half an hour and raising questions over whether the amusement park ride, which opened in 1986, had passed its use-by date. Gold Coast nurse Teresa, who asked for her surname to be withheld, suffered bruises and rope burn on her arm when she was forced to catch her son mid-air at the end of the ride on March 19.
Three of the Dreamworld victims: partners Roozi Araghi and Luke Dorsett and Luke's sister Kate Goodchild – all Canberrans. Credit:Facebook "There is a point in the ride ... just before you go up the conveyor belt where you hit a rougher part of the water and you get a jolt," she said. "Sometimes that jolt makes you bounce off your seat. On this day we hit the water so hard that it forced my son up from his seat and his seat belt became undone. My friend and I caught him mid-air and put him back in his seat." She sent a complaint to Dreamworld the next day but never heard back. Dreamworld chief executive Craig Davidson and his employees leave flowers at the site on Wednesday. Credit:Glenn Hunt A Dreamworld spokeswoman didn't respond to her claims but said the ride passed its annual mechanical and structural safety inspection on September 29 and had been constantly upgraded since 1986.
As per regulations, this safety audit was conducted by a specialist external engineering firm," she said. Cindy Low, top right, was one of four people killed in a tragic accident at Dreamworld. Hundreds of patrons took to social media to defend their experience on the ride however they were peppered with alarming stories of near-misses from Tuesday. "We were on the ride about an hour before the accident and we were also on the ride last week," said Joelle Verfurth. "The ride today was faster than last week and the water levels higher." Locals grieve outside Dreamworld on Wednesday following Tuesday's fatalities. Credit:Glenn Hunt
Natalie O'Brien said: "It's weird, when we hit the conveyer belt to go up at the end of the ride today, there was a louder than normal bang, my son said that was unusual, but didn't think much of it at the time". It's understood the ride's conveyor belt broke on Sunday, leaving riders stuck for about 15 minutes. The ride broke down again on Tuesday morning and had to be drained and restarted. The Australian Workers' Union Queensland secretary Ben Swan said he raised concerns over safety issues 18 months ago but Dreamworld chose to ignore them. The complaints related to operational and mechanical faults on other rides but Tuesday's incident would "categorically ... not come as a surprise" to management, he said. On Wednesday, Dreamworld chief executive Craig Davidson was among those who laid flowers on the entrance wall.
Tributes grew up to a 100 metres long for Canberra mother Kate Goodchild, her Canberra-based brother Luke Dorsett, Mr Dorsett's partner Roozi Araghi and an unrelated holidayer, New Zealand-born Sydney mother Cindy Low. Ms Low, who was holidaying with family and friends, made the tragic decision to take the ride without her husband Mathew and six-year-old daughter Isla who said they were now suffering "intense grief". Her 10-year-old son Kieran was in the raft along with Ms Goodchild's 13-year-old daughter who were both deeply traumatised but uninjured. The mother of Ms Goodchild and Mr Dorsett also despaired at losing her two children, both Department of Human Services employees. "I have three children and have lost two of them today – my whole family has been wiped out," Kim Dorsett told News Corp.
Federal senator Sam Dastyari was one of many to pay tribute to Mr Araghi, an Australian Bureau of Statistics worker and pop music lover whose family helped the Dastyaris to migrate to Sydney. "I'm devastated that such a caring, loving, sweet and sensitive friend has been lost. I'm angry that this could happen at a venue like Dreamworld," he said. | {
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Diamond Long loves to jerking off her massive cock. This POV proves it again. Have fun and enjoy! Really hot black tranny who knows what you guys loves! | {
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Obama urges Israel end occupation and Palestinians accept Israel
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Not Israel, but the Arabs are responsible for “altering the demographic composition” of the West Bank by ethnically cleansing the area of Jews in 1948, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, continuing his aggressive rhetoric against Friday’s anti-settlement resolution at the UN.“The anti-Israel resolution that just passed in the UN Security Council is based on the argument that Israel is ‘altering the demographic composition’ of Judea and Samaria,” Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page Tuesday.“The United Nations has consistently ignored the fact that Jews were ethnically cleansed from these territories in 1948, which is why there were no Jews in the area until after 1967.”The resolution, supported by 14 nations on the 15-nation Security Council, with the US abstaining but allowing it to pass by not using its veto, condemned “all measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including east Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements, transfer of Israeli settlers, confiscation of land, demolition of homes and displacement of Palestinian civilians, in violation of international humanitarian law and relevant resolutions.”Netanyahu pointed out that in 1929, it was the Arabs who massacred the Jews in Hebron; that in 1948, Jews were expelled and murdered in Gush Etzion, Kalya (near the Dead Sea) and Atarot, north of Jerusalem.“The Arab Legion also ethnically cleansed the Jews who were living in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, and then blew up all of the synagogues there,” he wrote. “Not a single Jew remained in any of the territories conquered by the invading Arabs in 1948. The reaction of the United Nations to this reality? Silence.”Pointing out that the League of Nations in 1922 ratified the Balfour Declaration that “awarded national rights to the Jewish people – and only the Jewish people – in the Land of Israel,” Netanyahu said that this was later adopted by the UN and “is a binding document under international law that defines the international legal status of the Land of Israel.”The UN has no legal justification for its resolution on Friday, he wrote, “only ignorance and malice.”Jerusalem, meanwhile, continued to take measures to express its displeasure with the 14 countries that supported the resolution, with Israel’s envoy to Angola, Oren Rozenblat, delivering a letter to the Foreign Ministry in Angola announcing that Jerusalem was terminating Israel’s international development programs with the country. While the immediate effect is insignificant, since currently only one Angolan student was due to attend a program in Israel, Foreign Ministry officials said there are a number of projects in the future that have now been frozen. The official did not say until when this policy toward Angola would be in effect. According to the official, Israel was especially disappointed by the Angola vote, since the country had informed Israel previously that it would abstain.The steps against Angola were the latest in a string that Netanyahu initiated in response to the resolution, including recalling Israel’s ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand; summoning in for protest the ambassadors and representatives of all the UN Security Council states; canceling the scheduled visit on Wednesday of the Ukrainian prime minister; and calling on his ministers to curtail visits to the 14 Security Council states that voted for the measure.While Netanyahu did not continue his sharp criticism of the US on Tuesday, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman Avi Dichter (Likud) repeated Israel’s claims that the US orchestrated the vote.“A delegation from the Palestinian Authority met with the [US] secretary of state 10 days before the resolution, including Saeb Erekat, [PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s] personal adviser and the head of their security apparatus,” Dichter told Israel Radio. “In addition, the American ambassador to the UN met with the Palestinian ambassador.”Though the Egyptians pulled their resolution, the US “did not remain a widower” and found other countries to do the job, he added, referring to Cairo’s last-minute decision to retract the resolution Thursday under apparent pressure from US President-elect Donald Trump. Senegal, New Zealand, Malaysia and Venezuela then dusted off the proposal and brought it for a vote the very next day.Israel’s Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer told CNN on Monday that Israel has clear evidence that the US was behind the move, and that this evidence would be presented to President- elect Donald Trump when he takes office on January 20.But Dov Weisglass, who served as former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s chief of staff, expressed doubt over claims that the US was secretly behind the resolution.“In my eyes, it is rudeness when an ambassador dares to poke his nose into the US decision-making apparatus,” Weisglass said of Dermer’s assertion.“I would like to see what this evidence is,” he said in an Army Radio interview. “I think that this resolution was not at all unexpected, it is the traditional position of the administration.I don’t believe that the administration initiated the resolution,” Weisglass said.“To expect the administration to veto a resolution with a text in line with the US position over the last 50 years – there is a limit to how much they can appear to work in the service of Israel at any price and in all circumstances, including to use a veto on a position that is their own clearly stated position,” he added.Weisglass characterized the response Netanyahu has taken against the countries that voted for the resolution as “ridiculous.”“The attempt to create symmetry between us and the rest of the world and to punish the 14 countries that voted against us is actually making the Palestinian dream of isolating Israel internationally into reality,” he said.Summoning of ambassadors to be reprimanded was a display of “rudeness” on Netanyahu’s part, he claimed. “To summon foreign ambassadors on a Sunday, especially on Christmas, is simply an elementary lack of manners. I think these reprimands are making people laugh in the foreign embassies involved. Even Senegal is not scared.”He said that these steps were intended to please Netanyahu’s own political base at home.Lahav Harkov and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report. | {
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Dieta à base de ração é opção mais saudável para os animais
Rosely Pereira
A carne crua, cada vez mais usada como base da alimentação de cães, aumenta o risco de contaminação, por bactérias, tanto dos próprios animais quanto das pessoas que convivem com eles no ambiente doméstico. Pesquisa inédita, realizada no Departamento de Medicina Veterinária Preventiva da UFMG, identificou, além da Salmonella spp, a presença das bactérias Escherichia coli patogênicas e Clostridium difficile nas fezes de cães que se alimentam de carne crua. Segundo o professor Rodrigo Otávio Silveira Silva, coordenador da pesquisa, esses patógenos apresentam potencial para causar infecções em humanos, e os efeitos vão desde diarreia até distúrbios sistêmicos graves, que podem levar à morte.
O estudo, que contou com participação da doutoranda Carolina Pantuzza Ramos e da graduanda e pesquisadora de iniciação científica Flávia Viegas, também revelou, pela primeira vez no Brasil, o perfil de 400 tutores de cães e o que eles pensam sobre a alimentação de seus animais. Os entrevistados, moradores de Belo Horizonte e da Região Metropolitana, foram divididos em dois grupos: o dos que oferecem ração para os cães e o dos que servem carne crua como base da dieta de seus animais.
Os dados, surpreendentes na avaliação do professor, revelaram que 70% das pessoas que oferecem carne crua aos seus cachorros o fazem por acreditar que é um alimento mais natural. Destes, 80% não veem risco de contaminação para o cão, e 95% acreditam não haver risco para humanos. “Percebemos que essa opção é baseada em uma questão filosófica, mas não tem fundamentação científica. As pessoas confundem, acham que os cães são carnívoros, mas não são. Desde que foram domesticados, há mais de 10 mil anos, suas enzimas do trato gastrointestinal sofreram alterações. Eles ainda precisam ingerir mais proteínas, mas só a carne crua traz riscos. A própria Associação Mundial de Veterinários de Pequenos Animais e o Centro de Controle de Prevenção de Doenças (CDC), dos Estados Unidos, já alertaram para os riscos dessa dieta”, afirma o professor Rodrigo Silveira.
O assunto é abordado na reportagem de capa da edição 2.069 do Boletim UFMG, que circula nesta semana apenas na versão digital, e pela TV UFMG. | {
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Speaking from Dharamsala, India, American Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams told reporters that the event in South Africa had been cancelled and shifted to another venue, to be announced. Williams is in Dharamsala with Shirin Ebadi of Iran, a fellow laureate, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his 1989 award (live stream available here) on October 2nd.
“We feel proud that the summit has been cancelled after we lodged a protest over denial of visa to the Dalai Lama,” she said. “Even other Nobel laureates have lodged their protest over the issue,” according to OneIndiaNews:
Williams, Ebadi, Leymah Gbowee of Liberia and a representative of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) have announced they were pulling out of the summit which was to be held Oct 13-15. “The Dalai Lama advocates a non-violent, negotiated solution to the Tibet problem — what he calls ‘the middle-way approach’ — and is calling for real autonomy for Tibet under Chinese sovereignty,” a Nobel Women’s Initiative statement said. The Nobel Women’s Initiative is led by Nobel Peace laureates Williams, Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchu Tum, Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman and Mairead Maguire. It said the decision to cancel the scheduled trip “follows South Africa’s refusal to issue a visa to the Dalai Lama for the Nobel peace laureates in Cape Town, and China’s public declaration of thanks for South Africa’s decision to block the spiritual leader from entering South Africa”. Fourteen Nobel Peace laureates had also urged South African President Jacob Zuma to allow the Dalai Lama to visit South Africa. In a letter to Zuma, they said they were “deeply concerned about the damage that will be done to South Africa’s international image by a refusal or failure to grant him a visa yet again”.
The Dalai Lama’s fortunes with world leaders seems to have waned in recent years, presumably due exclusively to rising Chinese pressure on foreign economies. To see more, check out this article, No One Likes the Dalai Lama Any More, which includes the following graph from Foreign Policy: Apparently, the Dalai Lama does still have at least a few friends. About the Dalai Lama’s silver anniversary celebration guests: | {
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Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1726
[email protected]
Guy Webster/Rhea Borja
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-6278/0850
[email protected], [email protected]
Lori Stiles
University of Arizona, Tucson
520-626-4402
[email protected]
Dwayne BrownHeadquarters, Washington202-358-1726Guy Webster/Rhea BorjaJet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.818-354-6278/0850Lori StilesUniversity of Arizona, Tucson520-626-4402
RELEASE : 08-284
Mars Phoenix Lander Finishes Successful Work on Red Planet
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander has ceased communications after operating for more than five months. As anticipated, seasonal decline in sunshine at the robot's arctic landing site is not providing enough sunlight for the solar arrays to collect the power necessary to charge batteries that operate the lander's instruments.Mission engineers last received a signal from the lander on Nov. 2. Phoenix, in addition to shorter daylight, has encountered a dustier sky, more clouds and colder temperatures as the northern Mars summer approaches autumn. The mission exceeded its planned operational life of three months to conduct and return science data.The project team will be listening carefully during the next few weeks to hear if Phoenix revives and phones home. However, engineers now believe that is unlikely because of the worsening weather conditions on Mars. While the spacecraft's work has ended, the analysis of data from the instruments is in its earliest stages."Phoenix has given us some surprises, and I'm confident we will be pulling more gems from this trove of data for years to come," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.Launched Aug. 4, 2007, Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to land on the Martian surface. The lander dug, scooped, baked, sniffed and tasted the Red Planet's soil. Among early results, it verified the presence of water-ice in the Martian subsurface, which NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter first detected remotely in 2002. Phoenix's cameras also returned more than 25,000 pictures from sweeping vistas to near the atomic level using the first atomic force microscope ever used outside Earth."Phoenix not only met the tremendous challenge of landing safely, it accomplished scientific investigations on 149 of its 152 Martian days as a result of dedicated work by a talented team," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.Phoenix's preliminary science accomplishments advance the goal of studying whether the Martian arctic environment has ever been favorable for microbes. Additional findings include documenting a mildly alkaline soil environment unlike any found by earlier Mars missions; finding small concentrations of salts that could be nutrients for life; discovering perchlorate salt, which has implications for ice and soil properties; and finding calcium carbonate, a marker of effects of liquid water.Phoenix findings also support the goal of learning the history of water on Mars. These findings include excavating soil above the ice table, revealing at least two distinct types of ice deposits; observing snow descending from clouds; providing a mission-long weather record, with data on temperature, pressure, humidity and wind; observations of haze, clouds, frost and whirlwinds; and coordinating with NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to perform simultaneous ground and orbital observations of Martian weather."Phoenix provided an important step to spur the hope that we can show Mars was once habitable and possibly supported life," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Phoenix was supported by orbiting NASA spacecraft providing communications relay while producing their own fascinating science. With the upcoming launch of the Mars Science Laboratory, the Mars Program never sleeps."The University of Arizona leads the Phoenix mission with project management at JPL and development partnership at Lockheed Martin Corporation in Denver. International contributions came from the Canadian Space Agency; the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland; the universities of Copenhagen and Aarhus in Denmark; the Max Planck Institute in Germany; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; and Imperial College of London.For additional information about Phoenix mission findings, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/phoenix
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One of my liveliest conversations during 2016 was over a barbecue dinner in Napa, California. Our host had averred that were Donald Trump to win, it would be because people in the middle of the country were too dumb to know better. It wasn’t the burgers that gave me indigestion.
He was, of course, indulging in an old cliché about American political life: that there are voters on the left and right coasts of the country who see one kind of future and everyone else in the middle who see another. You know, inhabitants of the “flyover states”. We see them from 37,000 feet but would absolutely prefer not to set foot in them unless it’s to visit, say, Aspen.
Maddening were the grotesque generalisations involved. Sorry to disabuse you, chum, but not everyone in New York or California is a progressive liberal! I also wanted to say that it was precisely this kind of condescension that was going to sink Hillary Clinton. And there was this radical thought: those people are American voters too and this is supposed to be one country.
We have a few things to report this week to suggest that on that last point I was being naive.
We will start with automobiles. Driving is driving; there is nothing different about being behind the wheel in California or Connecticut compared with Ohio or Oklahoma. The automobile experience is the same wherever you live, whichever political party you support. America, you might say, was stitched together by the railroads but has become united by cars and the highways they roll down.
Even that may soon cease to be a true statement. Scott Pruitt, in charge of environmental protection (or not) for Trump, is plotting to roll back the CO2 emission rules for cars put in place by former president Barack Obama. Suddenly, the spectre rises of America becoming two distinct markets for cars and trucks, one more or less green the other definitely dirty.
It is a future that even the car manufacturers are in two minds about. On the one hand, they will welcome the main thrust of what Pruitt is expected to announce this week: that the provisions put in place by Obama requiring that by 2025 all cars sold in the US must meet a standard of 54.5 miles per gallon, compared to 38.3mpg today, is just not achievable. On the other hand, they are afraid that Pruitt’s plan could mean the US market being cleaved in two for ever.
The reason for this division are the coasts. They won’t have it. California certainly won’t. The state has a special waiver granted to it by the 1970 Clean Air Act to set its own tough car emission ceilings. The Obama administration essentially toughened the federal standards to match those of California. But if Trump and Pruitt try to roll them back, California’s Democrat leaders will keep theirs in place. Xavier Becerra, the state attorney general, has already said so.
“We’re prepared to do everything we need to defend the process and the standards,” he told The New York Times. “We’re defending them because they’re good for the entire nation. No one should think it’s easy to undo something that’s been not just good for the country, but good for the planet.” California is a huge market all on its own. But 12 other states, mostly in the east and west, not in the middle, have historically followed California’s suit on emissions. Together they account for about a third of all the cars sold in the US.
Conservative forces are already urging Pruitt to try to force California to fall in line. He is primed. The state “shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be”, he told Bloomberg News. But California won’t give in easily. The upshot might be this: models on sale in showrooms in New York and in Missouri might soon be radically different in design, engineering and even weight.
But finally, more proof that the US is already two countries rather than one, its middle divorced from the outsides, came last week courtesy of Roseanne Barr and the revival by ABC of her late-Eighties sitcom co-starring John Goodman. The first episode of its return drew 18 million viewers, more than any comedy for the past four years. Barr is a Trump fan who plays one. And guess where all the viewers were – in the flyover states. It was huge in Kansas City, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. In New York and Los Angeles it didn’t make the top 20.
This was all by design. The day after Trump’s victory, ABC’s top brass gathered in Los Angeles and debated whether their programming executives had been too busy worrying about viewers on the coasts, liberals and progressives, and not enough about the heartland. “We looked at each other and said, ‘There’s a lot about this country we need to learn a lot more about, here on the coasts’,” Ben Sherwood, the president of Disney-ABC Television Group, revealed to The New York Times.
They were being smart, belatedly seeing what my Napa host failed to – and what Trump clearly saw when he was campaigning. There is another America, the bit in the middle, and it feels neglected.
Naturally, the President has been quick to salute Barr. “Look at Roseanne! Look at her ratings!” he told a union rally in Ohio. “They were unbelievable! Over 18 million people! And it was about us!” | {
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Sep 2nd, 2019
Sep 2nd, 2019
The Wests Tigers are in danger of losing star centre Esan Marsters next season.
The Kiwi Test ace is under contract for 2020 but has told those close to him he wants a release, with both the Cowboys and Bulldogs ready to swoop.
The 23-year-old, who played every game for the Tigers last season and was the club's top pointscorer, is a frustrated footballer.
Marsters is a specialist right side centre - although he has played some recent games on the left edge - and sees little football with the Tigers principally a team that attacks down the left side.
The strong centre is the Tigers' equal top tryscorer (nine) with fullback Corey Thompson this season, but believes he can do better with more ball.
Last Sunday's big win over the Dragons summed up Marsters' dilemma - he barely saw the ball, whereas his teammate Paul Momirovski bagged three tries on the opposite side of the field.
If Marsters does leave, expect the Tigers to go all out for sacked Knights centre Jesse Ramien.
Esan Marsters (R) wants out of Wests Tigers. (Getty)
MANLY TO RE-SIGN BIG IMPROVER
Some good news for Manly fans in the wake of last Saturday night's costly loss to the Storm.
Much-improved centre Brad Parker is set to reject offers from at least four rival clubs to sign a new deal at Lottoland.
Parker has been one of the rising stars of Des Hasler's second coming at Manly and his form has attracted plenty of interest in recent weeks.
Look for him to sign an upgraded deal in coming days.
Manly centre Brad Parker. (Getty)
BULLDOGS GET SOME CONSOLATION
The Bulldogs are another club in need of a boost after missing out on signing both Apisai Koroisau and Jesse Ramien in recent days.
And here it is: one of the stars of the club's late season surge, Raymond Faitala-Mariner, has abandoned plans to leave the club.
Faitala-Mariner wanted out more than once this season, especially when he couldn't make Dean Pay's starting side.
But the Kiwi-born forward's strong form in the second half of the season has seen him have a change of heart.
He's happy with his football at Belmore again and isn't about to be going anywhere.
Raymond Faitala-Mariner. (AAP)
FLYING FROM TOWNSVILLE TO TITANS
Cowboys flyer Gideon Mosby could be headed for a sea change in 2020.
One of the quickest players in the NRL, Mosby has been unable to hold down a regular top grade spot this season with the struggling Cowboys, playing just three games.
The Titans are looking for more pace out wide and are considering giving the Cairns-born 22-year-old a chance to show his wares next season.
Mosby is off contract with the Cowboys and is unlikely to be offered a new deal by the club. | {
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I can't really praise Crash too much either. It's melodramatic to the point of ridiculousness and very in your face. The main question is, what is wrong with being blatant? Every message that it wants to convey is said directly. There is no questioning what the movie is about. Everyone is racist, racism is incredibly complicated and bad. Hate breeds hate, but at the end of the day we are all human. Is subtlety really that much more valuable as a storytelling technique, that Crash is considered bad and Brokeback Mountain good due to it, even though they both boil down to the same theme of injustice? I guess that that comes down to personal taste. For my money, films are a visual medium above a storytelling medium, so being as explicit as possible is usually the right way to go.
I'd argue that the most disgusting scene in Brokeback Mountain, where Jack Twist is brutally murdered in a hate crime, is played off flippantly. It happens in eight seconds with quick cuts and distracting voiceover. There is the argument that this is happening in Ennis's imagination and Jack really did die in the accident that his wife describes, but for the sake of this article let's just assume the former is true. It lets you off the hook instead of making you witness the tragedy in order to make you tear up rather than face the music. What could have been a horrifying, thought provoking reality is forgotten soon after.
Crash does not have this problem. Every racial epithet and stereotype there is is thrown in your face over and over again. It's uncomfortable. It's disheartening. It's exaggerated, but it is real. You aren't crying during the opening scene of Selma. You don't have time to. When the young girls are exploded through the air in slow motion due to an act of white supremacist terrorism on a black church, you are stunned and disgusted. That really happened. Playing the moment out rather than shying away is the simplest way to make sure the audience understands the gravity of the situation. The loss of life is calculable, not just a moment in a movie to bring a tear to your eye. | {
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by
On March 30, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that the future leader of Syria should be determined by the people of Syria.
This major policy statement by the US took regime change off the table, and was obviously great news for Bashar al-Assad. Combined with Syrian military gains on the ground, Assad was in the strongest position he’d been in since the war in Syria began.
So, why 5 days later would he gas his own people?
But even without a thorough investigation, and less than 72 hours after the alleged chemical attack took place, American political leaders and establishment media claimed that Assad carried out the attack on April 4. Hours later, the US launched 59 tomahawk cruise missiles on a Syrian airfield based on these unproven allegations, killing 9 civilians including 4 children in Idlib province.
Common sense, historical facts and circumstantial evidence suggest that it’s unlikely that Assad gassed his own people earlier this week. In fact, it’s much more likely that the chemical weapons were from al-Qaeda, ISIS and/or other anti-Assad factions. Indeed, a case can be made that the attack was coordinated by the White Helmets, with US neoconservatives providing the script.
In 2013, US-supported, anti-Assad forces were losing ground in the war in Syria. Assad claimed that the rebels were using chemical weapons in Aleppo in a last-ditch effort to hold territory. Assad asked the UN to investigate his claims, and they agreed, and began an investigation in Syria. Within days of the UN inspectors’ arrival, another chemical weapon attack occurred in Syria. Western media was quick to blame Assad, even though it defied logic that Assad would use chemical weapons when chemical weapons inspectors were inside Syria at his invitation.
As conservative columnist Pat Buchanan said,
“I would not understand or comprehend that Bashar al-Assad, no matter how bad a man he may be, would be so stupid as to order a chemical weapons attack on civilians in his own country when the immediate consequence…might be that he would be at war with the United States. So this reeks of a false flag operation.”
Former member of congress Ron Paul pointed out, “the group that is most likely to benefit from a chemical attack is Al-Qaeda. They ignite some gas, some people die and blame it on Assad.”
And Russian President Vladimir Putin said, “There is every reason to believe sarin gas was used, not by the Syrian army, but by opposition forces to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.”
Nonetheless, the Obama administration and other western leaders blamed Assad, and talk of US military action in Syria was contemplated.
Fortunately, journalists like Seymour Hersh helped put a halt to war talk, by revealing that it was indeed the US-supported rebels who used chemical weapons – weapons they received from Turkey, a US ally.
The sarin gas attack that just occurred in Syria is eerily similar to the attack that occurred in 2013: US-backed anti-Assad rebels are losing ground, a sarin gas attack occurs and US politicians quickly blame Assad without an investigation. One difference between today and 2013 is that the US military actually bombed a Syrian military target in “retaliation.” Another difference is that this time, Russian military is in Syria at the invitation of the Syrian government, so the risk of military confrontation with Russia is real.
The US announcement on March 30 that it would not seek regime change in Syria was a massive blow to neoconservatives, liberal interventionists, ISIS, al-Qaeda and all other anti-Assad factions who have been trying to oust Assad for years. In 2016 alone, the CIA reportedly spent $1 billion supplying and training the rebel forces attempting to overthrow the Syrian government.
The Assad opposition is willing to revert to any means necessary, as history showed in 2013, so it’s conceivable that this week’s chemical attack was perpetrated by one of those factions who saw the window of opportunity to oust Assad closing.
And the US has a long history of making false claims to go to war, such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the Iraq WMD claims — both of which led to major wars.
Given this, it is conceivable that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was perpetrated by The White Helmets, with the goal of tricking the US into taking military action against Assad, something the White Helmets have pushed for years.
As Max Blumenthal points out, The White Helmets, who call for a military imposed no-fly zone in Syria, were founded in collaboration with a wing of the USAID — the wing that has promoted regime change around the world — and have been provided with $23 million in funding from the department.
Money to the White Helmets is just part of the $339 million that the USAID has allotted for “supporting activities that pursue a peaceful transition to a democratic and stable Syria.”
Russian deputy ambassador to the UN said on Wednesday that allegations that Assad used chemical weapons this week are based on “falsified reports from the White Helmets”, an organization that has been “discredited long ago”.
This doesn’t mean the White Helmets were involved in Tuesday’s attack, or that the attack itself didn’t really happen, we’re just asking the question.
With that said, clearly the neocons and all anti-Assad forces have a lot more to gain from this week’s chemical attack than does Assad. And Assad has much more to lose than any of those groups. And this week’s attack followed the same script used during the 2013 attack, and that attack was wrongly blamed on Assad, as we suspect this attack is as well.
Although, it is too early to know what really happened, one of the possibilities is that the Syrian military bombed an al-Qaeda hideout, not knowing that chemical weapons were in the building, and the gas spread, killing people, as Russian officials have pointed out. But it’s odd that the White Helmets just happened to be on the ground, and rapidly produced an HD video complete with a script that was read on most major media outlets within hours of the attack.
Other than the people responsible for the alleged chemical attack this week, nobody really knows what happened, including us. Now that the US has attacked Syria, Russia’s ally, the question is, will Russia back down? If they don’t, we may look back at this week’s attack as a flashpoint to the start of a military confrontation with Russia. And given that this could lead to World War III, we think it’s worth the time to consider all possibilities, including the ones mapped out here. | {
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revis.jpg
Darrelle Revis
(AP)
It would be a stretch to say Darrelle Revis has been a consistent thorn in Tom Brady's side, but that's mostly because the Patriots quarterback determined it wiser at some point to circumvent the rose bushes rather than fight through them.
Over seven meetings dating to 2009, Brady completed 20 of 39 passes for 257 yards, two touchdowns and one interception when throwing in the cornerback's direction. In three of those games against the New York Jets, Brady targeted Revis' receiver three or fewer times. So Sunday's trade that shipped Revis to Tampa Bay may be reason to dust off the duck boats.
Looking at that kind of success, in a league where passing rules the day, it's hard to understand why the Jets were so eager to make this move. Sure, it's better to get something now than be left empty-handed (a 2013 first-round pick and conditional 2014 pick is a decent haul), but all indications leading up to this deal suggested Revis wanted to play in New York and nowhere else.
Why not let him play out the year and figure out a way to keep him around? He's the type of player you build around, a franchise cornerstone. Just look at what the Patriots have been through on defense the last few years. Finding good cornerbacks – especially ones of Revis' caliber – is not an easy thing to do. It's almost impossible.
2. Florida State pass rusher Tank Carradine could be an intriguing option for the Patriots if he lasts until the 29th pick in Thursday's NFL draft. The defensive end is a little more than three months removed from a torn ACL and ran a 4.70 40-yard dash at a workout earlier this week.
While it once looked
like drafting him would be an investment in the future, it's possible he could provide immediate returns. And if those returns are anything close to
the 11 sacks and 13 tackles for loss he amassed in just 11 games last season,
he could end up being a steal for whichever team takes a leap of faith. With
Rob Ninkovich in the final year of his contract and New England in need of more pass-rushers, Carradine would be hard to pass on if he slips.
3. One name to keep an eye on during the draft is former LSU defensive back Tyrann Mathieu. New England has been all over him during the pre-draft process, and all indications suggest his interactions with the team have been positive. The Patriots have gambled on other players with drug concerns in the past – Aaron Hernandez and Ryan Mallett, among others – but it may be hard to justify such a risk having just five picks (first round, second, third, two sevenths).
4. Playing off that last point, we in the media make a big deal about which players are visiting which teams this time of year, but it's a dangerous game to take stock in such things.
The Jets recently
revealed they've evaluated 1,426 players and conducted more than 300 interviews.
A few of the names whispered in conjunction with your favorite team will likely
be selected this weekend. Most will not.
5. It's good to see so many New England players stepping up and doing whatever they can to get involved in the wake of the Boston Marathon tragedy. Several players have pledged money or used their charities to raise funds for those directly affected by bombings. Others, such as Julian Edelman, have taken time to visit victims in the hospital.
One of the overriding messages when speaking to players this week is that, while many are transplants from other parts of the country, when something like this happens, it pulls you into the fabric of the community.
As a Pennsylvania transplant, I can say it has had a similar impact on me. I've enjoyed my time here and realize I'm blessed to work in one the greatest sports cities in the country, but I never really felt a part of the region.
After witnessing the way everyone pulled together and rose above
tragedy, I'm proud to call it home. | {
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We are constantly being invited to use cloud services such as Dropbox, Mozy and SugarSync to store our documents, music, photos and more. It's the future, we're told.
The obvious benefits of storing files online is that it releases space on our PCs, smartphones and tablets, and files can be accessed from any device with an internet connection. Another advantage of cloud storage is that the responsibility of looking after your files (including backing them up) and maintaining the hardware is someone else’s.
There are privacy and security concerns, though, and you might well wonder whether someone could access your files. Services also have worrying phrases in their terms and conditions, such as "You hereby grant Mozy a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive licence to use any such content."
Also, for anything more than a few gigabytes, which tend to be offered free to get you to try a service, you must pay for online storage with recurring monthly fees.
An option you may not have considered is to run your own cloud service. It's easier than you might think: all you need is a PC, internet access and some free software. A dedicated PC is best, but the desktop PC you use for everything is also fine. Just leave it running when you go out. Fibre optic internet, such as BT Infinity or Virgin Media, is best but any broadband will work.
An advantage of turning your PC into a cloud server is that storage is limited only by the size of its hard disk and not the size of your bank balance. You can store any type and any size of files, there are no monthly fees, and it is private.
Only you have access to your cloud server, but it's also possible to grant permission to others, such as family or friends. Imagine being at work and you want to listen to music. With just a web browser you can log on to your home PC cloud server and access your whole music library. If you are out and need a file from home or work, you can access it with a laptop, tablet or smartphone.
There are some disadvantages, too. Your computer is running when you are out, using electricity. Plus, you're responsible for maintaining the hardware, making backups, and that Windows is running smoothly.
Also, bear in mind that broadband upload speeds are slower than download speeds. This means it can be very slow to download big files from your cloud PC, but fast to upload them, which is opposite to normal internet usage.
There are several programs which you can use such as ownCloud (owncloud.org) and Oxygen (oxygencloud.com), but here we’ll show you how to set up the free Tonido (tonido.com).
How to make a personal cloud server with Tonido
1. Browse to www.tonido.com and click the Downloads link. The software you need to turn a PC into a cloud server is Tonido Desktop Software for Windows. There are two versions and if you choose the portable edition it doesn’t need installing.
2. Open the zip file and drag the Tonido folder out and drop it on the desktop. When you want to start Tonido, just double click tonido.exe. The first time, a Windows Firewall alert appears. Click Allow access.
3. Another housekeeping task is to sign up for a free Tonido account. Enter the account name you want to use and a password. Your account name becomes part of the URL used to access your cloud server.
4. After clicking through welcome messages you’ll see this screen indicating that Tonido is active. It runs in the background and the browser can be closed and you can use the PC for other purposes, just don’t shut it down.
5. Make your PC energy efficient by opening Power Options in the Control Panel. Select High performance and click Change plan settings, Change advanced power settings. Set the display and disk to sleep when the PC is idle.
6. You can log in to your computer, which is now acting as a cloud server, from any computer or device with a web browser. Here we’re using a laptop in Starbucks. Just enter your personal URL, yourname.tonidoid.com.
7. The same screen as in step 4 is displayed and you have full access to the PC’s internal disk drive and any other drives that are attached. There’s an Upload button, and the Actions column enables you to download files as well.
8. Navigate to the Pictures folder on the disk and select the Gallery tab at the top. The images are shown as thumbnails. Click a photo to view a larger version or click the slideshow button and sit back and watch.
9. Use the panel on the left to find the Music folder on the PC and select a folder containing music, such as MP3 files. Switch to the Music tab at the top and music controls are displayed. Pick a track and play it.
Next page: using Tonido with mobile devices | {
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Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe will issue an executive order Friday to extend voting rights to more than 200,000 convicted felons, The New York Times reports.
The order allows felons who have served their prison time and finished parole to register to vote, reversing a Civil War-era provision in Virginia's Constitution.
ADVERTISEMENT
McAuliffe said prohibiting felons from voting in the state mostly disenfranchises African-Americans.
"There's no question that we've had a horrible history in voting rights as relates to African-Americans — we should remedy it," McAuliffe said Thursday, according to the Times.
Maine and Vermont are the only two states without voting restrictions on felons. Virginia, Kentucky, Florida and Iowa are among the states that impose the harshest restrictions.
Virginia will be a battleground state in the upcoming presidential election. The state has trended toward Democrats in recent years, with President Obama winning it in 2008 and 2012.
McAuliffe is a long-time ally of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonWhat Senate Republicans have said about election-year Supreme Court vacancies Bipartisan praise pours in after Ginsburg's death Trump carries on with rally, unaware of Ginsburg's death MORE, and served as chairman of her campaign in 2008. | {
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モグって折れない。快適な筆記を追究した高機能シャープペンシル！
製品の特徴
強い筆圧がかかると、ペン先が"モグって"折れないシャープペンシル。
新開発の「アクティブサスペンション」で芯が折れない。
強い筆圧がかかると、ボディ内部のスプリングによって、ペン先の機構が上に向かって
スライドする（モグる）「アクティブサスペンション」で、筆圧を吸収します。
だから、芯が折れない！
※筆記条件によっては折れることがあります。（２ノック以下推奨）
超・軽快な書き心地。
アクティブサスペンション機構により、書き出し時にペン先がモグることで、衝撃を50％吸収（当社比）。
軽快な書き心地を実現！
フレフレ機構搭載。
振るだけで芯が出るパイロット独自の「フレフレ機構」を搭載しているから、持ち替える手間がありません。
商品名の「モーグルエアー」は、コブによる衝撃を吸収しながら滑走するスキー競技の"モーグル"とペン先が"モグる"にかけています。
"エアー"は衝撃を吸収しながら空気のように軽い書き心地をイメージしました。
モーグルエアーのスペシャルサイトはこちら。
ラインアップ
モーグルエアー 0.3ｍｍ
HFMA-50R3-B
ブラック
HFMA-50R3-L
ブルー
HFMA-50R3-W
ホワイト
HFMA-50R3-P
ピンク
HFMA-50R3-V
バイオレット
HFMA-50R3-IL
アイスブル－
製品名 モーグルエアー 03 品番 HFMA-50R3 価格 500円+消費税 種類 シャープペンシル サイズ 最大径φ 11.0mm 全長 146mm 芯の太さ 0.3ｍｍ 軸さや 樹脂 方式 フレフレ＆ノック式 替えゴム HERFN-10
モーグルエアー 0.5ｍｍ
HFMA-50R-B
ブラック
HFMA-50R-L
ブルー
HFMA-50R-W
ホワイト
HFMA-50R-P
ピンク
HFMA-50R-V
バイオレット
HFMA-50R-IL
アイスブル－
HFMA-50R-LGL
ライングラデーションブルー
HFMA-50R-LGG
ライングラデーショングリーン
HFMA-50R-LGR
ライングラデーションレッド
HFMA-50R-DCL
デジタルカモフラージュブルー
HFMA-50R-DCG
デジタルカモフラージュグリーン
HFMA-50R-DCS
デジタルカモフラージュシルバー | {
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President Donald Trump's allegation on Twitter that former President Barack Obama ordered wiretaps of his phones during the election caught senior federal law enforcement officials completely off-guard, sources close to the matter have told Fox News.
Those sources said that the officials in question had no idea what Trump was talking about when the president made the allegation on social media Saturday morning. The sources also told Fox that Trump did not consult with senior officials who would have been advised of any such wiretapping operations before posting the messages.
Trump claimed in a series of tweets without evidence Saturday that his predecessor had tried to undermine him by tapping the telephones at Trump Tower, the New York skyscraper where Trump based his campaign and transition operations, and maintains a home.
"How low has President Obama gone to tapp [sic] my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" he tweeted.
Trump's charge also left many in the White House and Justice Department confused and scrambling over the weekend to find any kind of factual backup for the president's accusations.
Also Sunday, the New York Times reported that FBI Director James Comey asked the Justice Department to publicly reject Trump's assertion. According to the Times, Comey argued that Trump's claim falsely implied that the FBI had broken the law. The Justice Department had not issued any such statement as of Sunday evening.
Earlier Sunday, Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that nothing matching Trump's claims had taken place.
"Absolutely, I can deny it," said Clapper, who also said that he had “no knowledge” of a request for a FISA, or Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Act, order for a wiretap, which requires at least some evidence of illegal activity.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer said without elaborating Sunday that Trump's instruction to Congress was based on "very troubling" reports "concerning potentially politically motivated investigations immediately ahead of the 2016 election." Spicer did not respond to inquiries about the reports he cited in announcing the request.
Spicer said the White House wants the congressional committees to "exercise their oversight authority to determine whether executive branch investigative powers were abused in 2016." He said there would be no further comment until the investigations are completed, a statement that House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., took offense to and likened to autocratic behavior.
"It's called a wrap-up smear. You make up something. Then you have the press write about it. And then you say, everybody is writing about this charge. It's a tool of an authoritarian," Pelosi said.
Spicer's chief deputy, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said she thinks Trump is "going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential."
Josh Earnest, who was Obama's press secretary, said presidents do not have authority to unilaterally order the wiretapping of American citizens, as Trump has alleged was done to him. FBI investigators and Justice Department officials must seek a federal judge's approval for such a step.
Earnest accused Trump of leveling the allegations to distract from the attention being given to campaign-season contacts by Trump aides with a Russian official, including campaign adviser Jeff Sessions before he resigned from the Senate to become attorney general. The FBI is investigating those contacts, as is Congress.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said in a statement that the panel "will follow the evidence where it leads, and we will continue to be guided by the intelligence and facts as we compile our findings."
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement that the committee "will make inquiries into whether the government was conducting surveillance activities on any political party's campaign officials or surrogates."
The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said Trump was following "a deeply disturbing pattern of distraction, distortion and downright fabrication."
The office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., referred questions to Nunes, while a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said McConnell would not tell the Senate committee how to do its work.
Trump said in the tweets that he had "just found out" about being wiretapped, though it was unclear whether he was referring to having found out through a briefing, a conversation or a media report. The president in the past has tweeted about unsubstantiated and provocative reports he reads on blogs or conservative websites.
Obama spokesman Kevin Lewis said Saturday that a "cardinal rule" of the Obama administration was not to interfere in Justice Department investigations, which are supposed to be conducted free of outside or political influence.
Lewis said neither Obama nor any White House official had ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. "Any suggestion otherwise is simply false," Lewis said.
Trump used a similar approach with his unsupported claims of massive voter fraud that he said caused him to lose the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton. He eventually said he wanted to launch a "major" investigation to find the 3 million to 5 million votes he claims were cast illegally. Congressional leaders were cool to the idea — a costly and time-consuming effort.
Trump has been trailed for months by questions about his campaign's ties to Russia. Compounding the situation is the U.S. intelligence agencies' assessment that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump triumph over Hillary Clinton, along with disclosures about his aides' contacts with a Russian official.
Fox News' Matt Dean and Serafin Gomez contributed to this report. The Associated Press also contributed to this report. | {
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The Hill reports that federal workers turned their backs on Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue Thursday when he announced that the Department of Agriculture would be moving two research agencies within the department from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City.
Federal workers turn their backs on Trump Agriculture secretary after he chose to relocate them from DC to Kansas City https://t.co/mnliBsnlBn pic.twitter.com/oqgNQFDyDR — The Hill (@thehill) June 13, 2019
American Federation of Government Employees members from NIFA snd ERS turn backs on Agriculture Secretary Perdue at session on their unwanted relocation from DC to Kansas City area. #USDA pic.twitter.com/40JlVtuXFl — Jerry Hagstrom (@hagstromreport) June 13, 2019
That’s an upgrade, isn’t it?
Babies. — Princess of Whales (@corrcomm) June 14, 2019
If they don’t want to move, they can quit and learn to code. — Dr. Cheeseburger (@tomburkart) June 13, 2019
Should have been laid off on the spot. pic.twitter.com/xq3HzZjybH — Pinche Meelo (@PincheMeelo) June 13, 2019
The Pink Slip Czar has the answer… LOL — Dan Tucker (@RinoHunterSCM) June 13, 2019
Direct line of causality from these government dolts to Trump in the White House. — Daniel Lee (@RealDanLee) June 13, 2019
As stewards of our money I’m sure these government emplyoees understand the cost savings associated with moving KC. This juvenile acting out is just embarrassing. — Mr. Spock rocks (@Logic2260) June 14, 2019
Stunning and brave. — Victor Laszlo (@Glenn_somebody_) June 14, 2019
I like how you guys think we’re supposed to sympathize with them — wokestwarrior (@wokestwarrior) June 14, 2019
Ummm…In the private sector we’d call that a massive layoff & organizational restructuring. — Dennis J. Williams (@DJWilliams77) June 14, 2019
So this happens to people in the private sector all the time! Why should we feel sorry for these guys?? — Michelle (@michellebosso) June 13, 2019
Not sure why, that sounds awesome — Mimi Teixeira (@_MimiTeixeira) June 13, 2019
sounds like an upgrade — 16 Handles fan accou (@BasedKashiBar) June 14, 2019
They have no idea how lucky they are. — Eric Teetsel (@EricTeetsel) June 13, 2019
They should be happy their paychecks are going to go much further. — waitwhat? (@waitwhatrn) June 13, 2019
Same pay grade and live in Kansas City? Live like kings in their new homes — Big Sexy Int'l Bot (@Props_To_Me) June 13, 2019
I would be thrilled. That's equivalent to a $12,000/yr raise. pic.twitter.com/2v7pD1kmFo — WheelmanForHire (@WheelmanForHire) June 14, 2019
This is generally how the people in government feel about the middle of the country. — Garibaldi (@Garibal09927210) June 13, 2019
They're upset that they have to move away from one of the most expensive places to live in the world? Or are they upset that it'll be more difficult to be just another useless beaucrat looking to network with the rich and powerful in DC? — Eric W (@AgnosticRep) June 13, 2019
You certainly don't want to work any where near the people that actually work in agriculture if you are a government worker. — Lowell Knouff (@OldOkieKid) June 13, 2019
KC is far better than DC. They should be grateful — John Cereghin (@Pilgrimway) June 13, 2019
BBQ. Their federal paycheck will go further. Better pro football team. — Bradley Hope (@Brad_Hope) June 14, 2019
Joe’s Barbecue tho — silentplanet (@jcapital54) June 14, 2019
Kansas City BBQ > DC BBQ — Marky Marc (@HamfistHarold) June 14, 2019
I’m guessing they don’t know that KC has beautiful housing stock, an incredible food scene, and a strong cultural presence — MCap (@rightgay27) June 13, 2019
Let's see…… Far lower cost of living. Housing alone is a massive cost savings. Don't have to deal with the DC garbage. Nicer place to live all the way around. Screw these idiots. — Silence Dogood (@YesImSatan1) June 14, 2019
I know you'll have a hard time grasping this, but not only do they have internet in Kansas City, they can even access PornHub from it too. So it's not like their daily routine at the office has to change. — Coding My AI Therapy Lizard (@Gator_Country) June 13, 2019
So mad at the unfairness, outraged at the injustice! Yet I noticed NONE of you shiftless parasites were miffed enough to quit your cushy jobs and find something more palatable… Spare me… — 2A-Jetphixr (@Jetphixr) June 14, 2019
They're free to pursue other opportunities, aren't they? — Paul Foster (@pfoster19) June 13, 2019
They are free to quit their federal jobs and find jobs in the private sector. — Jeff Yeah! (@JeffOutLoud) June 14, 2019
These folks may be lucky to have a job anywhere. I am quite confident others would be more than happy to take their jobs and associated benefits. — wernet (@wernet) June 13, 2019
Are they hiring? — LiterallyTinaFail??❤️?? (@KristinBoymom) June 13, 2019
If they need somebody to fill one of their jobs, I am willing to move to Kansas City 🙂 — ✡︎ Robert – רוברט ✡︎ (@Robert_Boston) June 14, 2019
Not one of them looks like they've ever been near a farm. — GTRxMan (@gtrxman) June 13, 2019
The concentration of bureaucracy in DC is harmful. Spreading these out would be beneficial for many reasons. As of now, states just send baskets of money to DC to power a local economy based on…..regulation… / ? Seems less than laudatory. — MarginalResult (@MarginalResult) June 14, 2019
Frankly all the departments should be moved out of DC. Agriculture to Sioux City, IA. Interior to Billings, MT. IRS to Nome, Alaska. — Lukas Petersen (@LUKABUS89) June 13, 2019
I’d put the IRS at McMurdo Station. — Bert Gorllewin (@_Bert_G_) June 14, 2019
Eliminate the department in its entirety. It serves no purpose. The back turners can find their own relocation out of DC. — KeepUrDoctor (@KeepUrDoctor) June 14, 2019
Related: | {
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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be released for Switch. The news comes via a Nintendo News notice sent to European Switch owners.
The news update highlights “more than 60 quality indie games confirmed for Nintendo Switch throughout 2017.” It features logos for all of the indie games confirmed last week in addition to the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night logo.
In addition to Switch, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is also due out for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, PC, and PS Vita in the first half of 2018.
Thanks, Nintendo Everything. | {
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Actual Advice Mallard
before you sit down to poop, make sure there is toilet paper.
and that your boys didn't tick all over the toilet seat.
these captions aren't guaranteed to be correct | {
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Romney is increasingly projecting the aura of a loser. | REUTERS Romney fights 'loser' label
Many Republican political professionals are worried that Mitt Romney’s public image is now defined by a word never associated with winning presidential campaigns — weakness — and are urging him to take dramatic steps to recast his reputation between now and the fall.
The advice, echoed in interviews with numerous influential GOP figures, comes as Romney finds himself tormented by a contradiction: With each passing day of the primary season, he is coming closer and closer to being presidential nominee — and seemingly further and further away from being president.
Romney has the math of a winner, steadily building his lead in delegates against two main rivals, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, who in the view of most GOP campaign veterans have no plausible path to the nomination.
Increasingly, however, he is in a variety of ways tangible (polls) and intangible (public hand-wringing among top Republicans) projecting the aura of a loser — someone who over months of campaigning is seen as less commanding in his leadership style, and less plausible as a future occupant of the White House, than he was when he started.
“It’s a slow, methodical process that starts with recognizing that the primary process has decimated his fave/unfave and that he needs to begin the rebuilding,” said Republican operative Steve Schmidt, of the rehabilitation Romney must begin as he moves toward the general election.
There is no easy formula for projecting strength, or coaxing skeptical voters to look anew at a leader, but Washington is increasingly rife with speculation about how Romney should do it. The No. 3 Republican in the House, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), said that to elevate himself Romney needs “a direct interaction with the president” and to start moving beyond the tit-for-tat engagement with his GOP rivals.
“If I was him, now I’d focus everything on the president. I’d ignore the others and start to try to find that moment with the president,” said McCarthy, urging Romney to begin a series of major speeches contrasting himself with President Barack Obama. “It’ll take time to break through. But I would take it issue by issue, do one per week.”
Another veteran Republican strategist, Alex Castellanos, said the front-runner’s urgent task is to shoo away his reputation for timidity and pandering with a “moment of strength,” by picking a high-risk, high-profile fight over some important principle.
He lamented that in Michigan Romney hadn’t held up his opposition to the auto bailout or throughout the campaign more forcefully defended his Massachusetts health care plan — both opportunities to spotlight his political courage.
“Here’s a guy whose biggest weakness is, shall we say, his generous flexibility,” said Castellanos, who worked for Romney in 2008. “But he never said, ‘Doing what’s right is more important than doing what’s popular.’ That wasn’t the narrative.”
Explained Castellanos: “It’s hard for him because he’s such a pleaser. He’s a genuinely nice and civil guy. He doesn’t chew tobacco, spit and hit you in the eye.”
History offers some solace to Romney. Among the precedents of candidates who were seen as too weak and too damaged to win, even as they wrapped up their party nominations, is Bill Clinton. He was in third place — behind the incumbent George H.W. Bush and independent Ross Perot — in the spring of 1992, after a grinding primary contest in which his character and record were ceaselessly pummeled.
The third way for Romney to chase away his reputation for weakness or expediency is through artful improvisation, using an unexpected crisis to project a presidential style. Obama was widely credited for a poised performance during the early days of the financial meltdown in 2008, while John McCain set himself back with statements that seemed harried and irrelevant.
But other past elections offer cause for alarm in Romney ranks. Usually, once a politician takes on an aroma of hopelessness he keeps it. Bob Dole in 1996 limped to his nomination with few people expecting he would make a real race of it against Clinton, and he never did. Al Gore and John Kerry came up short in their 2000 and 2004 bids in part because they came to be defined in the public mind by traits — excessive calculation, awkward demeanors — that are perilously close to the way Romney is viewed.
Clinton and others who have “changed the narrative,” in the parlance of politics, did it by showing creativity and keen intuition under pressure, instincts that Romney is not especially known for.
But Republicans who assume Romney is the eventual nominee and wish him well say there are, broadly speaking, three ways that Romney can chase away his image of weakness in time for the general election.
One would be his selection of a vice presidential nominee. These choices can be transformative, as Clinton’s selection of Gore was in 1992 — overnight causing millions of Americans to take a fresh look at a ticket of two moderate Southerners and putting Clinton in command of the race. Far more often, however, the selection of a running mate amounts to a shrug of the shoulders in the larger trajectory of a race. And when the pick becomes consequential — as with people like Democrat Geraldine Ferraro in 1984 or Republican Sarah Palin in 2008 — it is because the running mate becomes a damaging distraction.
Another way for presidential candidates to give themselves image make-overs is some kind of highly visible conflict — including, if opportunity presents, with someone on their own side.
“How do you find a moment of strength?” asked Castellanos. “You stand up to either your friends or your opponents.”
The consultant said Romney missed a window in recent days by not standing up in a very visible way to talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, a darling of conservatives, to censure him for insulting a woman who spoke out in favor of contraceptives being covered by insurance. Alternatively, he advised, Romney could get off the defensive over his record of firing workers during his business career with a kind of damn-right strategy. Under this scenario, the former investment banker might stand in front of some federal agency and promise to shut it down the same way he did unprofitable businesses.
Unexpected crises are a bit hard to schedule, of course. But veterans of presidential campaigns say there are inevitably moments when a nominee will get a chance to have voters imagine him in the Oval Office.
“There will be several important events that will transpire across the campaign where he has an opportunity to step outside the caricature that has been drawn of him and reintroduce himself to the American people,” said Schmidt. “It begins with the period when he becomes the de facto nominee but before the convention, when other Republican candidates disappear from the race. He can begin to articulate a message that is hopefully positive, optimistic and that includes substantive detail about economic growth and how to create prosperity.”
The problem is not simply that Romney’s momentum is being drained by a long primary. Obama slogged through a long primary in 2008, long after he was widely viewed as the all-but-certain nominee, but for the most part was not deeply wounded by the process. In Romney’s case, the primary process is serving to systematically highlight some of his defects. If he doesn’t work to repair his image, those defects could remain defining in the fall.
“Voters really do separate primary elections from the general election,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “No presidential candidate in my lifetime has lost because he was ‘damaged’ in the primary. They lose because the other candidate is better, the environment is bad, the candidate is flawed or they ran a terrible general election campaign.”
The Pew Research Center last September found Romney and Obama split among registered voters, with 48 percent each. In each of three polls since, the president’s lead over Romney has widened. As of February, Romney trailed Obama, 44 percent to 52 percent.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has found a similar trend. Obama led Mitt Romney among registered voters, 50 percent to 44 percent, in a poll this month. Last summer, by contrast, Obama had just a 1-point lead, 46 percent to 45 percent.
Other numbers in the NBC/Journal poll were equally troubling for Romney.
Republican voters were asked to describe their greatest concern if Romney wins the nomination. The most selected response, by 18 percent, was, “He waffles on issues and does not take a position.”
This was seen as more of a problem than his difficulty relating to average voters. But that’s also a problem. In the exit polling in this week’s Ohio primary, Santorum beat Romney 34 percent to 22 percent on the question of who Republican primary voters think best understands the problems of average Americans.
Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant, said the good news for Romney is that little is static in a general election contest, and some opportunities to change the narrative — the conventions and the general election debates — are certain to happen.
“For a ‘planned’ moment, the convention offers the best venue, with supposedly unenthusiastic Republicans cheering wildly for an uplifting speech contrasting The Romney Vision versus The Obama Vision for a new America,” Ayres said.
A swing-state Republican chairman, speaking on a not-for-identification basis, pleaded with the Romney campaign to realize the best way to change the narrative is to shift attention elsewhere.
“November is not about Mitt,” this official said, “it’s about Obama.” | {
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The Supreme Court ruled the police did have the legal power to stop the parades
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Five Supreme Court justices in London ruled unanimously in favour of the unnamed resident, announcing that the police did have the legal power to stop the parades.
Mass loyalist demonstrations, some of which descended into serious violence, were staged across Northern Ireland in opposition to Belfast City Council's decision to limit the number of days the union flag flew over City Hall.
In April 2014, a High Court judge ruled in favour of a resident of the nationalist Short Strand area of east Belfast, who claimed the police's failure to stop unnotified loyalist marches past his home between December 2012 and February 2013 breached his right to privacy and family life. | {
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The new StarCraft: Remastered ranking system, revealed a week ago, has finally gone live! Patch 1.22.0 introduces the new ladder and some eye candy to go with it. Players will also receive rewards and portrait borders based on their ranking and will be able to view their performance statistics in the new Seasons tab.
The new StarCraft: Remastered ladder
A long-awaited change–StarCraft: Remastered now has a ranking system similar to StarCraft II and other Blizzard games. All players begin Season 1 unranked. They have to play five placement matches, the results of which will determine their starting league. For those who have played SC:R since the release, MMR for the initial placements will be based on their Frontier League data.
After each game, players will be able to see how much MMR they’ve gained or lost as a result of the match. More importantly, it is now possible to see exactly how much MMR is needed for a promotion or a demotion. Rankings will be based on a fixed value for the first two weeks until there is enough data to introduce the dynamic system. The system will be percentage-based, and the data will be updated daily. MMR decay will also be present in every league. S-rank players will have to play at least five games per week to maintain their position.
Dynamic ranking percentages:
S — Top 1%
A — 7%
B — 21%
C — 21%
D — 21%
E — 21%
F — 8%
Player statistics now available in the client
Players now have access to the new profile tab, Seasons. It contains detailed information about current and previous seasons’ ladder performance. Players have access to their MMR, global ranking, total wins, and individual statistics for each map. Global performance per race is also available in the Seasons tab.
A new ladder brings new cosmetics! Each rank comes with a border, just like in StarCraft II, so players can show off their fancy S rank to all their friends and opponents. Players can toggle the ranking border on and off if they want. Top ranks–S, A, and B–earn unique portraits each season; the S league’s portrait is even animated! Anyone who logs into StarCraft: Remastered during Season 1 will also receive an exclusive portrait. The updated Collection tab will give players more control of the console and building skins, as well.
Possible impact of the new ladder system
Most modern titles that involve competitive play feature a similar ladder system. StarCraft: Brood War was a black sheep for a long time with its huge skill gap within certain ranks and an overall confusing queue system. People often requested that Blizzard change the ranking system to be more like StarCraft II. This was a controversial topic for a while, since a big part of the player base considered the existing ladder a better solution. This was mostly due to the infamous “ladder anxiety,” a state of mind when players have anxiety towards competitive play. Some people claimed that it didn’t trigger the problem since the classic Brood War ladder was not oriented around MMR and being “Bronze” didn’t mean anything.
However, problems with being matched against uneven opponents–both much weaker and much stronger — persisted, and the introduction of the new ladder system should at least solve that issue. Lots of players have stopped playing in the past due to the lack of a proper ranking, and they will most certainly come back to the game with this patch. We will see how this change will affect StarCraft: Remastered in the long run, but it is definitely positive.
It is currently unknown whether the matchmaking will be purely rank-based, or if it will rely on MMR to find an equal opponent. This should not affect the experience of an average player since both ways will provide relatively balanced matchmaking. The only downside to this system will be the smurfing–people of the higher level playing on new accounts, an issue that plagues all modern competitive games. However, this problem is very inflated, and it is unlikely that there is a good way to solve this issue in StarCraft: Remastered.
Minor changes in 1.22.0
This patch also presents an updated competitive map pool, which now includes Roadkill. This new four-player map was introduced in the Korea StarCraft League and proved to be a great addition to the pool. The updated map list looks like this:
Blue Storm 1.2
Heartbreak Ridge 2.1
Polaris Rhapsody 1.0
Aztec 2.1
Roadkill 1.13
Circuit Breakers 1.0
Fighting Spirit 1.3
Great news for our fellow map makers! New ramps have been added to the editor in this patch. Eighteen different ramps that can be extended to any length in any direction are now added to many tilesets. This is a nice touch directed towards the map creators. Regular players, most likely, will not pay any attention to this change.
Click here if you want to read the official patch notes and here to visit the discussion forums. | {
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LeBron James is no stranger to making political statements, and that hasn't changed now that he's a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. Before his new team's game on Saturday night against the Spurs in San Antonio, LeBron arrived in a black and white hat that said "Beto for Senate."
The hat shows LeBron's support for U.S. Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, who is running against Ted Cruz in a high-profile race for one of Texas' two seats. This isn't the first time that LeBron has offered praise or support for O'Rourke.
Late in the summer, O'Rourke was asked for his thoughts on athletes -- NFL players, specifically -- kneeling for the National Anthem. In his response, he made the case that doing so is not disrespectful. When a video clip of O'Rourke's response was released, LeBron shared it on Twitter.
At the 2016 Republican National Convention, then-presidential candidate Cruz invoked James and his Cleveland Cavaliers' 3-1 comeback in the 2016 NBA Finals against the Golden State Warriors as a metaphor for his own comeback. James vocally backed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the general election. | {
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Hannah Arendt escribió en referencia a las mentiras de los populismos que la tarea del historiador ya no consiste en descubrir una falsificación ni en inventar explicaciones que soslayen el principal hecho político e histórico de la cuestión: que la falsificación está siendo creída. Este hecho para Arendt es más importante que el hecho de que sea una falsificación. La pensadora judía, que nunca quiso que la consideraran una filósofa, dedicó buena parte de su obra a entender el origen de los totalitarismos, el nazismo y la relación entre verdad y política. Para ella, había dos tipos de verdades, la de la razón y la de los hechos.
Sus reflexiones vuelven a estar de moda con la victoria de Trump en EEUU, la preeminencia de la extrema derecha de Marine Le Pen en Francia y las amenazas de partidos xenófobos y populistas en toda Europa. Ella decía: "Las mentiras resultan a veces mucho más plausibles, mucho más atractivas a la razón, que la realidad, dado que el que miente tiene la gran ventaja de conocer de antemano lo que su audiencia desea o espera oír. Ha preparado su relato para el consumo público con el cuidado de hacerlo verosímil mientras que la realidad tiene la desconcertante costumbre de enfrentarnos con lo inesperado, con aquello para lo que no estamos preparados".
El pensamiento de Arendt nos demuestra que el debate sobre la posverdad o los hechos alternativos no es nuevo, sino tan antiguo como la historia. En EEUU, un grupo de académicos ha creado una publicación digital que vale la pena seguir. Econofact, publicado por el ‘Centro Fletcher Edward R. Murrow para un mundo digital’ en Boston, arrancó el día en que Trump tomó posesión como presidente de EEUU, con el impulso del director de The Murrow Center for a Digital World, Edward Schumacher-Matos.
La red de más de 30 economistas, que han trabajado en el mundo académico y en administraciones republicanas y demócratas, tienen una obsesión común: los hechos. Creen con razón que no se puede avanzar en un debate si no se parte de datos y hechos contrastados. Los primeros temas que han tratado abarcan temáticas polémicas como cuál sería el impacto en la economía si la industria regresara a EEUU (David Deming de la Universidad de Harvard) o consecuencias de construir un muro con México para reducir la inmigración no autorizada (Jennifer Hunt de la Universidad de Rutgers). Los temas son espinosos y se presentan con cifras y datos que pretenden abrir un debate riguroso. El éxito de la publicación demuestra que existe una verdadera preocupación por debatir sobre la verdad como punto de partida. Aunque la verdad sea un término tan poco absoluto. | {
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Microsoft
Editors' note: This is the first CNET article by Crave's newest writer, geek celeb Bonnie Burton. A best-selling author of "The Star Wars Craft Book" and host of the Web show "Geek DIY," Bonnie will be covering all manner of geek and sci-fi happenings. Got a story idea for Bonnie? Beam it her way!
What would it take to make Internet Explorer hip again? Could an anime heroine do it?
As it gears up for the launch of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7 on Thursday, Microsoft posted a new ad featuring Inori Aizawa, a feisty anime girl who battles robots with her trusty SmartScreen shield while wearing a Sailor Moon-esque outfit complete with the Windows logo on her skirt.
According to the Facebook page dedicated to Inori, she's considered the personification of Internet Explorer.
Hey everyone! My name is Inori and you can think of me as a personification of Internet Explorer. When I was younger, I used to be a clumsy, slow, and awkward girl. However, just like the story of ugly duckling, people told me that I have really matured and changed over the years. I feel confident in my abilities now, and I'm eager to show you what I can do. Why don't you get to know me a little better?
Related stories Befriending a cutesy anime kid, IE 11 cozies up to Windows 7
Inori's design can be attributed to Collateral Damage Studios, which posted a blog in July explaining her origins. After artist and producer Danny Choo posted an image featuring human equivalents of the Safari, Firefox, and Chrome browsers, the designers were inspired to create their own character worthy of IE's transformation from a klutzy ugly duckling into an elegant superhero.
Clearly, Inori is no Clippy (the annoying office assistant attached to Microsoft Office that just wouldn't stop pestering anyone who attempted to write a letter in peace). She's is a sassy girl who fights robots, dresses like a sexy otaku girl, and pets her cat while surfing the Net. She's the kind of girl you want hanging around your computer. Inori isn't an intelligent user interface, however. She's just a girl standing in front of robots wanting to be loved.
Of course, no anime character is worth its weight in pixels without elaborate vital stats. Inori is 18 years old with an A-positive blood type. She loves mint ice cream and surfing the Internet, and dislikes bullies.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the anime character was created by Microsoft Singapore for the Anime Festival Asia (AFA) 2013. She is a part local marketing program for anime and Japanese popular-culture lovers at AFA 2013 and across Asia and does not represent an official mascot for Internet Explorer.
Regardless of Inori's future official duties for Microsoft, she represents a shift in thinking about what IE's image could become. Here's hoping Inori's story doesn't end with this debut video below. If anyone could smack around Internet trolls in their place, it's a girl who can destroy giant robots with a fling of the wrist. | {
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Apple Macintosh Performa 600 (CD) Specs
All Macintosh Performa Models | All 1992 Models | Dynamically Compare This Mac to Others
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The Apple Macintosh Performa 600 features a 32 MHz 68030 processor, 4 MB or 5 MB of RAM, and an 80 MB hard drive in a high-profile desktop case. The Performa 600CD includes 5 MB of RAM, a 160 MB hard drive and a 2X CD-ROM drive.
The standard version of the Performa 600 is the Macintosh IIvx.
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Introduction Date: September 14, 1992 Discontinued Date: October 18, 1993 Details:
Also see: All Macs introduced in 1992 The "Introduction Date" refers to the date a model was introduced via press release. The "Discontinued Date" refers to the date a model either was replaced by a subsequent system or production otherwise ended. Processor Speed: 32 MHz Processor Type: 68030 Details: This model has a 32-bit processor and a 32-bit data path. Processor Upgrade: Third-Party* FPU: 68882 (Optional) Details: *A variety of third-party processor upgrades and accelerators were available. System Bus Speed: 16 MHz Cache Bus Speed: N/A Details: N/A ROM Type: Macintosh ROM ROM Size: 1 MB Details: N/A L1 Cache: 0.5k L2 Cache: None Details: This model does not have a level 2 cache. RAM Type: 30-pin SIMM Min. RAM Speed: 80 ns Details: N/A Standard RAM: 4 MB, 5 MB Maximum RAM: 68 MB Details:
Also see: Actual Max RAM of All G3 & Later Macs N/A Motherboard RAM: 4 MB RAM Slots: 4* Details: *4 MB of RAM onboard. Four identical RAM SIMMs must be installed in a group. Video Card: Dedicated* VRAM Type: VRAM SIMM* Details: *This model has two SIMM slots for video memory that support 100 ns VRAM SIMMs. Standard VRAM: 512k, 1 MB* Maximum VRAM: 1 MB* Details: *By default, either two 256k or 512k VRAM SIMMs are installed for video memory. Modules larger than 512k are not supported. Display Support: Single Display* Resolution Support: 640x480* Details: *With 512k of VRAM, the onboard video is capable of supporting a maximum resolution of 512x384 (16-bit) or 640x480 (8-bit). With 1 MB of VRAM, it can support a maximum of 640x480 at 16-bit color. NuBus video cards can be installed to support additional displays, as well. 2nd Display Support: Single Display* 2nd Max. Resolution: Variable* Details: *The onboard memory only can support a single display. NuBus cards can be added to support additional displays, however. Standard Hard Drive: 80 MB* Int. HD Interface: SCSI Details: Configured with an 80 MB hard drive. Standard Optical: 2X (Optional*) Standard Disk: 1.44 MB (Auto) Details: *Internal 2X CD-ROM drive standard in Performa 600CD configurations (K0144LL/A and K0145LL/A). Standard Modem: None Standard Ethernet: None Details: N/A Expansion Slots: 3 NuBus, PDS Expansion Bays: 1 5.25"* Details: *If the 2X CD-ROM was not installed, the system has one open front-facing 5.25" drive bay intended for an optical drive. Case Type: Desktop Form Factor: Macintosh IIvx Details: N/A Apple Order No: K0119LL/A* Apple Subfamily: Mac Performa 600 Details: *K0119LL/A is configured with 4 MB of RAM and K0121LL/A is configured with 5 MB of RAM. The software bundle was different as well and neither included a CD-ROM drive. The Performa 600CD configurations were assigned order numbers K0144LL/A and K0145LL/A, which varied by installed software and CD-ROM bundles. Apple Model No: M1350 Gestalt ID: 45 Details:
Also see: All Macs with the M1350 Model Number and 45 Gestalt ID.
For more about identifiers and how to locate them on modern Macs, please refer to EveryMac.com's Mac Identification section. Please note that these identifiers commonly refer to multiple models. Battery Type: 3.6V Lithium Battery Life: N/A Details: N/A Original Mac OS: 7.1P Supported Mac OS: 7.1P-7.5.1, 7.5.3-7.6.1 Details:
For systems capable of running older versions of the Mac OS -- as well as modern ones -- please see site sponsor Earlier and later versions of the Macintosh System/Finder and Mac OS are not supported.For systems capable of running older versions of the Mac OS -- as well as modern ones -- please see site sponsor OHS . OHS specializes in heavily upgraded Macs capable of running both Mac OS X and Mac OS 9 applications. Dimensions: 6.0 x 13.0 x 16.5 Avg. Weight: 25.0 lbs (11.3 kg) Details: In inches - height by width by depth, (15.2 cm, 33 cm, 41.9 cm). Original Price (US): US$2000 Est. Current Retail: N/A Details: Photo Credit: Apple Computer, Inc.
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Video (Monitor): 1 (DB-15) Floppy (Ext.): None Details: One onboard DB-15 video port. ADB: 2 SCSI: 1 (DB-25) Details: N/A Serial (Standard): 2 Serial (Geoport): None Details: Serial ports are marked by printer and modem icons. Modem: None Ethernet: Details: N/A S-Video Input: None S-Video Output: None Details: N/A Microphone: None Sound In: 1 (Mono) Details: N/A Sound Out: 1 (Stereo) Headphone: None Details: N/A Security (Lock): 1 Joystick (PC): None Details: N/A Power: 1 Power Adapter: N/A Details: 100V-240V AC, 50-60 Hz Frequency, 230 Max Watts.
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Senator Ed Markey went on CNN earlier this month and appeared to break major news in the investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties with Russia. “There are very strong allegations the Russians had relationships with people inside of the Trump campaign,” the Massachusetts Democrat said. “In fact, subpoenas have now been issued in northern Virginia with regard to General Flynn and General Flynn’s associates. A grand jury has been empaneled up in New York.” While it was known that federal prosecutors in Virginia had subpoenaed associates of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, the grand jury investigation was news to political reporters who were watching.
Fake news, it turned out. Pressed later for details, Markey’s office revealed the source of the bad information:
A Markey aide says that the Senator was referring to reports on Louise Mensch's blog and Palmer Report (seriously) https://t.co/4U8EEg3yKn — Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) May 10, 2017
Louise Mensch is a British journalist, but only her Britishness is unquestioned; whether she can rightly be called a journalist is up for debate, for she has become a chief promoter of Russia-related conjecture online, principally on Twitter. The Palmer Report is a fellow-traveler.
Markey’s mistake was the latest and perhaps most prominent example of the rise of conspiracy-mongering on the left, prompting some to worry that liberals are heading into the same fever swamps that have swallowed up the Republican Party. “Mensch and The Palmer Report are part of a disturbing emerging trend,” the New Republic’s Sarah Jones wrote after the Markey incident. “Liberals desperate to believe that the right conspiracy will take down Donald Trump promote their own purveyors of fake news.”
The left ought to be concerned about this trend, but some have gone so far as to apply a false equivalence to conspiracy-mongering. The Russia theories haven’t taken hold among Democrats in nearly the same way that countless right-wing theories—like those about Barack Obama or Seth Rich—have gripped the Republican imagination. That’s because the two parties are fundamentally different: Only one of them acts responsibly when faced with politically convenient, but obviously fantastic, stories. | {
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It’s hard to believe that one racially charged interview in The New York Times was what it took to garner a meaningful punishment from congressional Republicans of Iowa’s long-standing, race-baiting congressman, Steve King. It's infuriating that it took that interview for his Republican Senate colleagues from Iowa, who've been well aware of his legacy of saying such things, to even criticize him. It's about time.
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King was quoted telling the Times last week. Monday night, the House Republican leadership responded by removing King from its agriculture and judiciary committees.
As every Iowan knows, that's one interview out of scores of statements and positions the 4th Congressional District representative has proudly offered up denigrating non-Western, nonwhite, Central American or Muslim people throughout his decades-long political career. Imagine if Iowa’s other high-ranking elected officials had taken a principled stand before they were shamed into doing so by national fellow Republicans.
Only in recent days have Sens. Charles Grassley and Joni Ernst condemned King. Shortly before the 2018 election, Grassley could be seen on video calling King an "ally" he needed in the House. But after the Times piece brought wide condemnations of King, as did a Washington Post column by South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, who is black, Grassley finally spoke up. Scott wrote, "King's comments are not conservative views but separate views that should be ridiculed at every turn possible."
SUBSCRIBE OFFER: There's more work like this from Rekha Basu, at a great price
On Saturday, Ernst tweeted Scott's piece and condemned King's comments as "offensive and racist and not representative of Iowa." Grassley told reporters from Axios," I find it offensive to claim white supremacy. I will condemn it."
Where have you been, senators? And where was Gov. Kim Reynolds, who just won election with King as her campaign co-chair? Then she was praising him as "principled." But after winning, she said something about his needing to decide whose values he represents.
In case they’ve forgotten, here’s a little refresher on King’s actions and pronouncements:
A Washington Post story this fall said King had met in August in Austria with members of the Freedom Party, founded by a former Nazi SS officer. He also granted an interview to a website associated with the party. This was while King was on a trip to Poland paid for by a group dedicated to preserving the history of the Holocaust.
He has said nonwhites have contributed less to civilization than white people; that America can't restore its civilization with "someone else's babies," and that "mixing cultures will bring down the quality of life." He called for America to be so homogeneous that we "look a lot the same."
He proposed an electrified fence to keep Mexicans out, noting, "We do that with livestock." He described Mexicans as having cantaloupe-size calves from running drugs. He justified torturing political prisoners in Abu Ghraib, comparing it to fraternity hazing.
While keeping a Confederate flag on his desk, he held up reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in Congress. He introduced legislation lobbied for by ACT for America, listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an anti-Muslim hate group. He went to bat for the convicted former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who defied a judge's orders not to detain immigrants nabbed through ethnic profiling. He lavished praise on European politicians for going after Muslims and trying to ban mosques and the Koran.
The Register has quoted more such comments by King over the years than I can count.
In June, King retweeted British Nazi sympathizer and Hitler admirer Mark Collett’s screenshot of a Breitbart news story about young Italians opposing mass migration, on which Collett had observed: "Europe is waking up..."
"Europe is waking up ...Will America...in time?" King added.
More:Even national Republicans are calling out Steve King. Aren't voters tired of his doublespeak?
More:Iowa Gov. Reynolds will keep Steve King as campaign co-chair
More:Basu: King’s race-baiting finds another target: Kaepernick
More:Basu: Steve King reappears to remind us he's the one setting Iowa back
In 2015, it was reported that both King and Ernst had accepted campaign donations from Earl Holt, the leader of a white supremacist group. After that caused a stir, both said they would donate the money to charities.
King endorsed a white-nationalist candidate for mayor of Toronto, earning the condemnation of writers for the conservative Washington Examiner and Weekly Standard, who called out his obsession with race-based politics.
Imagine if Iowa leaders had had this awakening about King 10 or 15 years ago, how things might be different for the state, and especially for King’s 39-county House district. Instead of being demonized, immigrants could had been welcomed and encouraged by their representative to help grow the region, its agriculture and small businesses. Instead of being so deeply divided and polarized under King’s leadership, the people of the district might have functioned as one, with a shared commitment to progress and growth.
Instead, his supporters have defensively carried water for him while his detractors have felt compelled to shrink from the limelight, embarrassed.
“That is not the party of Lincoln and it’s definitely not American,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said of King in stripping his committee assignments. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested King find “another line of work.”
Whatever your political views, real leadership means doing what's right when you learn what's wrong, not after everyone else has already condemned it — and then because of polls or popularity or because your career could suffer if you don't.
Whatever happens to King's career, one can only hope Iowa's other top leaders will learn from this and get on the right side for the right reasons — promptly next time.
Contact: [email protected] Follow her on Twitter @rekhabasu and at Facebook.com/rekha.basu1106. Her book, "Finding Her Voice: A collection of Des Moines Register columns about women's struggles and triumphs in the Midwest," is available at ShopDMRegister.com/FindingHerVoice. | {
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Every October, you can count on at least one big-budget horror remake hitting the theaters, as well as a barrage of scary movies playing on SyFy, HBO, and Netflix. Still, even with all the available options at the cinema, on cable, and via paid streaming services, it’s nice to find that there are some classics that you can watch entirely for free. Here are five horror movies you can stream in their entirety on YouTube.
The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Related Posts 10 Horror Movies Based on True Stories
Before he created the Scream and A Nightmare on Elm Street film series, director Wes Craven was already an established master of brutal horror, thanks in part to The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes. The film is about a family stranded on the side of the road in the Nevada desert, viciously hunted by a clan of cannibals living in the surrounding hills. Incredibly, The Hills Have Eyes is a horror movie inspired by actual events.
Click here to watch The Hills Have Eyes
Don’t Looks In the Basement (1973)
While this low-budget slasher doesn’t get a lot of love, it’s actually a pretty enjoyable flick. At an isolated asylum for the criminally insane, the director of the institution is murdered — and from then on, the inmates have the run of the place, despite the best efforts of a newly hired nurse to control the mayhem.
Click here to watch Don’t Look In the Basement
Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)
Related Posts Knapsack to Reunite for Fall 2013 Tour Dates
Dubbed in 1980 as the “worst movie ever made,” Plan 9 From Outer Space is the magnum opus of director Ed Wood. If you like camp and cheesy good fun, don’t miss this one. And when you finish, you can stream the excellent 1994 biopic Ed Wood, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp, Martin Landau, and Sarah Jessica Parker.
Click here to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space
White Zombie (1932)
In 1931, actor Bela Lugosi made a name for himself in America with his portrayal of Dracula. As his follow-up to that role, he starred in White Zombie as “Murder” Legendre, a white Haitian voodoo master who makes a weird face and does this thing with his hands to perform mind control over Madeleine, his zombie minion. The creepy atmosphere and set design help to make up for lackluster acting and mediocre story.
Click here to watch White Zombie
Nosferatu (1922)
Because the studio could not obtain rights to the novel Dracula, Nosferatu is an unauthorized silent adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic gothic tale. To circumvent legal troubles, names and other details were changed — for instance, “vampire” became “nosferatu,” and “Count Dracula” became “Count Orlok.” Despite the changes, Stoker’s estate sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Fortunately, one copy was preserved, and to this day it is considered a masterpiece — and perhaps the most chilling version of Dracula ever filmed.
Click here to watch Nosferatu | {
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Some 50,000 foreign nationals visited South Korea last year to receive plastic surgeries and spent some 215 billion won ($189 million), a government report showed.
The amount spent by those who received plastic surgeries in Korea last year was almost four times higher than the figure for the same medical procedures in 2012.
Compared to 2016, 968 more foreign nationals visited Korea last year for plastic surgeries, while the total number of foreign patients who visited the country for medical treatments dropped by 6.5 percent from 2016-2017.
(Yonhap) | {
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By Michael T. Wood, Guest Contributor
On 20 July 2015, the United States and Cuba reopened their embassies in Havana and Washington, D.C. This occasion represents another important step in the normalization of U.S.-Cuban relations, and continues a policy shift that began in December 2014. Even though more action is needed on both sides of the Straits of Florida, no one can deny the historic nature of these events. In light of these changes, it seems like a good time to explore an often overlooked or misunderstood portion of U.S.-Cuban sport history: American football in Cuba.
Before I continue, since this is my first post, I will start with an introduction. My name is Michael Wood and I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Geography at Texas Christian University. Over the past few years I have taught sports-related courses as an instructor for the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama. My research focuses on American football played between U.S. and Cuban teams from 1907 to 1956. In this piece, I will present a brief overview of the sport’s history in Cuba, discuss its place in the current historiography, and explain the approach I take in my dissertation. But first, I will address some misconceptions about games between U.S. and Cuban teams.
The most commonly used name for games between U.S. and Cuban teams is “Bacardi Bowl.” Its Wikipedia page includes a list of ten games and a couple of brief summaries. I would consider this information misleading at best. There were far more games played between U.S. and Cuban teams, and they were not called Bacardi Bowls. Sportswriters and university administrators in the United States introduced that designation for the games after the fact in part to augment their programs’ bowl legacies. These contests would regularly be described as just exhibition games or international matches. Further, the University of Havana, Cuban athletic clubs, or the Cuban government financed the games, not the Bacardi family.
The 1937 Auburn-Villanova game in Havana comes closest to being a “bowl,” since it was held during the expansion of postseason play in college football during the mid-to-late-1930s. Organizers intended the game to become an annual affair as part of a national sports festival. The first contest scheduled two North American teams, but later games would feature U.S. and Cuban teams. The deaths of three Cuban Naval pilots on a goodwill tour in Colombia forced the cancellation of the 1938 game and plans for the future matches never materialized. Even still, American football games continued on a local level and between U.S. and Cuban teams until 1956.
Now, with the whole “Bacardi Bowl” issue tackled, what about the sport’s history in Cuba?[1]
Cuban universities and athletic clubs played American football for over 50 years. The sport’s history on the island predated the first varsity squad at the University of Florida by a year and Cuban elevens competed on the gridiron for more than twenty years before the founding of the University of Miami in Coral Gables. Members of the Vedado Tennis Club and students of the University of Havana fielded teams and held the first American football games in Cuba in 1905. Afterward, Cuban colleges and athletic clubs, particularly in Havana, organized amateur leagues and played against each other until the mid-to-late-1950s. The number of teams in the leagues and games played varied from year to year, depending on the condition of the clubs and political stability on the island. Generally, American football remained within the socially exclusive, racially segregated institutions of the upper-/upper-middle-class sport culture in Cuba.[2]
In addition to the local amateur leagues, international games took place on a fairly regular basis. From 1907 to 1956, U.S. and Cuban teams played approximately 52 games. These contests pitted squads from colleges and universities, athletic clubs, and military bases in the U.S. South against teams from the University of Havana and five Cuban athletic clubs. They took place in Havana at Almendares Park from 1907-1921, on the grounds of the Vedado Tennis Club in the 1920s, at el Gran Stadium Cervecería Tropical (La Tropical) and el Stadium La Polar de La Habana (Stadium Polar) in the late-1930s, and at the University of Havana’s University Stadium from 1923 through the 1950s. U.S. cities also hosted games between U.S. and Cuban teams, including: Tampa, Miami, Lakeland, and Orlando in Florida; Statesboro and Savannah in Georgia; Spartanburg, South Carolina; and Dothan, Alabama. And this is just from what I have been able to piece together so far. It appears clear to me that there is more to American football in Cuba than a few handfuls of games. There was sustained participation in Cuba and a consistent effort to hold games between U.S. and Cuban teams. This is without a doubt a subject that deserves deeper investigation.[3]
In the historiography, baseball and prizefighting overshadow American football because of their popularity and racial inclusiveness. Since American football was a sport played primarily within Havana’s social athletic club culture, it becomes marginalized or characterized as part of U.S. cultural imperialism. Paula J. Pettavino and Geralyn Pye briefly mention the sport in their 1994 book, Sport in Cuba. It appears as a minor sport on the same level as squash, judo, professional wrestling, and professional bodybuilding. In his 1999 book, On Becoming Cuban, Louis A. Pérez, Jr. touches on the subject of American football in Cuba while discussing the influence of North American sporting culture on the upper-class athletic clubs in Havana in the early twentieth-century. Gerald R. Gems expands on the subject in his 2006 work The Athletic Crusade. Similar to Pérez, he associates the sporting culture of the early Cuban republic with the upper-class. He writes, “Wealthy Cubans who had attended schools in the United States returned to their homeland and to establish the Havana Sports Club and the Vedado Tennis Club in 1902. Both eventually competed in baseball, basketball, and American football. The latter played against American colleges and the University of Havana, which eventually installed an American coach and an American athletic director,” and, “Early in 1910 a Havana team even defeated the Tulane University football team.” Gems links these events with other overt actions, such as the activities of the Havana YMCA, to Americanize the population of Havana and, with the number of North American victories on the gridiron, as a reinforcement of Anglo superiority. These three examples were just a sampling, but, in general, most scholars dismiss or only mention American football games between U.S. and Cuban teams as a minor point in support of a broader thesis. There are no in-depth academic studies that focus exclusively on the sport in Cuba.[4]
Given the amount of games played and the scant scholarly attention paid to them, I chose American football games played between U.S. and Cuban teams as a research topic, and hopefully my dissertation will fill a portion of this gap in the historical literature. To make the project more manageable, I decided to concentrate on games played between 1907 and 1933, but I intend to extend the study to cover 1934 to 1956. Using the model Michael Oriard establishes in his books, Reading Football and King Football, I treat accounts of the games from U.S. and Cuban newspapers and periodicals, student newspapers, universities publication, and archival materials, as “cultural texts” through which I examine class, modernity, race and ethnicity, gender, and national identity. Overall, I argue that American football held a comparable place in the U.S. South and in Havana, and that these games suggest that a transnational upper-/upper-middle-class sport culture existed between the United States and Cuba in the first half of the twentieth-century.[5]
In closing, the triumph of the revolution and ensuing changes doomed American football in Cuba. On 1 January 1959, revolutionary forces led by Fidel Castro toppled the General Fulgencio Batista regime. The new revolutionary government dismantled the existing Cuban sporting culture, which included banning the existence of exclusive athletic clubs, many of whom played American football. Broadly speaking, U.S.-Cuban relations quickly deteriorated after the revolutionary government nationalized North American assets. The United States retaliated with the passage of the Economic Embargo in October 1960 and the severing of diplomatic relations in January 1961. Tensions continued to rise with the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 and the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. Cuba became a flash point in the Cold War and the United States’ adversary in the Western Hemisphere. These events and others set U.S.-Cuban relations on a hostile path for the last 54 years.[6]
One of the questions I get asked frequently about my dissertation and research is, “Do you think games between American football will be played in Cuba again?” I would automatically respond in the negative. Despite the geographic proximity and the history of American football in Cuba, the cultural divide created over the past 50 years seems to be too much to overcome. But in light of recent events, I have adjusted my answer to, “It’s possible.” Perhaps unlikely, but once again the Cuban flag flies in Washington, D.C. and the Stars and Stripes flies in Havana. Who knows? Given the current climate in college football, the coming years may bring a real bowl game to Cuba, but I doubt Bacardi will be its corporate sponsor.
Michael T. Wood is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History and Geography at Texas Christian University. His research focuses on American football played between U.S. and Cuban teams from 1907 to 1956. He currently teaches sports-related courses as an instructor for the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama. You can contact him at: [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected].
Notes
[1] Full disclosure: I use “Bacardi Bowl” in the title of my somewhat neglected research blog, “Bacardi Bowl: American Football and Cuba” (bacardibowl.blogspot.com). Perhaps it is a bit hypocritical on my part, but it is for the search hits. On a typical Google search, my blog appears on the first page of results, and it provides a little more depth than the other options. Also, it has given me the privilege to communicate with those interested in the subject. In the near future, I plan on revising and expanding it into a full website with more game narratives, roster lists, and profiles of important players, coaches, and officials.
[2] “El deportista,” Mella: 100 Años, Vol. 2 (Havana: Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau, 2003), 214; Louis A. Pérez, Jr., On Becoming Cuban (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 256; Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 164. De la Fuente notes that the Cuban Amateur Athletic Union (Union Atlética de Amateurs de Cuba) excluded Afro-Cuban and mullatto membership through the 1930s. He mentions the existence of Liga Intersocial, made up primarily of Afro-Cuban athletic clubs. More research needs to be done to determine if these clubs played American football.
[3] According to my research, the list of U.S. teams (in alphabetical order) includes: American Legion (Tampa), Chatham Flyers, Florida Southern College, Fort Pierce, Georgia Teachers College (Georgia Southern University), Howard College (Samford University), Key West Naval Station, Louisiana State University (LSU), Miami Naval Training Station, Mississippi A&M College (Mississippi State University), Norman Junior College, Pensacola Air Base, Presbyterian College, Rollins College, San Antonio Air Base, Southern Mississippi College (Southern Mississippi University), Stetson College (Stetson University), Tulane University, University of Alabama (B-team), University of Florida, University of Miami (FL), University of Mississippi, University of Tampa. The list of Cuban teams (again, in alphabetical order): Club Atlético de Cuba (C.A.C.), los Dependientes del Comercio de la Habana (Dependientes), Havana Yacht Club (H.Y.C.), Policía (Cuban National Police), la Universidad de La Habana (University of Havana), Vedado Tennis Club (V.T.C.). These lists are by no means complete. They are based on what I have been able to piece together so far and do not take into account Cuban teams that did not play international games.
[4] Paula J. Pettavino and Geralyn Pye, Sport in Cuba: The Diamond in the Rough (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), 54; Pérez, On Becoming Cuban, 256; Gerald R. Gems, The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2006), 89, 91.
[5] Michael Oriard, Reading Football: How the Popular Press Created an American Spectacle (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Michael Oriard, King Football: Sport and Spectacle in the Golden Age of Radio and Newsreels, Movies and Magazines, the Weekly and the Daily Press (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). I use the approach to cultural imperial from Allen Guttmann, Games and Empires: Modern Sports and Cultural Imperialism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).
[6] See: Thomas G. Paterson, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuba Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); Louis A. Pérez, Jr., Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1990). | {
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If you read my columns, and of course you do, you will by now be familiar with the safe space, the trigger warning, and the post-MILO therapy sessions that have become common sights on the American campus.
They are symbols of what NYU Professor Jonathan Haidt and free speech campaigner Greg Lukianoff call the culture of “coddling” in higher education, where speech on campus is censored in order to protect the hyper-sensitive feelings of left-wing students on campus.
Well, America has just elected a President that represents a comprehensive rejection of that culture.
When I come to college campuses, I generate fairly hysterical protests. But if the President-Elect visited a college campus, I suspect activists would burn the place to the ground before the end of the night. The only building left unharmed would be the student counselling center, where tearful students would no doubt gather for a “cry-in” the next morning, complete with therapy dogs, play-doh, soporific pan pipes and aromatherapy.
There is widespread consensus that the culture of codding on campuses has gone too far. It’s not just me saying it. Some of the most loudest voices against censorship on campus are liberals: Steven Pinker, Jonathan Chait, and Jonathan Haidt to name just a few. Moderate feminists like Christina Hoff Sommers, Emily Yoffe and Cathy Young also agree that something must be done to fix the American university.
If the President-Elect’s higher education reforms are carefully judged, there is no reason why they would not attract support from across the political spectrum. On this issue at least, the establishment and anti-establishment are in agreement. So what should Trump do?
As in other areas of policy, he should start by undoing the damage of the Obama administration. The Obamas have been surprisingly robust on campus free speech issues, with both Barack and Michelle Obama telling students to toughen up and engage with their political opponents instead of retreating into safe spaces.
At least they say the right things. But consider the travesty of justice unleashed by the outgoing administration with their 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter.
The letter was a validation of the radical feminist “rape culture” panic, feeding the pernicious lie that 1 in 5 female students become victims of sexual assault while in college. It called on university administrations to consider sexual assault a Title IX issue, causing administrations across the country to fear for their federal funding and scramble to take action.
The result was the rise of kangaroo courts on campus, with male students subject to one of the most egregious strings of miscarriages of justice in American history, hauled before panels of university administrators to be branded rapists based on threadbare evidence.
The rape culture panic subsided after Rolling Stone was fooled by a hoaxer who claimed to have been gang-raped by a college fraternity, but the kangaroo courts remain. Luckily, if the Obama administration was able to wreak this much havoc with a single letter, it shouldn’t be very difficult for Trump do undo the damage with similar methods. He should do so as soon as possible.
As for safe spaces and trigger warnings, there have already been promising signs of Trump’s intentions. In an interview with Inside Higher Ed during the campaign, Trump policy director Sam Clovis said “I think in the spirit of academic freedom, a college campus should be a place where people should be allowed to express themselves to the fullest as long as they don’t injure another party.”
“When students react in a particular way and they make demands, there has to be a calm approach to it, to say, ‘Look, this is free speech and this is the speech that is on this campus. You may not agree with this individual, but this person on this campus, and you should hear what they have to say.”
This suggests that a Trump administration would encourage college administrations to reject the demands of the pro-censorship campaigners who drive the culture of coddling on American campuses. I look forward to the outrage from left-wing academics and activists when this policy begins to take shape.
Last but not least, Donald Trump is set to tackle one of the problems raised by Bernie Sanders — crippling student loans. Trump has proposed capping student loans at 12.5 percent of a student’s income per month, with full debt forgiveness after 15 years.
The proposed reform has some conservatives up in arms, who point out that forgiveness after 15 years, as opposed to the current system of forgiveness after 20, will reduce the incentive for students to choose their degrees more carefully. But Trump’s team have also hinted that his administration will take student choices – good and bad – into account.
According to Sam Clovis’ comments to Inside Higher Ed, Trump plans to ensure that colleges have “skin in the game,” sharing a loan’s risk with students and taking a role in the approval process. This will ensure that college administrations think more carefully about letting students take out a six-figure loan for a course in Feminist Dance Therapy. I mean, it’s unlikely they’ll get any of that money back if a student’s most likely career paths are burger-flipping and blogging.
From coddling to pointless majors, the American campus is in crisis. The Democrats, who rely on identity politics to propel themselves into office, would have had few incentives to tackle the problem seriously, which involves relentlessly challenging censorship and political correctness in culture, smashing kangaroo courts on campus, and slapping heavy financial disincentives on pointless social justice courses. Trump has already done the first of these, and there is no reason why he won’t do the others as well.
It’s hard to overstate just how important this is, for American society and for the political right. The power of the cultural left can be felt everywhere — in entertainment, in the arts, in the media, and in corporations. But it all starts in education.
If we can beat them there, we can beat them anywhere. Here’s hoping my Dangerous Faggot tour, which resumes on November 30 at Penn State, turns out to be just the first wave of the conservative and libertarian counterattack.
Follow Milo Yiannopoulos (@Nero) on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat. Hear him every Friday on The Milo Yiannopoulos Show. Write to Milo at [email protected]. | {
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Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney joined a growing chorus of Americans calling for the state of South Carolina to take down the Confederate flag, calling it a symbol of hatred and divisiveness, only to have conservative followers of his turn on him.
Attention has once again returned to the flag flown at the state capital of South Carolina, home of the birthplace of the confederacy, following the shooting of nine black churchgoers by Dylann Roof, who sported Confederate flags on his car.
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Friday night, South Carolina state Rep. Norman “Doug” Brannon (R) said he plans on introducing a bill to remove the Confederate flag near his state’s capitol building, adding, “I’m not a politician tonight. But I do have access, and I will introduce that bill in December,”
Saturday morning on Twitter, Romney wrote, “Take down the # ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor # Charleston victims.”
See also:
Here are 11 myths about the future of gun control — debunked after the Charleston shooting
‘I know where he got his news’: Bill Maher links Charleston terrorist to right-wing media
Romney’s position on the Confederate flag isn’t new — he criticized it during the 2008 presidential campaign and drew fire and attack ads over it then
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While many praised Romney for taking a bold stand, others harshly criticized the conservative Republican with one writing, “With respect, if you want to define the confederacy, does that mean I get to define Mormonism”
Romney’s tweet and some responses below:
Take down the #ConfederateFlag at the SC Capitol. To many, it is a symbol of racial hatred. Remove it now to honor #Charleston victims. — Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) June 20, 2015
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@MittRomney if that flag offends someone, they need a history lesson — Hunter Ansley (@theHunterAnsley) June 20, 2015
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@MittRomney @Thomasismyuncle with respect, if you want to define the confederacy, does that mean I get to define Mormonism — Karon Adams (@MilitaryRosary) June 20, 2015
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@MittRomney Think that will help the murder rate in Chicago and Baltimore ? — STRONG (@6Strong8) June 20, 2015
@MittRomney I disagree. Let it stay, it is not a symbol of hatred. It is history, it has nothing to do with hate. — Kyle nChell (@Kylenchell98) June 20, 2015
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@MittRomney @EricaGrieder The Battle Flag hasn’t killed anyone since 1865. Please sirs go to Hades. — Charles Mangerian (@Civitas2012) June 20, 2015
@MittRomney Yes, because caving in to race-baiters who are only trying to exploit a tragedy is what won you the Presidency, right? — Dan (@Maverick_SS_49) June 20, 2015
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One tweet in particular was appreciative of Romney, complimenting him while taking a slap at the GOP in general:
. @MittRomney Wow! Has someone in the gop figured out that catering to the batsht crazies is a losing proposition? — T (@mgtilford) June 20, 2015
See also:
‘I know where he got his news’: Bill Maher links Charleston terrorist to right-wing media | {
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En video af kampe mellem christianitter og politiet deles torsdag flittigt på de sociale medier.
TV 2 har fredag rettet i et citat fra politikommissær Steffen Thaaning Steffensen. I første omgang skrev vi, at "Cadok er der kun for en ting, og det er at stikke os." Dette er nu rettet til "stække".
En video fra onlinemediet Cadok gengiver, hvordan politiet trak stavene for at komme igennem en stor menneskemængde under en politiaktion torsdag.
Videoen viser en fotograf, der bløder ud af hovedet efter tumult med politibetjente. Cadok skriver selv på sin Facebook-profil, at "pludseligt begyndte politiet at slå på alle som stod og så på".
Politikommissær Steffen Thaaning Steffensen har dog ikke samme udlægning af historien. Ifølge ham kastede ”en frygtelig masse mennesker med sten og flasker” forud for, at politiet trak stavene.
- Da en kollega blev ramt på armen, blev det besluttet, at de ikke ville finde sig i det mere. Derfor blev stavene trukket, siger politikommisæren.
Svært at se forskel på lovlydige og ballademagere
Steffen Thaaning Steffensen erkender, at Cadoks optagelser er voldsomme, men ifølge ham har betjentene på stedet overholdt reglerne, og videoerne viser ikke andet end en, der bliver væltet omkuld.
- Cadok er der kun for en ting, og det er at stække os. Jo flere klager, der ender hos Den Uafhængige Politiklagemyndighed, jo bedre er det for dem, siger ham.
Han tilføjer, at hvis man ikke flytter sig fra politiet, når betjente kommer løbende med stave, er det svært for politiet at se forskel fra lovlydige og ballademagere.
- Men der er ikke nogen af mine folk, der ville slå en Cadok-fotograf i hovedet, siger Steffen Thaaning Steffensen.
Der er efter hændelsen landet en klage over politiet hos Den Uafhængige Politiklagemyndighed. Betjentene har også selv GoPro-kamereaer på hjelmene, som klagemyndigheden vil se igennem.
Alternativet vil have Pind til at forklare
Videoen optaget af Cadoks fotograf er torsdag aften blevet delt mere end 4000 gange på Facebook, og den er også nået til Christiansborg.
Her beder Alternativets retsordfører, Josephine Fock, nu justitsminister Søren Pind (V) om at redegøre for forløbet.
- Jeg har svært ved at se, hvad der kan retfærdiggøre at fredelige bliver angrebet med knipler af politiet, hvis det er tilfældet. Det vigtigste er nu, at vi får afklaret, hvad der er sket, siger hun i en skriftlig kommentar.
To anholdt med store mængder euforiserende stoffer
Ved aktionen blev to personer anholdt for besiddelse af euforiserende stoffer.
Der er tale om to mænd på henholdsvis 21 og 31 år, der begge to er det, der i miljøet kaldes løbere - dem der løber med hashbodernes varer, hvis politiet kommer.
Løberne blev taget med blandt andet 40 hashkager og næsten 400 joints. De er efterfølgende begge blevet løsladt. | {
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BOSCoin CEO Yezune Choi responds to a question during an interview in Seoul, last week. / Courtesy of M&K PR
By Kim Yoo-chul
Blockchain technology is something new but it is definitely promising and has huge growth potential on multiple fronts with companies dedicating themselves to it.
Facebook and Samsung, for example, have recently created teams to study how the blockchain technology behind bitcoin, the most popular cryptocurrency, could be used in developing new products.
A few other options are also being explored. The project financing industry is one example that could benefit from distributed ledgers, as well, with BOSCoin CEO Yezune Choi pushing hard to bring credit and blockchain together in the years to come.
While it's true that there's been a lot of buzz about the pros- and cons- of blockchain in the digital currency community, Choi claims public blockchains are an appropriate application of the protocol in terms of the creation of a relevant ecosystem.
A public blockchain is basically the model used by bitcoin, ethereum and litecoin, and could be regarded as the original distributed ledger structure. The technology can receive and send transactions from anybody in the world. They could also be audited by anybody, and every node has as much transmission power as any other.
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The debt deal reached by Congressional leaders and President Obama would keep the nation from defaulting on its loans, but it would make graduate school much more expensive for many graduate students.
As part of the savings to trim the deficits, Congress would scrap a special kind of federal loan for graduate students. So-called subsidized student loans don't charge students any interest on the principal of student loans until six months after students graduated.
In an email to The Huffington Post, Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org notes that "graduate students can defer repaying their federal student loans by capitalizing the interest. The debt deal merely changes the $8,500 in subsidized loans to unsubsidized."
Under the agreement, a special credit for all students who make 12 months of on-time loan payments would also be axed.
The cuts would save the government $21.6 billion over the next ten years.
Think Progress points out the poorest grad students would be unaffected by the changes proposed in the agreement.
The cost of the war in Afghanistan costs $27 billion over three months, according to Think Progress, which says "Americans are left to wonder which cost-saving measure would be more worthwhile."
Reuters reports that grad students can currently borrow as much as $20,500 a year in federal Stafford loans. That amount will be raised to make up for the extra money students will have to spend to cover the lost subsidies. | {
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Si è parlato di Puglia, Murgia e anche di Corato nella sede del Parlamento Europeo di Bruxelles, durante l’incontro “Sudèuropa. Beni comuni e giustizia ambientale: Europa<->Puglia” organizzato nei giorni scorsi da Eleonora Florenza, deputata al parlamento europeo per il gruppo GUE/NGL. Tra gli altri, hanno relazionato, anche i coratini Corrado De Benedittis (rappresentante dei Comitati Alta Murgia) e Giuseppe Caldara (perito agrario).
Lo sguardo sulla Puglia aveva il chiaro fine di connettere "le tante questioni di giustizia ambientale e di gestione dei beni comuni - che insistono sul mare e sulla terra di Puglia - con quel filo rosso rappresentato dalla loro valenza europea e con le ricadute che il quadro europeo ha su tutte le questioni territoriali. La questione meridionale è oggi una questione europea, e uno dei profili attraverso cui è necessario affrontarla è il problema della giustizia ambientale”.
Durante i suoi due interventi, avvenuti nell’ambito del convegno “Beni comuni e giustizia ambientale: connessioni tra Europa e Puglia” e durante la conferenza stampa conclusiva, Corrado De Benedittis ha ribadito la necessità di una rinnovata attenzione sulle tematiche che riguardano il territorio murgiano: dalla riqualificazione ambientale, alla valorizzazione del patrimonio storico culturale, al rilancio dell’economia di tutta l’area murgiana attraverso l’incontro tra vecchie e nuove generazioni, così da fare incontrare tradizione e innovazione nell’ottica di un’agricoltura di qualità amica dell’ambiente, del paesaggio e della salute, evidenziando la mancata nomina da parte di Regione e Ministero dell’ambiente del nuovo presidente dell’Ente Parco: «assente da più di un anno per fine mandato, bloccati dalle solite logiche spartitorie mentre è necessario che guidi il Parco chi realmente conosce, vive e tutela questo territorio».
A tal fine, ha sottolineato la necessità che l’Ente Parco dell’Alta Murgia sia sbloccato dalle logiche di spartizione politica e diventi realmente il volano al servizio delle comunità dei 13 Comuni del Parco, tra cui Corato.
«È necessario - ha sostenuto De Benedittis - che l’Alta Murgia sia finalmente liberata dalle servitù militari, ben 3 poligoni attivi, che a detta di tutti gli operatori economici e culturali, costituiscono un limite oggettivo a un serio programma di rilancio della Murgia sia sul piano economico che su quello turistico. Ho ricordato, a tal proposito, che il Parco è stato concepito dai movimenti murgiani, dai CAM e in particolare dal Centro studi Torre di Nebbia, come parco di pace crocevia delle culture mediterranee».
Un occhio sulla grande sofferenza ed emergenza in cui si trova l’olivicoltura di Corato e del Nord barese, a seguito dell’epocale gelata dello scorso anno è stato il fulcro dei due interventi di De Benedittis:
«Tutt’oggi, il Ministero delle politiche agricole non ha riconosciuto la stato di calamità e che gli olivicoltori si ritrovano in una situazione drammatica, a fronte di una carenza di liquidità e della necessità di avviare i lavori di cura delle piante. In considerazione di tutto ciò, è necessario che le Istituzioni europee abbiano grande attenzione alle necessità agricole, ambientali e turistiche di Corato e del Nord barese».
A tal fine, ha anticipato «l’intenzione del Comune di Corato di avere, nella prossima stagione amministrativa, qualora ne dovesse avere la guida, un’interlocuzione diretta con le Istituzioni europee, in relazione ai grandi assi di sviluppo: agricoltura, ambiente, welfare, imprenditoria giovanile, innovazione, facendo entrare la nostra città nella dimensione dei network europei e delle iniziative comunitarie che interessano le città».
Alla crisi olivicola ha fatto anche riferimento la relazione di Giuseppe Caldara, nell’ambito del convegno “La terra di Puglia. Ulivi, pesticidi, xylella: quale agricoltura, quale politica commerciale?”.
Un intervento di carattere tecnico-politico, con dati alla mano che ha fatto luce su: «avanzamento della xylella fino a Monopoli e al sud barese, gelate 27 e 28 febbraio 2018 e protesta gilet arancione.Ho voluto evidenziare quelle che ritengo inefficienze istituzionali sopratutto di Regione e Stato in merito alla mancata declaratoria sugelate olivo a Corato, in provincia di Bari, Bat e sud di Foggia».
In una nota conclusiva, Andrea Mastrototaro del Coordinamento provinciale Rifondazione Comunista, supporto organizzativo dell’evento, ha spiegato che «questa idea, nata dall’Euro Deputato Eleonora Florenza, è stata accolta con entusiasmo dal partito per un’importante sguardo sui movimenti di lotta e di analisi sulle tematiche ambientali ed economiche della Puglia. Ho suggerito personalmente due temi fondamentali per il nostro territorio, la questione Xylella e quella ambientale del Parco dell’Alta Murgia nell’ottica sia di opportunità di lavoro che di importanza storico-culturale. I nomi di Corrado De Benedittis e di Giuseppe Caldara sono venuti spontaneamente per le loro competenze e il loro interesse ormai consolidato sui temi. Un’esperienza molto interessante - ha concluso Mastrototaro - per un alto livello di discussione, fatto di argomenti seri e di tematiche non solo europee ma anche locali». | {
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Unificação da Globo pode render 2.500 demissões de funcionários, diz site
O clima nos bastidores da Globo segue tenso. Na última sexta-feira (8), a emissora divulgou um novo modelo de gestão e produção que entrará em vigor em janeiro. Com esse novo projeto, o ‘Uma Só Globo, funcionários estimam que a “fusão” causará 2500 demissões.
• Sandy e Junior terão série na Globoplay após turnê ‘Nossa História’
• Globo demite mais de 100 funcionários e clima é tenso, diz site
As informações foram divulgadas pelo jornalista Daniel Castro, do Notícias da TV.
O número foi obtido pelo site de notícias através de fontes que tiveram acesso a informações privilegiadas sobre o processo de reestruturação da Globo.
Em contato feito pelo Notícias da TV, a Globo nega que o corte seja de 2500 vagas, mas admite que haverá ainda mais demissões. “Todas as grandes empresas modernas passam por processos na busca de eficiência e evolução constante e, nesse contexto, é natural que se façam ajustes. Na Globo não é diferente”, afirmou a emissora em nota.
As demissões já vêm ocorrendo na Globo há alguns meses, o que tem gerado ainda mais um clima de insegurança nos bastidores. Ainda segundo o Notícias da TV, na semana passada, cerca de 300 pessoas foram demitidas, somente nos Estúdios Globo, antigo Projac, no Rio de Janeiro.
Veja também | {
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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, abruptly resigned from his law firm, which then promptly undercut his recent statements defending the president.
Mr. Giuliani had taken a leave of absence last month from the firm, Greenberg Traurig, to represent Mr. Trump. But the firm, one of the nation’s largest, said in a statement on Thursday that he no longer worked there.
Firm partners had chafed over Mr. Giuliani’s public comments about payments that another of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Michael D. Cohen, made to secure the silence of a pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The president has denied her allegations.
Mr. Giuliani suggested that such payments were common at his firm, even without the knowledge of the clients. “That was money that was paid by his lawyer, the way I would do, out of his law firm funds,” he said on Fox News. He added, “Michael would take care of things like this like I take care of this with my clients.” | {
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Like many Southern cities, Clinton, Mississippi, bears the scars of American slavery. A road cutting through the city’s center marks a key route used by slave traders in the decades before the Civil War. Signs across town tell the story of a Reconstruction-era riot that claimed the lives of at least 30 African-Americans.
But, unlike many of its neighbors, Clinton is doing all it can to heal those scars through its public school system.
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As the national discussion has shifted towards “school choice,” often a cover for charter schools and voucher programs, Clinton has moved in the opposite direction, towards working together and using public resources to give every student a high-quality education.
It all started with an innovative idea. In the early 1970s, Clinton began sending its kids to the same schools regardless of where they live. Instead of multiple elementary schools serving different neighborhoods, for example, there’s one citywide school for kindergarten and first grade, one for second and third grades, and so on. This fills Clinton’s classrooms with a mix of black and white students from all parts of town.
As schools nationwide are becoming increasingly resegregated, Clinton’s are thriving because of integration. Despite 40 percent of its students qualifying for free- or reduced-price lunch, the city’s high school graduation rate is substantially higher than the state and national averages. Teachers there have been ranked the best in the state.
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Clinton stands in stark contrast with its neighbors. Last year, nearby Cleveland, Mississippi, finally gave up a five-decade legal battle with the federal government over integration. As of 2015, 179 U.S. school districts were involved in active desegregation cases, 44 of them in Mississippi.
The state capital, Jackson, is experimenting with charter schools, which are publicly funded but privately operated. Darlings of the “school choice” movement, charter schools are generally more racially segregated than traditional public schools. A study last year found that one in five charter schools in California, the state with the most charters, had a discriminatory admissions policy. On top of that, research continues to confirm that charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools.
In his February address to Congress, Donald Trump called education the “civil rights issue of our time.” There’s a grain of truth to that. Public schools are by some measures as segregated now as they were at the time of Brown v. Board of Education.
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But the answer isn’t “school choice,” it’s better schools for all students. Trump’s push, along with that of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, for voucher programs, more charter schools, and less regulation is woefully misguided. It would send public money to private hands, with little to no accountability for students and parents.
As Clinton’s story shows, public schools designed to give all students a high quality education are powerful tools for addressing increasing economic and racial inequality. Leaving things up to the private market — DeVos’ definition of “school choice” — only makes things worse.
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Every kid needs public investment, not a “choice” that only occasionally delivers. | {
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We got our paper “Refund Attacks on Bitcoin’s Payment Protocol” accepted at the 20th Financial Cryptography & Data Security Conference in Bridgetown, Barbados. The question is… what is the paper about and why do we think it is important for the Bitcoin community?
BIP70: Payment Protocol is a community-accepted standard which governs how customers and merchants interact during the payment process. It is currently in use by Coinbase and BitPay, the two largest Payment Processors in the Bitcoin Community, who collectively provide the Payment Protocol for more than 100,000 merchants world-wide to use with their customers. The premise behind the protocol is to improve the user experience as customers no longer handle (or see) Bitcoin addresses during the payment process. Most importantly, the protocol should prevent man in the middle attacks as customer’s can authenticate messages from the merchant when a payment is requested.
To briefly describe the Payment Protocol:
The merchant sends a Payment Request message that contains their Bitcoin address, the number of bitcoins requested and a memo describing the purpose of the payment. This message is signed using their X.509 certificate’s private key.
message that contains their Bitcoin address, the number of bitcoins requested and a memo describing the purpose of the payment. This message is signed using their X.509 certificate’s private key. The customer’s wallet verifies the authenticity of the merchant’s Payment Request message and displays on-screen the payment details to the customer (as seen in Figure 1).
If the customer authorises the payment, the wallet performs two actions: Authorises a payment transaction and broadcasts it the Bitcoin network, Responds with a Payment message that contains a copy of the payment transaction (Bitcoin transaction that sends bitcoins to the merchant), the customer’s refund address and the number of bitcoins that should be refunded in the event of a dispute.
Finally, the merchant replies with a Payment Acknowledgement message that repeats the customer’s Payment message and informs the wallet to display a confirmatory message, “Thank you for your payment!”.
A full description of the Payment Protocol can be found in our paper and in the BIP.
It should be noted that the protocol provides two pieces of evidence in case of a dispute:
The customer has publicly verifiable evidence that they were requested to make a payment by presenting the Payment Request message signed by the merchant. The customer has publicly verifiable evidence that they fulfilled the requested by presenting the payment transaction that is stored in Bitcoin’s Blockchain.
What we propose in the paper is that a third piece of evidence should be provided.
The merchant should have publicly verifiable evidence that he sent the refunded bitcoins to a Bitcoin address endorsed by the same pseudonymous customer who authorised the payment.
Why is this endorsement important? In conventional online commerce, the merchant refunds the money back to the same account that authorised the payment. However, in Bitcoin (and the Payment Protocol), refunds are sent to a different Bitcoin address. This refund address has no connection to the Bitcoin address(es) that authorised the payment. Fundamentally, the merchant needs to be confident they are actually sending the bitcoins back to the customer.
Furthermore, there is no community-accepted refund protocol in use today. The Payment Processors (and merchants) have had to implement their own policy to deal with refunds in Bitcoin. Unfortunately, sending refunds in Bitcoin is not as trivial as it first appears and these observations lead us to identify two new attacks:
The Silkroad Trader attack relies on an authentication vulnerability in the Payment Protocol as customers can send bitcoins to an illicit trader via an honest merchant, and then plausibly deny their involvement.
The Marketplace Trader attack relies on the current refund policies of Coinbase and BitPay who both accept the refund address over e-mail. This allows a rogue trader to use the reputation of a trusted merchant to entice customers to fall victim to a phishing-style attack.
Full details of the attacks can be found in the paper (and are written in such a way that we hope even people without any prior knowledge about Bitcoin can easily understand them).
We performed experiments on real-world merchants to validate the feasibility of our proposed attacks and privately disclosed our results to Coinbase, BitPay, Bitt and others (all our experiments were approved by our university ethical committee). These Payment Processors have taken precautionary measures to prevent the Marketplace Trader attack (as it relies on their refund policies). However, to solve the Silkroad Trader attack requires the Payment Protocol to endorse the refund addresses sent at the time of payment.
A concrete solution is outlined in the paper and we are in the process of implementing it for both Bitcoin Core and Bitcoinj. We hope to soon release the code to the Bitcoin community alongside a new BIP to outline the technical details. In essence, the solution aims to associate each transaction input with a refund address – as the keys that authorised the transaction are also required to sign the refund address. We settled with this solution to ensure the customer has full flexibility over which refund address was chosen. (i.e. No additional information needs to be stored to re-generate the refund address).
We recommend reading the paper to understand the attacks, experiments and solution. Please do leave us a comment if you found the post interesting or want to know more information. I can also be privately contacted at patrick.mccorry at ncl.ac.uk. | {
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Nov. 29th 2017 1:24 pm
Google I/O 2017 happened over half a year ago at this point, and a ton was announced at the company’s annual developer conference. A lot of that surrounded Google Assistant, and Google Home in particular. However, most of the things announced at I/O still haven’t arrived, so what gives?
What do we already have?
– Hands Free Calling
Obviously, the biggest feature that was announced at I/O has already arrived, hands-free calling. And that’s only gotten better since its debut. At launch, this feature either used a private number or your Google Voice number, which was already great, but now it can even tie into your standard phone number.
This is one of the best additions to Google Home since its launch, but it’s not all we were promised at the event.
– Bluetooth audio streaming
Another feature Google promised and delivered on was the ability to use Google Home devices as Bluetooth speakers. Through an option in the Home app, users can easily pair their phones to a Home speaker and use it like you would any other wireless speaker.
What about the rest?
Those two features are awesome additions to Google Home devices, but that’s not all Google said was coming to Home.
– Hulu, Google Play Movies, and more for hands-free casting
One of the things I’ve been looking forward to most is more services being added to hands-free casting. Netflix and YouTube have been available since launch, and we’ve slowly seen other services added in the months since I/O, such as HBO Now and CBS. YouTube TV was also recently added.
There were several others promises back at I/O, however, and it’s odd that we’ve heard nothing about them since then. Hulu, Crackle, HGTV, the Food Network, Red Bull TV, and even Google’s own Play Movies are all on the list, but none have been enabled so far. At this point, we don’t even know if these services are still getting this functionality.
– Visual responses w/ Chromecast integration
Another Chromecast-related feature that was supposed to arrive is visual responses. This is designed to push information such as directions or calendar events to your phone or Chromecast connected TV. This is a prime example of what Google’s Assistant ecosystem is capable of, but it has yet to arrive or even be mentioned since I/O.
– Proactive Assistance
This is the big one, though. Proactive Assistance is potentially a game changer in terms of usefulness with an Assistant speaker. Getting proactive, but subtle notifications from Home for things like traffic updates for your commute is something that would be insanely useful.
These are all features fans of Google Home have been looking forward to for months, and while we’ve got a lot of great things in the meantime, the question has to be asked — where are all of these features?
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Check out 9to5Google on YouTube for more news: | {
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Photo : Frederick M. Brown ( Getty Images )
As the director of Avatar, James Cameron deserves a lot of credit for the massive (and yet mercifully brief) 3D movie fad, and even though you no longer have to see the 3D version of a movie in order to get the full experience, theaters all over the country are now fully equipped to screen uglier versions of new movies that require audience members to wear stupid glasses over their real glasses just so they can get in an extra “ooh” or “aah.” Still, while most moviegoers are pretty much over 3D, Cameron himself is still fully committed to the format, to the point that he recently promised that the next four Avatar movies—yes, four—will all be in 3D and they’ll all “look sumptuous.”
Cameron dropped that sumptuous quote during a culture and technology event in Australia called Vivid (via VFXBlog), and while he was there he talked a bit about the current status of 3D. He notes that the technology that makes movies like Avatar possible is now “ubiquitous,” which makes it “not remarkable,” so even though there are 70,000 3D-capable theaters in the world instead of the 3,000 that existed when Avatar came out, the technology no longer seems special. He also pins some of the blame for that on Hollywood, which made a habit of shoehorning 3D onto non-3D movies with post-conversion, leaving audiences disappointed by half-assed effects and giving 3D a bad name.
Cameron goes on to say that he hopes people eventually get sick of reaching toward 4K resolution, because production technology has “basically stalled” over the last three or four years and isn’t in place yet for “the next big thing.” Naturally, he wants that to be real 3D that you don’t need special glasses for, saying that technology for “good 3D” is in the works but that it will only happen if people can be convinced to want it. He’s hoping Avatar 2 is sumptuous enough to make the case for 3D, but if not, at least Avatar 3, Avatar 4, and Avatar 5 will all have some cool effects. | {
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The Nation: Grand Old Plutocrats
toggle caption iStockphoto.com
John Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation. He is also the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin.
The House voted by an overwhelming margin Thursday for tax fairness -- extending tax cuts for the middle-class, while requiring individuals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000 to pay a taxes at the same rate they did during the boom years of the 1990s.
Well, to be precise, House Democrats voted overwhelmingly for tax fairness.
House Republicans voted overwhelmingly against any change in tax policy that did not take care of millionaires and billionaires.
The actual vote to extend only some of the expiring Bush-era tax cuts was 234-188.
Democrats provided 231 of the 234 "yes" votes. (Twenty Democrats, most of them Blue Dog "Democrats-in-Name-Only," voted "no.")
Among the 171 Republican voting on the proposal, 168 voted "no." (Only libertarian Republican mavericks Ron Paul of Texas, Walter Jones of North Carolina and John Duncan of Tennessee voted "yes.")
With President Obama sending his usual mixed signals and the Senate stalled out by super-majority requirements that reject majority rule, the House vote may be the last stand for common sense -- and the will of the American people, who by a 2-1 majority favor letting the tax breaks for the wealthy expire. (The new CBS News survey says the split is 53 percent for approach proposed by the House Democrats to 26 percent for the rejectionist stance of the House Republicans.)
So what did we learn Thursday?
Not that Republicans are the "party of the rich."
That characterization is unfair to the rich. There are many millionaires whose economic good sense -- not just concerns about debts and deficits but also respect for the economic benefits associated with equity -- has led them to argue that they should pay more. Organized as "Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength," they have written members of Congress, arguing that: "Now, during our nation’s moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don’t need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way."
So the Republicans are not the "party of the rich."
They are the party of "greed-is-good" contingent that favors rule by the rich.
That's an important distinction.
The Republican Party, founded by radicals and led well into the 20th century by political players such as Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, who feared the excesses of elitism, monopoly and plutocracy, has become the champion of elitism, monopoly and plutocracy.
What matters is no longer who the Republicans are standing up for. It's what they are standing up for.
With many of America's wealthiest individuals arguing that their tax breaks should expire, House Republicans are actually more enthusiastic about giving tax breaks to the rich than are the rich.
This is about more than tax policy.
This is about what kind of country America is going to be: a plutocracy designed to best serve the elites or a democracy designed to best serve the great mass of Americans.
The Republicans -- with the exception of Paul, Duncan and Jones -- have opted for plutocracy.
It's still a reasonably free country. That is their right.
But it is worth noting, as Bill Moyers does, that: "Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn’t meant to become an American phenomenon -- some of our founders deplored what they called 'the veneration of wealth.'"
Like it or not, Moyers says, "plutocracy is here."
Yes, plutocracy is here.
It even has a party: the Grand Old Plutocrats. | {
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A Serbian man reportedly has become a hero in Egypt — by accidentally killing a shark with his butt while drunk.
Dragan Stevic was soused to the gills while partying at the Red Sea resort Sharm El Sheikh when he inadvertently felled the beast that had been terrorizing tourists for weeks.
Stevic cannonballed into the water from a high-diving board, according to a Macedonian news agency.
Instead of making a splash, he came down right on the shark’s head, killing the toothed terror instantly.
The fun-loving party boy was immediately touted as a local hero who saved tourist season, which had dried up after the shark had injured three people and killed one vacationer.
Stevic swam to shore and is currently in the hospital recovering from alcohol poisoning. | {
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The Grand Theft Auto series has always been about taking the good with the bad. On one hand, the open-ended nature of the games and the huge city environments make the games a sheer joy to play. On the downside, the previous incarnations of the game were cursed with poor mission design that never really made you feel like you were working toward any sort of greater goal. You merely drove around, causing trouble, occasionally doing odd jobs for the local criminal masterminds until you had collected enough cash to proceed. Rockstar's latest entry in the series, Grand Theft Auto III, reinvents the series, updates it for a new generation of consoles, and manages to keep every single positive aspect from the two previous games. Or, to put it another way, GTA3 is one of the most amazing PlayStation 2 games to be released this year.
Before we go any further, there's one thing everyone should know about Grand Theft Auto III before purchasing it. It is easily the most "mature" M-rated game on the market today. More often than not, its storyline revolves around rather violent acts of crime, and if you stray from the storyline and just go on a crime spree of your own, the game becomes an absolute bloodbath. On top of that, the game contains adult language and situations, including drugs, prostitution, and a heaping helping of sexual innuendo. If R-rated crime sagas such as Goodfellas or Heat are too much for you, then this isn't the game for you. The game and its dialogue have been written specifically for an adult audience, and it definitely isn't for kids.
GTA3 takes place in a fictional metropolis known as Liberty City. Liberty City is a largely corrupt place, with several warring criminal factions spread throughout its boroughs. You're a small-time crook who gets set up by your girlfriend during a heist. You take the fall for the crime but manage to escape when a posse of thugs overtake the paddy wagon that you, along with a few other prisoners, are traveling in. This is where you hook up with the demolitions expert known as 8-Ball, who takes you to meet a friend in the early portion of the game, which also serves as a tutorial of sorts to help you get acclimated to the rules of the world. That friend is involved with the Mafia, of course, and he gives you tasks of increasing difficulty. Each mission starts with a cutscene that sets up your challenge nicely, explaining why it needs to be done to help "the family" and giving your missions--which include such tasks as delivering an item, tailing a suspected security leak, and wiping out the leaders of opposing gangs--a real sense of purpose. As you progress, you'll meet other people in the business of breaking the law, who will also have jobs for you. This gives you options, as you can either do every available mission from each of your contacts or skip around from boss to boss and do the jobs in whatever order you please. Since certain missions trigger plot points, it's entirely possible to miss some missions throughout the course of the game. As you proceed, other portions of the city will open up, giving you access to new missions, cars, and terrain.
While the missions in GTA3 are fun and sometimes wickedly challenging, there's also a great deal of fun to be had by simply exploring the world around you. Rockstar and DMA Design have obviously spent a lot of time adding tons of little touches to the game that, while almost completely unnecessary, make the world seem like a living, breathing place. Lots of little side missions are included, triggered by jumping into a specific vehicle. Stealing a taxi will let you pick up passengers and deliver them for cash. Jacking a cop car lets you embark on vigilante missions to clean up the streets by killing specific criminals. Fire trucks and ambulances also have their own specific missions. Other little touches are graphical; your character will flip the bird to any car that gets too close to you while crossing a street. If you jump into a car and take off immediately, your character won't have time to shut the driver's-side door, leaving it flapping open until you take your finger off the gas for a second to give him time to yank the door shut. Cars dismantle in spectacular ways as they get more and more banged up, losing hoods, trunks, doors, and bumpers as you go. Some cars have special features, including sirens on emergency vehicles, working water hoses on fire trucks, and working hydraulics on a specific gang's make of lowrider that let you hit switches to make the car hop or roll around on three wheels. The game keeps track of any spectacular stunts you pull off in a car and grades them. Finally, while you can't go into most of the stores and buildings in the area, they have a realistic look that really adds to the atmosphere of the game.
In addition to those touches, ignoring the missions also gives you time to go on crime sprees of your own. This sort of freestyle element isn't exactly rewarded in the game, but it's definitely one of the coolest things about GTA3. As you commit crimes, the police will pick up your trail. Hitting someone with a bat while a cop is watching is a sure way to get them on your tail; stealing a car and putting it up on the sidewalk to mow down a corner full of prostitutes is another. The game keeps track of your status with an arrest meter. Small offenses, such as rear-ending a cop car, will get you one star on your six-star meter. While cops will pursue you if they see you in this state, you can hide and eventually the star will go away. Continue to live life outside the law, and you'll get two stars, and so on. With each level comes a more severe response from "The Man." At three stars you'll have cop cars flying at you out of nowhere. At four, they'll all but give up on trying to bust you and instead simply attempt to gun you down. Helicopters will also be dispatched to your location, ensuring that you won't get away easily. At higher levels, the FBI will respond to your crime scene, and at the highest level, the military will get involved. There's really only one way to get your arrest level up that high: shooting cops. Running over innocents and blowing up a few cars might get you three or four stars, but to truly anger the law, you have to take a few of them down. The AI for police vehicles is pretty rough--they tend to practically destroy their own cars while chasing you into walls and other impassible obstacles. Outside of the car, the law fares a bit better, but there are a few instances where cops get stuck because they can't seem to understand how to use a flight of steps to get to you and simply run into a wall repeatedly, giving you all the time in the world to dispose of them.
Getting the cops on your tail and then trying to run away is insanely fun, and the game gives you a pretty amazing arsenal to make sure that the cops stay busy. Your first weapon will be a baseball bat, great for robbing citizens by beating them to death, but it won't hold up in a gunfight. Eventually you'll secure a pistol, which is when the game's lock-on targeting comes into play. Holding R1 will target a nearby person, and the L2 and R2 buttons can be used to cycle through different targets. As you outgrow your pistol, you'll score an Uzi, giving you fully automatic fire while still being light enough to allow you to run. In addition, the Uzi is the only weapon that can be used from inside your vehicle. When you're driving, the L2 and R2 buttons let you look out either side of your car, and your Uzi can be fired out the side windows. This drive-by technique is amazingly handy for slow-moving pedestrians but doesn't work well at all on vehicles because even though you can see the drivers inside the cars, you can't shoot them directly. All hits to a car simply do generic damage to it, and once it reaches a certain damage level, it catches fire and eventually explodes. Since the Uzi is a fairly low-power weapon, it's next to impossible to shoot up cop cars as they try to ram you off the road, forcing you to do your serious battling on foot. In addition to those weapons, you'll also encounter significantly heavier artillery, including assault rifles, a shotgun, grenades, a rocket launcher, and a flamethrower. The weapons are well balanced, and each has its place in the game. For instance, the rocket launcher can be used to take down police helicopters, and the sniper rifle has a zooming scope that lets you take out people from the relative safety of rooftops or out-of-sight positions on the street.
The previous GTA games were played from a 2D top-down perspective that looked pretty sharp, but they were limited in the amount of realism and action they could display. Even though the camera would zoom out to show more of the road ahead as you picked up speed, more often than not you rammed head-on into buildings because turns simply appeared too quickly. GTA3 takes the series into a polygonal world. This gives the game a much more realistic, gritty look, replacing the cartoonish, colorful look of the old games. DMA has really done an excellent job with the graphics in GTA3. The characters look fantastic, the cars are all well modeled and break apart extremely nicely, and overall, the texture quality is quite nice. You will occasionally see some objects in the world (cars and pedestrians, for instance) fade into view as you approach, but it's hardly noticeable and doesn't affect the gameplay. Additionally, the frame rate can take some very noticeable dives, but this usually occurs only when the screen is filled with angry police, exploding cars, and all sorts of other mayhem. By default, the game uses a tracerlike blur effect that gives the entire game a dark, dreamy appearance. This filter can be disabled on the options screen, if desired. GTA3 contains a number of different cameras for both the driving and walking portions of the game. It defaults to a behind-the-back view for both, but you can change the chase distance, go for a first-person view, choose a cinematic driving cam, or opt for the old top-down look of the older GTA games, which is a nice touch but isn't really conducive to playing the game, since there are sometimes streets on top of streets and other level design elements that simply don't work from that perspective. Other perspective problems include not being able to see behind you effectively while on foot. While you can get a rear view by pushing R3, it's quite easy for police and opposing gang vehicles to simply get behind you and run you down before you even know what's going on.
GTA3 sounds terrific. The streets are filled with chatty pedestrians, and the police have some great, typically macho-sounding lines. Rockstar pulled in some terrific voice talent for the game, and it pays off by making the game's main characters extremely convincing. Celebrity voices include Frank Vincent (Casino, Cop Land), Joe Pantoliano (The Matrix, Bad Boys), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs, Free Willy), Michael Rapaport (Cop Land, Metro), Debi Mazar (Goodfellas, Space Truckers), Kyle MacLachan (Twin Peaks, Showgirls), and Guru from the rap group Gangstarr. Adding to the aural portion of the game is a series of nine radio stations, any of which can be switched on while you're inside a car. The radio concept has been with the GTA series since the beginning, but GTA3 really takes the concept to the next level. Each station fills a different genre, including pop, classical, hip-hop, and an absolutely hilarious talk radio station. The music is licensed and includes tracks from Moving Shadow Records, tracks licensed from the soundtrack to the movie Scarface, and rap tracks from Game Records, including artists such as Royce Da 5'9", JoJo Pelligrino, and Black Rob. Finally, everything from the squeal of tires to the sound of a helicopter crashing into the ground sounds great and packs quite a punch.
Rockstar and DMA Design have obviously spent some time making sure that Grand Theft Auto III is a quality product, and that quality shows in everything, from the graphics, to the sound, to the plot points, to the gameplay itself. Unlike previous games in the series, the game is extremely fun whether you play it as it was intended to be played or eschew the game's intended mission structure and set out on your own to wreak havoc throughout the city. While the violent nature of the game will surely turn some people off and kids simply shouldn't be allowed anywhere near it, Grand Theft Auto III is, quite simply, an incredible experience that shouldn't be missed by anyone mature enough to handle it. | {
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Barb
Brand: Stranger Things
Genre: Movies & TV
Product Type: Action Figure
Series: Stranger Things Fall 2018
One of the most iconic niche characters of the hit TV show Stranger Things. Barbara Holland, or Barb as she’s known by the masses is the geeky cautious best friend of Nancy Wheeler that goes missing. One eerie night in 1983, Barb begrudgingly tags along with Nancy to Steve Harrington’s house for a party. Little does she know that there is a demonic creature from another dimension waiting for her in the bottom of the pool.
Spectacular likeness of Barbara Holland sculpted from images of actress Shannon Purser
Figure comes with retro Trapper Keeper
Figure is featured in iconic 80’s blouse and blue jeans in the Netflix Original Series Stranger Things
Designed with 12+ points of articulation for dynamic posing
Figure features a stylized Stranger Things branded disk display base and is showcased in retro themed packaging | {
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Advertising Read more
Frankfurt am Main (AFP)
German financial regulator Bafin on Friday said it had asked an external monitor to take a closer look at Deutsche Bank's anti-money laundering efforts amid questions over the lender's role in handling suspicious transfers for Danske Bank.
Bafin took the unprecedented step last September of installing KPMG auditors at Germany's largest bank to oversee its progress in battling illegal transactions such as money laundering, terrorist financing and organised crime.
In a statement, the watchdog said it had now ordered Deutsche Bank to "review its group-wide risk management processes in the area of correspondence banking" and make the necessary changes.
Bafin added that it had widened KPMG's three-year mandate to cover monitoring the bank's implementation of the order.
The move comes as Deutsche Bank is under scrutiny over its activities as a correspondence bank that handled foreign transactions for Danske's Estonian branch.
Investigators in Copenhagen, Brussels, London and the United States are probing some 200 billion euros in transfers that passed through the Estonian branch between 2007 and 2015, involving some 15,000 foreign clients.
Deutsche Bank said it had been expecting the expansion of KPMG's mandate.
"There is a strong interest in the matters concerning Danske Bank Estonia among regulators globally," it said in a statement.
"There are still no indications of misconduct on our part in this context."
Deutsche has previously said it worked with Danske for eight years, before ending the relationship in 2015 after suspect activities were uncovered at the Danish firm.
Deutsche has insisted it played only a "limited role" in the Danske transactions because as a correspondent bank it did not have "access to their client base".
Deutsche Bank has repeatedly been rapped by regulators in the past for lax controls.
In 2017, it had to pay a fine of almost $630 million (559 million euros) after an investigation by British and American authorities into laundering of money originating in Russia.
Soon afterwards, the US Federal Reserve ordered a further fine of $41 million over gaps in the bank's money laundering surveillance.
© 2019 AFP | {
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Environmental Groups Urge USPS to Adopt Electric Mail Trucks
As the U.S. Postal Service tests its new prototypes for the next mail delivery truck, environmental groups and others are urging it to pick an electric vehicle.
In a letter to Postmaster General Megan J. Brennan, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Union of Concerned Scientists and 10 other groups urged the postal service to choose plug-in electric vehicles as it seeks to replace its aging fleet of mail trucks.
If an electric vehicle is chosen, the postal service would have the largest electric vehicle fleet in the world, the Sierra Club said.
“A large USPS order of electric trucks could help catalyze the clean delivery vehicle market and accelerate the adoption of EVs by other fleets,” Luke Tonachel, director of the clean vehicles and fuels project at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Trucks.com. “USPS has a big opportunity to be a leading innovator and to work to building an oil-free vehicle fleet.”
Five companies have produced prototype delivery vans as part of the postal service’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, or NGDVs, program, which the agency is testing in “real-world” conditions in multiple locations.
The postal service said the winner of the vehicle contract, estimated to be worth around $6.3 billion to replace up to 180,000 mail trucks over seven years, will be announced in early 2018.
Two of the companies — VT Hackney/Workhorse and Mahindra — offer delivery vehicles with some level of electrification.
The VT Hackney/Workhorse all-electric prototype has a small BMW gasoline engine that acts as a generator to extend the range of the truck. The Mahindra prototype has a 2.5-liter engine from General Motors and may be available with a mild hybrid powertrain option.
Switching to electric delivery trucks from gasoline-powered vehicles would save the postal service in fuel costs and reduce emissions while reducing reliance on foreign oil by substituting domestic electricity and reducing maintenance costs, the environmental groups said.
“Adopting lower emission delivery trucks will position USPS as an innovative leader by showing how large government and private fleets can travel on nearly every type of road in the United States while emitting little to no harmful pollutants in our air,” the letter said.
Besides the VT Hackney– /Workhorse and Mahindra electric vehicles, other prototypes include vehicles from AM General, Karsan/Morgan Olson and Oshkosh.
“The U.S Postal Service has begun the next phase of its process to develop a future class of delivery vehicles that will incorporate new technology to accommodate a diverse mail mix, enhance safety, improve service, reduce emissions and produce operational savings,” Kim Frum, a USPS spokeswoman, told Trucks.com.
Every three weeks, the five prototypes, which are being tested in different terrains and environments, move to another test area in the U.S.
“The testing will allow the postal service the opportunity to make an informed and educated decision of the future of our vehicle fleet based on carrier feedback and observations,” Frum said.
The new mail truck will replace the Grumman Long Life Vehicle, which was designed in the 1980s. Of the 215,000 mail trucks in rotation, 140,000 are at least two decades old.
Read Next: Here’s What the Next Generation USPS Mail Truck Will Look Like | {
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Home is where the heart is, but for many people on PEI home is also where the music is. PEI has a long-running history of musically-talented families, such as the Ellises, the Chaissons and ... | {
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Russian MP Threatens Closure of Websites 'Promoting' Homosexuality
Elena Mizulina, Russia's head of the State Duma's Committee on Family, Women and Children, announced Thursday that she would seek the closure of any pro-LGBT websites in the country, claiming they "promote homosexuality," reports GayRussia.
According to a Google translation of the article's original Russian text, Mizulina proposed the antigay proposition as an amendment to a pending federal law prohibiting the dispensing of "negative information" to children.
Mizulina cited the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, claiming that by signing, Russian "national authorities are obliged to limit the freedoms and human rights, the implementation of which could violate the rights of the child, the right to the formation of his personality."
Mizulina further claimed that "none of the adults, whatever preferences he had for himself, has the right to impose these preferences on a person under 18 years old... Therefore, limiting promotion of homosexuality among children should be referred to in the information gap for children."
The law which Mizulina is proposing to amend was enacted in December of 2010, according to GayRussia, and seeks to protect children from information "harmful to their health and development."
The Russian government is currently considering a law that would ban so-called "homosexual propoganda," which LGBT advocates say could amount to a ban on any discussion of LGBT identities. | {
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Modern life takes its toll on our skin all the time. The constant pressure, stress, pollution, sun exposure, even the food we eat, may leave skin looking dull and worn out over the years. Going into my mid-30’s, I’m interested in discovering new skin care options available to remain youthful and glowing.
Skin Resource.MD
Trying different products is a lot of fun while deciding upon a skin care regimen. Lucky for me, I think I can stop looking! Recently, I’ve been using Skin Resource.MD, a dermatologist-created skin care line from San Diego, CA formulated by practicing dermatologists from Grossmont Dermatology Clinic. What I love about this line is that I can customize my skin care with their many options available.
Skin Resource.MD provides amazing products for those with aging, acne-prone, sensitive, dry, oily, sun damaged, dark spotted and/or blemished skin. They can be used together, however you choose and for whatever suits your family’s skin care needs.
Save on Skin Care Kits
To help make your decision easier, Skin Resource.MD offers a significant savings on their dermatologist-recommended products in five skin care kits, including:
Prescribe It For Yourself Kit – 5 Essential Products ($59) is the perfect daily skin care routine to get younger looking skin and visibly reduce the signs of aging.
Fix It Acne Kit ($49) offers treatment and prevention for acne-prone skin.
Instant Gratification Kit ($98) provides the ultimate anti-aging bang for your buck.
Men’s Kit ($49) effortlessly tackles the effects of environmental stresses, active lifestyles, and seasonal transitions on a man’s skin.
R & R Kit (Resurface & Rehydrate) ($89) groups three of their key products to help take off the top layer of dead skin (resurface), allowing fresh new skin to take center stage (rehydrate).
Optimal Skin Care in Minimal Time
Baobab Skin Care Correction Facial Cream ($49) is for those of us who want gorgeous skin, but don’t have time for all the skin care steps or office visits to see a dermatologist. Created for patients who wanted to brighten and improve their uneven skin tone in minimal time. In under 30 days, with regular use, this cream delivers results you can see and feel.
Baobab oil, along with palmitic acid from the African Baobab Tree (or the “Tree of Life”) has extraordinarily high concentrations of antioxidants and vitamins A, C, D, E and F, rejuvenating the skin, lessening the signs of aging, improving uneven skin tone and reversing sun damage.
Hurry! For the whole month of December, Baobab Skin Correction Facial Cream is Buy One Get One Free.
The Perfect Skin Care Regimen
Curious about my favorite Skin Resource.MD products? Here’s the perfect skin care routine, prescribed by me:
DAYTIME
Total Facial Cleansing Gel – This soap-free cleanser is a refreshing way to start your day. Packed with antioxidants and vitamins, it leaves skin feeling ultra clean and nourished.
– This soap-free cleanser is a refreshing way to start your day. Packed with antioxidants and vitamins, it leaves skin feeling ultra clean and nourished. Total Antioxidant Anti-Aging Facial Serum & Age-Limit Advanced Refinishing Serum – During the week, I switch between these two serums, the perfect primers used before my moisturizer and foundation with SPF. The former shields against free radicals and boosts collagen production, providing a light, velvety finish. The latter is clinically shown to reduce the look of fine lines, wrinkles and aids in lifting my discoloration on the cheek area.
– During the week, I switch between these two serums, the perfect primers used before my moisturizer and foundation with SPF. The former shields against free radicals and boosts collagen production, providing a light, velvety finish. The latter is clinically shown to reduce the look of fine lines, wrinkles and aids in lifting my discoloration on the cheek area. Oil Free Antioxidant Facial Moisturizer – Offers complete antioxidant therapy for my neck and face, reducing the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, redness and skin pigmentation. A great option for my combination skin as my oily T-zone is controlled all day!
– Offers complete antioxidant therapy for my neck and face, reducing the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, redness and skin pigmentation. A great option for my combination skin as my oily T-zone is controlled all day! Total Skin Moisturizer – I use this on my body, though it can be used on the face as well. It contains vital antioxidant therapy ingredients and vitamins, restoring and protecting the skin from free radical damage.
– I use this on my body, though it can be used on the face as well. It contains vital antioxidant therapy ingredients and vitamins, restoring and protecting the skin from free radical damage. Eye-Perfection Therapy – This highly potent eye serum aids in reducing my fine lines, eye puffiness and dark circles.
NIGHTTIME
Pore Clearing Acne Cleanser – I love the smell of this cleanser as it deep cleans pores with a sulfate-free formula. This cleanser won’t leave your skin taut and dry like most harsh acne cleansers will. You can really feel it working!
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Morgan Rielly and his Maple Leafs teammates arrived home from Nashville with the idea they can rev their engines heading into the Stanley Cup playoffs.
There’s no reason to believe the Leafs will do anything but win the majority of their last eight games of the 2017-18 regular season.
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Six are at the Air Canada Centre — where the Leafs have won 12 in a row and have a sparkling 25-8-2 record — and six are against teams that are out of the playoff picture.
“It’s a good opportunity for us to go on a little home run,” Rielly said after the Leafs beat the Predators on Thursday night.
“We have an opportunity to get on a little bit of a roll going into the playoffs, which I think is important. You always want to go in with a little bit of momentum and it’s an opportunity to get comfortable at home. We have some practice days coming up as well, so that works to our advantage.”
The Leafs shouldn’t have much of a problem setting a franchise record for most victories, considering they’re one short of tying the mark of 45, accomplished three times. | {
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Another presidential debate, another master class in straight-faced lying from Hillary Clinton. Clinton didn’t pass up her final chance to mislead the country about her policy positions, damning scandals — and, of course, Donald Trump.
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When it came to the subject of the Supreme Court, Clinton clearly hoped voters would take her for some sort of constitutional scholar. “I would hope that the Senate would do its job and confirm the nominee that President Obama has sent to them. That’s the way the Constitution fundamentally should operate. The president nominates, and then the Senate advises and consents or not,” Clinton said.
“Everything I did as secretary of state was in our interest and in furtherance of our values.”
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Unfortunately for Clinton’s interpretation, there is nothing in the Constitution which mandates that the Senate immediately respond to the president’s nomination. When it came to the subject of the Second Amendment, Clinton once again demonstrated dishonesty — and her weak knowledge of the Constitution.
“I support the Second Amendment,” Clinton said. “I understand and respect the tradition of gun ownership. It goes back to the founding of our country. But I also believe that there can be and must be reasonable regulation,” she insisted.
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This is nonsense. The Second Amendment clearly states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Moreover, the tradition of gun ownership is based not on the right to hunt or shoot clay pigeons, but the right to protect oneself and one’s family from evil men and tyrannical governments. The policies Clinton supports fundamentally deny these truths.
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When it came to the equally divisive issue of abortion, Clinton once again displayed a propensity for lying. “So many states are putting very stringent regulations on women that block them from exercising that choice to the extent that they are defunding Planned Parenthood,” Clinton said.
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But regardless of one’s position on the issue, defunding Planned Parenthood in no way blocks a woman’s right make that choice. Moreover, Clinton conveniently ignored the fact that the states which moved to defund Planned Parenthood did so in the wake of videos that revealed the organization may have engaged in shockingly illegal and immoral behavior — selling parts of aborted children for profit.
On the issue of immigration, Clinton asserted that Trump “started his campaign bashing immigrants, calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals and drug dealers.” In reality, Trump criticized lax immigration policy which permitted immigrants who were rapists and criminals and drug dealers to enter the country with ease.
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“I am also arguing is that bringing undocumented immigrants out from the shadows, putting them into the formal economy will be good because employers can’t exploit them and undercut Americans’ wages,” Clinton said. But putting cheap illegal labor into the formal economy immediately negates the economic benefit of cheap illegal labor. Welfare use for immigrant populations is also disproportionately high compared to other demographic groups. The sudden transformation of all illegal workers into U.S. citizens would wreak havoc on wages, the job market, and benefits infrastructure.
One of Clinton’s most outrageous lies came when discussing her view on globalization and borders. “We will not have open borders,” she insisted. “That is a rank mischaracterization.” Moderator Chris Wallace challenged Clinton, referring to comments she made to a Brazilian bank. “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders,” Clinton said at the time.
“Well, if you went on to read the rest of the sentence, I was talking about energy,” Clinton responded. However if one does read the rest of the sentence as Clinton suggests, it clearly shows she is lying. “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere,” she said.
It is clear she is talking about a borderless hemisphere with free movement of peoples powered by sustainable energy, not a common market with open trade and open borders solely in the sustainable energy sector.
Clinton also had the audacity to chastise Wallace for bringing up her speech. “You are very clearly quoting from WikiLeaks and what is important about that is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans,” Clinton said. No — what’s important is that the Democratic candidate for president is one of the most corrupt and dishonest politicians in U.S. history.
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Even if WikiLeaks was an agency of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, that does not make the revelations in their leaks any less true. Clinton also repeated the claim that Trump “encouraged espionage against our people.” But Trump did no such thing — he called on Russians to release emails he assumed they already had, a distinction clearly lost on Clinton.
Another lie came when Clinton claimed that Obama has cut the federal deficit by two-thirds. In 2008, the federal budget deficit was $459 billion. In July of this year the Obama administration announced the deficit was expected to reach $600 billion. Moreover, the national debt has increased by 84 percent under Obama, from over $10.6 trillion in 2009 to over 19.7 trillion as of this month.
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But Clinton’s most boldfaced, unabashed lie undoubtedly arrived when it came to the issue of her uncomfortably close relationship to the Clinton Foundation while secretary of state, allegedly engaging in repeated instances of pay-to-play.
“Everything I did as secretary of state was in our interest and in furtherance of our values,” Clinton said. How granting Russians — who Clinton seems to think are hiding under her bed — uranium mining rights or authorizing massive arms deals to repressive Islamic dictatorships is in our interest or in furtherance of our values, Clinton did not say. | {
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Yet Scheer, like Harper, promises his government will keep same-sex marriage and abortion off its agenda. And in this respect, I think social conservatives might have made a tactical error in preferring the family man Scheer’s so-con bona fides to the rakish Maxime Bernier’s parliamentary libertarianism.
Last week, Huffington Post’s Althia Raj asked Scheer if he would be content to allow socially conservative MPs to pursue their causes through private member’s motions or bills. “It is the leader’s job to encourage people to bring up issues that unite us rather than divide us,” he responded, obliquely. He called the question “hypothetical.”
Bernier’s answer to the same question has been, essentially, “yes.”
That said, either Bernier, the non-social conservative who understands what Parliament is for, or Scheer, the proud but pragmatic social conservative, was a reasonable choice to follow Harper’s stifling, paranoid leadership. Both are much more cheerful, much more comfortable in their own skins, and show far more confidence in their party. In different ways, each proposed thinking of its social conservative wing as it should be thought of: not as a problem to be managed, but as a natural feature of any big-tent conservative party.
The opposition and the media consider so-con beliefs utterly anathema, if not unsuitable for debate, and that is their right. Many voters simply do not agree.
An Ipsos poll conducted in March found 53 per cent of Canadians thought abortion should be available whenever a woman chooses, but 24 per cent thought there should be restrictions. An Angus Reid poll last year found monolithic support (84 per cent) for extending human rights protections to transgender Canadians, but not inconsiderable opposition (33 per cent) to bathroom choice. | {
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The joint A-League Golden Boot has managed just 153 minutes game time since joining 2 Bundesliga side Darmstadt 98 from Brisbane Roar in May.
Maclaren has been excused from attending the club’s winter training camp to secure a deal, which could put him back in World Cup selection contention for Australia in Russia in six months.
The 24 year-old’s availability until the end of the season has sparked an arm-wrestle between Edinburgh clubs Hibs and Hearts, with the former - coached by ex-Celtic boss Neil Lennon - thought to have gazumped Craig Levein’s side for his services.
Hibs and Hearts badly need a recognized goalscorer to boost their respective hopes of European qualification, with Maclaren - who scored 40 goals in 53 appearances for Brisbane - seen as potent pick-up by both coaches.
Ironically, the pair clash after the resumption of the Scottish Premiership’s winter break in the Scottish Cup on January 21.
The striker, who represented Scotland at Under-19 level before opting for the land of his birth, needs matches to cast off the cobwebs of inactivity having played less than three hours of game-time so far this season. | {
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AP
The Eagles fired Chip Kelly Tuesday night.
A short team release announced that team chairman and CEO Jeffrey Lurie had released Kelly. The team announced a Wednesday press conference.
Pat Shurmur will be the interim coach for Sunday’s season finale.
“We appreciate all the contributions that Chip Kelly made and wish him every success going forward,” Lurie said in the statement. | {
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Personally, I’m down with a long book — I love diving into a story and knowing I’ll get to stick around for a while, spending quality time with the characters I love and the world they live in. But at the same time, I get it: not everyone wants to sit down with all 1049 pages of The Arabian Nights when there are so many other good books to read; ones that require far less significant a time commitment. Some of us have Netflix binges to get back to, after all. But with that said, there are still some especially long books that are definitely worth the time it takes to read them. And hey, thanks to the nifty website How Long To Read, (which I’m completely obsessed with) you can find out exactly how long it’s going to take you to read one of these can’t-miss tomes before you even turn to page one. (13 hours and 11 minutes for The Arabian Nights, in case you were wondering. That’s a little less than a nonstop flight from New York City to Beijing — so next time you’re headed to China, you know what you’re reading.)
Here are 11 of the longest books that are still worth your time (assuming you’re unwilling to read all off the longest books, anyway.)
1. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
I know there’s something very Rory-Gilmore-esque about claiming to love a Russian author, but seriously, I do love Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina — even though practically every main character shares some variation of the exact same name, and it takes some serious mental gymnastics to keep them all straight. But the novel, in addition to being indulgently tragic, is also so beautifully written. Anna is married to a man who is unable (and unwilling) to fulfill her passions, and thus she begins an illicit affair with army officer Count Vronsky, leaving her husband and son behind as she follows her own impulses. But the stigma of pursuing her personal dreams outside the rules of traditional society proves to be too much for Anna, and as I’m sure you know by now, her story ends in tragedy.
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2. We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas
Exploring the unfulfilled promises of post-WWII America, Matthew Thomas’s novel We Are Not Ourselves introduces readers to Eileen and Ed Leary, a couple whom very often seem ill-suited for one another, but who are trying to arrange their lives the best — and perhaps the only — way they know how. More than the pace of the plot, it’s the characters who will keep you reading this longer work, as you try to understand Eileen’s distant and controlling personality that runs parallel to her unrealized dreams, Ed’s infuriating, but understandable drive for little more than the status quo, and their fraught relationships with their son, Connell.
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3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
This work of magical realism will take readers into the heart of Tokyo — the unseen Tokyo, that is, as one man’s search for his wife’s missing cat turns into one man’s search for his missing wife as well. Toru Okada dives headfirst into the underworld of this Japanese capital, encountering prostitutes and politicians, psychics and World War II veterans who all have their own, sometimes malicious, agendas. This book is equal parts bizarre and beautiful, surreal and kaleidoscopic, and despite its 600-plus pages, it’ll be over before you know it.
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4. Ulysses by James Joyce
265,000-ish words of stream-of-consciousness writing is a lot to get through, I’ll give you that. But I do think Ulysses really is worth reading, especially if you were like me and totally skipped this one in high school. The novel reimagines Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey through the story of a single day in the life of an average man making his way through the crowded streets and pubs of Dublin. The early controversy over the book — the obscenity trials and "Joyce Wars" — should peak your curiosity enough to get past any lingering hang-ups you might have about the wordiness.
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5. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I absolutely adore East of Eden, and it is one of the few long books that I have found myself reading (and appreciating) more than once. Taking you into John Steinbeck’s Salinas Valley landscape during the American Dust Bowl, this epic family drama introduces readers to the Trasks and the Hamiltons, two families who are destined to re-live the Biblical tragedies of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, generation after generation. But if you’re nervous about diving into heavy-handed religious themes, don’t be. This is an engrossing novel that you will become utterly lost in, filled with Steinbeck’s subtle and masterful symbolism.
Click here to buy.
6. The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ll admit, this is one of those books I struggle with — the songs that appear throughout the text, the fact that everyone makes such a big deal about the movies, the sometimes-over-the-top foreshadowing and metaphor. The Lord of the Rings is one wild ride to be sure, and I’m not always totally convinced it’s one I want to be on. But at the same time, if you’ve ever wanted to escape into an epic fantasy for several hundred pages, there’s really no better way to go than J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic. There are some good reasons people are so obsessed with this one.
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7. The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante
Word around literary circles is that the pseudonymous author Elena Ferrante wrote The Neapolitan Novels as one long book that was ultimately divided into a series of four due to length and marketing necessities. If this is truly the case, then the story that follows lifelong friends Elena “Lenù” Greco and Raffaella “Lila” Cerullo from grade school through their adult lives, exploring their evolving friendship against the backdrop of domestic violence, Italian economic and social class disparities, the feminist movement of the 1970s, and political protest, is definitely an XL read that must make your TBR pile. I guarantee you’ll have Ferrante fever by the time you’re done.
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8. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
If any of the novels on this list were a tad overrated, it would probably be Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick — but here’s the thing: for any self-respecting bibliophile, finishing Moby-Dick is kind of like taking your vitamins, or getting your teeth cleaned once every six months. Like it or not, it’s just something you really should do for the long-term benefits. Moby-Dick is referenced in so many other great works of literature and film, it’s an American classic, and everyone should really read it once. Plus, who doesn’t love a good adventure story?
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9. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
If you think gold mining in 1860s New Zealand is a snore (or, if you’ve never once found yourself thinking about gold mining in 1860s New Zealand, then I don’t blame you) think again. From strange and obscure origins comes author Eleanor Catton’s novel The Luminaries, a story of violence and mystery, adventure and success, and the myriad ways astrology might inform our destinies. At 848 pages, The Luminaries is one of the shorter-long titles on this list, but it’s a fun and compelling read — and there isn’t anything else quite like it.
Click here to buy.
10. I Know This Much Is True by Wally Lamb
Wally Lamb is one of my favorite contemporary authors, and it’s a testament to his exceptional writing that people keep buying and reading his always-long books. I Know This Much is True tells the story of identical twins Dominick and Thomas Birdsey. Thomas suffers from paranoid schizophrenia, and one afternoon, while experiencing a severe episode of his disease, he enters a public library and cuts off his own hand. What follows is an explosion of confusion, resentment, misunderstanding, injustice, and fear, alongside a deep exploration of the unconditional love shared between these two brothers. You’ll hurt for them, and rally behind them, and when the book is over you’ll be so immersed in their stories you’ll feel like this novel wasn’t nearly long enough.
Click here to buy.
11. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
The premise of this haunting and mesmerizing historical novel has been every reader’s fear ever since Ginny Weasley picked up Tom Riddle’s diary in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — that the books we read will turn out to be more than the ink and paper they’re made up of, revealing the darkest side of the human spirit and changing our readerly lives forever. Elizabeth Kostova’s novel, The Historian, tells the story of one woman who stumbles across a series of mysterious and disturbing letters while exploring her father’s library, giving rise to a secret and sinister family history that blurs the lines between fantasy and reality.
Click here to buy.
Image: mybookbath/Instagram | {
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