As promised, there will be an online launch party for Earth & Sky on its release date, October 28th! With just one week to go, I thought I'd share the details… and a special launch giveaway.
Because there's going to be one BIG launch day prize, to get you warmed up I'm starting the giveaway today! The prize? A Kindle Paperwhite with a custom Earth & Sky cover, preloaded with the book, plus your choice of any three of my books or the books I've recommended here (see the first five links under For Readers), in whatever available format you prefer, and an Earth & Sky swag pack including star candies in Win's favorite Earth flavors, bookmark, magnet, and sticker.
You can enter any time between now and the end of Oct 28th using the Rafflecopter form below. The giveaway is open internationally. And even after you've entered, don't forget to check back, because I'll be adding a few more ways to earn entries on the day of the launch!
The online launch party will take place on the event page on Facebook and here in a new post on my blog. On the event page wall, you'll be able to ask questions and add comments about the book, and I'll be holding a few quick giveaways of books and swag throughout the day. Here on the blog, you can ask and comment too, as well as checking out a video reading from the book and heading to the signing "booth" to request a personalized signed bookplate and bookmark. From 8-9pm EST, I'll be hosting a live chat (link to be posted at that time on both the Facebook page and my blog) during which anyone is welcome to drop in, discuss the book, writing, or whatever else strikes your fancy, and possibly snag another prize.


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'Their Finest' - Movie Review
tags: Movies Reviews
Second World War, home front, London. Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) gets a job with the Ministry of Information writing scripts for informational short films - she thought she'd be in the secretarial pool. There she finds herself contending with a very intelligent and obnoxious screenwriter (Sam Claflin) and an aging actor (Bill Nighy) who's having trouble acknowledging that his glory days are behind him. Her husband (Jack Huston), injured in the Spanish Civil War and now an artist, is uncomfortable with her making more money than he does.
Arterton is good as usual. I wasn't familiar with Claflin, but he was very good. Nighy has a particular brand of over-acting he uses for both comedy and bad-guy roles that I don't particularly love, but in his more serious moments he's also good. A thoroughly charming film that manages to be funny, feminist, depressing, and hopeful all in one package.
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http://www.gilesorr.com/blog/their-finest.html

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Wimbledon lost this top-of-the-table clash in the most frustrating and difficult of circumstances when Eastleigh centre back Tom Jordan scored the first goal with a handball that the referee and linesman miss, when almost everyone else in the ground saw it.
With injuries plaguing the Dons again, Jason Goodliffe was unavailable and Danny Kedwell was only judged fit enough for the bench, not to start. Ben Judge, having served his one match suspension, came in, while Kezie Ibe started alongside Jon Main. Terry Brown also made a tactical change, bringing in on-loan Rob Saunders for his first start, in place of Elliott Godfrey.
The Dons had the wind behind them in the first half and used it to good effect, keeping pressure on Eastleigh and denying them any chances. However, the Eastleigh defence held firm and Wimbledon had only limited opportunities, the best being when Main got to a curling cross from Jay Conroy only to volley it over the bar. Ibe looked to have broken through at one point but a superb last ditch tackle by Jordan denied him.
Eastleigh played their normal game, which was to hit the ball long for their strikers to compete and hope for knock downs and the run of the ball. Perhaps their tactics were to wait for the second half with the wind behind them as they were much more attack-minded and started to look dangerous. Nonetheless, James Pullen had not really been tested until the moment when Jordan went for a corner and, being unable to reach the ball thanks to Tom Davis's challenge, simply reached over David and punched the ball into the net.
After a brief pause, while they waited for the whistle to go, Eastleigh celebrated at length, while The Dons complained without success. And for the next ten minutes they lost their composure as Eastleigh strove to take advantage from their good fortune.
Terry Brown brought Kedwell into the game and on and Wimbledon started to get back into the game. But then the referee, who had struggled to keep up throughout the game, announced that he was unable to continue. It took nearly 20 minutes for a linesman to be found and when play resumed it was Eastleigh who scored again through Jonny Dixon, following a clever move down the left.
Wimbledon had their focus back now and Elliott Godfrey came on to score a fine volley. For an agonising half-second, it looked as if Ibe had saved a point but his last minute header was well saved. After the final whistle had gone, frustration re-surfaced and Alan Inns was red-carded for something he said to the replacement referee.
It is hard to assess any game like this when it is so distorted by one event. Such goals are rare indeed and it was the Dons' misfortune that it should happen in a game of such significance. They now had a week to regroup, lick their wounds and get back to winning ways against Team Bath.


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Senate Oks Medical Marijuana Bill
Thread starter 420
For the third year in a row, the Senate has passed a bill that would allow for the restricted medicinal use of marijuana.
The bill passed on a 34-7 vote Wednesday, and now moves to the House, where it has been defeated in each of the past two sessions.
To qualify for usage, a physician would have to certify that the patient is afflicted with one of a list of specific debilitating diseases and that the use of medicial marijuana could be beneficial. A physicians advisory board would then have to approve the certification. The Department of Health would be responsible to create rules for the provisions and distribution.
Sen. Carroll Leavell, R-Jal, said just because the state passes a law, it doesn't make marijuana use legal. Federal law outlawing marijuana would still take precedent, and people using medical marijuana would still be liable to federal prosecution, he said.
Sen. William Payne, R-Albuqueruqe, noted that the Supreme Court has ruled that medicial marijuana laws passed by the state are invalid.
That may be true, said Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, but he said the state was sending a message to the feds.
"I think what we're trying to say, when you're dying of cancer there may not be anything else that will let you eat a bite of food," he said.
Sen Tim Jennings, D-Roswell, whose wife is battling breast cancer, said that the use of medical marijuana allows some patients to keep their weight up and increase their chances of survival.
Leavell countered that drug abuse is a huge problem in New Mexico that would be made worse by the bill.
"This bill, if we pass it here, sends a very terrible message to the young people of New Mexico that the use of marijuana is somehow legal," Leavell said. Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Sandia Park, said she was concerned that the bill would lead to the kind of abuses that have happened with medicial marijuana provisions in California. But the bill's sponsor, Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said New Mexico's law would be much different.
"We think we have provisions in the measure that would make it impossible for the abuses, or perceicved abuses, that have taken place in California to happen here," Ortiz y Pino said.
Gov. Bill Richardson had said before Wednesday's debate that he supports the bill.
"I continue to support a medical marijuana bill that includes proper safeguards to prevent abuse," Richardson said. "I will work with legislators to get it passed this session to provide this option for New Mexicans suffering from debilitating diseases.
Source: Carlsbad Current-Argus (NM)
Copyright: 2007 Carlsbad Current-Argus
Contact: editor@currentargus.com
Website: Carlsbad Current-Argus: Breaking news, Sports, Lifestyle, Opinion
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drktwr
For the third year in a row, the Senate has passed a bill that would allow for the restricted medicinal use of marijuana...
The bill passed on a 34-7 vote Wednesday, and now moves to the House, where it has been defeated in each of the past two sessions...
Leavell countered that drug abuse is a huge problem in New Mexico that would be made worse by the bill...
"This bill, if we pass it here, sends a very terrible message to the young people of New Mexico that the use of marijuana is somehow legal," Leavell said. Sen. Sue Wilson Beffort, R-Sandia Park, said she was concerned that the bill would lead to the kind of abuses that have happened with medicial marijuana provisions in California. But the bill's sponsor, Sen. Gerald Ortiz y Pino, D-Albuquerque, said New Mexico's law would be much different...
34-7 is looking good to me. Looks like little by little all the hardheads are getting weeded out (pun intended). Were in a time of big changes happening, lets just hope it passes in the House. That Sen. Pino has his head up his ass comparing bud smokers to other drug abusers. I'm glad here in Cali our Reps don't have their heads up their asses.:allgood:
Thanks for the great info 420.
SENATE BACKS MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL
Senate May Snuff Marijuana Bill
Herb Fellow
Utah Senate Passes Controversial Medical Marijuana Bill
Robert Celt
State Senate Passes Marijuana Bill
Illinois Senator Working To Legalize Medical Marijuana
PFlynn


For other people named Émile Bernard, see Émile Bernard (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Émile Bénard.
Émile Henri Bernard (28 April 1868 – 16 April 1941) was a French Post-Impressionist painter and writer, who had artistic friendships with Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and Eugène Boch, and at a later time, Paul Cézanne. Most of his notable work was accomplished at a young age, in the years 1886 through 1897. He is also associated with Cloisonnism and Synthetism, two late 19th-century art movements. Less known is Bernard's literary work, comprising plays, poetry, and art criticism as well as art historical statements that contain first-hand information on the crucial period of modern art to which Bernard had contributed.
For a timeline, see Émile Bernard chronology.
Émile Henri Bernard was born in Lille, France in 1868. As in his younger years his sister was sick, Émile was unable to receive much attention from his parents; he therefore stayed with his grandmother, who owned a laundry in Lille, employing more than twenty people. She was one of the greatest supporters of his art. The family moved to Paris in 1878, where Émile attended the Collège Sainte-Barbe.
He began his studies at the École des Arts Décoratifs. In 1884, joined the Atelier Cormon where he experimented with impressionism and pointillism and befriended fellow artists Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. After being suspended from the École des Beaux-Arts for "showing expressive tendencies in his paintings", he toured Brittany on foot, where he was enamored by the tradition and landscape.
In August 1886, Bernard met Gauguin in Pont-Aven. In this brief meeting, they exchanged little about art, but looked forward to meeting again. Bernard said, looking back on that time, that "my own talent was already fully developed." He believed that his style did play a considerable part in the development of Gauguin's mature style.
Bernard spent September 1887 at the coast, where he painted La Grandmère, a portrait of his grandmother. He continued talking with other painters and started saying good things about Gauguin. Bernard went back to Paris, attended Académie Julian,  met with van Gogh, who as we already stated was impressed by his work, found a restaurant to show the work alongside van Gogh, Anquetin, and Toulouse-Lautrec's work at the Avenue Clichy. Van Gogh called the group the School of Petit-Boulevard.
One year later, Bernard set out for Pont-Aven by foot and saw Gauguin. Their friendship and artistic relationship grew strong quickly. By this time Bernard had developed many theories about his artwork and what he wanted it to be. He stated that he had "a desire to [find] an art that would be of the most extreme simplicity and that would be accessible to all, so as not to practice its individuality, but collectively..." Gauguin was impressed by Bernard's ability to verbalize his ideas.
1888 was a seminal year in the history of Modern art. From 23 October until 23 December Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh worked together in Arles. Gauguin had brought his new style from Pont-Aven exemplified in Vision after the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, a powerful work of visual symbolism of which he had already sent a sketch to van Gogh in September.
Self-portrait with portrait of Paul Gauguin, Bernard, 1888.
Gauguin's counterpiece, same year, for same 'Vincent'.
Breton Women in a Green Pasture, Bernard, 1888.
Van Gogh's copy, December 1888.
Vision after the Sermon: Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Gauguin, 1888.
He also brought along Bernard's Le Pardon de Pont-Aven which he had exchanged for one of his paintings and which he used to decorate the shared workshop. see in: (ref. Druick 2001) This work was equally striking and illustrative of the style Émile Bernard had already acquainted van Gogh with when he sent him a batch of drawings in August, so much so that van Gogh made a watercolor copy of the Pardon (December 1888) which he sent to his brother, to recommend Bernard's new style to be promoted. The following year van Gogh still vividly remembered the painting in his written portrait of Émile Bernard in a letter to his sister Wil (10 December 1889):"...it was so original I absolutely wanted to have a copy."
One of Émile Bernard's drawings from the August batch ("...a lane of trees near the sea with two women talking in the foreground and some strollers" – Vincent van Gogh in a letter to Bernard – Arles 1888) also appears to have inspired the work van Gogh and Gauguin did on the Allée des Alyscamps in Arles.
In 1891 he joined a group of Symbolist painters that included Odilon Redon and Ferdinand Hodler. In 1893 he started traveling, to Egypt, Spain and Italy and after that his style became more eclectic. He returned to Paris in 1904 and remained there for the remainder of his life. He taught at the École des Beaux-Arts before he died in 1941.
"[...] this creative, avant-garde young man destroyed himself in a fight against that same avant-garde he had helped to create. His rivalry with Gauguin led him out of spite along a different path: classicism. This change took place when he was living in the Middle East, in a period of great crisis. But the fact remains that the young Bernard played an essential part as an initiator for Gauguin, and that he was the inventor of a new artistic vision."
Poster of the 1889 Exhibition of Paintings by the Impressionist and Synthetist Group, at Café des Arts, known as The Volpini Exhibition, 1889.
Bernard theorized a style of painting with bold forms separated by dark contours which became known as cloisonnism. His work showed geometric tendencies which hinted at influences of Paul Cézanne, and he collaborated with Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.
Many say that it was Bernard's friend Anquetin, who should receive the credit for this "closisonisme" technique. During the spring of 1887, Bernard and Anquetin "turned against Neo-Impressionism." It is also likely that Bernard was influenced by the works he had seen of Cézanne. But Bernard says "When I was in Brittany, I was inspired by "everything that is superfluous in a spectacle is covering it with reality and occupying our eyes instead of our mind. You have to simplify the spectacle in order to make some sense of it. You have, in a way, to draw its plan."
"The first means that I use is to simplify nature to an extreme point. I reduce the lines only to the main contrasts and I reduce the colors to the seven fundamental colors of the prism. To see a style and not an item. To highlight the abstract sense and not the objective. And the second means were to appeal to the conception and to the memory by extracting yourself from any direct atmosphere. Appeal more to internal memory and conception. There I was expressing myself more, it was me that I was describing, although I was in front of the nature. There was an invisible meaning under the mute shape of exteriority."
Symbolism and religious motifs appear in both Bernard and Gauguin's work. During the summer of 1889, Bernard was alone in Le Pouldu and began to paint many religious canvasses. He was upset that he had to do commercial work at the same time that he wanted to create these pieces. Bernard wrote about his relationship with the style of symbolism in many letters, articles, and statements. He said that it was of a Christian essence, divine language. Bernard believed that it "It is the invisible express by the visible," and those previous attempts of religious symbolism failed. That period of symbolism represented the nature of beauty, but did not find the truth in the beauty. Art until the renaissance was based on the invisible rather than the visible, the idea, not the shapes or concrete. The history of the painting of symbols was spiritual. Everything, meaning symbols, were forgotten with the paganist ideas and doctrines. That is what Bernard was attempting to accomplish with the rebirth of symbolism in 1890. In his idea of the new symbolism, he concentrated on maintaining a grounded art, more authentic in Bernard's mind meant reducing impressionism, not creating an optical trip like Georges-Pierre Seurat, but simplifying the actual symbol.
His concept was that through ideas, not technique, the truth is found.
One of Émile Bernard's students was the Swedish painter Ivan Aguéli.
Brothel scene, sent+dedicated to Vincent van Gogh, 1888.
Émile Bernard, Portrait of a Boy in Hat, 1889.
Still life with teapot, cup and fruit, 1890.
Breton Peasants in a Meadow, 1892.
Notes sur l'école dite de "Pont-Aven"
Julien Tanguy dit le "Père Tanguy"
Souvenirs sur Paul Cézanne: une conversation avec Cézanne, la méthode de Cézanne. Paris: Chez Michel, 1925.
His correspondence with other artists is of great art historical interest. Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Bernard traded ideas and art. Many letters sent from van Gogh and Gauguin to Bernard give historians a better idea of the artists lives and connection to their artwork.
Neil McWilliam (ed.), Émile Bernard. Les Lettres d'un artiste (1884-1941), Les Presses du réel, Dijon, 2012, an edited selection of 430 letters covering the entirety of the artist's career.
^ This text and the Note following accompanied excerpts from Vincent van Gogh's letters to Bernard and to Theo, his brother, published in the Mercure de France 1893 through 1897. Translated to the German by Margarethe Mauthner, this selection was pre-published by Bruno Cassirer in Kunst und Künstler, Berlin, June 1904 to September 1905, and finally in a bestselling volume.
Dorra, Henri: Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, Gazette des Beaux-Arts 1955. Vol. 45.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Émile Bernard.
Van Gogh Letters to Bernard, The Morgan Library online exhibition (facsimiles and translations).


Marine operations Thanks to his evidence, we busted fifty guys, worse than him, I'm really sorry about your wife, sir, I didn't know, What's that? Easy, man! You've got some balls, Marcin, Blacha, Let go, Why did you do it? It wasrt me, Hello, honey, Everything all right? Good interview, Great reporter, Very good, Take care of yourselves, Kasia? Okay, let me speak to her, Or, Mira, no, I don't want, I can't speak to her now, Bye, Then in the hotel, with your professor, Ferrari, we were drinking, My wife, Marta called and, she said, we're going to have a baby, We'd been trying to have it, for few years then, Iwona, forget it if you can and forgive me, I will not forget it, And there's nothing to forgive, You saved my life, Marcin, What I told you there, it was the truth, Will you finish this film with me? Of course, I'll do, This one and the next ones too, if you want Well now, ain't you gonna come inside? We saw all three of them go in there. Why didn't you tell me about this before? Everybody's already here. Can you hear me? Come on out! You're not in trouble, honey. Come on home! Can you hear me? What if he drowned in it, Terry? Have y'all got anybody out there looking for my boy? Three boys missing? I'm aware of that. We've been looking around in the dark and there's all sorts of people out there. There's neighbors, there's kids, there's people I don't even know… Yes, listen… But I ain't seen one, but one… Ma'am, listen… One police officer out there all night long. Listen. We are doing everything we can. Now, I appreciate your concern. I got two boys myself. Sometimes boys, they like to run off and get into things. My son is eight years old! He sleeps with a nightlight on! He did not run away from home. Ma'am, you need to calm down. I'll calm down when you find my son. We're in front of the school where three kids are still missing.


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Platform: Switch
Cloudpunk Review
Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.
Posted by Kiran Manan on November 14, 2020 - 7:55pm EST
A sprawling city that hums with life; a maze of cloud piercing skyscrapers, androids, augmented humans and barely-legal hover cars – the essence of cyberpunk. Cloudpunk offers the chance to explore such a cityscape from the perspective of Rania, Cloudpunk's newest delivery driver. From the very start you're promised speed, danger and even money – provided you can survive the night. Cloudpunk makes notable attempts to live up to this excitement, but unfortunately, a series of technical errors and questionable gameplay choices makes the whole experience fall short.
From the get-go, it's evident that developer ION LANDS is trying to recreate the atmosphere seen in Blade Runner, The Fifth Element or any other movie where technology has flourished and the quality of human life has withered. Nivalis is a gorgeous city, but conversations between Rania and dispatch (referred to as 'control') make it quickly clear that life in the metropolis is either long and painful or cut very short. These conversations, which you will mostly have while piloting your company hover car – or HOVA – make up the bulk of the narrative and are well written if a little cliché. The story of Cloudpunk is straightforward – you are piloting a HOVA around the city for a 'semi-legal delivery company' called Cloudpunk. You will be making deliveries and occasionally moral decisions, but mostly just trying to get through your first night on the job. Commentary on 'society' can be a little heavy handed with storylines ranging from stopping the poor from starving in the freezing depths of the city, to whether owning sentient sex robots is perhaps a touch unethical; but the world of Cloudpunk is so purposely stylised and exaggerated that it gets away with it for the most part.
This style, comprised of voxel art, is a blocky playground for the player to explore. Filled with numerous districts dotted with vendors, food stalls and collectibles, the city is fun to traverse. You will have to make use of portals, elevators and locating the correct place to park your HOVA in order to successfully navigate the multi-levelled environments. This, and the ability to shift into first person mode, makes weaving through streets a satisfying experience. Though the camera may seem very sensitive at first with no option to adjust this, your frantic movements and constant motion seem to match up well to the hectic pace of the city itself. Alternatively, there is a third person camera, but it feels slippery and unstable, while losing the sense of scale first person mode creates in having you dwarfed by your surroundings. Cloudpunk is full of charming artistic touches such as individual illustrated character icons for whoever is talking, and detailed indoor environments such as bars and cafés which can be seen as you move through the city. It is a shame that most of these environments are inaccessible, as the few indoor locations that do exist are delightful. Namely, Rania's apartment, despite being on the rough side of town, boasts an amazing view of the city and is packed with cute knickknacks which can be purchased over time to decorate the room.
Customisation doesn't end there though – there are a number of outfit options which can be purchased for Rania from different merchants, and the HOVA itself can be modified in various ways. This includes practical upgrades such as speed boosters and bumpers, as well as a cosmetic options. Fitting my HOVA with neon red taillights that trailed after my craft wasn't necessary but certainly made my experience zipping around buildings feel a lot more stylish.
For the most part then, Cloudpunk might display everything you'd want a cyberpunk adventure to look like. Apart from some dodgy voice acting, ranging from flat line delivery to what sounds like bad Beatles impressions, Nivalis is home to many interesting and often funny characters who may offer Rania side quests in the form of deliveries or passenger transporting. But there are some odd design choices in Cloudpunk that often make the game feel tedious and unappealing.
There are small niggles, such as the fact that the map is assigned to left on the d-pad, and the right button is an option to 'hide all UI' – even during dialogue or when using menus. This means that menus need to be navigated with the joysticks and anyone who prefers using the d-pad should prepare to feel frustrated every time they accidentally hit a button. That's a relatively minor issue, but there's such a plethora of these small, annoying choices that they gradually build up to be quite irritating. Mission waypoints don't usually update until an entire exchange of dialogue is finished, leading to a lot of standing around while you wait for discussions to end, with not much to do in the meantime especially if you've already cleaned out the area of its collectibles. Merchant dialogue can't be skipped without automatically purchasing the first item in the sale list, so expect to sit through those same lines every time you want to quickly sell your loot. The entire map itself cannot be viewed at any time – only the map of the district you are in. So, as much I wished to return to my apartment to buy more decorations, I had a very difficult time finding it. Access to the wider map may also have presented players with more options in the route they would like to take to their next delivery; being able to choose which districts I cut through, or if there were any side missions I could stop at on the way, would have introduced a bit of variety to the often repetitive delivery missions.
For as pretty as Cloudpunk is, there is no denying that your first hour of gameplay will be every hour of gameplay. Drive to the location via the waypoint, exit the HOVA and collect a package. Drive to the next waypoint, exit the HOVA and deliver the package. Even those missions which have Rania deviate from Cloudpunk to do runs for other organisations follow this formula, and it just isn't interesting enough to carry a 10 hour game. You are often presented with decisions to make, but these barely affect the outcome of missions. There is also the added task of needing to refuel the HOVA periodically and repair it when too much damage has been taken, though there is only an indicator for the former and not the latter. The inclusion of car damage does ensure you need to try and drive somewhat carefully rather than smashing into other vehicles, but repair garages are frequent and cheap enough that you'll likely never encounter much of a problem.
The biggest issue, of course, stems from the difference between this Nintendo Switch port and the game on PC, as clearly graphical sacrifices needed to be made to get the game running. The draw distance is pretty terrible for starters; instead of flying around towering neon skyscrapers, you'll be flying through a lot of grey cloud. Buildings will clip in rather jarringly, making precise weaving very difficult. During the first hour of the game, it seemed that the system really couldn't handle the HOVA making a quick stop at the same time as buildings were phasing in, leading to some freezing, especially in docked mode. However, I did notice that freezing eased up after the first few hours. There are load screens between each area of the city, and considering that you often need to get deliveries from one side of town to the other, you can expect 2-3 load screens per mission which seriously hampers the flow of flying around.
Entering new areas usually sees a lot of lag, followed by a short period where other vehicles may crash into you despite not actually making any contact – especially frustrating considering the fact that the HOVA takes damage. In fact, the entrance of new areas always seems especially jam-packed with vehicles upon loading in. These dissipate and then there are barely any vehicles to be seen, though I am unsure whether this is a bug or rather an attempt to mimic random traffic patterns. One unusual issue was that skipping dialogue did not skip the voice over accompanying it, leaving characters reading out text I had long ago passed, and more strangely, this did seem to fix itself around 4 hours in. For the most part, Cloudpunk performs much better in handheld mode than docked, but players will then have to tolerate the smaller map on which waypoint numbers are unintelligible.
The porting issues also hold back some of the more entertaining aspects of play. For example, the use of 'highways' – light roads which offer your HOVA a speed boost – is an interesting idea, with intersections and other vehicles making it feel like a real city, but there isn't that much to look at while traversing these due to the poor draw distance. In the PC release, players were surrounded by the multitude of wonderfully lit buildings, but in this version the landscape is covered in smog. On foot journeys do not suffer from this problem as much, but considering most of your time is spent in the craft, it's not much of a consolation.
Cloudpunk is a hodgepodge of a pleasing visual style, repetitive gameplay, decent writing and technical failings. There are times where walking around Nivalis feels like something out of a Philip K Dick novel, with dystopian 'Minority Report' style advertisements broadcast over the city as you find yourself doing questionable things, like buying drugs to bribe your way into a seedy night club for a delivery. Rania, and her automata 'dog' Camus, will likely grow on you as you hear their playful back-and-forth during long stretches of driving. Other times, you'll recognise the laziness that seeps through other aspects of gameplay – the repetitive missions, unchanging collectables and even half-hearted naming of recurring, speaking characters such as 'gang member 2'. It's a shame to be sure, as there are quite a few things to like about Cloudpunk, but just enough problems pulling it back to stop most playing for too long.
Our ratings for Cloudpunk on Switch out of 100 (Ratings FAQ)
A conflicting situation – the voxel style and cool environments to explore while on foot are ultimately hampered by the porting issues which make Nivalis a cloudy eyesore while flying.
There isn't much variation in your deliveries as a driver. Every now and then you'll be given an unusual task, but these go down much in the same way. Flying the HOVA feels fun, but again is let down on the visual front.
With a very straightforward story, dialogue is at least mostly well written and protagonist Rania is interesting enough to keep key story moments feeling dull. There is an attempt to build a sense of lore around the city and genre clichés are both embraced and teased, preventing the story from feeling overly trite.
Poor draw distance, laggy ship movements, and frequent load screens among other bugs really hinder the entire experience.
You'll likely be able to finish Cloudpunk without running into any game-breaking bugs, but the question is whether you'll want to. Fans of the cyberpunk genre may enjoy running and flying about for a while, but you'd be forgiven for abandoning ship before long.
US: October 15, 2020
Our Review of Cloudpunk
"Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads."
Game Ranking
Cloudpunk is ranked #1624 out of 1857 total reviewed games. It is ranked #111 out of 131 games reviewed in 2020.
1623. Someday You'll Return
1624. Cloudpunk
1625. Lost Words: Beyond the Page
Phoning Home
Released: February 2017
Developer: Ion Lands
6 images added Nov 13, 2020 13:10
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Gillian Jacobs' Face: the Heart of Love
February 23, 2016 February 23, 2016 / Jane Walker
WARNING SPOILERS in the last paragraph
Like most Judd Apatow offerings, Love is a mixed bag. Created by Apatow, Paul Rust, and Lesley Arfin the Netflix Original series stars Gillian Jacobs and Rust as star-crossed love interests Mickey and Gus. I binge-watched Love over a weekend and have piles and piles of notes on the show. The pilot is contrived, the pace is sluggish and Paul Rust (while comically effective) over-plays his hand when given material that's emotional. However, none of that is what I want to talk about.
Instead, I want to discuss that acting beacon of light, Gillian Jacobs and her magic face! I don't even know how to begin to breakdown what is at work in her radiant, honest, tortured, hilarious, vulnerable, ferocious (I could go on) portrayal of Mickey. What captivated me most, though, was her face and how Jacobs brilliantly uses it to depict the inner life of her complicated, messy character. So here are some random fan-girl musings on Gillian's face and why I love to watch her use it.
After a sluggish pilot in which Mickey and Gus' existences before each other are displayed in mundane, meandering detail (Gus says I love you too much, Mickey hates that her boyfriend's mom still buys his pants) the pair finally meet for the first time at a convenience store. Mickey forgets her wallet, Gus pays for her coffee but she insists he follow her home so she can pay him back. It's awkward. And slow. It is a single reaction from Jacobs that zinged the show back to life.
Gus has trapped himself inside a terrible joke about how he lives inside the "O" in the Hollywood sign. Jacobs takes this hilarious beat where she tries to decide whether to ignore Gus or continue the conversation. We see the moment where she might just appreciate the lameness of the joke as her eyes come to life for the first time and she asks "which one?" Her face shines with mischief as he answers without missing a beat "the first "0" in wood". Mickey fails to keep a smile away and holds her mouth in crooked admiration. She doesn't fall in love with Gus here, but I love how Jacobs plays this moment of discovery that she may have met her next great friend. It's indescribably special and that feeling is captured perfectly with every muscle in her face.
My favourite Gillian Jacobs moments on Community are watching her character Britta being called on her bullshit by the other characters. Watching Britta move from indignant to sheepish to embarrassed is pure comic joy. In the fourth (and strongest) episode of Love, Mickey is being berated by her ex-boyfriend for being a terrible girlfriend. Among other things she stole his laptop and left cigarette burns in his couch. He had dogs, 'didn't that ever occur to her'? Here we get so see Jacobs become embarrassed in a different context. At first it is funny watching her nose squirm and eyes dart, trying to find a way to turn the situation around. However, as the insults grow more intense "You destroy everything you touch, do you know that?" The shame that takes over Mickey's face as her breath becomes short and color fills out her cheeks twists the tone of the scene in an instant.
Jacobs is an expert at shifting a scene with the whims of her face. The morning after the Gus spends the night for the first time, he tries to recapture the closeness they shared. He tries cuddle up to her, asks her to go to breakfast and finally reminds her of his invitation to go to a party at his house that night. Mickey is grumpy and groggy and doesn't have the energy to engage. She rolls away from him and claims that the party "sounds stupid." Gus leaves rejected and hurt but what he doesn't see is Mickey swallowing a smile as she turns away. When she knows he is gone Mickey whirls around and mashes her face into her pillow in a perfect moment of delight.
Mickey shows up to the party. What she doesn't know is that Gus has invited a pretty blond friend from work to nurse his ego. Mickey spends an excruciating night watching pretty blond friend toss around her pretty blond hair, make jokes and win over the party guests. When she escapes to the bedroom Gus follows her. Mickey immediately tries to hide her hurt. "She's beautiful" she offers. Here she tries to recreate the bliss on her face from earlier. You can see the effort it takes to make her smile beam and her eyes sparkle. It is devastating. The skill it must take to walk the tightrope line between fake and real and too fake and too real freaks me right out!
There are many, many other moments that Jacobs captures perfectly with her incredible face. There are moments of pain that are so honest and raw and silently gut wrenching that I wouldn't do justice to try and dissect them.
SPOILER ALERT remidner
Gus and Mickey have called it quits after a horrific argument days earlier. Mickey finds Gus (after stalking him on instagram) at the same store where they met. Her face looks pale and uninhabited as she apologies and suggests that maybe in a year they could go for coffee. When Gus pulls her to him for a clichéd end-of-season- kiss, Mickey's face comes back to life and I give Gus and the moment a pass. If he can bring her back to life maybe he's alright. Just as in their first meeting, when Mickey finds Gus irresistible for the first time, Jacobs was my way into the show as an audience member. If she believes in all of this I sure can.
Britta Perry, Gillian Jacobs, Love
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50%67°49°Night - Mostly clear. Winds NE. The overnight low will be 54 °F (12.2 °C).Partly cloudy with a high of 79 °F (26.1 °C). Winds variable.
15%75°57°Partly cloudy today with a high of 75 °F (23.9 °C) and a low of 57 °F (13.9 °C).
Tonight - Mostly clear. Winds NE. The overnight low will be 54 °F (12.2 °C).


text:
Café con aroma de mujer é uma telenovela colombiana de 2021, produzida por Yalile Giordanelli para a RCN Televisión e distribuída pela Telemundo. É uma nova versão da telenovela homônima de 1994 criada por Fernando Gaitán, que já teve duas adaptações populares feitas no México com os títulos Cuando seas mía eDestilando amor. Estreou pela primeira vez na Colômbia em 10 de maio a 24 de setembro de 2021 por meio do Canal RCN, enquanto nos Estados Unidos estreou na Telemundo em 25 de maio a 28 de setembro de 2021, substituindo Buscando a Frida e sendo substituída por Malverde: El Santo Patrón. A novela foi finalizada em 24 de setembro de 2021 na Colômbia.

É protagonizada por William Levy e Laura Londoño, sendo antagonizada por Carmen Villalobos, Diego Cadavid e Mabel Moreno.

A música de abertura e as canções da trilha sonora são cantadas por Laura Londoño.

Enredo
Todos os anos, Gaviota (Laura Londoño) e sua mãe chegam à Fazenda Casablanca para pegar o café da segunda safra do ano, mas esperam que a próxima visita seja a última, pois a partir de agora serão donas de suas próprias terras. No entanto, o destino tem outros planos. Octavio Vallejo, proprietário da fazenda, acaba de falecer. Gaviota já o havia salvado de um sequestro. Octavio prometeu como recompensa dar-lhe um hectare de terra para que ela pudesse plantar seu próprio café. Tentando fazer com que a família Vallejo honre o acordo, Gaviota conhece Sebastián (William Levy), filho de Octavio, e uma atração irreprimível nasce entre eles, um amor doloroso e impossível, tornando-se dois amantes que pertencem a mundos diferentes.

Elenco
 Laura Londoño - Teresa Suárez (Gaivota)
 William Levy - Sebastián Vallejo Cortez
 Carmen Villalobos - Lucia Sanclemente Méndez de Vallejo
 Diego Cadavid - Iván Vallejo Sáenz
 Lincoln Palomeque - Leonidas Salinas
 Luces Velásquez - Julia Cortéz de Vallejo
 Katherine Vélez - Carmela Suárez
 Andrés Toro - Aurelio Díaz
 Mabel Moreno - Lucrecia Valencia De Castillo de Vallejo
 Ramiro Meneses - Carlos Mario Álzate
 María Teresa Barreto - Marcela Vallejo Cortez
 Laura Archbold - Paula Vallejo Cortez
 Juan David Agudelo - Bernardo Vallejo Sáenz
 Laura Junco - Margarita Briceño
 Dailyn Valdivieso - La Maracucha
 Caterin Escobar - Marcia Aguirre
 Marcelo Dos Santos - Eduardo Sanclemente
 Yarlo Ruíz - Lemarcus Acosta
 Raúl Ocampo - Carlos
 Pedro Gilmore - Arthur
 Mario Duarte - Pablo Emilio Villegas
 Constanza Gutierrez - Margot
 Maia Landaburu - Diana
 Carlos Manuel Vesga - Danilo
 Waldo Urrego - Pedro Alzate
 María del Rosario - Aura
 Jorge López - Xavier
 Mario Espitia - Jorge Latorre
 Juan Carlos Cruz - Wilson Briceño
 Julian Santamaría - Campesino
 Rodrigo Candamil - Martín Tejeiras
 Julian Andrés Velásquez
 Juan Sebastián Ruíz
 Luis Eduardo Motoa - Otávio  Vallejo

Produção

Desenvolvimento

A produção foi anunciada durante o Up-front da Telemundo para a temporada de televisão do período 2020–21. A produção da telenovela iniciou as gravações em 3 de dezembro de 2020 nos locais definidos. Para esta versão, a adaptação está a cargo de Adriana Suárez junto com Javier Giraldo e Paola Cazares, e a direção de cena sob o comando de Mauricio Cruz e Olga Lucía Rodríguez.

As produções começaram em dezembro de 2020, na Colômbia. A lista do elenco foi anunciada em 4 de dezembro de 2020 pela revista americana People en Español. Um trailer da novela foi lançado em 5 de abril de 2021.

Recepção
A novela foi posicionada durante sua estreia na sexta posição dos programas mais assistidos na Colômbia durante a noite de 10 de maio de 2021. Sendo assim superada em audiência pela segunda temporada de Enfermeras—produção do mesmo canal—. Embora tenha sido bem recebida pelo público em sua estreia, não obteve classificações favoráveis devido aos protestos de 2021 na Colômbia.

Ligações externas

Telenovelas da Colômbia
Telenovelas da Telemundo
Telenovelas da RCN Televisión
Programas de televisão da Colômbia que estrearam em 2021
Programas de televisão da Colômbia encerrados em 2021
Telenovelas da década de 2020
Telenovelas em espanhol
Refilmagens de telenovelas

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
This is Business Live from BBC News, with Sally Bundock
Trading on an old relationship - the UK's Business Minister
is in India today as he begins a global mission to drum up support
Live from London, that's our top story on Friday 8th July.
Flying the flag for British business in a post-Brexit world.
Britain's Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, is in India
today for the UK's first post-referendum trade talks.
in Mumbai to discuss the future of its UK steel operations.
It is expected to pause the sale of the main Port Talbot plant,
but go ahead with the sale of its other speciality business.
And Asian markets were cautious, awaiting the latest jobs data
And we'll have our business editor Simon Jack with us to take us
through a tumultuous week on currency markets -
as well as the problems storing up in Europe's biggest banks.
And of course do get in touch with us throughout the programme
about the stories we're covering - just use the hashtag #BBCBizLive.
The UK is launching its first trade talks since the vote to leave
the EU, as Business Secretary Sajid Javid meets the Indian
He will discuss how the trading relationship with India might
work with the UK outside the European Union.
The Business Secretary will also visit the US, China,
Japan and South Korea in the coming months.
India is the third biggest foreign investor in the UK, and total trade
between the two countries was worth over $21 billion last year.
Commonwealth countries, including India accounted
for about 10%, or ?47.8 billion, $61.81 billion, of UK exports
in 2014, whereas about 44%, or ?228.9 billion or $296
In total, the EU has trade agreements with 52 countries
and it is expected the UK will need to re-negotiate all these once it
The UK's Business Secretary, Sajid Javid will meet Tata's
chairman Cyrus Mistry in Mumbai today ahead of a Tata board
India is the first country where a Yogita Limaye joins us now.
India is the first country where a Sajid Javid will be held these kind
of discussions. Trade between India and the UK is roughly $20 billion,
and growing. Even so, the UK is only in's 12 largest trading partner, a
situation it has been trying to change. India has been separately
negotiating a free trade agreement with the EU for several years, but
negotiations have stored on some issues. And so even before the
Brexit Road, many from industry here were saying that the UK and India
should forge a separate trade relationship. And now of course,
since we have of the referendum, rebel here are saying that this
could be an opportunity, because the UK would be free to strike a deal
with India without thinking what the EU wants. That is the positive side
of things. At of course there are many Indian companies which have big
investments in the UK and who are worried. They see the UK as a
gateway to Europe. And so they are concerned about access to that
market. Those questions are likely to come up in the meeting between
the finance minister and Sajid Javid. Before that he will be here
in Mumbai meeting the bosses of Tata Steel. Again, the Brexit vote has
been occasions for the company, which has operations in the UK but
also in Europe, in the Netherlands. About a quarter of the steel that it
produces in the UK is sold in Europe, so that is a key market.
Will be a concern not just for Tata but also for potential buyers.
That's why there are expectations that Tata might pause the sale
process of its British business operations. And we will have a lot
more detail on that from Simon Jack, our business editor, who will be
joining us in about five minutes. Four of the biggest US banks have
committed to helping maintain London's position as a global
financial hub after the UK In a statement, the banks
and Chancellor George Osborne said they would work to ensure London
"retains its position". It was signed by JPMorgan,
Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
and Morgan Stanley, as well as Consumer confidence in Britain has
seen its biggest slump in 22 years following
the referendum on June 23rd. That's according to market
research company GfK. The survey tracks people's
willingness to make big purchases as well as worries
about their own personal finances It found a marked deterioration
in confidence across regions and age groups - and among people
who had voted to leave the EU as well as those
who wanted to Remain - although the latter
group were more gloomy. Tata Steel is expected to announce
today that it will pause the sale of most of its UK business,
including its Port Talbot plant. However, it will proceed
with the sale of its speciality steel-making business,
which employs 2,000 people The company says it wants
to consider the options and assess Now let's get the latest on the
developing story in Dallas, where five police officers have been
killed and six wounded by sniper fire. We got an update from a
reporter there are not so long ago. Currently we are in negotiations
with the suspect involved in the shootings at the garage in downtown
Dallas. This suspect we are negotiating with for the last 45
minutes has been exchanging gunfire with us and not being very
co-operative in the negotiations. Before I came here, I asked for
plans to end this stand-off, and as soon as I am done here, I will be
presented with those plans. We can speak now to Peter Bowes, in LA.
This happened during protests about two recent fatal police shooting is?
Yes, it was one of many protests taking place in cities around the
United States over the last 24 hours also, protesting at the shooting of
two black men in separate incidents in Louisiana and Minnesota. This was
taking place in downtown Dallas. It was a similar sized protest to the
one in New York City. It was a peaceful protest in Dallas, up until
the shooting started. At that point, there was a certain amount of panic
and chaos, as the crowd tried to disperse and people tried to get to
safety. Police chief of the lesson later said he believed two snipers
were responsible, snipers, as he put it, in an elevated position above
the crowd, who were targeting police officers on the ground. We now know
that three people in fact are in custody, and the fourth is holed up
apparently in a parking structure in Dallas. There has been an exchange
of gunfire with the police, and they are trying to negotiate with this
person, who the police say is not negotiating. The person has made a
number of threats, saying that the end is coming, that they're going to
hurt and kill more police officers, and saying that there are bombs all
over the place in downtown Dallas. This is a situation which is far
from over. The police are still describing it as an active crime
scene. Do we know weather or not all of the suspects have now been
located, if not rounded up? No, we do not know that. In fact the police
chief said they do not have a complete comfort level that all of
the suspects have been found. The indication being that there could be
other people involved in this. What he did say, with some certainty, was
that he believes that these people have worked together, that they were
acting together. He said that they had triangulated in different
positions with their rifles, aiming at the people on the ground,
specifically the police officers. He said it seemed as if they had some
knowledge of the planning of the route of the March, the progress of
the demonstration through downtown Dallas, implying that a certain
amount of planning and perhaps intelligent planning with some in
fight -- inside information perhaps, as to what had been planned for the
route of this protest. For now, Peter, thank you very much. Any more
news on that, we will update you. We can show you how the markets have
been trading across the world. In Japan, closing down just over 1%.
Hong Kong, similar scenario. Among the real movers, energy shares, by
the energy companies Yadav related to that sector. We have got the oil
price down quite significantly yesterday. That has caused some, not
serious nerves, but it has had an impact on trade. Also we are looking
ahead to the US jobs data, which comes out later. And if I can
quickly show you the European markets, which all closed about 1%
higher yesterday's. All headed in the right direction for the time
being. A lot of nervous trade today ahead of the jobs figures coming out
later in the US. The last time they were released, it was a real
surprise. The US economy, not adding as many jobs as many had predicted.
We can hear from Samira Hussain, in New York, as to what we can expect
on that number to day. The latest US jobs report comes out on Friday. In
the last month, the US economy only added 38,000 jobs, nicking it the
worst employment report since the autumn of 2010. Given a court in
dismal employment numbers, some are calling the June jobs report the
most important of the year, even though America's central bank has
already signalled it will not be raising interest rates any time
soon. But the Federal Reserve will still be paying attention to these
numbers, specifically, they will be looking for increases in how much
people are being paid. That will be one sign that the labour market is
getting stronger, and a clear reflection of the overall health of
the US economy. Still to come... As we mentioned, Simon Jack will be
with us to talk us through some detail of the situation with regards
to Tata Steel. We'll have the BBC's
business editor on the show, taking us through the realities
for people and companies You're with Business
Live from BBC News. UK energy prices climbed
to near nine-month highs in the aftermath of the EU
referendum, as the market began Let's speak now to Jamie Stewart,
electricity editor at ICIS. How have energy prices been affect
did so far by the Brexit news? So far, there has been no direct
impact. What we do see is In terms of what we have
mentioned already, the fact that there has been a lot of power plant
closures in the last year, the UK energy has had a massive
transformation, in many ways. Looking ahead now, what are the key
issues? Well, over the last quarter, we have really seen mass coal plant
closures, both for economic and environmental reasons. This means we
are now burning a lot more gas than we were this time last year, in
order to fill that supply gap. Price of gas has risen over the last
quarter. Just, we are now looking at a 9% increase. Electricity, 13%. --
gas. That more expensive gas being burned in our power plants raises
the energy price overall. Thank you so much for joining us. Jamie
Stuart, electricity editor. This is Hammerson expanding in
Ireland. Lots of concerns about Brexit will mean for some of the big
cities here in the UK. Of course, Dublin with its far more generous I
suppose corporate tax level, lots of businesses might be looking to
relocate to Dublin or Berlin as a result of that Brexit vote.
Interesting comments coming out from the retail analyst Nick Bubb at the
moment. Still to come on the programme, as
well as the rest of the business news we will be right across
developments in Dallas where five police officers have been killed and
six injured. That's developments taking place overnight. We will
speak to a reporter outside the hospital in central Dallas where the
wounded police officers are being treated.
Now let's talk some more about Tata Steel. We are expecting various
announcements today about its UK business.
Including the Port Talbot plant. Plans to find rescuers for this deal
had been thrown into doubt by the Brexit vote. According to Bloomberg
they're saying four out of the seven potential bidders have backed out
since the referendum. The struggling business in the UK was put up for
sale in March T employs about 11,000 people at plants across the UK
including the huge Port Talbot plant in Wales. But it's currently losing
around ?1 million a day. One of the key reasons why is the
price of steel. Slumping since its peak in 2011. Although it has been
recovering in recent months. Global demand has been dropping, whilst
there's been an oversupply in steel, particularly a lot coming from
China. As promised here is Simon jack our business editor.
Today is critical really. Two things are going to happen today. The UK
Business Secretary is in Mumbai. He is going to meet the chairman of
Tata before a board meeting at which two things I think will happen. One
is that they will say they're going to sell off another bit of their
empire, if you like. This is a specialty steel business in, those
people will have certainty, yes there is a buyer for those. The
large share of the business that includes the plant in Port Talbot
and employs 9,000 people, that we expect them to hit the pause button
on that. We talked about this before. Back in March, Tata was in a
hurry to get rid of this business, it said it was losing ?1 million a
day, we want to get shot of it as quickly as possible, there was a
worry if nothing happened in a short period of time it would shut the
doors and that would be bad news for people. Since then they've become
more relaxed. That's for a couple of reasons. First, the steel market has
improved a bit since back then, prices - they're not losing so much
money, they can relax a little bit. The second is the Government has
been showering incentives or inducements on anyone who will keep
this plant going. That includes, they've offered to take - to provide
hundreds of millions of loans, take up to a 25% stake, that was
controversial, that's part nationalisation. They've looked at
one-off legislation to reduce the burden of the enormous pension fund.
None of the bidders wanted to take that as it is. They're waiting to
see whether consultation on that legislation means that burden will
be redo you gossed, either -- will be reduced either for Tata or new
buyers. The uncertainty isn't just coming out in the financial markets
and the commodity markets, we are seeing Italy's lenders really on the
edge. Do you think this is the new banking crisis we will see across
Europe? Italy's banks have always been a little shaky, what they
didn't do, they didn't set up a bad bank to put loans in. What we have
seen in the last few weeks and months, particularly since Brexit,
is we have seen the idea that we might lower interest rates again.
Everyone thinks that's great for everyone, lower interest rates,
markets go up. But it's actually pretty bad for banks because they
make money on the difference between what they borrow and lend at and if
interest rates go lower and lower, that margin, the net interest margin
they call it gets compressed. Also, the Italian economy hasn't grown
hardly from the last five, six years and if we get a down town because of
Brexit a poor economy, higher losses on loans, it's a problem for them.
How big a deal is the situation with the Italian banks. The authorities
said they put this money aside, we have this escape route. There is a
escape route but it's controversial. By the letter of the law they're not
supposed to do this. There are state aid rules as to what happens about
what you can do. Those have changed about whether you can put money into
banks. I guess, we all know to our cost, when banks go bad it costs
everyone loads of money. Banks play by different rules, they're not like
normal companies, they're the blood stream of entire economies. I
suspect that a deal will be done. A way to help them will be found. It's
not just Italian banks. If you look at Deutsche bank, that's trading at
30% of what it's worth on paper. There are banking issues throughout
the European Union. You could argue given its systemic importance that
is the most dangerous bank in Europe. Too big too fail.
Definitely. If you think about it, history and Germany's past t used to
be hand in glove with the Bunde bank. They'll be keeping an eye on
that. Thank you very much. We will leave it there.
Let's continue with the situation in Dallas.
We have been hearing the shooting dead of five police officers at a
rally there. Several others are still fighting for their lives in
hospital. One woman, Shetamia Taylor,
was at the protest earlier. She brought her three sons along
with her but was injured She's currently receiving treatment
at the Baylor Hospital in Dallas, where Dr Sima Yasmin,
a doctor and reporter for the Dallas Morning
News, is just outside. Earlier, Sima spoke
to her sister Theresa. A peaceful rally, just to show them
that you know it's OK to stand up for who you are and what you believe
in and just a simple message, you know, violence doesn't get you
anywhere. Just come together. Communicate with one another.
That was one reaction coming from the hospital where people are being
treated in Dallas. We are trying to keep you across what's going on.
It's a moving picture at the moment. It certainly is. Dr Sima is on the
line now, we understand from the hospital where those injured are
being treated. I hope you can hear me. Yes, I can. Excellent. Can you
give us a little bit of an update of the situation outside the hospital.
I am outside one hospital in Dallas about two miles east of where the
shooting and protests occurred a few hours ago. This is one of two Dallas
hospitals where we believe the injured officers have been taken to
and injured civilians. The hospital I am outside of at least two cops
are being treated inside as well as the woman we spoke about. She's
currently in theatre undergoing surgery for a gunshot wound to the
leg. She is the woman that took her three sons to this protest because
overwhelmingly we are hearing that this was a peaceful protest. It was
a protest in regards to the police involved shooting of black men and
we are hearing shots were fired as people were leaving the
demonstration. It was around 9.00pm local time when shots were fired and
this woman said her sister said she shielded her sons and she was shot
in her leg at that time and the recent updates that we have are that
six officers have been injured and five officers have passed away. It's
an horrific situation. We understand the police are still dealing with
some suspects. They haven't yet all been rounded up, have they? This is
an ongoing scenario, isn't it? That's correct. In fact, the woman
in surgery now for that gunshot wound to the leg became separated
from her sons and two of them are still in the area which is
considered an active shooting situation, while their mother is
receiving treatment they're not able to leave that area. The latest
reports we heard is that possibly one suspect, we are thinking there
maybe two or three, but one suspect has been neutralised and that's the
word used by police. Some reports saying that suspect may have shot
themselves. Others saying the police may have shot that suspect. In a
press conference a few hours ago the Dallas police chief used the word
triangulation, possibly snipers positioned in a way to kill as many
officers and injure as many officers as possible. There was also a
possible bomb threat. We have had FBI agents in the area investigating
that possibility, as well. We appreciate your time and thank you
for bringing us up to date with what's going on where you are
outside the hospital where people are being treated who were shot in
the overnight developments in Dallas.
We have Michael Houston in to talk through a couple of stories that are
in the business pages at the moment. Because of Dallas we obviously have
to focus coverage there. One story this is in the FT. This is China's
richest man planning to back a sort of rival really to Uefa Champions
League. Tell us more. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a terrible
idea. China wants to increase its exposure to global football and
wants to attract superstars and bank roll essentially a rival to the
Champions League. We already know how much money goes into global
football already. There is already concerns about sky high ticket
prices and for me I think this is just going to drive ordinary people
away from mainstream football. Too expensive? Too expensive. Another
thing, you never get a Leicester City. That's one of the great things
about the football season this season and we have already seen Euro
2016, England's abject performance. For me we need to focus more on
grass roots and less on this sort of stuff. Michael, we will leave it
there. That's it from Business Live today. Thank you very much. Plenty
more business news throughout the day and on the website.


text:
EP00 Invited Address 12b - The Evolution of Analytic Psychotherapy: A Review of Developments Over a Practice Span of More Than 60 Years - Judd Marmor, M.D.
Invited Addresses | Psychotherapy
Judd Marmor | James Bugental, PhD
This address is a review of the significant theoretical and practical changes in the practice of psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy in the experience of the author's personal practice over the past 62 years.
To list three major changes that have taken place in psychoanalytic theory.
To list three important changes that have taken place in the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Judd Marmor Related seminars and products
Judd Marmor, MD, was an American psychiatrist known for his role in removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Judd was an adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California in LA, was Franz Alexander Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Southern California School of Medicine. he has practices medicine for more than 50 years, having graduated from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1933. He is past president of the American Psychiatric Association, American Academy of Psychoanalysis, and The Group for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and The Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry. He is recipient of the Bowis Award for Outstanding Achievements in Leadership in the Field of Psychiatry from the American College of Psychiatrists and the Founders Award from the American Psychiatric Association. Dr. Marmor served on the editorial board of 14 journals.He authored five books and co-authored one. He has written or co-written more than 300 scientific papers. Much of his writing has been on psychoanalysis and human sexuality.
Profile at NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov
James Bugental, PhD Related seminars and products
James Bugental, PhD, was one of the predominant theorists and advocates of the Existential-Humanistic Therapy movement. He received his Ph.D. from Ohio State University in 1948, was named a Fellow of the American Psychological Association in 1955, and was the first recipient of the APA's Division of Humanistic Psychology's Rollo May Award. James devoted himself to teaching and writing; he was also an Emeritus Professor, Saybrook Institute, and an Emeritus Clinical Lecturer (formerly Associate Clinical Professor), Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University Medical School. In 1987, he was the recipient of the first annual Rollo May Award of the Mentor Society "for contributions to the literary pursuit," and in 1986, he received a certificate "in recognition of the distinguished contribution to the discipline of Clinical Psychology" from the Division of Clinical Psychology, American Psychological Association. He was a past president of the Association for Humanisitic Psychology and served on the editorial boards of eight professional journals. Bugental has written 150 articles, reviews, comments, and chapters in books edited by others.
James F.T. Bugental Profile at Bugental.com


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Congrats to our amazing Malaysian athletes that pulled home a record haul of 145 gold, 92 silver and 86 bronze - this is the country's best showing at the SEA Games! Therefore Monday has been declared a holiday and everyone gets to chill out..
I will keep my topic about buying like and followers till the week after!
Tune in and hygge with me to another awesome hour of music from 8-9 pm, only on AFOradio.


text:
Coffee Summits, not Coffee Parties
Posted on March 13, 2010 by Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
By now you've probably heard about the Coffee Party.
The Coffee Party: Drink more caffeine to be half as angry and twice as ineffectual as the Tea Party.
The Coffee Party bills itself as a spontaneous grassroots alternative to the tea party, one not tied to any hyper-partisan or corporate agenda. In actuality, it behaves more like an unofficial extension of the Obama permanent campaign. The only call to actual "action" seems to be for the Waiting-on-the-World-to-Change Generation to lament over lattes, sharing their exasperation at how the unwashed masses have been astroturfed to obstruct poor President Obama from carrying out his noble vision of bipartisan, pluralist kumbayah.
From CNN:
Meet these members of the Coffee Party Movement, an organically grown, freshly brewed push that's marking its official kickoff Saturday. Across the country, even around the globe, they and other Americans in at least several hundred communities are expected to gather in coffeehouses to raise their mugs of java to something new.
They're professionals, musicians and housewives. They're frustrated liberal activists, disheartened conservatives and political newborns. They're young and old, rich and poor, black, white and all shades of other.
Born on Facebook just six weeks ago, the group boasts more than 110,000 fans, as of Friday morning. The Coffee Party is billed by many as an answer to the Tea Party (more than 1,000 fewer fans), a year-old protest movement that's steeped in fiscal conservatism and boiling-hot, anti-tax rhetoric.
This new group calls for civility, objects to obstructionism and demands that politicians be held accountable to the people who put them in office.
The New York Times ran an earlier fluff piece about the Coffee Party last week:
Eileen Cabiling, who founded the Los Angeles chapter, said she had campaigned for President Obama, but paid little attention to politics until the Tea Party convention and Mr. Obama's State of the Union speech, where he rebuked Congressional Democrats and Republicans alike for their inability to move on legislation.
"I had withdrawn in campaign fatigue," Ms. Cabiling said. "I was like, what happened?"
"This is about recognizing that the government represents us," Ms. Cabiling said, "so we need to step to the plate and start having a voice and start acting like bosses."
This sounds like 2008 all over again. In other words, they are the ones they have been brewing for.
Recognizing that "the government is us" is instructive, but somehow Ms. Cabiling's comments remind me less of returning government to We-the-People and more of the creative classs self-indulgence that leads to declarations such as "Out with Bubbas, Up with Creatives."
What seems to drive today's progressives is where they perceive themselves in relation to the Bubbas. In Obama, the creative class saw an opportunity to be the bosses–many declaring in 2008 that for the first time they felt engaged in the political process. Once Obama won the election, their motivation was gone. They were now the bosses they had waited for, or so they thought. Politics became boring again, onto the next reality show. Obama's lack of leadership and his continuation of Bush policies were not enough to get his supporters out of their "campaign fatigue." It took the tea party's opposition to Obama to get the Obama partisans to realize that they were not quite as in control of the situation as they thought they were. Now they want to "wake up and stand up" just enough to regain their perception of themselves as bosses. Demanding for accountability of our elected officials seems to be an afterthought.
Even if it is not a propaganda arm or a gimmick, the coffee party is a response to the Tea Party, and therein lies the problem.
In terms of where we as liberals need to be focusing our response, the Tea Party is neither here nor there.
Jumper Cables = Critical Thinking
The Tea Party isn't the one who claimed to be a proponent of single-payer universal healthcare in 2003…
…then campaigned for a public option and against a mandate in 2008…
…only to assume the American presidency and reverse his already half-baked recipe into the ultimate shit sandwich–a mandate without a public option.
It wasn't the Tea Party protests that brought the public option down, either. The public option has remained popular, if vaguely defined, among voters.
The Tea Party is beside the point.
Bill Clinton nailed it not too long ago when he was campaigning for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts:
You need to take that tea party label back. (Applause and cheers) The tea party–(Applause continues)–you know all this tea party protest, the whole idea behind it is that government is inherently corrupt and bad and confused, right–and, the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against government. That is not true–the Boston Tea Party was a revolt against abuse of power–taxation without representation, taking the autonomy away from the Massachusetts Bay Company and the local governments. You had a very vigorous government at the time of the Boston Tea Party. The people believed in it, they participated in it, and they thought the purpose of the government was to advance the common good. –Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton has a knack for getting to the heart of the matter. (Ironically, Martha Coakley lost because she was unable to fight the abuse of power within her own party.)
Neither the Tea Party nor the Coffee Party are responding to the root issue. The Tea Party is a vehicle for absorbing catch-all populist anger into the GOP brand. The coffee response to the tea party is likewise a vehicle for preserving the Obama brand. Neither "party" has a larger purpose other than keeping each side involved in an imaginary contest where each tribe wants to be the boss of the other tribe. When you take away the superficial rhetoric about the role of government on both sides, what remains are taunts that either you're a socialist or you're a teabagger. These faux movements exploit real voter backlash at Washington and serve to keep the electorate divided and busy bashing each other at the rank-and-file level rather than collectively pushing back on the oligarchy.
What is missing right now is a mobilized response not to each other but to abuse of power, specifically a response in the form of advocacy for the working/middle class. I'm often reminded of FDR's economic bill of rights:
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.
Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
All of these rights spell security.
I'm also reminded of this clip from Meet the Press:
SEC'Y CLINTON: Well, I absolutely would look forward to having coffee. I've never met her.
But, you know, I'm ready to have a cup of coffee. Maybe I can make a case on some of the issues that we disagree on.
MR. GREGORY: So maybe there's a summit meeting here.
Tea and Coffee parties are echo chambers.
What we really need are more coffee summits, so to speak, where competing ideas are put forward as to how we can turn FDR's economic bill of rights into a reality.
Filed under: General | Tagged: Coffee Party, Economic Bill of Rights, FDR, Tea Party |	90 Comments »
Hillary Clinton Channels FDR in Internet Freedom Speech
Posted on January 22, 2010 by riverdaughter
Some people call us Hillary Die Hards like that's a *bad* thing. But there's a reason we supported her for president of the US. She leads from her principles.
That's it. The whole shebang. We didn't think she was perfect or transformative or a magical change agent. We figured that she'd piss us off occasionally. But in general, there's a bedrock foundation of belief and commitment to her values and we can pretty much predict what side she's going to come down on an issue.
That's why the speech she gave yesterday at the Newseum in Washington came as no surprise to me. The earthquake in Haiti has obscured the seismic activity in China that occurred last week when Google refused to continue censoring its search engine for the Chinese audience at their government's demands. It is also alleged that government sanctioned hackers have accessed 40 0r more companies, including Google, in order to look for information on Chinese dissidents and to steal source code and intellectual property. These are very serious allegations. Censorship and persecution of dissidence are abhorrent and anyone who works with proprietary information in large databases knows how valuable that information is.
Yesterday, Hillary threw down the gauntlet and committed the State Department to preserving and extending the ability of all countries to use the internet as a means of expression, commerce, education and connection with each other. Here's a small sample of that speech:
On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. And we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. Now, this challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic. The words of the First Amendment to our Constitution are carved in 50 tons of Tennessee marble on the front of this building. And every generation of Americans has worked to protect the values etched in that stone.
Franklin Roosevelt built on these ideas when he delivered his Four Freedoms speech in 1941. Now, at the time, Americans faced a cavalcade of crises and a crisis of confidence. But the vision of a world in which all people enjoyed freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear transcended the troubles of his day. And years later, one of my heroes, Eleanor Roosevelt, worked to have these principles adopted as a cornerstone of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They have provided a lodestar to every succeeding generation, guiding us, galvanizing us, and enabling us to move forward in the face of uncertainty.
So as technology hurtles forward, we must think back to that legacy. We need to synchronize our technological progress with our principles. In accepting the Nobel Prize, President Obama spoke about the need to build a world in which peace rests on the inherent rights and dignities of every individual. And in my speech on human rights at Georgetown a few days later, I talked about how we must find ways to make human rights a reality. Today, we find an urgent need to protect these freedoms on the digital frontiers of the 21st century.
There are many other networks in the world. Some aid in the movement of people or resources, and some facilitate exchanges between individuals with the same work or interests. But the internet is a network that magnifies the power and potential of all others. And that's why we believe it's critical that its users are assured certain basic freedoms. Freedom of expression is first among them. This freedom is no longer defined solely by whether citizens can go into the town square and criticize their government without fear of retribution. Blogs, emails, social networks, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas, and created new targets for censorship.
As I speak to you today, government censors somewhere are working furiously to erase my words from the records of history. But history itself has already condemned these tactics. Two months ago, I was in Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. The leaders gathered at that ceremony paid tribute to the courageous men and women on the far side of that barrier who made the case against oppression by circulating small pamphlets called samizdat. Now, these leaflets questioned the claims and intentions of dictatorships in the Eastern Bloc and many people paid dearly for distributing them. But their words helped pierce the concrete and concertina wire of the Iron Curtain.
There was a reason why Hillary voted no on retroactive immunity for telecomms in the FISA legislation. It wasn't to make Obama look bad. He did that all on his own. No, she wanted to protect our privacy so that we could call our president on his boneheaded moves without fear of retribution.
The full text of the speech and a video of the event is available at 21st Century Statecraft at State.gov.
Democrats who fear yesterday's Supreme Court Ruling on corporate campaign donations should get crackin'. The internet provides a wealth of low cost or free methods of spreading the word, like blogtalkradio, blogging, facebook. Some candidates have made use of these tools but online media is still in its infancy and has the potential to reach a lot of people who might otherwise get their information from TV. If you'd thrown your weight behind Hillary, you'd have a friend in the WH right now who would help you protect your precious access. Looks like you'll have to do this on your own now. Get to work!
Filed under: General | Tagged: FDR, Four Freedoms, Hillary Clinton, Internet Freedom |	62 Comments »
It's Time to Downsize the US
Posted on August 23, 2009 by Mapleblood
In difficult circumstances, such as the current economic crisis, it's normal to work out how one got there as a means to avoid repeating the process. In the current situation, the discussion seems to range between those who feel that the situation is already working itself out, to those who feel that structural dangers remain and proper regulation is required, to those who feel that the problems were the result of regulation and government programs in the first place.
Count me somewhat on the side of the last group. I say somewhat because I think that the problem has to with the inappropriateness of the regulations that were employed, but unlike them I do not think that the problem is humans using morals and reason to regulate the marketplace. In other, more localized, words, I reject the notion that the Tenth Amendment prohibits spending programs and regulations.
My sense is that the regulations that were deployed to prevent economic disaster were structurally and functionally inadequate because they half-heartedly represented the Great American Project as manifest in the Constitution of the United States. The problem with the regulations wasn't that they were half-hearted. That half-heartedness is symptom of the larger problem. They were structurally and functionally inadequate because the US can no longer afford to provide its citizens the rights and freedoms guaranteed in its Constitution. The regulations failed because they had a relationship to expectations that are suited to an America that does not exist, in an economic sense. The problems with the public education system, illegal immigration, crime and punishment, and social security, to name a few, are all relatively easy to solve, once the very costly, burdensomeness of the Constitution is overcome. It's time for America to wake up and downsize its' dream, the dreams of its citizens, and smell the aroma of the box store, bulk size, generic coffee reality that its best and its brightest have packaged for Uncle Sam's future.
Downsizing America
Given the economic realities of the new US of A, what aspects of the American vision should no longer be seen as part of the covenant between the citizens and their government? A quick look at some fundamentals of democracy should provide some context about what avenues should be open to being cut. Then the process of contracting out the bureaucratics to the private sector can begin. This said, these are preliminary thoughts, so all that I will provide is a rough and general sketch.
Democracy is expensive and inefficient, even when it's practised by politicians who are not neo-conservative Republicans. This is unsurprising by design. After all, it's said that, in an ideal democracy, the populace is educated, they have access to all of the information they need to make a good decision, and they are free to make that decision. How does this ideal fare when it faces the real world?
Immediately, one is struck by the gross redundancy in the ideal system. Providing that much information to so many amounts to an excessive effort for minuscule return. The set of possible decisions for any question is extremely limited, given the options for action, and polling research has already proven that we only need small sample populations to get the gist of what people want. In fact, given the history of their wants, and given the nature of the question, there is probably no need to poll them further because it should be derivable from past decisions. The cost savings to be gained by dismantling the information network should be substantial. Mainstream media can remain as is.
The efficacy of sampling also suggests a direction for schooling provision. Once again, the system is entirely redundant. Imagine, though it's a laughable thought, that a university degree was all the education one needed to be capable of making good decisions. What do you think it would cost to bring the 71% of Americans who do not have a degree, into the range of democratic competence? How could it possibly be worth the cost? In fact, apart from the decreasing number of specialty jobs that actually require a well-schooled employee, there is no good reason to maintain anything, but a shell of the existing system, apart from creating athletes for the circus part of social diversion. This is because we can use the same polling methodology and randomly choose children from the masses to receive schooling similar to the one that is provided today, and then poll them to find what the rest would have wanted, if they had the schooling.
Given the earlier recommendation of using past polling to extrapolate their wants, this process is admittedly redundant, but it does double duty in terms of providing training for the small percentage of jobs that actually require advanced schooling. Then again, perhaps it is wasteful to randomly select children, as this disregards the advantages of choosing children who are more likely to do well at university, based on their family background. Given past polling, it's probably best to err on the side of efficiency. The point to take here is that there is no value in giving people more schooling than they need to do the small range of relatively unskilled jobs that await them. Furthermore, think of the dissatisfaction that is avoided when people don't have enough education to be hired below their level of training.
If the vast majority of people are no longer making decisions, then there's no reason to prop up the facade that they actually are involved in decision-making. If voter turnout is any indication, many will appreciate avoiding the exercise. To be fair, eternal vigilance is an unwieldy burden to bear, if the only benefits people accrue is to not have decisions made for them by their betters.
In fact, if they are not needed for decision-making, their representatives are redundant for the same structural reasons. The cash to be gained, by trading in the clunker of a public decision-making structure, should be sigificant.
All of these actions would save the economy trillions and once again put America front and center as an economic powerhouse, through the tax dollars it would free up and save. At the same time, it would give Americans a leg up on the rest of the developed/undeveloping world, by readying its citizens for a life of diminished possibilities long before the others face the challenge, should they.
The Constitution is in the way of progress in the US, to the extent it promotes the values of the ideal democracy. Perhaps it was prescient to send home Churchhill's bust because his notion that "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.", seems to have gone bust for America.
This is "a frayed thread" in honor of GW's administration crying wolf at election time.
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Filed under: Democracy as a form of liberal goverment, Economy, education, General, going forward, government, Human Rights, Justice, Politics | Tagged: 10th Amendment, activism, Alexander Hamilton, Bachmann, Barack Obama, Beck, DeMint, downsize, education, FDR, James Madison, limited government, Perry, Politics, re-structuring, recession, The New Deal, U.S. Constitution, Washington, White House |	4 Comments »
The Culture of Cannibalism in US Politics: The Cycle of Corruption
Mark Twain, in "Cannibalism in the Cars," suggested that cannibalism of the body politic is a logical outcome of the practice of the political values of the elected representatives of the United States, in dire circumstances. What would occur, if such dire circumstances did not require a natural disaster, but became a systemic feature of the political landscape?
The current economic crisis and America's abject failure to provide economically-efficient, affordable healthcare are two examples of dire circumstances that are systemic features of America's political landscape. Both crises are the results of bad governance. Both circumstances are direct products of the growth of influence of en-corporated political interests (encorps) in the system of governance of the United States. Bad governance, in both cases, involves a betrayal of the public trust that is manifested in not regulating the encorps in a way that protects the public's interests, especially with respect to not meaningfully regulating the encorps ability to influence government officials.
The United States was born wary of the power of vested interests to influence public policy. Alexander Hamilton's comments in the Federalist Papers are an example of this concern. .
In republics, persons elevated from the mass of the community, by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, to stations of great pre-eminence and power, may find compensations for betraying their trust, which, to any but minds animated and guided by superior virtue, may appear to exceed the proportion of interest they have in the common stock, and to overbalance the obligations of duty.
Unfortunately, keeping the vested interests out is not a simple matter. How can it be when parties themselves are collective expressions of a set of weighted interests? Frankly, it is sensible for people of like purpose to strive together to achieve their aims, and there is nothing necessarily insidious about the practise. In fact, it's a cornerstone of Democracy and civil society.
It is also, however, the entry way for corruption because the crux of the matter is not that people have differing and competing interests: it's that they differ so greatly in terms of their power to realize those interests. When the power to realize those interests is used to unjustly deny the interests of less powerful, but equally or more deserving citizens, through a donation that is traded for a piece of unjust legislation, then it can be said that a positive feedback loop of corruption has been initiated.
The overly simple analysis that follows attempts to describe the basic workings of this system.
Filed under: Bad Bank, Barack Obama, broken promises, corruption, Democracy as a form of liberal goverment, DNC, Economy, financial bailout, Financial Meltdown of 2008, General, Health Care Reform, Joe Biden, Politics, Republican Ticket, Single Payer, Wall Street and the Bonus Class | Tagged: Democratic Party, Dick Cheney, FDR, Haliburton, Health Care Reform, influence peddling, Joe Biden, MBNA, phRMA, political corruption, President Bush, President Obama, presidential waiver for lobbyists, Republican Party, the culture of cannibalism in US politics, third party, Wall Street bonuses |	54 Comments »
Wednesday: With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?
Posted on May 13, 2009 by riverdaughter
Franklin D. signs Social Security into law
Short post this am, I'm off to another TC.
Social Security "reform" is back in the news. We always knew that Medicare needed a major overhaul but Social Security was supposed to be safe- as long as the economy kept growing. Ah, there's the rub. During recessions, economies do not grow. Now, in the past, recessions weren't very long lasting and things righted themselves soon enough. But *this* recession is different. In this recession, we have given away the store to the bankers, literally, and have them hobbling along on their zombie bandaged feet, arms outstretched to consume whatever's left. In spite of all the money we've dumped on them, they are still wildly undercapitalized. And they're going to hold onto their toxic assets while they gamble for ressurection with the money we gave them. In other words, the recession is going to be long, painful and Japanese. There are going to be a lot of people out of work, for longer periods of time and contributions to the social security trust fund are going to diminish proportionally.
We could have shortened the pain but we have Obama and he and his droogs at Treasury are determined to save the bankers from the endangered species list at the expense of the rest of us. Reform, if it comes at all, will be too little, too late. So, here we are, looking a reduced Social Security trust fund, a much smaller piece of the pie that we will have to divide amongst ourselves. And there will be many more people who will be relying on it this time, thanks to the bankers and stock brokers who gambled away our retirement money.
Judging from my mom's reaction to the perceived fate of Social Security, I wouldn't expect any help from the older generation. They got theirs, they pity you but not enough to want to help you at their own expense. Expect the administration to "divide and conquer". There will be some age cutoff where you will be sitting pretty to receive what you put into the system. People like yours truly will miss that cutoff, just like everything else people my age missed like income averaging and car loan deductions on our income taxes and generous Pell grants. We will be expected to provide for ourselves using the markets for returns, which will be extremely risky and will undoubtably be accompanied by generous fees for the money managers.
Filed under: Economy | Tagged: FDR, recession, Social Security |	42 Comments »
For Democratic Reform- FDR
Posted on September 27, 2008 by riverdaughter
Some of you may be asking what you can do now that the party has abandoned its principles and the public. It isn't enough to withhold your vote for Obama. What can YOU do to make the party better?
Well, we are working on that. A number of Clinton bloggers and organizers have begun to coalesce and form an initiative to reform the party and take it back. We are calling our initiative For Democratic Reform or FDR. (It's intentional)
We are in the process of forming an inrastructure, formalizing our political philosophy and goals and developing content for our new site. That's the hard part and we are committed to it. The easy part is the website through which we will start to communicate with the public and others who would like to help us to achieve our goals.
Have a sneak peek at our Website: For Democratic Reform- FDR.
This is the start of something *good*!
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: FDR, For Democratic Reform |	47 Comments »
Monday: You say you want a Revolution
The maddening thing about Florida and Michigan is that the DNC has been sitting on these two states all primary season, deliberately withholding their critical mass so that Barack Obama's delegate count looks inflated. All season long, it has appeared that he was ahead. This was by design. It gave his campaign the advantage of looking like an unstoppable force of nature and his supporters a million different ways of talking about the math, not the map.
But it *is* the MAP, not the math that counts here. Because without that critical mass of Florida and Michigan, every other vote from a state that went for Clinton doesn't count. The DNC lowered the bar for the anti-Clinton candidate from 2210 delegates to 2025 by sitting on Florida and Michigan. It's not just that Florida and Michigan have been disenfranchised, it's ALL of the Clinton states including CA, NY, NJ, AZ, OH, TX, PA, IN, MA, NH, AR, NM, WV, TN, etc, etc. If you live in one of those states that went decisively for Clinton, your vote was just as much hostage as a vote in Florida and Michigan. It's just one more insult to voters in a party where the primary process is more important than the people and where gaming the system leads to a predetermined outcome.
It's one thing to get mad. But what can you do about it, you ask? What can one person do to make her vote count? Demand that Florida and Michigan be seated as is. The time for revotes has come and gone and Obama obstructed them anyway in order to maintain the perception of an insurmountable lead. He has forfeited any reasonable argument for less than full recognition. The voters of Florida and Michigan are innocent victims in all of the political shenanigans and so are we. See the links below to do what you can to bring Florida to a resolution or start a Revolution.
You wanna do even more? FDR has a rally…
Alright!!!
One other thing: Some of you are getting a little PO'd about Obama's use of the past tense when it comes to Hillary. How many times do we need to go over this? They are playing mind games, people. Even if he does stupidly go in front of the cameras tomorrow night and crown himself king, he has to wait out the next three months because nothing is official until the balloons drop in Denver. In the meantime, he's going to be sweating bullets because *we* have something the DNC desperately wants. And they are not going to get it by continuing their bad behavior. We all have choices. You have a lot more power than you think. Now, turn off the news, re-register as an unaffiliated voter, send your old torn up registration card to Howard and Donna and send Hillary a ten spot. Don't make me come over there. :-||
Filed under: General, Presidential Election 2008 | Tagged: Count Our Votes Rally, FDR, Revolution |	173 Comments »


This is horrible. Straight girls should only kiss lesbians – not other straight girls!
#63: Put an obvious link to your RSS feed on your blog. I like this blog, but as a young person: if it's not in google reader it doesn't exist. I'll never see it again.