Apple would rather you not blow up teen couples on your iPhone, asks developer to edit video game
Casey Baseel
In a lot of ways, digital distribution of video games is a great thing, as it allows developers to easily add new content to a title after its release. It’s a double-edged sword, though, and that same streamlined pathway from programmer to player can also be used to quickly make changes that take things away.
A few weeks ago, we took a look at a smartphone game whose lonely, jaded protagonist and his mystical, jaded companion use their powers to make affectionate couples meet with a host of calamities, including straight blowing them up. Apple, however, is not cool with this sort of vengeful fantasy, and so the iOS version of the game is being toned down and given a new name since the original title, Explode, Real Types! no longer describes the game’s contents.
Welcome to the Stars Hollow Gazette‘s Health and Fitness News weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.
Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.
You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.
I had a hunk of butternut squash lingering in my refrigerator, and it turned out to be the perfect ingredient for a grilled cheese and vegetable sandwich.
“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.
None of the members of the Senate’s Intelligence Committee have encrypted websites nor use secure emails. So how can we trust them with our privacy?
Members of Congress – most of whom can’t secure their own websites, and some of whom don’t even use email – are trying to force a dangerous “cybersecurity” bill down the public’s throat. Everyone’s privacy is in the hands of people who, by all indications, have no idea what they’re talking about.
Leaders are expected to bring its much-maligned series of “cybersecurity” bills to the floor sometime in the next couple weeks – bills that we know will do little to help cybersecurity but a lot to ]help intelligence agencies like the NSA vacuum up http://www.theguardian.com/com… even more of Americans’ personal information. The bills’ authors deny that privacy is even an issue, but why we’re trusting Congress at all on this legislation, given their lack of basic knowledge on the subject, is the question everyone should be asking.
In a giant step forward for investor protection, the Department of Labor proposed new rules this week to ensure that financial advisers act solely in their clients’ best interests when giving advice and selling products for retirement accounts. The new standard of fiduciary duty would bar stockbrokers, insurance agents and other financial professionals from increasing their pay by steering clients into high-cost products and strategies when comparable lower-cost ones are available.
For Labor Department officials, the challenge now is to see the proposal through the rest of the rule-making process. The United States Chamber of Commerce, which has opposed the fiduciary standard, has already said it plans to ask for an extension of the 75-day comment period. Other delay tactics are all but certain. [..]
Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez and his team deserve praise for a well-crafted proposal. Now they need to carefully vet the public comments and promptly issue a final rule that preserves the proposal’s strong protections for retirement savers.
Despite the protections delineated in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, as well as the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the Constitution (which in 1964 formally banned poll taxes), headlines remind us that the right to vote is “still threatened.” The US Supreme Court has mangled the Voting Rights Act, and the Congress has failed to repair the damage done. The Brennan Center for Justice has determined that at least 83 restrictive bills were introduced in 29 states where legislatures had floor activity in 2014, including proposals to require a photo ID, make voter registration more difficult, reduce early voting opportunities, and make it harder for students to vote.
“The stark and simple truth is this-the right to vote is threatened today-in a way that it has not been since the Voting Rights Act became law nearly five decades ago,” said President Obama.
The great American process of forming a more perfect union is far from complete. The events of 150 years ago were not the end of anything. They were a pivot point that took the United States in a better direction. But the was incomplete, and insufficient to establish justice. So the process continues.
That is why Congressmen Mark Pocan, D-Wisconsin, and Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota, have proposed to amend the Constitution to declare clearly and unequivocally that
Even before the ink was dry on the deal between committee leaders on fast-track trade-negotiating authority, Cabinet secretaries were already completely ignoring its milquetoast terms.
And that should tell you a lot about the direction this debate is headed.
There’s a passing reference to currency in the fast-track bill draft unveiled on Thursday, but there’s no requirement that it be deterred in any enforceable or meaningful way, inside or outside trade agreements such as the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
The TPP has already largely been negotiated, even though this current debate on trade-negotiating authority pretends to inform it. And it’s abundantly apparent from the comments of President Barack Obama, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, and Trade Ambassador Michael Froman that currency manipulation won’t be addressed in any enforceable way as part of the TPP.
Elizabeth Warren has given her fair share of great speeches, and has written some outstanding legislation on reforming Wall Street, but her speech on April 15 to the Hyman P. Minsky Conference was the best Wall Street policy speech I have ever heard her, or anyone, ever give. It was comprehensive without being a laundry list of in-the-weeds wonkiness. It laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need to do these reforms, and it was politically compelling as well. Her politically compelling argument laid out a strong philosophical rationale for why we need these reforms. Perhaps most importantly, she did all this while masterfully refuting the hackneyed attacks about her being anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-market forces.
Warren’s series of proposed reforms would be a major and much needed boost to an economy still held down by the Wall Street abuses that brought on the collapse of the massive housing bubble, the 2008 financial collapse, and the hardest hitting economic slowdown since the Great Depression.
Americans who believe the Second Amendment gives them an individual right to own guns (as opposed to a more general right to bear arms, as our editorial board argues) often make cogent arguments for their position. I believe that allowing people to own guns is not incompatible with imposing reasonable restrictions on their ownership, but I have heard sensible people strongly argue the opposite side.
But there are ridiculous arguments against gun control, perhaps the silliest of which is that the framers of the Constitution wanted to preserve the possibility, or even encourage the idea, of armed rebellion against the government. It’s a particularly absurd argument when it comes from a member of Congress who is running for president.
Well, it’s been 10 years and I hope I’m constantly surprising you with facets of my character I have not yet revealed even when I write within a restricted format (which is the essence of poetry).
My therapist is leaving the medical group (oh, don’t worry, it’s all related) with which I am associated and in our final session they asked me-
“Do you answer to ek hornbeck?”
Yes, of course I do.
It’s not a common name so it’s easily picked out of the crowd whereas regular names like Robert or Bob have instantly a dozen heads spinning.
Well, I’m not like that. Not that my head doesn’t spin because it might be someone I know personally, but because I don’t share myself on the Internet. Personally I Google rather poorly, ek hornbeck much better, and my onion layers are part of the fascination-
Is he in Heaven? Is he in Hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel.
Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.
Yup, one of 500 and ignored on a rainy day.
But by 1833 when Borodin was born the struggles of 1789 were far in the past (hah). and he…
Well, he was an award wining chemist.
He dabbled in music and wrote several things but rarely finished any of them, still he attracted the attention of the more serious composers who saw flashes of talent and was considered one of The Balakirev Circle of new wave nationalist Russians because he was so conciously derivitative of popular folk tunes.
The Polovtsian Dances referenced in the commerical above were a part of his (unfinished) opera, Prince Igor, which was about the suppression of native Mongolians (the Polovtsians) by Prince Igor and has all the charms of Opera…
It must be long, boring, and in an incomprehesible foreign language (even if that language is English).
The characters, especially the main ones, must be thoroughly unsympathetic and their activities horrid and callous.
Everyone must die, hopefully in an ironic and gruesome way.
Ballet is the same, but with more men in tights and without the superfluous singing.
with an admirable mixture of genocide of the culture you are stealing. It has all the charm of a musical about Greasy Grass in which Custer wins.
Oh and it and several other snippets were stolen by Broadway for Kismet. Someday I’ll chat about Nellie Forbush, a thoroughly unsympathetic character.
To his credit Borodin was an early advocate of Women’s Rights and despised by his “revolutionary” contemporaries in ‘The Five’ for writing in conventional formats like Quartets, Concertos, and Symphonies of which I offer you the two that he indesputedly finished all on his own.
So what does this say about me (aren’t we all the star of our own movie)? I like this role. He’s exactly like me only more in your face-
I’m not trying to prove anything. All I want to do is teach my students that man just wasn’t planted here like a geranium in a flowerpot. That life comes from a long miracle; it didn’t just take seven days.
But it’s against the law. A school teacher’s a public servant. He should do what the law and the school board want him to.
Has the accused have anything to say in his own defense? If not, I sentence you to life as a public servant. A silent butler in the service of your school board. Waste baskets for ideas on sale in the outer lobby.
I don’t see anything funny in this Mr. Hornbeck.
Objection sustained. Neither do I.
Then why don’t you just leave us alone? You newspaper people have stirred up enough trouble for Bert. What do you want anyway?
I came to tell Boy Socrates here that the Baltimore Herald is opposed to Hemlock and will provide a lawyer.
Who?
Who? I don’t know yet but what’s the difference? A new lawyer with old tricks, an old lawyer with new tricks. Wake up Copernicus! The law is still on the side of the lawmakers and everything revolves around their terra firma.
Then why bother, you and your newspaper?
Because I know that the sunrise is an optical illusion. My teacher told me so.
Sigh. I have to break in a new therapist. I think I’ll start with this one-
What do you call a schizophrenic Buddhist?
Someone who is at two with the universe.
And actually, that’s multiple personality disorder and I’ve never been diagnosed as anything except depressed and anxiety prone.
By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.
On the night of April 18-19, 1775, just hours before the battles of Lexington and Concord, Revere performed his “Midnight Ride”. He and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which was beginning a march from Boston to Lexington, ostensibly to arrest Hancock and Adams and seize the weapons stores in Concord.
The British army (the King’s “regulars”) had been stationed in Boston since the ports were closed in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, and was under constant surveillance by Revere and other patriots as word began to spread that they were planning a move. On the night of April 18, 1775, the army began its move across the Charles River toward Lexington, and the Sons of Liberty immediately went into action. At about 11 pm, Revere was sent by Dr. Warren across the Charles River to Charlestown, on the opposite shore, where he could begin a ride to Lexington, while Dawes was sent the long way around, via the Boston Neck and the land route to Lexington.
In the days before April 18, Revere had instructed Robert Newman, the sexton of the Old North Church, to send a signal by lantern to alert colonists in Charlestown as to the movements of the troops when the information became known. In what is well known today by the phrase “one if by land, two if by sea”, one lantern in the steeple would signal the army’s choice of the land route, while two lanterns would signal the route “by water” across the Charles River. This was done to get the message through to Charlestown in the event that both Revere and Dawes were captured. Newman and Captain John Pulling momentarily held two lanterns in the Old North Church as Revere himself set out on his ride, to indicate that the British soldiers were in fact crossing the Charles River that night. Revere rode a horse lent to him by John Larkin, Deacon of the Old North Church.
There were other riders that night besides Dawes, including a woman, Sybil Ludington. The other men were Israel Bissel and Samuel Prescott. a doctor who happened to be in Lexington “returning from a lady friend’s house at the awkward hour of 1 a.m.”
As the Missouri national guard prepared to deploy to the streets of Ferguson last year during protests sparked by the shooting death of Michael Brown, the troops used highly militarised language such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” to refer to citizen demonstrators.
Documents detailing the military mission divided the crowds that national guards would be likely to encounter into “friendly forces” and “enemy forces” – the latter apparently including “general protesters”.
A briefing for commanders included details of the troops’ intelligence capabilities so that they could “deny adversaries the ability to identify Missouri national guard vulnerabilities”, which the “adversaries” might exploit, “causing embarrassment or harm” to the military force, according to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by CNN.
And in an ominous-sounding operations security briefing, the national guard warned: “Adversaries are most likely to possess human intelligence (HUMINT), open source intelligence (OSINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), technical intelligence (TECHINT), and counterintelligence capabilities.”
In less military-style language, the briefing then goes on to detail how protesters might obtain this intelligence – a list of sources no more technical than public records, social media and listening to conversations “being carried out in public” by civic officials or law enforcement, according to the report.
Clarence W. Habersham Jr., the first officer to arrive on the scene after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man named Walter L. Scott, is drawing intense scrutiny both for the questions surrounding his response to the shooting and for what his role has illuminated about the pressures and expectations black officers face in largely white police departments.
Critics of Officer Habersham, 37, including black leaders and lawyers, have called for him to be prosecuted for what they say was his failure to provide adequate aid to Mr. Scott, 50, and for appearing to go along with what many viewers of a video of the shooting believe was an attempt by Michael T. Slager, the white officer who fatally shot Mr. Scott in the back, to plant a Taser by his body.
Officer Habersham later said in a brief police report that he tried to aid the victim by putting pressure on his wounds, but critics say the video does not show him performing CPR or acting with urgency in response to the shooting.
…
On April 4, Officer Habersham arrived on the scene after Mr. Slager, 33, who has since been charged with murder, fired eight shots at Mr. Scott as he was some distance away, fleeing after a traffic stop and a confrontation. In the video, as Mr. Scott lies in a grassy lot after Mr. Slager has handcuffed him, Officer Habersham can be seen crouching over Mr. Scott and at other times standing over him while directing medics to the lot on his radio. He does not appear to perform CPR on Mr. Scott, and he did not claim to have done so in his two-sentence report, stating that he “attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds.” Yet there are moments in the video when neither officer appears to be tending to Mr. Scott as he lies dying.
Some experts question that response.
“I wouldn’t have expected him to jump immediately into CPR,” Seth W. Stoughton, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former police officer, said of Officer Habersham. “You need to treat the bullet holes first to make CPR even remotely effective. But I didn’t really see him doing that. When I see two officers on scene with someone who has just been shot, I certainly do not expect to see both of them standing up and away from the body, neither one of them offering aid.”
Mr. Slager is shown in the video picking up an object from another part of the lot and then dropping either that object or something else by Mr. Scott’s body. Officer Habersham was standing over Mr. Scott, putting on blue medical gloves, when Mr. Slager dropped the object, and it is unclear in the video if he saw it happen. Civil rights activists contend that the dropped object was a Taser that Mr. Slager said Mr. Scott had tried to take from him.
The shooting is also being investigated by state and federal agencies.
…
Officer Habersham and four other officers are accused in a federal lawsuit filed last year of beating a black robbery suspect who was handcuffed in November 2011. It was unclear whether Officer Habersham participated in the beating, witnessed it but failed to stop it or played some other role, if any, but the lawsuit also accuses him and other officers of failing to render aid to the suspect.
“This is the Old South, and you have the Old South mentality here,” said Edward Bryant, president of the North Charleston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “The whites are always in charge. They’re the lead person, and Mr. Habersham is being in that role as they had it in the 1800s.”
Now it’s not like my Viking heritage is devoid of this, I invite the study of Vidkun Quisling who in many respects is even more reprehensible than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s stereotypes. I once traveled with a Norwegian through New Haven and mentioned it was Benedict Arnold’s home town.
“Who is he?”, she asked.
“Well, he’s kind of the U.S. Quisling.”, I replied sort of off handedly but also to prove I was at least passingly familiar with the history of Scandinavia.
She turned to me and said, with real anger in her voice, “How do you know that name!”
Umm… well… uh…
Folks, this struggle is not about identity politics. It’s not about your race, your creed, your gender, or sexual orientation. It is a class struggle and identity politics is just another distraction to keep the corporatist Billionaires in charge and their political toadies in office. It’s not a struggle of White and Black, it’s a struggle of Blue and Green and Gold above all against every one else.
A week of building tensions over race and policing came to a peak as chanting cops crashed a press conference announcing the exoneration of an officer – and then anti-police demonstrators crashed the cops’ interruption.
…
A citizen video captured the officer slamming the handcuffed girl to the ground, sparking public criticism. The video went viral. It became a Rorschach test revealing America’s divide on policing. Some saw a handcuffed girl manhandled by an officers. Others saw an endangered officer carefully protecting himself and the public against a lawbreaker. The lack of crucial facts about the case, compounded by a week of missteps by the police department in communicating with the public, exacerbated tensions in town.
…
The teen’s mother, Valerie Boyd, reacted to the decision by saying “there’s no justice.”
“The department of training failed [the officer] as well as they failed me and my daughter. The department is at fault. He should have been retrained coming into New Haven as a police officer. He should have been given the proper procedures of how to apprehend a suspect,” Boyd said.
“He’s back on the street. I don’t feel safe.”
…
The officers’ crashing of the press conference was in turn crashed by protesters critical of the police protest. These demonstrators, most of whom were black, called the police protesters racists who are deaf to the concerns of the black community.
…
“We’re protecting you, you dumbbell!” shot back one of the pro-police protesters.
I am a class traitor. Welcome to Stars Hollow Connecticut “the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve … where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Ron Wyden has long aspired to be a major Senate dealmaker, but one of his biggest breakthroughs to date – negotiating a landmark trade bill – has put him at odds with his Senate leader and Democratic friends, and has earned him scorn from liberals who think he’s sold out.
“Like a vote for the Iraq War or statements of support for the Social Security-cutting Bowles-Simpson plan, a vote for fast track and the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] will never be forgotten and will haunt members of Congress for years to come,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America.
…
“Over and over again we’ve been told that trade deals will create jobs and better protect workers and the environment,” Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said after the deal was announced. “Those promises have never come to fruition. Now some in the Senate are ready to dive into another mistaken trade deal.”
…
The two sides soon hit a snag over Wyden’s idea for a new mechanism to potentially turn off the fast-track procedures at the same time that Democracy for America and Move On, another progressive group, were criticizing Wyden for even talking with Republicans about the bill and threatening to try to defeat him in Oregon’s 2016 Senate Democratic Party primary.
…
But critics remain unsatisfied. They say the final provision for potentially stripping fast track from a trade agreement was too weak to make a significant difference.
By EMILY STEEL and BEN PROTESS, The New York Times
APRIL 17, 2015
The staff lawyers at the Justice Department reviewing Comcast’s proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable have raised concerns about the merger and are leaning toward recommending that it be blocked, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations.
…
If approved, the merger would reshape the country’s television and broadband infrastructure. Other deals hinge on the merger’s approval, including the Charter Communications $10.4 billion bid for Bright House Networks that would ultimately create the nation’s second-largest cable operator.
Media executives and public interest groups have raised concerns that an enlarged Comcast would have too much power over the future of the Internet and television. Among the fears are that Comcast would use its extra heft to force consumers to pay more for declining service and to push around Internet companies and TV networks, stifling innovation and diversity of programming.
“There’s no question is my mind that this deal is anything other than blatantly anticompetitive,” said Michael Copps, a former Democratic member of the F.C.C. and a special adviser to the Common Cause public interest group. “It fails not just the antitrust metrics, but the public interest metrics, too.”
Now, imagine a world in which Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, and Bright House sue in a secret Star Chamber of corporation judges not only for the immediate revenue from the expected (but not proven) boost to their stock prices and are awarded not only that, but any future income they could nebulously claim was an indirect result of this monopolist deal and the U.S. Government would be forced to tax you…
Yes YOU!
to pay them that without actually doing any work at all.
That my friends is Investor State Dispute Settlement and is the great steaming shit sandwich that Barack Obama and Ron Wyden want you to eat.
Don’t be fooled by social issues like Marriage Equality and Marijuana Legalization. They are mere bread and circuses. These people are whores to the bone and would sell their mothers for a nickle. They are cheaper to buy than Judas.
As the Missouri national guard prepared to deploy to the streets of Ferguson last year during protests sparked by the shooting death of Michael Brown, the troops used highly militarised language such as “enemy forces” and “adversaries” to refer to citizen demonstrators.
Documents detailing the military mission divided the crowds that national guards would be likely to encounter into “friendly forces” and “enemy forces” – the latter apparently including “general protesters”.
A briefing for commanders included details of the troops’ intelligence capabilities so that they could “deny adversaries the ability to identify Missouri national guard vulnerabilities”, which the “adversaries” might exploit, “causing embarrassment or harm” to the military force, according to documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request by CNN.
And in an ominous-sounding operations security briefing, the national guard warned: “Adversaries are most likely to possess human intelligence (HUMINT), open source intelligence (OSINT), signals intelligence (SIGINT), technical intelligence (TECHINT), and counterintelligence capabilities.”
In less military-style language, the briefing then goes on to detail how protesters might obtain this intelligence – a list of sources no more technical than public records, social media and listening to conversations “being carried out in public” by civic officials or law enforcement, according to the report.
Clarence W. Habersham Jr., the first officer to arrive on the scene after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black man named Walter L. Scott, is drawing intense scrutiny both for the questions surrounding his response to the shooting and for what his role has illuminated about the pressures and expectations black officers face in largely white police departments.
Critics of Officer Habersham, 37, including black leaders and lawyers, have called for him to be prosecuted for what they say was his failure to provide adequate aid to Mr. Scott, 50, and for appearing to go along with what many viewers of a video of the shooting believe was an attempt by Michael T. Slager, the white officer who fatally shot Mr. Scott in the back, to plant a Taser by his body.
Officer Habersham later said in a brief police report that he tried to aid the victim by putting pressure on his wounds, but critics say the video does not show him performing CPR or acting with urgency in response to the shooting.
…
On April 4, Officer Habersham arrived on the scene after Mr. Slager, 33, who has since been charged with murder, fired eight shots at Mr. Scott as he was some distance away, fleeing after a traffic stop and a confrontation. In the video, as Mr. Scott lies in a grassy lot after Mr. Slager has handcuffed him, Officer Habersham can be seen crouching over Mr. Scott and at other times standing over him while directing medics to the lot on his radio. He does not appear to perform CPR on Mr. Scott, and he did not claim to have done so in his two-sentence report, stating that he “attempted to render aid to the victim by applying pressure to the gunshot wounds.” Yet there are moments in the video when neither officer appears to be tending to Mr. Scott as he lies dying.
Some experts question that response.
“I wouldn’t have expected him to jump immediately into CPR,” Seth W. Stoughton, an assistant professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law and a former police officer, said of Officer Habersham. “You need to treat the bullet holes first to make CPR even remotely effective. But I didn’t really see him doing that. When I see two officers on scene with someone who has just been shot, I certainly do not expect to see both of them standing up and away from the body, neither one of them offering aid.”
Mr. Slager is shown in the video picking up an object from another part of the lot and then dropping either that object or something else by Mr. Scott’s body. Officer Habersham was standing over Mr. Scott, putting on blue medical gloves, when Mr. Slager dropped the object, and it is unclear in the video if he saw it happen. Civil rights activists contend that the dropped object was a Taser that Mr. Slager said Mr. Scott had tried to take from him.
The shooting is also being investigated by state and federal agencies.
…
Officer Habersham and four other officers are accused in a federal lawsuit filed last year of beating a black robbery suspect who was handcuffed in November 2011. It was unclear whether Officer Habersham participated in the beating, witnessed it but failed to stop it or played some other role, if any, but the lawsuit also accuses him and other officers of failing to render aid to the suspect.
“This is the Old South, and you have the Old South mentality here,” said Edward Bryant, president of the North Charleston chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “The whites are always in charge. They’re the lead person, and Mr. Habersham is being in that role as they had it in the 1800s.”
Now it’s not like my Viking heritage is devoid of this, I invite the study of Vidkun Quisling who in many respects is even more reprehensible than Harriet Beecher Stowe’s stereotypes. I once traveled with a Norwegian through New Haven and mentioned it was Benedict Arnold’s home town.
“Who is he?”, she asked.
“Well, he’s kind of the U.S. Quisling.”, I replied sort of off handedly but also to prove I was at least passingly familiar with the history of Scandinavia.
She turned to me and said, with real anger in her voice, “How do you know that name!”
Umm… well… uh…
Folks, this struggle is not about identity politics. It’s not about your race, your creed, your gender, or sexual orientation. It is a class struggle and identity politics is just another distraction to keep the corporatist Billionaires in charge and their political toadies in office. It’s not a struggle of White and Black, it’s a struggle of Blue and Green and Gold above all against every one else.
A week of building tensions over race and policing came to a peak as chanting cops crashed a press conference announcing the exoneration of an officer – and then anti-police demonstrators crashed the cops’ interruption.
…
A citizen video captured the officer slamming the handcuffed girl to the ground, sparking public criticism. The video went viral. It became a Rorschach test revealing America’s divide on policing. Some saw a handcuffed girl manhandled by an officers. Others saw an endangered officer carefully protecting himself and the public against a lawbreaker. The lack of crucial facts about the case, compounded by a week of missteps by the police department in communicating with the public, exacerbated tensions in town.
…
The teen’s mother, Valerie Boyd, reacted to the decision by saying “there’s no justice.”
“The department of training failed [the officer] as well as they failed me and my daughter. The department is at fault. He should have been retrained coming into New Haven as a police officer. He should have been given the proper procedures of how to apprehend a suspect,” Boyd said.
“He’s back on the street. I don’t feel safe.”
…
The officers’ crashing of the press conference was in turn crashed by protesters critical of the police protest. These demonstrators, most of whom were black, called the police protesters racists who are deaf to the concerns of the black community.
…
“We’re protecting you, you dumbbell!” shot back one of the pro-police protesters.
I am a class traitor. Welcome to Stars Hollow Connecticut “the little town that time forgot and the decades cannot improve … where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.”
Ron Wyden has long aspired to be a major Senate dealmaker, but one of his biggest breakthroughs to date – negotiating a landmark trade bill – has put him at odds with his Senate leader and Democratic friends, and has earned him scorn from liberals who think he’s sold out.
“Like a vote for the Iraq War or statements of support for the Social Security-cutting Bowles-Simpson plan, a vote for fast track and the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] will never be forgotten and will haunt members of Congress for years to come,” said Jim Dean, chair of Democracy for America.
…
“Over and over again we’ve been told that trade deals will create jobs and better protect workers and the environment,” Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said after the deal was announced. “Those promises have never come to fruition. Now some in the Senate are ready to dive into another mistaken trade deal.”
…
The two sides soon hit a snag over Wyden’s idea for a new mechanism to potentially turn off the fast-track procedures at the same time that Democracy for America and Move On, another progressive group, were criticizing Wyden for even talking with Republicans about the bill and threatening to try to defeat him in Oregon’s 2016 Senate Democratic Party primary.
…
But critics remain unsatisfied. They say the final provision for potentially stripping fast track from a trade agreement was too weak to make a significant difference.
By EMILY STEEL and BEN PROTESS, The New York Times
APRIL 17, 2015
The staff lawyers at the Justice Department reviewing Comcast’s proposed $45 billion takeover of Time Warner Cable have raised concerns about the merger and are leaning toward recommending that it be blocked, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations.
…
If approved, the merger would reshape the country’s television and broadband infrastructure. Other deals hinge on the merger’s approval, including the Charter Communications $10.4 billion bid for Bright House Networks that would ultimately create the nation’s second-largest cable operator.
Media executives and public interest groups have raised concerns that an enlarged Comcast would have too much power over the future of the Internet and television. Among the fears are that Comcast would use its extra heft to force consumers to pay more for declining service and to push around Internet companies and TV networks, stifling innovation and diversity of programming.
“There’s no question is my mind that this deal is anything other than blatantly anticompetitive,” said Michael Copps, a former Democratic member of the F.C.C. and a special adviser to the Common Cause public interest group. “It fails not just the antitrust metrics, but the public interest metrics, too.”
Now, imagine a world in which Comcast, Time Warner, Charter, and Bright House sue in a secret Star Chamber of corporation judges not only for the immediate revenue from the expected (but not proven) boost to their stock prices and are awarded not only that, but any future income they could nebulously claim was an indirect result of this monopolist deal and the U.S. Government would be forced to tax you…
Yes YOU!
to pay them that without actually doing any work at all.
That my friends is Investor State Dispute Settlement and is the great steaming shit sandwich that Barack Obama and Ron Wyden want you to eat.
Don’t be fooled by social issues like Marriage Equality and Marijuana Legalization. They are mere bread and circuses. These people are whores to the bone and would sell their mothers for a nickle. They are cheaper to buy than Judas.
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On this day in 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed,
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