This previews with 3 minor flaws (see if you can pick them out). I have wasted waaay too much time trying to fix them, the code around the affected areas is rock solid so a flaw in rendering either in preview or across the site.
Or maybe compiler error but I checked the output code.
Oh, favorites. TMC likes Gonzaga and I have no objection. Me? Michigan and Syracuse mostly, ‘Nova and Hall in a pinch.
Assault rifles and military-style semi-automatics have been banned in New Zealand after Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, announced sweeping and immediate changes to gun laws following the Christchurch mosque shootings.
“I absolutely believe there will be a common view amongst New Zealanders, those who use guns for legitimate purposes, and those who have never touched one, that the time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end. And today they will,” said Ardern.
Parts that are used to convert guns into military-style semi-automatics (MSSAs) have also being banned, along with high-capacity magazines and parts that cause a firearm to generate semi-automatic, automatic or close-to-automatic gunfire.
“In short, every semi-automatic weapon used in the terrorist attack on Friday will be banned in this country,” said Ardern.
The ban on the sale of the weapons came into effect at 3pm on Thursday – the time of the press conference announcing the ban – with the prime minister warning that “all sales should now cease” of the weapons.
Ardern also directed officials to develop a gun-buyback scheme for those who already own such weapons. She said “fair and reasonable compensation” would be paid. [..]
The measures were praised internationally, with Rebecca Peters, who helped lead the successful campaign to reform Australia’s gun laws in the 1990s, saying: “It’s been the fastest response ever by a government after a tragedy.” [..]
Ardern said the immediate changes were intended to take out of circulation the guns that were “most critical to be addressed urgently”.
“There are a range of other amendments that we believe do need to be made and that will be the second tranche of reforms, yet to come.”
Given the urgency of the legislation, Ardern said there would be a shortened select-committee process for the legislation and that she expected the amendments to the Arms Act to be passed within the next session of parliament on Monday.
That’s what effective leadership looks like. New Zealand’s cabinet has now agreed in principle to overhaul those laws, experts are reviewing ways to make the country safer from firearms and, Ardern promised, “within 10 days of this horrific act of terrorism, we will have announced reforms.”
Contrast that with the United States, where just since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (1.45 million, including murders, suicides and accidents) than died in all the wars in American history (1.4 million). More Americans die from guns every 10 weeks than died in the entire Afghanistan and Iraq wars combined, yet we still don’t have gun safety rules as rigorous as New Zealand’s even before the mosques were attacked.
The N.R.A. (not to be confused with the vast majority of gun owners) will turn to its old smoke-and-mirrors standby, arguing that the killer’s hate, not his guns and bullets, were the real problem.
But while it’s true that white supremacy is deadly and needs to be confronted — something our vote-obsessed president blindly ignores — without the weapons of mass murder, 50 New Zealand worshipers would still be alive; 17 Parkland, Fla., schoolchildren and staff members would still be alive; nine Charleston, S.C., churchgoers would still be alive; 11 Pittsburgh congregants would still be alive; 58 Las Vegas concertgoers would still be alive; 26 Newtown, Conn., first graders and adults would. …
Why can’t leaders in America learn from experience, the way leaders in other countries do? After a massacre in Australia in 1996, the government there took far-reaching action to tighten gun policy. In contrast, every day in America, another hundred people die from gun violence and 300 more are injured — and our president and Congress do nothing. [..]
It’s also true that there are no simple solutions. The U.S. now has more guns than people, so criminals have a steady supply — and so do ordinary Americans at a time when suicides are at a 30-year high.
But gun laws do make a difference. When Connecticut tightened licensing laws in 1995, firearm homicide rates dropped by 40 percent. And when Missouri eased gun laws in 2007, gun homicide rates surged by 25 percent.
Polls show some measures have broad backing. For starters, more than 90 percent even of gun owners support universal background checks to ensure that people are legally allowed to own a gun before they buy one.
Astonishingly, about 22 percent of guns in the U.S. are still acquired without a background check. In parts of the U.S., you need a more thorough background check to adopt a dog than to acquire a semiautomatic AR-15 weapon. [..]
Another basic step: Keep guns out of the hands of people shown to present a danger to themselves or others, such as when they are suicidal or threatening a domestic partner. Fourteen states have such “red flag” laws, and similar legislation is before Congress to achieve something similar at a national level.
We should likewise invest more in “smart guns” that can be fired only by an authorized person; it’s outrageous that my phone requires a pin or fingerprint but that an AR-15 doesn’t. That would help with the estimated 200,000 guns stolen each year. [..]
Slowly, the tide of public opinion is shifting. The N.R.A.’s extremism is turning some people off, and it seems on the defensive, so eventually we may follow New Zealand. But how many more people will die before the president and Congress act?
It’s never ceases to amaze just how stupid some politicians are. Not does it never cease to amaze when the consequences of their actions backfires. Prime example would be Republican California Representative Devin Nunes, he of the midnight run to the White House to prove “no collusion,” who filed $250 million lawsuit against Twitter, specifically a Republican strategist, and two parody Twitter accounts, one purporting to be Nunes’s mother, the other purporting to be Nunes’s cow. While the parody account of his mother has been suspended, @DevinCow now has over half a million followers, more than the congressman. The Stars Hollow Gazette is 527,150.
The creator of @NunesMom worked around the suspension creating a new account Devin Nunes’ Alt-Mom @NuneAlt, re-posting a screenshot of an deleted tweet that had a “helpful diagram” to explain Nunes’ relationship with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
There are now numerous other parody account, such as, Devin Nunes’ Thin Skin @DevinSkin, which needs to get thicker, and this list:
Pundits are calling the lawsuit “bonkers” and “ridiculous” particularly given Nunes’s co-sponsorship of a bill called the Discouraging Frivolous Lawsuits Act. Last night Seth Meyers, host of NBC’s “Late Night.” took a closer look at Nunes’ lawsuit.
Joan Coaston at Vox.com explained some of the reasoning behind the 40 page lawsuit:
Nunes’s complaint is part and parcel with wider efforts to clamp down on Twitter itself. In short, Nunes argues in his lawsuit that Twitter is a content creator and thus Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (which states that Twitter doesn’t have to determine what’s defamatory and what’s not and basically prevents a massive speech crackdown) shouldn’t apply to the social media giant. [..]
In effect, Nunes wants to force Twitter into regulating speech that is mean to Nunes and other conservatives. And as Jeet Heer wrote at Talking Points Memo on Tuesday, just the expense of fighting a lawsuit like this one can be incredibly damaging, let alone any resulting ruling. [..]
So yes, Nunes is drawing more attention to @Devincow. But he’s also sending a message: Some conservatives do in fact want more regulations stemming from the federal government, provided those regulations are aimed squarely at so-called “left-leaning” social media platforms
One other point that Nunes seems to have missed, courts have ruled that under the First Amendment public figures can be parodied and ridiculed. Here’s hoping a judge will dismiss this frivolous lawsuit and teach Nunes a lesson by making him pay for everyone’s court costs.
Pondering 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.
America is having a heated debate about the meaning of the word socialism. We’d be better served if, instead, we were debating the meaning of freedom.
The Oregonian reported last week that fully 156,000 families are on the edge of homelessness in our small-population state. Every one of those households is now paying more than 50 percent of its monthly income on rent, and none of them has any savings; one medical bill, major car repair or job loss, and they’re on the streets.
While socialism may or may not solve their problem, the more pressing issue we have is an entire political party and a huge sector of the billionaire class who see homelessness not as a problem, but as a symptom of a “free” society.
The words freedom and liberty are iconic in American culture—probably more so than with any other nation because they’re so intrinsic to the literature, declarations and slogans of our nation’s founding.
The irony—of the nation founded on the world’s greatest known genocide (the systematic state murder of tens of millions of Native Americans) and over three centuries of legalized slavery and a century and a half of oppression and exploitation of the descendants of those slaves—is extraordinary. It presses us all to bring true freedom and liberty to all Americans.
The 2019 Economic Report of the President is out, and everyone is having fun with the bit at the end that acknowledges the help of student interns – a list that includes Peter Parker, Aunt May, Bruce Wayne, and Jabba the Hutt:
The White House is passing this off as a deliberate joke. More likely, someone slipped superheroes in to see whether anyone in charge was actually paying attention, and proved that they weren’t.
But the bigger news from the report involves the supposed economic payoffs from the Trump tax cut. Even the White House now acknowledges that the tax cut won’t do all they said it would – their wildly optimistic economic projections depend on the claimed payoff to other economic policies that they themselves haven’t specified. So tax cuts will do wonders for growth, as long as you do a bunch of other stuff, details to come later.
This puts me in mind of what Voltaire said about witchcraft: “It is unquestionable that certain words and ceremonies will effectually destroy a flock of sheep, if administered with a sufficient portion of arsenic.”
But beyond that, even the claimed positive effects of the tax cut itself are things we can already see aren’t happening.
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungoverwe’ve been bailed outwe’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
This Day in History
Dr. Martlin Luther King, Jr. begins march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama; the Sharkville massacre in South Africa occurs; Wrongly incarcerated Randall Dale Adams is released from prison; Musician Johann Bach born.
Breakfast Tunes
Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac
I believe in luck: how else can you explain the success of those you dislike?
Tonight I have a slight favorite, the Johnnies. They had a pretty good year for them and after years and years of exile to the NIT it’s kind of nice to see them back in the big dance.
Spring is upon us at 5:58 PM ET when the sun crosses the equator heading north to the Tropic of Cancer, the most northerly circle of latitude on Earth at which the Sun can be directly overhead. This year the Vernal Equinox coincides with the last Super Moon of 2019.
The moon will reach its closest point to Earth — what’s known as lunar perigee — on Tuesday at 3:47 p.m. ET, but the moon won’t be completely full until Wednesday at 9:43 p.m. ET. The moon is usually about 240,000 miles away from Earth, but at perigee this month, it will come within about 223,300 miles of our planet, according to NASA.
Native Americans call it the Worm Moon because according to folklore tradition, it occurs at a time when the frosty ground is melting and earthworms start to emerge. A sure sign is the return of the Robin. It’s also called the Sap Moon signaling the start of sap flowing in the trees and the start of the annual tapping of maple trees.
But not every place will experience the exact same amount of daylight. For instance, on Wednesday, Fairbanks, Alaska, will see 12 hours and 15 minutes of daylight. Key West, Florida, will see 12 hours and six minutes. The differences are due to how the sunlight gets refracted (bent) as it enters Earth’s atmosphere at different latitudes.
That daylight is longer than 12 hours on the equinox is also due to how we commonly measure the length of a day: from the first hint of the sun peeking over the horizon in the morning to the very last glimpse of it before it falls below the horizon in the evening. Because the sun takes some time to rise and set, it adds some extra daylight minutes.
Check out TimeAndDate.com to see how many hours of sunlight you’ll get during the equinox. [..]
Perhaps you were told as a child that on the equinox, it’s easier to balance an egg vertically on a flat surface than on other days of the year.
The practice originated in China as a tradition on the first day of spring in the Chinese lunar calendar in early February. According to the South China Morning Post, “The theory goes that at this time of year the moon and earth are in exactly the right alignment, the celestial bodies generating the perfect balance of forces needed to make it possible.”
This is a myth. The amount of sunlight we get during the day has no power over the gravitational pull of the Earth or our abilities to balance things upon it. You can balance an egg on its end any day of the year (if you’re good at balancing things). [..]
I once stood an egg on the dining room table and left it there. One of my cats, Mom Cat, sat staring at it for quite some time. After several minutes, she very gently reached out with one paw and tapped it. It rolled off the table and smashed on the floor before I could reach it. As I cleaned up the mess, Mom Cat sat on the edge of the table watching, as if to say, “yes, gravity still works.”
During the winter and summer solstices, crowds flock to Stonehenge in the United Kingdom. During the solstices, the sun either rises or sets in line with the layout of the 5,000-year-old-monument. And while some visit Stonehenge for the spring equinox too, the real place to be is in Mexico.
That’s because on the equinox, the pyramid at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Peninsula puts on a wondrous show. Built by the Mayans around 1,000 years ago, the pyramid is designed to cast a shadow on the equinox outlining the body of Kukulkan, a feathered snake god. A serpent-head statue is located at the bottom of the pyramid, and as the sun sets on the day of the equinox, the sunlight and shadow show the body of the serpent joining with the head.
If only winter would end like this:
So break out the new brooms, rakes, shovels; check out the local garden center for bedding plants and start unearthing last years Spring and Summer clothes; it’s Spring.
Pondering 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 “Pondering the Pundits”.
In November, the American people voted overwhelmingly to put Democrats in charge of the House of Representatives to start serving as a truly independent check and balance on the executive branch. Since then, President Trump and his allies have complained of “Presidential Harassment,” decrying Democrats for having the audacity to request documents and witnesses to fulfill our constitutional responsibilities.
The problem is that the White House is engaged in an unprecedented level of stonewalling, delay and obstruction.
I serve as chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, the primary investigative body in the House of Representatives. I have sent 12 letters to the White House on a half-dozen topics — some routine and some relating to our core national security interests. In response, the White House has refused to hand over any documents or produce any witnesses for interviews.
Let me underscore that point: The White House has not turned over a single piece of paper to our committee or made a single official available for testimony during the 116th Congress. [..]
President Trump’s actions violate our Constitution’s fundamental principle of checks and balances. If our committee must resort to issuing subpoenas, there should be no doubt about why. This has nothing to do with presidential harassment and everything to do with unprecedented obstruction.
As a farmer told me, “You can still make a small fortune in agriculture, but the problem is you have to start with a large fortune.”
Farmers tend to be optimistic pessimists. They know the odds are against them — the bankers, bugs, monopolists, violent weather and sorry politicians. Yet, they keep at it as long as they can; working long and hard hours, enduring arduous conditions and tremendous stress to nurture the seeds that bring us an abundance of foods. But sometimes, the odds bunch up. Coping with natural disasters is to be expected. It’s the unnatural disasters of rigged economic policies, Wall Street greed and unrestrained corporate profiteering that slam the door on good, efficient family farmers, making it impossible for them to keep producing. [..]
Indeed, a central cause of the spreading farm depression is the increasing monopolization of all the things farmers must buy (from seeds to machinery) and of the markets that buy from them. The big four biotech ag giants, for example, control 63 percent of all commercial seeds sold in the world; four meat processors control 84 percent of the U.S. beef market; and four global traders control up to 90 percent of the world’s grain sales. Our farmers and their families are hurting, but so far, our leaders, including the president, aren’t helping them.
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