Lurker > whitewimmin

They don't have to have come out this year, but don't consider games that you've always loved and have kept playing this year

For me:
Sonic Mania
Stardew Valley
Hitman
Dirt 4
Life is Strange
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http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/05/stardew-valley-publishers-tease-new-stardew-meets-harry-potter-project

Finn Brice, CEO of Chucklefish (publishers of Stardew Valley) has posted a tweet that teases the company's next home-grown title:

Not much is known about the title as of yet, although Brice has alluded to an upcoming project in the past which he characterised as being "Stardew Valley meets Harry Potter". It's important to note that by "Harry Potter", he's referring to the idea of witches and wizards attending a magical school, rather than indicating any formal crossover between the two franchises (although yes please let's go).

Previous tweets have seemed to have hint at a game called Spellbound, and the presence of those witches in what definitely resembles a cutesy life-sim world could point to this being the same project.

Responding to users on Twitter, Brice clarified that there there will be "no formal announcement" for a while; he also retweeted a user who had retweeted the image with the caption "Little Stardew Academia", indicating that comparisons with the popular Little Witch Academia franchise may be appropriate.

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We regret to inform you that free speech doesn't apply to non-right wingers

https://twitter.com/ticki_/status/903272442839355392
https://twitter.com/innerpartisan/status/903263369276395520
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http://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news/milwaukee-county-sheriff-david-clarke-has-resigned

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke resigned Thursday, TODAY'S TMJ4 has learned.

Milwaukee County Clerk George L. Christenson confirmed the news Thursday afternoon. His letter of resignation was received at 3:17 p.m

There's no word yet on why the sheriff chose today to tender his resignation or what his next moves may be.

In June, the sheriff withdrew his name from consideration for an Assistant Secretary Position at the Department of Homeland Security after speculation he would fill that role.

The sheriff was in Nashville at the time of his resignation and could not immediately be reached for comment.

Clarke rose to prominence as a national media figure during his tenure as sheriff of Milwaukee County, increasingly appearing on cable news outlets like FOX News to talk about police issues.

His tenure was not without controversy. In a span of six months in 2016, three people in custody died at the Milwaukee County Jail — as well as a newborn baby.

Clarke first won election to the position in 2002. He defended his post in elections in 2006, 2010, and 2014.

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fenderbender321 posted...

Also, this appears to be part of the scandal that already happened last year.

Yes, the massive scandal was >50% worse than first estimated
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/31/opinion/columnists/yemen-famine-cholera.html

Let’s be blunt: With U.S. and U.K. complicity, the Saudi government is committing war crimes in Yemen.

“The country is on the brink of famine, with over 60 percent of the population not knowing where their next meal will come from,” the leaders of the U.N. World Food Program, Unicef and the World Health Organization said in an unusual joint statement.

Yemen, always an impoverished country, has been upended for two years by fighting between the Saudi-backed military coalition and Houthi rebels and their allies (with limited support from Iran). The Saudis regularly bomb civilians and, worse, they have closed the airspace and imposed a blockade to starve the rebel-held areas into submission.

That means that ordinary Yemenis, including children, die in bombings or starve.

A child dies in Yemen every five minutes.



This is Buthaina, a girl believed to be 4 or 5 who was the only survivor in her family of a bombing last week by the Saudi coalition that killed 14 people.

Human Rights Watch has repeatedly concluded that many Saudi airstrikes were probable war crimes and that the U.S. shares responsibility because it provides the Saudis with air-to-air refueling and intelligence used for airstrikes, as well as with much of the weaponry.

Yet victims like Buthaina aren’t on our television screens and rarely make the news pages, in part because Saudi Arabia is successfully blocking foreign journalists from the rebel-held areas. I know, because I’ve been trying for almost a year to get there and thought I had arranged a visit for this week — and then Saudi Arabia shut me down.

With commercial flights banned, the way into rebel areas is on charter flights arranged by the United Nations and aid groups. But Saudi military jets control this airspace and ban any flight if there’s a journalist onboard. I don’t think the Saudis would actually shoot down a plane just because I was on it, but the U.N. isn’t taking chances.

This is maddening: Saudi Arabia successfully blackmails the United Nations to bar journalists so as to prevent coverage of Saudi atrocities.



The Saudis don’t want you to see children like this one, Alaa, severely malnourished and photographed by a World Food Program team. Two days later, Alaa died.

“The situation in Yemen is a disgrace that brings shame to our global community,” says Michelle Nunn, president of Care USA. “More than 20 million Yemenis are in need of emergency assistance, and a child dies every five minutes. Yet few Americans know about the daily bloodshed, near-famine conditions and a raging cholera epidemic.”

The civil war in Yemen started as a local conflict, but Saudi Arabia rushed in because of exaggerated fears of Iranian influence there. All parties have behaved outrageously. But it’s our side that appears to be responsible for the most deaths: A draft U.N. report says that the Saudi-led coalition is responsible for 65 percent more deaths of children than the Houthis and their allies, and it’s the Saudis who have imposed the blockade that is leading to starvation.

In addition, the world’s worst cholera epidemic has broken out in Yemen, partly because so many people are malnourished. An additional 5,000 Yemenis are infected with cholera each day.

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It's something I've been pondering for a while, but the impetus for making this topic today is coming across this: https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/903231470906593280
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Do people think highly of the Advance or Rush games?
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Antifa is not a set of beliefs
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http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant

You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss’s continuing indulgence of white supremacists. Allies of National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster hold Bannon responsible for a campaign by Breitbart News, which Bannon once led, to vilify the security chief. Trump’s defense of Bannon, at his Tuesday press conference, was tepid.

But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury. “They’re wetting themselves,” he said, proceeding to detail how he would oust some of his opponents at State and Defense.

Needless to say, I was a little stunned to get an email from Bannon’s assistant midday Tuesday, just as all hell was breaking loose once again about Charlottesville, saying that Bannon wished to meet with me. I’d just published a column on how China was profiting from the U.S.-North Korea nuclear brinkmanship, and it included some choice words about Bannon’s boss.
...
Far from dressing me down for comparing Trump to Kim, he began, “It’s a great honor to finally track you down. I’ve followed your writing for years and I think you and I are in the same boat when it comes to China. You absolutely nailed it.”

“We’re at economic war with China,” he added. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path. On Korea, they’re just tapping us along. It’s just a sideshow.”

Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear buildup with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote. Given that China is not likely to do much more on North Korea, and that the logic of mutually assured destruction was its own source of restraint, Bannon saw no reason not to proceed with tough trade sanctions against China.

Contrary to Trump’s threat of fire and fury, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution [to North Korea’s nuclear threats], forget it. Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that ten million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us.”
...
“To me,” Bannon said, “the economic war with China is everything. And we have to be maniacally focused on that. If we continue to lose it, we're five years away, I think, ten years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we'll never be able to recover.”
...
He dismissed the far right as irrelevant and sidestepped his own role in cultivating it: “Ethno-nationalism—it's losers. It's a fringe element. I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”

“These guys are a collection of clowns,” he added.

From his lips to Trump’s ear.

“The Democrats,” he said, “the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

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http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/16/trump-charlottesville-temper-chaos-241721

President Donald Trump’s decision to double down on his argument that “both sides” were to blame for the violent clashes at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was driven in part by his own anger — and his disdain for being told what to do.

Trump’s temper has been a constant force in this eight-month-old White House. He’s made policy decisions after becoming irritated with staffers and has escalated fights in the past few weeks with everyone from the Senate majority leader to the volatile dictator of North Korea.

The controversy over his response to the Charlottesville violence was no different. Agitated about being pressured by aides to clarify his first public statement, Trump unexpectedly unwound the damage control of the prior two days by assigning blame to the “alt-left” and calling some of the white supremacist protesters “very fine people.”

“In some ways, Trump would rather have people calling him racist than say he backed down the minute he was wrong,” one adviser to the White House said on Wednesday about Charlottesville. “This may turn into the biggest mess of his presidency because he is stubborn and doesn't realize how bad this is getting.”

For Trump, anger serves as a way to manage staff, express his displeasure or simply as an outlet that soothes him. Often, aides and advisers say, he’ll get mad at a specific staffer or broader situation, unload from the Oval Office and then three hours later act as if nothing ever occurred even if others still feel rattled by it. Negative television coverage and lawyers earn particular ire from him.

White House officials and informal advisers say the triggers for his temper are if he thinks someone is lying to him, if he’s caught by surprise, if someone criticizes him, or if someone stops him from trying to do something or seeks to control him.

That latter trigger — of attempting to corral him — set in motion the past five tense days surrounding Charlottesville. On Saturday, the president failed to condemn white supremacists, who had marched through the city shouting anti-Semitic chants and assaulting counterprotesters. One of them killed a 32-year-old woman and injured roughly 20 others when he rammed his car at a high speed into a crowd.
...
In one stark example, the president’s dislike of being told what to do played a role in his decision to abruptly ban all transgender people from the military: a move opposed by his own defense secretary, James Mattis, and the head of the Coast Guard, who vowed not to honor the president’s decree.

The president had grown tired of White House lawyers telling him what he could and could not do on the ban and numerous other issues such as labor regulations, said one informal White House adviser. While multiple factors were in play with the transgender ban, Trump has grown increasingly frustrated by the lawyers’ calls for further study and caution, so he took it upon himself to tweet out the news of the ban, partly as a reminder to the lawyers who’s in charge, the adviser said.
...
“The possibility that the president is annoyed and angry and yells at someone in the building is not of a lot of consequence to me because it happens all of the time,” said one informal yet frequent adviser to the White House.

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A prayer for safety seems reasonable before driving around at 150 mph
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http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/02/politics/kfile-sam-clovis-blog-posts/index.html

Sam Clovis, President Donald Trump's nominee to be the Department of Agriculture's chief scientist, maintained a now-defunct blog for years in which he accused progressives of "enslaving" minorities, called black leaders "race traders," and labeled former President Barack Obama a "Maoist" with "communist" roots.

Clovis, a long-time Iowa political activist and former economics professor, wrote the blog posts on the now-deleted website for his radio show "Impact with Clovis," which aired for several years on Sioux City KSCJ. Copies of the show are not available online, but the blog is archived on The Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Most of the available blog posts are from 2011 and 2012.
Trump's nomination of Clovis, a fervent supporter of Trump during the presidential campaign, has drawn criticism from Senate Democrats and climate activists, who have attacked his lack of scientific credentials and skepticism of climate science.
Clovis is currently serving as the senior White House adviser to the USDA, but as his old blog posts highlight, his background is strongly rooted in the politics of conservative talk radio. His nomination requires Senate confirmation.
Clovis did not respond to an email from CNN's KFile requesting comment. A spokesperson for the USDA said, "Dr. Clovis is a proud conservative and a proud American. All of his reporting either on the air or in writing over the course of his career has been based on solid research and data. He is after all an academic."
A spokesperson for the White House did not return a request for comment.
In his writings, Clovis directed most of his ire at then-President Obama and the progressive movement.
In a post from September 2011, Clovis wrote in reference to Obama, "He was brought up by socialists to be a socialist. His associations were socialists or worse, criminal dissidents who were bent on overthrowing the government of the United States. He has no experience at anything other than race baiting and race trading as a community organizer."
The month before, Clovis said the 2012 Republican primary candidates needed to call out progressives for what they were — "liars, race traders and race 'traitors.'"
At times, Clovis adopted a conspiratorial tone in his blog postings, openly pondering whether the Obama Administration would place conservative activists on a kill list that included terrorists like Anwar al-Awlaki and accusing Obama-era czars of using taxpayer money to buy the support of academics who would claim science was settled.
In one blog post in April 2011, Clovis contrasted the successful recovery efforts following the 2008 floods in Iowa with the chaos in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, attributing the difference to Iowa's culture "focused on family, community and the primacy of faith in life."

Second time today there's been a story about a Trump guy referring to opponents as Maoists.
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Weird. The Toyota racecars are p cool still. Also I have no idea how they're going to fill a 700 car roster, unless it's like every NASCAR and Indycar being counted separately.
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https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/892210839486427136

Please use these screenshots to confirm your pre-existing notions of each outlet
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https://twitter.com/Ry_Bass/status/892119504884551680
Article about the issue from before his decision:
http://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/19626695/ucf-kicker-donald-de-la-haye-asked-stop-making-money-youtube-videos

Central Florida kicker Donald De La Haye has a popular channel on YouTube, and in his most recent video he says UCF asked him to stop making money off his videos so that he can preserve his amateur status.

In the video "Quit College Sports or Quit YouTube," De La Haye said, "I feel like they're making me pick between my passion in what I love to do, make videos and entertain, be creative, and my other passion, which is playing football."

A source said UCF never gave De La Haye an ultimatum; rather, he met with members of the compliance staff and they offered to work toward a solution. The NCAA referred all comments to UCF, saying that it has not received a waiver from the school in regard to the matter.

In a statement, UCF said, "UCF Athletics is committed to rules compliance. Our compliance staff strives to make sure our student-athletes are informed about all pertinent NCAA bylaws. Student-athletes attend regular educational meetings regarding NCAA eligibility. One of our goals is to help our student-athletes learn about the bylaws that govern intercollegiate athletics, in an effort to help them maintain their eligibility."

De La Haye has made 41 videos that show his daily life, including what it is like to be a student-athlete. Because he hit 10,000 lifetime views, he was able to make money off ads placed on his videos. At issue is NCAA bylaw 12.4.4, which states an athlete "may establish his or her own business, provided the student-athlete's name, photograph, appearance or athletics reputation are not used to promote the business."

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http://thefederalist.com/2017/07/31/anthony-scaramucci-man-trump-america-need/
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As in, a Republican staffer asked the_Donald for suggestions
https://www.wired.com/story/republican-staffer-the-donald-resolution/?mbid=social_twitter_onsiteshare

THIS PAST WEDNESDAY, a group of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee presented an amendment calling for an investigation into alleged misconduct on the parts of Hillary Clinton and James Comey. It was a way to frustrate Democrats, but, more than that, it provided an opportunity to publicly discuss their very favorite thing: the many bygone misdeeds of Crooked Hillary. The amendment may sound to some readers like it's been ripped out of a conspiracy forum, because that's exactly what happened.

Sponsored by first-term Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Florida), the amendment itself sought to hijack what began as a resolution from Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) asking for information about Comey's firing. In response to Jayapal's proposal, Gaetz and a few fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee effectively replaced the Democrats' resolution with one of their own. The new amendment (which you can read in its entirety here) asks for an investigation into things like "the propriety and consequence of immunity deals given to possible Hillary Clinton co-conspirators" and "James B. Comey’s refusal to investigate then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton regarding" a number of matters, including many of which may have come directly from r/The_Donald.

Thursday night, three Twitter users discovered that a staffer for one of the resolution’s sponsors attempted to crowdsource a number of the resolution's salient points from r/The_Donald, a subreddit notorious for playing host to unfounded conspiracy theories and anti-Islam tendencies. In other words, not a conventional source of legislative inspiration.

"If the purpose of oversight investigations is to get to the truth," one longtime legislative staffer explained, "then using baseless conspiracies as your starting point is completely counterproductive to a direct investigation."

Three Twitter users—@regress_ceej, @espressoself, and @TrashWeightlift—first identified the possibility that a staffer was using Reddit for legislative CliffsNotes, after Reddit user and frequent r/The_Donald visitor Devinm666's unique comment history caught their attention. Though the account has since been deleted, it included threads like this one:

The insider references to subpoenas, the legislative process, and working in Congress (as well as allusions to taking down Crooked H) prompted some additional digging. The three Reddit sleuths then saw that Devinm666 had actively solicited other r/The_Donald members for assistance with the upcoming amendment. Representative Gaetz has confirmed that that Devinm666 is in fact legislative aide Devin Murphy.

"Yes, Devin is a staffer in our office," Gaetz wrote in an email to WIRED. "It is the responsibility of our staff to gather as much information as possible when researching a subject and provide that information for consideration. We pride ourselves on seeking as much citizen input as possible.”
...
Thursday he wrote again, "I did ask for stuff, and I helped draft this amendment." Even when not directly talking about his job, he would often allude to his position. In one comment thread responding to a question about how "normal" this sort of legislation was, Devinm666 wrote, "Actually quite abnormal within this Congress. Cucks abound, and they have not been defending the president. Hopefully that stops now."

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/28/us/politics/reince-priebus-white-house-trump.html

Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff who failed to impose order on a chaos-wracked West Wing, was pushed out on Friday after a stormy six-month tenure, and President Trump replaced him with John F. Kelly, the secretary of homeland security and retired four-star Marine general.

Mr. Trump announced Mr. Kelly’s appointment on Twitter shortly before 5 p.m. and only afterward sent out another message thanking Mr. Priebus for his service. “We accomplished a lot together and I am proud of him!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Priebus’s ouster was the latest convulsion in a White House that has been whipsawed by feuds and political setbacks in recent days. The president became convinced that Mr. Priebus was not strong enough to run the White House operation and that he needed a general to take charge. Mr. Kelly, who has demonstrated strong leadership at the Department of Homeland Security, had become a favorite of Mr. Trump’s.

Just hours earlier, the president had heaped praise on Mr. Kelly at an event in Long Island talking about the battle against the violent MS-13 gang. “I want to congratulate John Kelly, who has done an incredible job of secretary of homeland security,” the president said. “One of our real stars. Truly one of our stars. John Kelly is one of our great stars.”

But some advisers to Mr. Trump were opposed to the choice, arguing that Mr. Kelly did not have the political background for the job. “The president needs someone who understands the Trump constituency as his chief of staff, someone who has both administrative skills and political savvy,” Roger Stone, Mr. Trump’s off-and-on adviser, said, anticipating Mr. Kelly’s selection before the announcement was made.

Mr. Priebus, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, lost his job just hours after the president’s signature drive to repeal his predecessor’s health care program collapsed on the Senate floor and a day after an ugly feud with the new communications director erupted in a public airing of the deep animosities plaguing the White House.

The announcement capped a fraught 24 hours in which the president’s advisers waited for a change they had long anticipated. Mr. Priebus accompanied Mr. Trump on Air Force One for a day trip to Long Island as his fate was being decided. Making for a tense flight, his rival, Anthony Scaramucci, the communications director who had publicly vowed to force Mr. Priebus’s resignation, was also on the plane and in the motorcade.

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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video-shows-border-officers-appeared-encourage-permit-teen/story?id=48903893

A government surveillance video obtained by ABC News has shed new light on a tragic incident at the U.S.-Mexico border, sparking outrage from members of Congress who help oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The video shows that in 2013 two U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers appeared to encourage, or at least permit, a 16-year-old Mexican high school student to drink from a bottle that tests would later reveal contained concentrated liquid methamphetamine.

The young man, Cruz Velazquez, died within two hours of drinking the substance, but the two officers involved, Valerie Baird and Adrian Perallon, remain on the job today, with no disciplinary action taken against them.

A former head of internal affairs at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, James Tomsheck, told ABC News the two officers violated agency protocols by allowing the young man to drink from the bottle, and that he was told at the time they would be punished.

“If they truly suspected there was a controlled substance in the bottle,” Tomsheck said, “they should've conducted a field test.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California and the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security, condemned the officers’ conduct.

“Drug smuggling is wrong and is a crime, but this teenage boy did not deserve a death sentence,” Lofgren told ABC News. “For CBP officers to inflict a summary death sentence is not only immoral, but also illegal.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Missouri and the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, echoed those sentiments.

“In order for CBP officers to prevent smuggling, ensure public safety, and do their difficult job at the border properly, CBP must have the appropriate protocols in place and officers must follow them,” Thompson told ABC News. “While there is no excuse for attempting to bring illicit substances into the country, it is absolutely clear from the video that there were numerous failures in judgement and procedure that led to the senseless death of a 16-year-old boy. CBP must ensure that such a tragedy never occurs again.”

The video, which will air for the first time today on Good Morning America, World News Tonight with David Muir, 20/20 and Nightline as part of a year-long investigation of U.S. Customs and Border Protection conducted by ABC News and The Investigative Fund, shows that Velazquez took four drinks from the bottle, and the officers appear to repeatedly encourage him with hand gestures.

The Velazquez family ultimately filed a civil lawsuit against the officers and the agency, claiming that the officers’ actions led to Cruz’s death.

“What you see, I think, is a basic lack of compassion and decency toward a 16-year-old boy,” said Gene Iredale, the San Diego-based attorney who represented the Velazquez family. “Almost a delight that you would see in children who just pull the wings off flies slowly, a smile when he's being asked to drink something and being put in this position.”

Both officers, who declined through their attorneys to be interviewed by ABC News, denied asking Velazquez to drink from the bottle, and the official report called the incident an “accident.” Officer Perallon claimed Velazquez “volunteered” to take a drink.

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https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/890931465885798400

I don't necessarily disagree, but this change would not have helped the healthcare bill, which received 49 votes.
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What games did you have when you first got the system?

FIFA 16 and Trials Fusion with my Xbox One.

Within the first month or so I added Forza Horizon 2 and GTA V
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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/25/16025332/senate-health-care-bill-individual-mandate-hail-mary

Sources suggest that Senate Republicans are weighing a last-ditch idea to pass some kind of health care bill in the coming days: a narrowly focused Obamacare repeal bill. A “skinny repeal” measure could eliminate the law’s hated individual mandate to buy insurance, perhaps some of its taxes on the health care industry, and little else.

That policy could prove extremely disruptive to the individual insurance markets, where people buy coverage if they don’t get it through their employers or the government, if it became law. Health insurance works as a business only if as many healthy people buy insurance as possible to offset the costs of paying for sick people’s health care. Getting rid of the Obamacare requirement that people buy health insurance or face a penalty could lead healthy people to avoid insurance altogether.

Politically, “skinny repeal” could be the end game, according to three health care lobbyists. It’s a plan with great peril — putting the individual insurance market at risk of spinning into a death spiral if Senate and House lawmakers can’t reach an agreement on a final piece of legislation.

As deep divisions persist within the Senate Republican conference, it may be the GOP’s last remaining chance to keep even a small chunk of its health care promises alive.

If senators find 50 votes to start debate on health care on Tuesday, they are expected to take up both a clean bill to partially repeal Obamacare’s spending and all of its taxes as well as the repeal-and-replace legislation they’ve been working on for months.

Neither bill appears able to pass; both lack the support of 50 of the 52 Senate Republicans. Senate leaders have started promising reluctant senators that if they pass a bill, any bill, they will go into negotiations with the House and fix the legislation there.

In order to get to conference, though, leadership needs a bill that can get 50 votes. Eliminating the penalty for Obamacare’s individual mandate — possibly along with its employer mandate and some of its taxes on the health care industry — might be the only plan that can win such broad support within the Republican conference.

Three lobbyists told Vox that this was the path forward being charted by Senate leadership. One lobbyist said the bill could be narrowed to the “lowest common denominator product.”

That would fit with Senate leadership’s emphasis to its members on moving the health care bill to conference negotiations with the House at any cost.

“The whole emphasis is we're trying to get something to go to conference committee with,” a Senate Republican aide said on Tuesday. “I don't know if it's the main plan. But we have to get something done."

Some people have pointed out that this is basically what Obama ran on in the 08 Democratic Primaries, where he attacked Clinton for her insistence on a mandate
http://www.politico.com/pdf/PPM44_080130_nd_obama_hrc_healthcare_plan_forces_health_insurance2.pdf
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http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/25/trumps-attack-on-sessions-over-clinton-prosecution-highlights-his-own-weak-stance/

President Trump’s decision Tuesday to attack Attorney General Jeff Sessions over Sessions’ “position” on Hillary Clinton’s various scandals only serves to highlight Trump’s own hypocrisy on the issue — and is likely to fuel concerns from his base who see Sessions at the best hope to fulfill Trump’s immigration policies.

Trump’s attack is the latest in a series of shots Trump has launched at Sessions in recent days, annoyed still over Sessions’ decision to recuse himself from Russia investigations in March. But Trump himself was the one who flip-flopped on whether to prosecute Clinton.

The pinnacle of Trump’s anti-Clinton push came in October during the second presidential debate when Hillary Clinton, high in the polls and confident of victory in November, snarked: “You know, it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.”

“Yeh, because you’d be in jail,” Trump fired back, clearly ratting Clinton and triggering gasps and cheers from the audience.

“Lock her up” was a common chant on the Trump campaign trail, but in less than a month of Trump’s longshot victory, that promise was shredded by the president-elect. In an interview with the New York Times two weeks after Election Day, Trump expressed concern about how much Hillary Clinton had suffered.

“I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t,” Trump said. “She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways, and I am not looking to hurt them at all. The campaign was vicious.”

When asked what he would say to his disappointed supporters, he said: “I think I will explain it that we in many ways will save our country.”

Breitbart News criticized Trump’s U-turn at the time, calling it a “Broken Promise” on the site’s front-page.

But while many of his supporters were indeed disappointed, the controversy quickly died down — with some believing that it was a necessary political price to pay in order to push forward with Trump’s pro-America agenda.

Trump’s base reasoned that they would rather have a border wall than Hillary Clinton prosecuted. But now they may end up with neither.

For Sessions represents one of the vital pillars of Trump’s immigration agenda. Sessions has fought in the trenches for a tough line on immigration for years, back when Trump was pouring money into the campaign coffers of Democrats who wanted to open up America’s borders.

“‘Immigration reform’ may be the single most abused phrase in the English language. It has become a legislative honorific almost exclusively reserved for proposals which benefit everyone but actual American citizens,” he wrote in a 2015 immigration handbook he delivered to all Republican members of Congress.

Sessions also represents some of the most significant achievements of Trump’s young administration. The Department of Justice has been fighting to get Trump’s popular travel ban through the liberal courts — a battle it looks likely to win via the Supreme Court. Sessions’ office has also taken a tougher line on criminals by enforcing mandatory minimums and cracking down on street gangs, as well as upping the number of judges at the border.

I post this not because I agree with it, but because I think the stances Breitbart expresses on intra-GOP feuding are noteworthy given their audience and reach. When an outlet like them pushes back against Trump, it's worth paying attention to it.
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/25/sports/football/nfl-cte.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist, has examined the brains of 202 deceased football players. A broad survey of her findings was published on Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Of the 202 players, 111 of them played in the N.F.L. — and 110 of those were found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E., the degenerative disease believed to be caused by repeated blows to the head.

C.T.E. causes myriad symptoms, including memory loss, confusion, depression and dementia. The problems can arise years after the blows to the head have stopped.

The brains here are from players who died as young as 23 and as old as 89. And they are from every position on the field — quarterbacks, running backs and linebackers, and even a place-kicker and a punter.

They are from players you have never heard of and players, like Ken Stabler, who are enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Some of the brains cannot be publicly identified, per the families’ wishes.

Dr. McKee, chief of neuropathology at the VA Boston Healthcare System and director of the CTE Center at Boston University, has amassed the largest C.T.E. brain bank in the world. But the brains of some other players found to have the disease — like Junior Seau, Mike Webster and Andre Waters — were examined elsewhere.
...
The set of players posthumously tested by Dr. McKee is far from a random sample of N.F.L. retirees. “There’s a tremendous selection bias,” she has cautioned, noting that many families have donated brains specifically because the former player showed symptoms of C.T.E.

But 110 positives remain significant scientific evidence of an N.F.L. player’s risk of developing C.T.E., which can be diagnosed only after death. About 1,300 former players have died since the B.U. group began examining brains. So even if every one of the other 1,200 players would have tested negative — which even the heartiest skeptics would agree could not possibly be the case — the minimum C.T.E. prevalence would be close to 9 percent, vastly higher than in the general population.

The N.F.L.’s top health and safety official has acknowledged a link between football and C.T.E., and the league has begun to steer children away from playing the sport in its regular form, encouraging safer tackling methods and promoting flag football.
...
In addition to the 111 brains from those who played in the N.F.L., researchers also examined brains from the Canadian Football League, semi-professional players, college players and high school players. Of the 202 brains studied, 87 percent were found to have C.T.E. The study found that the high school players had mild cases, while college and professional players showed more severe effects. But even those with mild cases exhibited cognitive, mood and behavioral symptoms.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/NivElis/status/889869192224276482
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

Xbox One: Slime Rancher and Trials Fusion (I already have this, but on disc)
360: Bayonetta and Red Faction: Armageddon
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/889675644396867584
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.newschannel5.com/news/inmates-given-reduced-jail-time-if-they-get-a-vasectomy

Inmates in White County, Tennessee have been given credit for their jail time if they voluntarily agree to have a vasectomy or birth control implant, a popular new program that is being called “unconstitutional” by the ACLU.

On May 15, 2017 General Sessions Judge Sam Benningfield signed a standing order that allows inmates to receive 30 days credit toward jail time if they undergo a birth control procedure.

Women who volunteer to participate in the program are given a free Nexplanon implant in their arm, the implant helps prevent pregnancies for up to four years. Men who volunteer to participate are given a vasectomy, free of charge, by the Tennessee Department of Health.

County officials said that since the program began a few months ago 32 women have gotten the Nexplananon implant and 38 men were waiting to have the vasectomy procedure performed.

Judge Benningfield told NewsChannel 5 that he was trying to break a vicious cycle of repeat offenders who constantly come into his courtroom on drug related charges, subsequently can’t afford child support and have trouble finding jobs.

“I hope to encourage them to take personal responsibility and give them a chance, when they do get out, to not to be burdened with children. This gives them a chance to get on their feet and make something of themselves,” Judge Benningfield said in an interview.

First elected in 1998, Judge Benningfield decided to implement the program after speaking with officials at the Tennessee Department of Health.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/RepMikeQuigley/status/885894645284302849

Gotta say, no. That's not correct.
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/joeprince___/status/885631802102120449
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/north-carolina/articles/2017-07-13/farm-bill-with-anti-union-language-signed-by-cooper

The legislation, approved on the second-to-last full day of this year's General Assembly chief work session, includes a provision designed to prevent farms from being forced into future agreements to collect workers' dues and transfer them to unions. Farmers also could not be required to enter into union contracts as part of settling worker lawsuits.

The Farm Labor Organizing Committee, the only agricultural worker union in the state, said the provision was aimed to block it from helping laborers improve their own working conditions through union agreements and litigation. A group leader blasted Cooper for "choosing to be on the wrong side of history" by expanding an anti-labor law first passed in the state in 1947 and vowed to challenge the new law in court.

"It is a shame that this Democrat and others refuse to stand on the side of the most marginalized working poor and the immigrant workers that keep this state's economy afloat," said FLOC President Baldemar Velasquez in a release. He said worker and immigrant rights groups had been hopeful for a veto after meetings with Cooper last month, before the union provision got debated.

"Working people in North Carolina deserve better from our legislators and our governor," state AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer MaryBe McMillan said.

Cooper offered no statement on the measure in Thursday's announcement. Spokesman Ford Porter wrote later that "while the governor had concerns with this legislation, it supports North Carolina's farming and agriculture industry and passed with broad bipartisan support."

North Carolina's workforce is consistently ranked near the bottom among states in the percentage of workers holding union membership. Pro-business Democrats and Republicans who have led state government over the past several decades have seen the state's aversion to labor organizing as a plus to attract companies to expand in North Carolina.

The unions that backed his campaign are not pleased.
http://aflcionc.org/statement-about-gov-coopers-plan-to-sign-s615/
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-peter-smith-death-met-0713-20170713-story.html

A Republican donor and operative from Chicago's North Shore who said he had tried to obtain Hillary Clinton's missing emails from Russian hackers killed himself in a Minnesota hotel room days after talking to the Wall Street Journal about his efforts, public records show.

In a room at a Rochester hotel used almost exclusively by Mayo Clinic patients and relatives, Peter W. Smith, 81, left a carefully prepared file of documents, which includes a statement police called a suicide note in which he said he was in ill health and a life insurance policy was expiring.

Days earlier, the financier from suburban Lake Forest gave an interview to the Journal about his quest, and it published stories about his efforts beginning in late June. The Journal also reported it had seen emails written by Smith showing his team considered retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, then a top adviser to Republican Donald Trump's campaign, as an ally. Flynn briefly was President Trump's national security adviser and resigned after it was determined he had failed to disclose contacts with Russia.

At the time, the newspaper reported Smith's May 14 death came about 10 days after he granted the interview. Mystery shrouded how and where he had died, but the lead reporter on the stories said on a podcast he had no reason to believe the death was the result of foul play and that Smith likely had died of natural causes.

However, the Chicago Tribune obtained a Minnesota state death record filed in Olmsted County that says Smith committed suicide in a hotel near the Mayo Clinic at 1:17 p.m. on Sunday, May 14. He was found with a bag over his head with a source of helium attached. A medical examiner's report gives the same account, without specifying the time, and a report from Rochester police further details his suicide.

In the note recovered by police, Smith apologized to authorities and said that "NO FOUL PLAY WHATSOEVER" was involved in his death. He wrote that he was taking his own life because of a "RECENT BAD TURN IN HEALTH SINCE JANUARY, 2017" and timing related "TO LIFE INSURANCE OF $5 MILLION EXPIRING.

I assume everyone will take all this at face value and not use his death as the jumping off point for wider political theories.
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/smart-living/39-photos-that-show-why-everyone-misses-george-w-bush/ss-BBE06ml
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/PoliticoKevin/status/885493218737094657

A. When was this era, exactly? I must have missed it.
B. His version of not being kind and gentle involves a lot of the Confederate Flag (despite being from Minnesota) and calling people cucks

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/15/why-corey-stewart-thinks-the-lost-cause-is-a-winning-strategy-215138

On April 24, as cities from New Orleans to Charlottesville were considering tearing down statues of Confederate heroes, a long-shot Republican candidate for Virginia governor penned his umpteenth tweet defending the honor of Dixie: “Nothing is worse than a Yankee telling a Southerner that his monuments don't matter.”

The tweet went viral. For Corey Stewart, whose political profile is high inside Prince William County, where he is chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, but considerably lower among the state’s Republican voters, this burst of notoriety would seem to have been helpful.

The only problem was that the attention was almost entirely negative. Stewart’s ratio of unfavorable replies to favorable retweets and favorites was horrendous: more than 3 to 1. At least four national political reporters noted that Stewart, was in fact, born in Duluth, Minnesota, making him much more of a Yankee than a son of the South. R&B singer John Legend, with 9.22 million followers, rebuked him with a simple question: “Really, nothing?”

But what others saw as a PR disaster, was from Stewart’s perspective an unqualified success. This explains why over the three months of the campaign, Stewart, 48, has tweeted numerous times about issues that would appear to concern only the most entrenched neo-Confederate. He has relentlessly criticized the city of Charlottesville for its plan to tear down a statue of General Robert E. Lee in one of the city’s major parks, and rename parks named after Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

“No Robert E. Lee monument should come down. That man is a hero & an honorable man. It is shameful what they are doing with these monuments,” he wrote in one Twitter missive, following up a few hours later: “After they tear down Lee & Beauregard, they are coming for Washington & Jefferson.” He added the hashtag #HistoricalVandalism.

When he hasn’t lamented the shoddy treatment of Southern heritage, he has compared the politicians who support removing statues to ISIS, the murderous Islamic extremists who have destroyed historic artifacts and religious sites throughout Syria. Or suggested that George Soros “needs to be tried for sedition, stripped of his citizenship or deported.” Or labeling his main opponent a “cuckservative,” the disdainful epithet of choice among the alt-right.

He came in a very close second in the GOP primary for governor last month
http://results.elections.virginia.gov/vaelections/2017%20June%20Republican%20Primary/Site/Statewide.html
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

JohnLennon6 posted...

Sayoria posted...

"Brooks will replace ex-state Sen. Ralph Shortey, who is facing three felony counts alleging he solicited a 17-year-old boy for sex."

Lmao, Republicans gunna republican.

Holy fuck, do you ever stop with this partisan bullshit?

Why should she?
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.france24.com/en/20170712-macron-tax-cuts-benefit-frances-richest-study-finds

The richest 10 percent of France's households will likely benefit the most from tax cuts proposed by the new centrist government of French President Emmanuel Macron, a study showed Wednesday.

The new government has promised to cut levies on businesses and individuals by roughly 11 billion euros ($12.6 billion) next year as part of a reform of taxes on the highest earners that is intended to spur investment and hiring.

The details of the changes are still being worked out by Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who is struggling to deliver both tax cuts and reductions to public spending while respecting EU rules on budget deficits.

The respected French Economic Observatory at Sciences Po university in Paris issued a first assessment of the impact of the proposed tax cuts on Wednesday, saying that the top 10 percent of households would see 46 percent of the benefits.

The think-tank warned that "financing them by cutting public spending would significantly deepen the inequality produced by these measures."

Government spokesman Christophe Castaner admitted Wednesday that finalising the budget in 2018 would be even more difficult than this year when savings have been achieved by cutting foreign aid and transport infrastructure spending.

"This year was difficult, next year it will be even more so because we will add on the massive cuts in taxes paid by the French people and companies," he said.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe said in an address to parliament last week that France "cannot remain both the champion of public spending and the champion of taxation."

https://www.ft.com/content/648a5b04-6559-11e7-9a66-93fb352ba1fe

Edouard Philippe owes his job to President Emmanuel Macron. But France’s prime minister of two months makes no claims that his boss’s reformist presidential agenda is any radically new ideology.

Rather, in his first foreign media interview, Mr Philippe shows loyalty to his former party by suggesting that “Macronism” is the direct legacy of Alain Juppé, the unsuccessful centre-right presidential hopeful and Mr Philippe’s mentor in politics.

When it is suggested that the government’s plans for a more flexible labour market, tax cuts for businesses and emphasis on public spending curbs were all rightwing measures, Mr Philippe bursts into laughter. “Yes, what did you expect?” he says.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/how-we-are-ruining-america.html

Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.

You might know David Brooks from his previous column, "no one wants to hang out with me"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/the-golden-age-of-bailing.html
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://twitter.com/dvoeverie/status/884605197565259776
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.courant.com/breaking-news/hc-west-hartford-trump-morely-school-steven-marks-20170705-story.html

The West Hartford man who police said wrote profane and threatening anti-Trump graffiti at Morley Elementary School on June 15 has been ordered to stay off the property.

Hartford Community Court judge Tammy Geathers said Wednesday that Steven Marks, 32, is to stay off the Bretton Road school property and continued his case to Aug. 2.

Prosecutor Tom O'Brien said Marks has a clean record but asked the judge to continue the case so he could reach out to the Town of West Hartford and discuss restitution for the graffiti. He said Marks has arranged to meet with a social worker in West Hartford as well.

West Hartford Police on June 19 released a 28-second surveillance video clip showing a bald, white man wearing a dark blue Boston Red Sox t-shirt with khaki shorts riding a bicycle onto the Morley playground accompanied by a white and brown dog, identifying the man as the suspect. In the video clip, the suspect appears to write something on a sign located on the playground. The video was time stamped at about 10:30 p.m. on June 15.

Marks told police on June 19 he vandalized the property "out of 'anger towards liberals and they are breaking major laws everyday and being disrespectful towards our government,'" according to the warrant for his arrest. He told police it was his hope that the vandalism would appear to have been done by the "Left."

In the arrest warrant, West Hartford Police Officer Dante Ursini said Morley Elementary School Principal Ryan Cleary on June 16 said "students informed him that there were 'swear' words written on the playground equipment."

Some of the writings said "Kill Trump," "Left is the best," "Bernie Sanders 2020" and "Death to Trump" and were written on the playground welcome sign, a tan piece of of playground equipment, a yellow concrete barrier pole, a playground bench and on a "Little Free Library" located on the playground.

Marks saw his photo in the news, called the police and later turned himself in on a warrant that charged him with third-degree criminal mischief and breach of peace, police said. He posted $500 bail. Police said when they went to his home to take his statement, he was compliant and respectful.

Marks told police he was at the school to play catch with his dog and that he found a green Sharpie marker on the school grounds. He told police when he found the marker, he "'had the dumb idea to vandalize the school with what would seem to be liberal hate speech.'"

Marks told police he would "never harm the president or any member of government and understood it was 'stupid' and 'illegal.'"

"Left is the best,"

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

I meant in terms of which superhero.

Like, Spiderman, Thor, Hulk, that sort of thing
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/03/health/charlie-gard-trump-pope-bn/index.html

The fate of Charlie Gard, a terminally ill infant, has come to the attention of two of the most powerful people on the planet: Pope Francis and US President Donald Trump.

Last week, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a hospital can discontinue life support to the baby, who has a rare genetic disease. His doctors wish to take him off life support, but his parents disagree. Charlie's parents, Chris Gard and Connie Yates, wanted the hospital to release Charlie into their custody so they can take him to the United States for an experimental treatment.

On Sunday, Pope Francis called for the parents of the baby, who is in a hospital in London, to be allowed to "accompany and treat their child until the end."

"The Holy Father is following with affection and emotion the situation of little Charlie Gard and expresses his closeness to his parents. He is praying for them, in the hope that their desire to accompany and care for their own child until the end will be respected," the director of the Holy See Press Office, Greg Burke, said in a statement Sunday.

On Monday, Trump tweeted his support for Charlie's parents as doctors in London prepare to turn off his life support.

"If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends in the U.K. and the Pope, we would be delighted to do so," Trump posted.

Born in August, Charlie has mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome. Caused by a genetic mutation, the disease leads to weakened muscles and organ dysfunction, among other symptoms, with a poor prognosis for most patients.

Charlie has been in the intensive care unit at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London since October. His doctors now wish to take him off life support.

But Charlie's parents, refusing to accept the prognosis, want to take him to the United States for an experimental treatment.

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/06/27/health/charlie-gard-european-court-ruling-bn/index.html

Parents are rightly at the "heart" of decisions made about life-sustaining treatment for critically ill children, noted Dominic Wilkinson, director of medical ethics at the Oxford Uehiro Centre.

"However, there are limits," Wilkinson wrote in a recent editorial about Charlie's case published in The Lancet, a medical journal.

"Sadly, reluctantly, doctors and judges do sometimes conclude -- and are justified in concluding -- that slim chances of life are not always better than dying." Sometimes, the "best that medicine can do" -- and the most ethical decision -- is to provide comfort and to avoid painful and unhelpful medical treatments, he wrote.

The court said the decision was meticulous, noting that they spoke with Charlie's health care providers, independent experts, experts recommended by the family, and Charlie's parents to inform the ruling. In the end, the press released said they determined, "it was most likely Charlie was being exposed to continued pain, suffering and distress and that undergoing experimental treatment with no prospects of success would offer no benefit, and continue to cause him significant harm."

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/02/world/asia/south-korea-adoptions-phillip-clay-adam-crapser.html

Phillip Clay was adopted at 8 into an American family in Philadelphia.

Twenty-nine years later, in 2012, after numerous arrests and a struggle with drug addiction, he was deported back to his birth country, South Korea. He could not speak the local language, did not know a single person and did not receive appropriate care for mental health problems, which included bipolar disorder and alcohol and substance abuse.

On May 21, Mr. Clay ended his life, jumping from the 14th floor of an apartment building north of Seoul. He was 42.

To advocates of the rights of international adoptees, the suicide was a wrenching reminder of a problem the United States urgently needed to address: adoptees from abroad who never obtained American citizenship. The Adoptee Rights Campaign, an advocacy group, estimates that 35,000 adult adoptees in the United States may lack citizenship, which was not granted automatically in the adoption process before 2000.

Mr. Clay is believed to be just one of dozens of people, legally adopted as children into American families, who either have been deported to the birth countries they left decades ago or face deportation after being convicted of crimes as adults. Some did not even know they were not American citizens until they were ordered to leave.

Adoptees from other countries, like Vietnam, Thailand and Brazil, have faced deportation. But the sheer number of children adopted from South Korea, once a leading source of children put up for adoption abroad, has made it the most visible example of the issue, and of the enormous challenges returnees face as they try to once again navigate a foreign culture, this time with little or no assistance.

Many have nowhere to go, often living on the streets. In South Korea, one deportee served a prison term for robbing a bank with a toy gun. Another, who like Mr. Clay had mental health problems, has been indicted twice on assault charges.

“Deportation is like the death sentence to them,” said Hellen Ko, a chief counselor at the government-run Korea Adoption Services, who monitored Mr. Clay as a caseworker. “They had a hard time adjusting to life in America. It gets even harder for them when they return here.”

The government here does not know how many of the 110,000 South Korean children adopted into American families since the 1950s have been deported. When the United States deports Koreans, it does not tell Seoul if they are adoptees. At least six cases have been documented, though, and officials here say that they have been unable to determine the citizenship status of 18,000 Korean adoptees in the United States.

Once back in their birth country, they are on their own and often go undocumented.

“All I had was $20 on me; I didn’t know where I was,” Monte Haines said, recalling the day he landed at Seoul’s gateway airport after being deported in 2009, more than 30 years after an American family adopted him. “There was nobody there to talk to.”

Americans have adopted more than 350,000 children from abroad since the 1940s, according to the Adoptee Rights Campaign, and the United States left it to the parents to secure citizenship for the children.

But some did not understand that their children did not automatically become citizens when they completed the adoption. Other adoptees have said that their parents were put off by the cost and paperwork of the citizenship process, or that they essentially abandoned them.

In 2000, Congress passed the Child Citizenship Act, which granted automatic citizenship to children adopted by United States citizens. But the law did not retroactively benefit adoptees who were already legal adults.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/reports/2016-elections/political-divisions-in-2016-and-beyond
Just gonna take some snippets here

The "socially liberal, but economically conservative" folks you hear so much about? They don't really exist:

To do this, I created two new indexes:

An economic liberalism-conservatism index (which combines views on the social safety net, trade, inequality, and active government)
A social/identity liberalism-conservatism politics index (which combines the moral issues index plus views toward African-Americans, immigrants, and Muslims).
This allows us to plot all respondents on a single scatterplot, shown here.

https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1101/figure2_drutman_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png

There's significant overlap in voters' views on economic questions, while the two groups are more polarized on issues of identity
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1095/figure4-5_drutman_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png

Make of these what you will
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1097/figure8_drutman_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1089/figure9_drutman_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png
https://www.voterstudygroup.org/assets/i/uploads/reports/Graphs-Charts/1098/figure10_drutman_e4aabc39aab12644609701bbacdff252.png

In both parties, this donor class is both more conservative on economic issues and more liberal on social issues, as compared to the rest of the party. However, there is a slight but notable asymmetry between the two parties on identity issues. Among Democrats, the donor class is notably to the left of the working class on these issues. Among Republicans, the donor class is also to the left of the working class on identity issues, but only slightly. This suggests that Democrats could feel more pressure to move to the left on identity issues, while Republicans will stay where they are, further polarizing the parties on identity issues.
...
What Divides The Parties Now?
The parties are divided on both social/identity and economic issues, but more so on identity issues. The gaps between the Clinton and Trump voters on questions of racial resentment, immigration, attitudes toward Muslims, and moral issues are consistently wide. There is very little overlap between the two camps on these issues.

By contrast, although the parties are divided on economic issues, there is more overlap. Particularly in the Republican Party, there are a wide range of views on economic issues, now that the party has expanded to include more and more populists who were formerly Democrats.
...
What Are The Divisions Within The Parties?
Both parties have internal divisions, though the divisions within the Republican Party are probably greater, since Republicans are about equally divided between economically liberal populists and more free-market-oriented conservatives. Republican primaries revealed a Kasich faction that is consistently more moderate across issues, a Trump faction that is more liberal on economic issues but more conservative on identity issues, and a Cruz faction that is more free market on economic issues and particularly conservative on moral issues.

Democrats are less divided on the substantive issues, but somewhat more divided in disposition, with Sanders supporters evincing more anti-establishment disaffection, and Clinton supporters having more faith and enthusiasm toward the political system overall.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCjhzr9UAAISJM0.jpg
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

It's not a completely fair comparison; the first four are varying shades of sim, while the last two are open-world, arcade-style racers. But vote anyways
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://deadspin.com/10-years-ago-wwe-killed-vince-mcmahon-in-its-most-ridi-1796026047

Our president thought it was real
https://youtu.be/teuEgJPCepQ?t=2m38s
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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

https://www.upguard.com/breaches/the-rnc-files

In what is the largest known data exposure of its kind, UpGuard’s Cyber Risk Team can now confirm that a misconfigured database containing the sensitive personal details of over 198 million American voters was left exposed to the internet by a firm working on behalf of the Republican National Committee (RNC) in their efforts to elect Donald Trump. The data, which was stored in a publicly accessible cloud server owned by Republican data firm Deep Root Analytics, included 1.1 terabytes of entirely unsecured personal information compiled by DRA and at least two other Republican contractors, TargetPoint Consulting, Inc. and Data Trust. In total, the personal information of potentially near all of America’s 200 million registered voters was exposed, including names, dates of birth, home addresses, phone numbers, and voter registration details, as well as data described as “modeled” voter ethnicities and religions.

This disclosure dwarfs previous breaches of electoral data in Mexico (also discovered by Vickery) and the Philippines by well over 100 million more affected individuals, exposing the personal information of over sixty-one percent of the entire US population.

The data exposure provides insight into the inner workings of the Republican National Committee’s $100 million data operation for the 2016 presidential election, an undertaking of monumental scope and painstaking detail launched in the wake of Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012. Deep Root Analytics, TargetPoint, and Data Trust—all Republican data firms—were among the RNC-hired outfits working as the core of the Trump campaign’s 2016 general election data team, relied upon in the GOP effort to influence potential voters and accurately predict their behavior. The RNC data repository would ultimately acquire roughly 9.5 billion data points regarding three out of every five Americans, scoring 198 million potential US voters on their likely political preferences using advanced algorithmic modeling across forty-eight different categories.

Spreadsheets containing this accumulated data—last updated around the January 2017 presidential inauguration—constitute a treasure trove of political data and modeled preferences used by the Trump campaign. This data was also exposed in the misconfigured database and had been for an unknown period of time.

UpGuard’s discovery — of perhaps the largest known exposure of voter information in history—is corroborated by technical evidence, as well as by the public statements of the responsible firms and political staffers.

In the early evening of June 12th, UpGuard Cyber Risk Analyst Chris Vickery discovered an open cloud repository while searching for misconfigured data sources on behalf of the Cyber Risk Team, a research unit of UpGuard devoted to finding, securing, and raising public awareness of such exposures. The data repository, an Amazon Web Services S3 bucket, lacked any protection against access. As such, anyone with an internet connection could have accessed the Republican data operation used to power Donald Trump’s presidential victory, simply by navigating to a six-character Amazon subdomain: “dra-dw”.

Upon inspection of the contents, “dra-dw” is shown to stand for “Deep Root Analytics Data Warehouse.” The concept of a “data warehouse” is common in modern business— essentially, it is a massive collection of data prepared specifically for complex analysis. Deep Root Analytics confirmed they owned and operated the dra-dw bucket, which was subsequently secured against public access the night of June 14th, shortly after Vickery notified federal authorities.

In total, 1.1 terabytes of data in the warehouse—an amount roughly equivalent to 500 hours worth of video—was fully downloadable.

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/donald-trump-owes-least-315-million-financial-firms-some-which-are-lobbying

Financial disclosuredocumentsreleased Friday by the Office of Government Ethicsshed new light on President Trump’s finances, even as he refuses to release his tax returns. The documents show that Trump owes hundreds of millions of dollars to major financial institutions -- some with business before Trump’s administration.

According to section 8 of the disclosure documents, Trump lists liabilities with 10 creditors. The minimum amount he owes is $315 million. Based on the maximum amounts listed, he could owe more than half a billion dollars to the creditors.

Among Trump’s largest creditors is Deutsche Bank, which has faced requests from Democrats to explain its lending to Trump. Deutsche Bank earlier this month rejected that request.

According to lobbying records, Deutsche Bank in 2017 has been pressing federal officials on "issues related to Dodd-Frank Act reform" and "issues related to the regulation of foreign banks." Trump has pushed to repeal key portions of the Dodd-Frank legislation that was passed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

Trump entities also owe at least $110 million to Ladder Capital, a firm whose Securities and Exchange Commission filings say it “loans together with certain financial institutions, which to date have included affiliates of Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, RBS Securities Inc., UBS Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC.” Reuters recently reported that the firm is working with Citigroup on a sale.

Trump owes up to $25 million to UBS, according to the financial disclosures. UBS has also been lobbying in 2017 on Dodd-Frank as well as on “proposals to implement a financial transactions tax.”

Trump owes at least $50 million to a shadowy entity called Chicago Unit Acquisition, LLC. Trump’s financial disclosure says that one of his entities, DJT Holdings, owns Chicago Unit Acquisition. Mother Jones recently reported that the arrangement may mean that Trump’s businesses "could owe $50 million and possibly much more to one or more creditors that have not been disclosed to the public."

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite

http://www.postandcourier.com/news/south-carolina-s-online-charter-schools-a-million-investment-with/article_6539ef90-511f-11e7-adba-d706dfdb4027.html

Online charter schools have grown exponentially across South Carolina and the nation — and questions about their effectiveness are growing, too.

Today, the state has five virtual charter schools that together enroll roughly 10,000 students, up dramatically from about 2,100 students nine years ago when the state's first cyber schools opened. A 2007 bipartisan bill fueled their growth by authorizing the state's virtual schools program, and since then, taxpayers have footed the bill to the tune of more than $350 million.

Despite this hefty investment, online charter schools have produced dismal results on almost all academic metrics, according to state and district data. On average, less than half of their students graduate on time. At one cyber school, nearly a third of students dropped out last school year. Data from the S.C Public Charter School District, which oversees these schools, shows just one in two virtual students enroll for a full year.

Supporters of online education, including U.S. Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, praise virtual schools for their flexibility, innovation and reach. For struggling, home-bound or bullied students, advocates argue, these schools are lifelines.

But critics contend state taxpayers have spent tens of millions of dollars lining the pockets of the for-profit companies that manage these schools at the expense of their flailing students.

"It concerns me," said Don McLaurin, chairman of the S.C. Public Charter School District Board of Trustees. "Right now, for a variety of reasons, the virtuals are having performance problems, at least some of them. ... We may have more than we need."

On almost every measure of student achievement, virtual schools lag behind their brick-and-mortar counterparts:

In 2016, the average four-year graduation rate at the state’s online charter schools was 42 percent. That’s nearly twice as low as the statewide average of 82.6 percent. Three online charter schools — S.C. Whitmore School, S.C. Virtual Charter School and Odyssey Online Learning (formerly Provost Academy) — had lower graduation rates than all but three schools in the entire state. Two of those schools with lower graduation rates were for troubled and at-risk students, and one was an online-based school in Richland School District Two.

Those same three online charter schools also had higher dropout rates than every school in the state but one — Greg Mathis Charter, a “last chance” high school in North Charleston. At Odyssey Online, which enrolled 528 students last school year, the dropout rate was 32 percent — more than 10 times the statewide average.

On average, only about half of all online charter school students stayed for the entire 2015-16 school year. Roughly one in five students who began the school year at an online charter school left mid-year. By contrast, the charter district’s brick and mortar schools retained more than 80 percent of their students for the whole school year.

“How are these online charter schools serving their students? I’d go as bluntly to say that they're not. They’re serving their shareholders, plain and simple,” said Michael Barbour, an associate professor at Touro University in Vallejo, Calif., and an expert in virtual education.

“These aren’t education bodies; they are corporate bodies and as such, the person they answer to isn’t the students, it isn’t the parents, it’s not even the legislators or regulators that created them. It’s the shareholders,” he said. “And the shareholders only give a damn about one thing, and that’s profit."

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Liberte, egalite, fraternite