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Debt Rattle October 7 2020
October 7, 2020 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, China, CIA, declassification, FBI, FOIA, food banks, Gina Haspel, Hillary, Russia, Trump
Leonardo da Vinci Head of a Woman 1475-80
• President Trump Reauthorizes Declassification of all Documents (sundance)
• There are Trillions at Stake (sundance)
• Declassified CIA Docs Show Alleged Clinton Plan To Link Trump To Russia (DC)
• Spy Chief Releases Docs On Claim Hillary Clinton Cooked Up Russia Scandal (NYP)
• CIA Director Gina Haspel and the British Role in the Anti-Trump Plot (Farrell)
• Grand Jury Indicts St. Louis Couple Who Defended Home Amid Demonstrations (JTN)
• Jay Powell Wants More Help From Congress: Low Risk Of 'Overdoing It' (CNBC)
• Unfavorable Views of China Reach Historic Highs in Many Countries (Pew)
• Court To Rule On UK Freedom Of Information Bids From Overseas (G.)
• The Unprecedented And Illegal Campaign To Eliminate Julian Assange (Glass)
• Top US Food Bank Warns Of Nationwide "Meal Shortages" In Next 12 Months (ZH)
• Media Criticizes Trump For Downplaying Virus Threat By Not Dying (BBee)
Trump disavows
Trump declassification
I have fully authorized the total Declassification of any & all documents pertaining to the single greatest political CRIME in American History, the Russia Hoax. Likewise, the Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. No redactions! https://t.co/GgnHh9GOiq
Lawyer "sundance" explains that we've been here before, and nothing happened. We're still where we were in May 2019.
Interesting that he includes Julian Assange. I did say a few weeks ago that Assange may need the right-wing press. And they need him.
President Donald Trump has transmitted an epic tweet-storm seemingly targeted toward all officials within the executive branch; and the intelligence apparatus writ large:
One important note of caution: there is a big difference between "authorized" and "ordered". On May 23rd, 2019, President Trump authorized AG Bill Barr to declassify all documents and despite much optimism nothing happened {Go DEEP}. However, President Trump references that lack of inaction in the next series of tweets:
Presumably "people" who "acted very slowly" would pertain to AG Bill Barr, FBI Director Chris Wray, CIA Director Gina Haspel, State Dept Secretary Mike Pompeo and former ODNI Dan Coats. President Trump asks those agencies now to "Act!!!" President Trump also expressed the same frustration many of us feel about how these agencies and institutions have operated only to protect their own interests. He even re-tweeted the meme of Bill Barr to drive home the point. [..] Whether anything comes of this latest, seemingly stronger, emphasis and request from President trump is an unknown. However, again, this is an authorization for release of documents and not a direct order.
There are likely legal reasons for this approach, and no doubt there are advisors around the office of the president who would want him to take a more cautious approach. Several people are pointing toward an announcement of a press conference by the DOJ tomorrow and attempting to connect the tweet-storm to the presser. However, my gut tells me they are two distinctly different topics; but we can keep our fingers crossed. We will know if the two events are connected less than 12 hours from now. Interestingly, albeit likely unrelated, the specific participants in the presser hold offices that are directly connected to the previous 2019 indictment of Julian Assange.
Also "sundance", with an excellent review of how Washington operates.
With 30-days left before the election perhaps it's worthwhile remembering what all of this opposition is about… Something 99% of American voters do not quite understand. Congress doesn't actually write legislation. The last item of legislation written by congress was sometime around the mid 1990's. Modern legislation is sub-contracted to a segment of DC operations known as K-Street. That's where the lobbyists reside. Lobbyists write the laws; congress sells the laws; lobbyists then pay congress lucrative commissions for passing their laws. That's the modern legislative business in DC. When we talk about paying-off politicians in third-world countries we call it bribery. However, when we undertake the same process in the U.S. we call it "lobbying".
CTH often describes the system with the phrase: "There are Trillions at Stake." The process of creating legislation is behind that phrase. DC politics is not quite based on the ideas that frame most voter's reference points. With people taking notice of DC politics for the first time; and with people not as familiar with the purpose of DC politics; perhaps it is valuable to provide clarity. Most people think when they vote for a federal politician -a House or Senate representative- they are voting for a person who will go to Washington DC and write or enact legislation. This is the old-fashioned "schoolhouse rock" perspective based on decades past. There is not a single person in congress writing legislation or laws.
In modern politics not a single member of the House of Representatives or Senator writes a law, or puts pen to paper to write out a legislative construct. This simply doesn't happen. Over the past several decades a system of constructing legislation has taken over Washington DC that more resembles a business operation than a legislative body. Outside groups, often called "special interest groups", are entities that represent their interests in legislative constructs. These groups are often representing foreign governments, Wall Street multinational corporations, banks, financial groups or businesses; or smaller groups of people with a similar connection who come together and form a larger group under an umbrella of interest specific to their affiliation.
Sometimes the groups are social interest groups; activists, climate groups, environmental interests etc. The social interest groups are usually non-profit constructs who depend on the expenditures of government to sustain their cause or need. The for-profit groups (mostly business) have a purpose in Washington DC to shape policy, legislation and laws favorable to their interests. They have fully staffed offices just like any business would – only their 'business' is getting legislation for their unique interests. These groups are filled with highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs. In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress. Within the walls of these buildings within Washington DC is where the 'sausage' is actually made. Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process.
I've read many comments on the declassification, and I find all the references to Russia disconcerting. Why not leave Russia out, and then look at what happened? Russia is not the story.
Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified portions of two documents that show the CIA picked up intelligence regarding Hillary Clinton's alleged approval of a campaign to link Donald Trump to Russia's hacking efforts. Ratcliffe declassified notes taken in 2016 by then-CIA Director John Brennan during a meeting with President Obama and his national security advisers regarding Russia's election meddling efforts. The intelligence chief also declassified sections of a Counterintelligence Operation Lead (CIOL) memo that the CIA sent on Sept. 7, 2016 to then-FBI Director James Comey and Peter Strzok, the top counterintelligence investigator on Crossfire Hurricane. "Per FBI verbal request, CIA provided the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date," reads an unredacted portion of the CIOL.
The memo referred to information related to "US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server." Brennan has testified that he created a so-called "fusion cell" in July 2016 that consisted of officials from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency to investigate Russia's election interference. The CIA documents, obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation, were cited last week in a letter that Ratcliffe sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham. That letter said that U.S. intelligence "gained insight" in late July 2016 into "Russian intelligence analysis" that asserted that Clinton had approved a plan to link Trump to Russia's hacking efforts in order to distract from her use of a private email server.
The documents released Tuesday do not provide much clarification about the underlying CIA intelligence. They do confirm that the CIA obtained the intelligence Ratcliffe referred to in his letter. Republicans asserted that the documents raise questions about whether Clinton personally approved the dissemination of a false allegation linking Trump to Russia. Clinton campaign advisers publicly accused Donald Trump of aiding Russia's hacking efforts following the July 22, 2016 release of DNC emails through WikiLeaks. A report from the special counsel's office released last year said there was no evidence that Trump or members of his campaign conspired with Russia to hack and release Democrats' emails. According to Brennan's undated notes, he told President Obama that the intelligence community had picked up evidence that Russians had learned that Clinton personally approved a plan on July 28, 2016 to link Trump to Russia's hacking of the Democrat National Committee.
Brennan's notes refer to intelligence related to Clinton's approval "of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services." Brennan appeared on CNN shortly after Ratcliffe declassified the documents, but denied that they showed any wrongdoing on Clinton's part. He said during the briefing for Obama, he provided examples of "the type of access that the U.S. intelligence community to Russian information and what the Russians were talking about and alleging." "If in fact what the Russians were alleging, that Hillary was trying to highlight the reported connections between Trump and the Russians — and that's a big 'if' — there is nothing at all illegal about that."
The docs do seem to move us forward at least a bit.
National Intelligence Director John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified documents that claim Hillary Clinton ordered "a campaign plan to stir up a scandal" by linking President Trump to Russia in 2016 — and that then-President Barack Obama knew about her possible role. Ratcliffe provided to Fox News an undated set of notes from then-CIA director John Brennan about a briefing for Obama that touched on the allegation, and an investigative referral from the CIA to the FBI describing the claim. "Today, at the direction of President Trump, I declassified additional documents relevant to ongoing Congressional oversight and investigative activities," Ratcliffe told Fox News Tuesday.
Most of the unredacted content in the documents was released by Ratcliffe last week, though minor new details cast doubt on former FBI Director James Comey's declaration last week that he could not recall the claim, which Clinton allies deny as baseless potential Russian disinformation. The newly released notes from Brennan, who now is a fiery anti-Trump commentator, indicate that Brennan briefed Obama on "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 28 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services." Ratcliffe's initial disclosure said that, according to Brennan's notes, Clinton allegedly approved the scheme on July 26.
The minor inaccuracy shortens the window of time between Clinton's alleged approval of the plot and the FBI opening its investigation of possible Trump-Russia collusion on July 31, 2016. A previously undisclosed annotation in Brennan's notes appears to attribute to Obama an interest in "any evidence of collaboration between Trump campaign + Russia." The initials "JC" also are on the briefing notes, implying that that then-FBI Director James Comey attended the meeting where Brennan discussed the theory with Obama.
[..] The investigative referral from the CIA to the FBI, meanwhile, contains the previously disclosed passage noting an allegation about "Clinton's approval of a plan concerning US Presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server." The actual referral is mostly redacted, but additionally states that the document was sent "per FBI verbal request." It was addressed to Comey, but to the attention of then-FBI Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, who notoriously traded anti-Trump text message on work phones with his mistress FBI lawyer Lisa Page. In his initial disclosure last week, Ratcliffe said the claim against Clinton was unproven and could be an "exaggeration or fabrication."
The same Gina Haspel is now apparently hampering efforts to declassify documents. Who foisted her on Trump? And what role did she play in the Assange case while she ran the CIA in London?
We have raised and discussed serious matters of fact and questions about the role of CIA Director Gina Haspel in the Anti-Trump conspiracy. It appears Haspel (while serving as London Chief of Station from 2014 to early 2017) was an active, knowledgeable party to the efforts to target candidate Trump with an FBI-instigated foreign counterintelligence operation. That seditious conspiracy carried forward to a more sophisticated and aggressive plan to carry out a soft coup against President Donald J. Trump. Looking back on news reporting concerning Haspel, we turn (with caution) to a Washington Post article from July 2019 by Shane Harris, titled: "The quiet director: How Gina Haspel manages the CIA's volatile relationship with Trump".
We are supposed to believe that Haspel and her office did not cooperate with the reporter for the article. Harris disclaims Haspel involvement by writing: "This report is based on interviews with 26 current and former officials who have worked with Haspel in the United States, particularly when she served in senior management roles at headquarters, and in London, where Haspel served two tours as the CIA's top representative — chief of station — a plum post that is usually the steppingstone to the agency's highest ranks." No Washington Post article in the last decade has contained such a scrupulous sourcing statement. Of course, Haspel had nothing to do with the article. Remember that, won't you?
Haspel, twice-over Chief of Station in London, had close connections with the British intelligence and security services. Given the nature of the "special relationship" between the two countries, that is hardly surprising. Harris's interviews of British intelligence officers take things a step further, however: "… what she lacked in after-hours sociability she made up for with deep professional ties to the upper echelon of the British security establishment. 'She had access to anyone in our service,' the former British intelligence official said." Harris goes on to explain: "Haspel has become the CIA's linchpin to the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, its most important foreign partner. Her British colleagues say that she knows them so well — warts and all — that they call her the 'honorary U.K. desk officer.'"
In the next paragraph, Harris notes breathlessly: "… Trump has accused the United Kingdom of conspiring with American intelligence to spy on his presidential campaign." President Trump certainly has made that claim, and one believes for very good reasons that seem to compound weekly. Reasons that make the "intelligence community" and 95% of "official Washington" extremely nervous. It is the sort of statement that presidential aides and counsels look nervous about, wring their hands and respectfully, earnestly plead: "But Mr. President, you just can't say that sort of thing!" Truth be damned.
Hard to see how this is not political.
St. Louis couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey, have been indicted by a Grand Jury seated by St. Louis Circuit Prosecutor Kim Gardner's office, in connection with them defending their home this summer amid Black Lives Matter protests. Al Watkins, an attorney for the couple, confirmed to the Associated Press the indictments against Mark McCloskey, 63, and Patricia McCloskey, 61. Joel Schwartz, a McCloskey attorney, told Just the News on Tuesday night that the indictment is called a "suppressed" indictment and that he's unaware of what it states. "I am told by sources that this is a suppressed indictment, which makes no sense to me. We had a hearing this morning in court. The hearing was cancelled. Then I was contacted by sources, who learned my clients were indicted. I reached out to the Circuit Attorney's office. I have yet to received a response," said Joel Schwartz to Just the News.
Schwartz represents the couple in the criminal case, and Watkins represents the couple in a related civil case. Gardner, a Democrat, charged the McCloskeys with "flourishing" a weapon in connection with the June 28 incident in which social justice protesters entered the couple's private, gated community during a demonstration and marched past their home. The McCloskeys have said they each went outside with a gun because they feared for the safety of themselves and their home. Missouri GOP Gov. Mike Parson said in July that he was prepared to exercise his pardon powers if prosecutors bring criminal charges in the case. As previously reported by Just the News, Gardner's campaigns have received tens of thousands of dollars from a political action committee financed by billionaire political philanthropist George Soros.
He's going to bankrupt untold numbers of Americans.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called Tuesday for continued aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus for an economic recovery that he said still has "a long way to go." Noting progress made in job creation, goods consumption and business formation, among other areas, Powell said that now would be the wrong time for policymakers to take their foot off the gas. Doing so, he said, could "lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship for households and businesses" and thwart a rebound that thus far has progressed more quickly than expected. "By contrast, the risks of overdoing it seem, for now, to be smaller," Powell added in remarks to the National Association for Business Economics.
"Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste. The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods." The remarks come amid conflicting signs for an economy trying to shake off the unprecedented impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. While 11.4 million jobs lost during the associated economic shutdown have been recovered, nearly half of displaced workers remain sidelined. GDP is expected to show a sharp rebound from the 31% second-quarter plunge and housing has been a strong point as well.
However, Powell cautioned that backing off now with fiscal and monetary help runs the risk of losing momentum and bringing about an added downturn that would look not like the government-induced one that began in February, but rather a more traditional downturn that would be harder to recover from and worsen the U.S. wealth gap. That would be one where "weakness feeds on weakness," he said. "The recovery will be stronger and move faster if monetary policy and fiscal policy continue to work side by side to provide support to the economy until it is clearly out of the woods," Powell added.
Don't worry, they hate Trump more.
Views of China have grown more negative in recent years across many advanced economies, and unfavorable opinion has soared over the past year, a new 14-country Pew Research Center survey shows. Today, a majority in each of the surveyed countries has an unfavorable opinion of China. And in Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United States, South Korea, Spain and Canada, negative views have reached their highest points since the Center began polling on this topic more than a decade ago. Negative views of China increased most in Australia, where 81% now say see the country unfavorably, up 24 percentage points since last year. In the UK, around three-quarters now see the country in a negative light – up 19 points.
And, in the U.S., negative views of China have increased nearly 20 percentage points since President Donald Trump took office, rising 13 points since just last year. The rise in unfavorable views comes amid widespread criticism over how China has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Across the 14 nations surveyed, a median of 61% say China has done a bad job dealing with the outbreak. This is many more than say the same of the way the COVID-19 pandemic was handled by their own country or by international organizations like the World Health Organization or the European Union. Only the U.S. receives more negative evaluations from the surveyed publics, with a median of 84% saying the U.S. has handled the coronavirus outbreak poorly.
"5 year search for the truth by @SMaurizi continually blocked by UK/US govt."
Hard to swallow the irony of the Guardian printing this.
The rights of those living abroad to submit freedom of information requests are to be tested in court after more than a dozen cases – including one relating to Julian Assange's extradition – were blocked. A combined hearing involving the Home Office, Metropolitan police, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) and 13 separate cases is to be held at an information tribunal in London. At issue is whether applicants overseas are entitled to a response when submitting freedom of information requests to UK government departments and agencies. It is not clear who triggered the "stay" imposed on the 13 requests. The ICO has declined to comment. No date has been set for the case.
The Cabinet Office, which has responsibility for FOI policy, says it complies with ICO guidance, which states: "Anyone can make a freedom of information request – they do not have to be UK citizens, or resident in the UK." The tribunal, however, has told parties in the suspended cases that it has "decided to deal with the territorial scope" of the Freedom of Information Act 2000. All of the stayed FOI requests are from applicants not resident in Britain. The hearing will also examine whether there is a requirement that those who make FOI requests have a connection to the UK. "The main principle behind freedom of information legislation," the ICO has said, "is that people have a right to know about the activities of public authorities, unless there is a good reason for them not to."
One of the blocked cases is an appeal by the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who works for daily newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano and writes about WikiLeaks. She has been pursuing information about how the Crown Prosecution Service dealt with its Swedish counterpart during initial attempts to extradite Assange to Sweden. Her work has been covered by the Guardian. Maurizi has also studied at Imperial College in London. Barristers Jennifer Robinson, who represents Assange, and Estelle Dehon, who specialises in freedom of information, are representing Maurizi. They have asked the tribunal to lift the stay and allow their appeals for the release of further information to proceed. They argue that Maurizi has worked on UK publications and has carried out investigations relating to the UK and UK citizens. She has also taken several other cases to information tribunal hearings.
Let's declassify the docs behind this.
Over the 17 days of Julian Assange's extradition hearing in London, prosecutors succeeded in proving both crimes and conspiracy. The culprit, however, was not Assange. Instead, the lawbreakers and conspirators turned out to be the British and American governments. Witness after witness detailed illegal measures to violate Assange's right to a fair trial, destroy his health, assassinate his character, and imprison him in solitary confinement for the rest of his life. Courtroom evidence exposed illegality on an unprecedented scale by America's and Britain's intelligence, military, police, and judicial agencies to eliminate Assange. The governments had the edge, like the white man of whom Malcolm X wrote, "He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck."
The deck was clearly stacked. Assange's antagonists were marking the cards as early as February 2008, when the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center set out, in its words, to "damage or destroy this center of gravity" that was WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks, from the time Assange and his friends created it in 2006, was attracting sources around the world to entrust them, securely and anonymously, with documents exposing state crimes. The audience for the documents was not a foreign intelligence service, but the public. In the governments' view, the public needed protection from knowledge of what they were doing behind closed doors and in the skies of Afghanistan and Iraq. To plug the leaks, the governments had to stop Assange. The Pentagon, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the State Department soon followed the Counterintelligence Center's lead by establishing their own anti-Assange task forces and enlisting the aid of Britain, Sweden, and Ecuador.
What a ride it's been. The first recorded "black op" against Assange occurred on September 27, 2010, when a suitcase containing three laptops, hard drives, and clothing vanished from the aircraft carrying him from Sweden to Germany. Efforts to retrieve his belongings, which included privileged communications with his legal counsel, elicited vague excuses from the airline that it knew nothing. The fate of the purloined items became public knowledge in 2013 when information from his laptops appeared in prosecution briefs against U.S. Army whistleblower Chelsea Manning. In 2011, FBI agents went to Iceland to employ an 18-year-old informant, Sigurdur "Siggi" Thordarson, to spy on WikiLeaks. When Iceland's authorities discovered the FBI's illegal activities, it deported the FBI agents. Thodarson, whom the FBI had paid $5,000 and flown around the world, later confessed to stealing money from WikiLeaks and was convicted for sexually abusing underage boys.
Tulsi for Julian
Tulsi Gabbard calls on the US government to drop all charges against Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who both acted in the public interest by exposing illegal US mass surveillance, lies, corruption and war crimes. pic.twitter.com/nlPokD4iVd
— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) October 6, 2020
And not just in the US.
The virus pandemic and resulting recession, crushing millions of households, has produced a new era of hunger nationwide. After seven months of the coronavirus chaos, triggering widespread unemployment and the collapse of small businesses, millions of Americans are going hungry for the first time in their lives ahead of the holiday season. Tens of millions of Americans have turned to their local food banks as food insecurity spirals out of control. According to the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey from late August, about 10% of adults, 22.3 million, reported they didn't have enough to eat or lacked food. This figure is up from 18 million in early March.
Now, Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, serving more than 46 million people, is warning it may experience a massive food shortage within the next twelve months, reported WaPo. Feeding America said it could face a deficit of "10 billion pound shortfall between now and June of 2021 – the equivalent of 8 billion meals." In July, the nonprofit organization "estimated the total need for charitable food over the next year would be an unprecedented 17 billion pounds, more than three times the food bank network's last annual distribution of 5 billion pounds."
Rising food insecurity comes as the economy faces a tidal wave of long-term unemployment as millions of people who lost jobs early in the pandemic and remain out of work, unable to find a job, as job losses increasingly become permanent. At the moment, nearly 4 million jobs have vanished forever. Two problems are developed: rising long-term unemployment and permanent job losses, the combination of the two create deep economic scarring and immense financial pain for households. The Salvation Army recently launched its annual holiday fundraising campaign early this year, for the first time in 130 years, in a bid to "rescue Christmas" to support those households financially ruined by the economic downturn.
Brilliant Babylon Bee.
President Donald Trump is once again under fire from the media for recklessly downplaying the danger of COVID by refusing to die. As the president begins to show signs of recovery, many worry that this sends the wrong message about the seriousness of the global pandemic. "Every hour that he lives is another hour that the severity of this virus is undermined!" said reporter Sara Grace Major for CNN. "Why won't he just DIE and show the American people how deadly this virus truly is?" "Mr. President, are you sure you don't need to lie down indefinitely or go on a ventilator?" asked another distraught journalist. "Maybe even say goodbye to your loved ones?!"
"Honestly, I feel terrific. Tremendous, really. I was never afraid of this virus before, but now I am even more not afraid. It's sad, really. I was told this virus would be one tough cookie," Trump said to the press. "In fact, I've never felt better." "His defiance is going to get people killed. Dying like he's supposed to would be the most patriotic thing he could do," complained CNN correspondent Adam Pelot. "If he lives, how will the people be able to trust science?" At publishing time, members of the press had begun pulling their own hair out as they watched the "incredibly strong and healthy" president go for a jog around the White House grounds.
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Home › Forums › Debt Rattle October 7 2020
This topic contains 22 replies, has 10 voices, and was last updated by sumac.carol 3 months, 2 weeks ago.
October 7, 2020 at 9:14 am #64177
Leonardo da Vinci Head of a Woman 1475-80 • President Trump Reauthorizes Declassification of all Documents (sundance) • There are Trillions at
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle October 7 2020]
October 7, 2020 at 11:14 am #64179
Michael Reid
Experts with integrity explain why and how the health policy implemented in the western world is incorrect
https://off-guardian.org/2020/10/06/another-10-experts-questioning-the-coronavirus-panic/
Apparently, the medical profession can cure a Covid-19 infection in an old person with multiple comorbidities in just a few days if they really want to. The quarter million Americans dead from Covid-19 must be due to medical malpractice.
October 7, 2020 at 12:15 pm #64181
madamski
A headline this morning: "The only bright spot in Trump's Soviet-style COVID-19 strategy is that it's not working".
I just couldn't let that da Vinci go unremarked; sublime fits nicely, IMO…
October 7, 2020 at 1:00 pm #64183
Let me get this straight: Assange was travelling with 3 laptops and hard drives in a suitcase? And he gave this suitcase to the airline as if it was containing just clothes and chocolates? Not very smart IMO.
"It's easy to poke fun at Julian Assange. But there may be more to this than a pompous egotist whining for attention. My reading of the story is that the bag's disappearance was immediately noticed and reported. The air carrier's response: "We dunno." Assange could hardly go to the cops at the time and say, "I had a top-secret video supplied by Bradley Manning in that bag, could he? "
from comments Assange's Luggage
Assange may have felt that keeping it on his person may have seemed equally insecure or worse. It may even have been a red herring. We don't know. Or maybe he just wasn't thinking clearly that day. We all have days like that. Add justified paranoia, fear of the nastiest global gangsters on the planet…
how Washington operates.
"…. highly-paid lawyers who represent the interests of the entity and actually write laws and legislation briefs. In the modern era this is actually the origination of the laws that we eventually see passed by congress.
Again, no elected official is usually part of this law origination process."
No proof of wrong doing – Biden
"Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called Tuesday for continued aggressive fiscal and monetary stimulus"
Another way of saying, "Print more, and more."
Feeding America, a nationwide network of more than 200 food banks, serving more than 46 million people, is warning it may experience a massive food shortage within the next twelve months
and ….. that is the conclusion when looking at your belly button. (In other words, "Don't look over the wall, You might see starving bodies lying in the street")
Canada GDP and the printing press chart (+456%), demonstrate how the gov. saved the world.
Imagine, "What would businesses be like without all that money?"
(In other words, "Don't look over the wall, You might see frozen starving bodies lying in the igloos.")
Thanks for posting "The Early Treatment Of Trump" yesterday, Ilargi, and thanks for all of the engagement fellow-commentarians. I was busy at work again, so I saw it this morning.
"Auntie-Grandma" (not her real name) was still feeling fine last evening, more than 72 hours after the positive coronavirus test that ejected her from the surgical hospital, and about 36 hours after beginning treatment. Asymptomatic… so still at goal of "better than Trump".
I've been thinking about non-extractive economic arrangements again this morning…
Anything that will actually develop as alternative currency will need to stand on its own in the current financial arrangement.. A transition to Community Banking, as Ellen Brown advocates, with postal banks or city credit unions, would be a workable transition.
It is necessary to keep the wealth local. When money goes in and is taken out of a community, it is an extractive solvent. There is not actual "investment", just resource-extraction. That process is very far along in financial capitalism. All the productive systems are sickened by it, and many will soon collapse. Lending at interest, with all risks born by the borrower, is the imbalance that extracts. It extracts if the borrowing enterprise survives, and it extracts all of the assets if the borrowing enterprise fails, after it has been extracting wealth for a while already.
The alternative model is that of Islamic Finance. There needs to be a sharing of risk and benefit between lender and borrower, "skin in the game" for the lender. If the enterprise fails, the lender needs to also take losses, so the lender is inherently interested in the success of the enterprise of the borrower. To that end, there is not "lending at interest" as we know it, in Islamic Banking, but a sharing in costs and rewards of each enterprise. This is like buying stock in a company and getting quarterly dividends, the way stock-investing used to be. It is "Equity Investing".
The return of equity investing to western finance is the necessary first step. It will stop the transfer of wealth to the few elites, who do not manage it in the interests of the (narrowly or broadly defined) economy, or community or ecosystem.
At the point where the town is the banker, as the state is the banker in North Dakota, then real wisdom in investment can take place. The whole town has an interest in investments with local enterprise doing well, and doubly so. The community benefits by thriving and also by profiting-from-thriving. There is not extraction of life-blood to distant investors.
When a community bank or credit union is the commons, contributing to the community government coffers, then there can be local control and oversight. People will inherently want good investments to be made, and will be diligent in judging who is reliable to borrow, and who is not.
Money as a store of value is another category from money as currency. I think they have to be different in most cases, though everybody will accept gold as currency, always. Gold is a store of value, but it is dangerous to hold.
I don't see the necessity of creating local currencies, which has been done in history, as long as local banking, with equity investing prevents extraction of value from the local economy, and nurtures local enterprise, citizens, and economy.
There is the issue of taxes to fund higher levels of organization than the town or city. This is currently done by spending money which is created by bonded debt, then paid back at interest from tax collections. This is extractive of the local economy. It concentrates wealth in the hands of those who already have wealth to lend at interest.It is not necessary, of course. Both the Continental Congress and Abraham Lincoln printed money and spent it into circulation.The amount of money in circulation is generally controlled through spending it into the economy and taxing it out of the economy, whether there is a parasitic skim of wealth by financiers, or not. All benefits should remain with the commons, whether town, county, state or nation. All costs are inherently born by the commons, through economic linkages at the real-economy level.
A synthesis of Community Banking, Islamic (equity investing) finance and Modern Monetary Theory, which eliminates a parasitic class of financiers is something which is obtainable by modifying the current economic structure. It would be able to intelligently invest and diversify locally and at each higher stage of organization.
The essential factor is to avoid creating a class advantage, which would self-amplify over time, to control all wealth, which is what we now have.
Bill7
'As Boris Johnson announces Britain's 'great reset', were the Covid 'conspiracy theorists' right all along?':
Instead, Schwab and Malleret want a world changed forever by a virus which they admit is only 'mild' compared to others in history. Covid-19 is seen as the catalyst for the 'Fourth Industrial Revolution'.
As to where all this is heading, I recommend you read Schwab's 'Great Reset', and his earlier 'The Fourth Industrial Revolution', but please don't do so late at night, because they will probably give you nightmares. Schwab's elitist Davos-man utopia is a trans-human, socially distanced, utterly soulless dystopia for the rest of us. Think of the most terrifying sci-film you've ever watched and that still doesn't go anywhere near it. And the worst thing is that it is sold to us as some kind of 'progressive' vision.
Johnson, in his speech yesterday, showed he's a fully-signed up 'Great Resetter'. It was, for me, the most chilling oration ever made by any British prime minister at a party conference.
The man who justified a national lockdown in March on a purely temporary three-week basis to 'flatten the curve', and 'protect the NHS', and who said in the summer, after the lockdown had lasted three months, that he hoped Britain would return to 'significant normality' by November, now tells us: "We have been through too much frustration and hardship just to settle for the status quo ante – to think that life can go on as it was before the plague; and it will not… We are resolving not to go back to 2019.".."
Soo-prize, soo-prize, soo-prize..
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/502795-boris-johnson-uk-great-reset/
sumac.carol
500,00 sharks to be killed for covid vaccine.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8778565/Half-million-sharks-killed-effort-make-Covid-vaccine-wildlife-experts-say.html
Sharks killed unnecessarily according to Dr
Joseph Mercola.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2020/10/07/how-many-sharks-die-for-squalene.aspx
@ sumac.carol
We are The Tragic Species, n'est ce pas?
@ John Day
"All benefits should remain with the commons, whether town, county, state or nation."
Sadly, this is the social equivalent of 'and then a miracle occurs'.
https://www.desjardins.com/ca/about-us/desjardins/who-we-are/our-history-museum/timeline/index.jsp#tiroir-before-caisses
did you see this
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/collection/family-jewels
The Family Jewels
Widely known as the "Family Jewels," this document consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter. Also available in PDF format (this file is 28MB, so please be patient while it downloads).
Printer-friendly versionPrinter-friendly version
Documents in this Collection
Documents in PDF format require the Adobe Acrobat Reader®
Document Number: 0001451843
Attachment	Size
PDF icon DOC_0001451843.pdf	29.32 MB
Squalene adjuvant makes a rapid vaccine response, but creates autoimmune illness that kills some of the "beneficiaries", not just the sharks.
"Gulf War Syndrome" was most likely from the squalene adjuvant in the secret "Vac-A" anthrax vaccine. That's why you could get it without deploying to Iraq!
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2004/12/iraq200412
@ Gepetto
I'm sorry. I forgot to answer your squestion.
"I feel stupid and contagious" come from this song:
It just seemed to fit.
John Day -this is awful -they will potentially make people ill while killing so many sharks.
Oui Madamski, malheureusement.
Now I know TWO French words!
Sorry, that was the wrong link. This is the link to the right article about squalene adjuvants causing autoimmune disease, Gulf War Syndrome, as an example. We have squalene in our own bodies, in small amounts, in some cell membranes, for instance. When our immune systems are activated against squalene, it harms the cells in us that have it.
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1999/5/the-pentagons-toxic-secret
And we call vaccine-hesitant people crazy. What's crazier than all of this?
The Early Treatment of Trump Debt Rattle October 8 2020


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text:
Tim Britton
SEATTLE -- Will Middlebrooks left Sunday's 2-1 victory in the ninth inning with left hamstring tightness. Middlebrooks experienced the injury while stealing second base in the top of the inning. Mike Aviles replaced him in the field in the bottom of the ninth, with Nick Punto sliding over to third base.
The Red Sox aren't sure about the severity of the injury, with manager Bobby Valentine saying, "You don't really know with those things until the next day."
Middlebrooks declined comment until he knows more on Monday.
Middlebrooks dealt with leg issues back in early May, causing him to miss one game and leave another one in the second inning.
Aviles was himself a late scratch from the lineup, as he was feeling under the weather. With the Red Sox limited by a shallow bench, though, he was able to play defense for two innings at short. That, in turn, enabled Boston to pinch-hit Ryan Kalish for Brent Lillibridge in the 10th, jump-starting the team's game-winning rally.
If Middlebrooks has to miss a few days, it will further restrict a Red Sox team currently carrying only three bench players.
Twitter: @TBritton_Projo

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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text:
* At [http://archive.org/stream/9780262517638OpenAccess/9780262517638_Open_Access#page/n33/mode/2up p. 21], I say, "OA is not an attempt to reform, violate, or abolish copyright." Add these notes.
** I'm not denying the some OA proponents have recommended the reform, violation, or abolition of copyright law. Indeed, I recommend the reform of copyright myself; see my updates to an adjacent passage on p. 21, immediately below. In this passage I'm merely saying that supporting OA doesn't commit one to support any of these particular stances toward copyright.
** I'm not denying that some OA proponents have recommended the reform, violation, or abolition of copyright law. Indeed, I recommend the reform of copyright myself; see my updates to an adjacent passage on p. 21, immediately below. In this passage I'm merely saying that supporting OA doesn't commit one to support any of these particular stances toward copyright.
** In a blog post from September 21, 2008, on Aaron Swartz' [https://web.archive.org/web/20080922030952/http://guerillaopenaccess.com/ Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto], I disavowed illegal tactics for attaining OA. "I don't oppose the illegal tactics because I think current copyright law is just. On the contrary, I think it is grotesquely unbalanced and unjust. Nor do I oppose civil disobedience. But I don't accept that copyright infringement is civil disobedience and, more importantly, I don't accept that advancing OA through deliberate violations of copyright law would do more good than harm. I have three basic reasons: (1) OA is already lawful and doesn't require the reform or violation of copyright law, even if it could leap forward with the right reforms. (2) OA activists will never match the publishing industry's funds for litigation. (3) One of the most persistent and harmful misunderstandings of OA is that it violates copyright law. We've come a long way in educating policy-makers out of that misunderstanding. But the Orwellian [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Copyright_in_Research_Works_Act Fair Copyright in Research Works Act] (a.k.a. Conyers bill) is just one recent piece of evidence that we still have a lot of educating to do and that publishers can still make a lot of hay from the misunderstandings which remain. A campaign to give the publishing lobby its first valid evidence that OA violates copyright is the last thing we need. For an earlier take on some of these issues, see my 2003 article, [https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4455490 Not Napster for Science]....I should say for the record that one problem with current copyright law is that it leaves the line between legal and illegal tactics very fuzzy. By criticizing illegal tactics, I don't mean to leave the impression that it's always easy to tell what they are. By recommending only lawful tactics, I don't mean that we shouldn't push the envelope." For more background on the Conyers bill, see my three critiques of it, one from [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4322592 October 2008], one from [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:4391154 March 2009], and one from [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:10059024 March 2012].
*** Also see Albert N. Greco, [https://muse.jhu.edu/article/683784 The Scholarly Publishing Community Should Support Changes to US Copyright Law] (paywalled), ''Journal of Scholarly Publishing'', January 2018.
*** Also see John Willinsky, [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bjulpetHpvOs1EcWtOGv0RCPgST0Y8AvooP97COOnbg/edit# Copyright's Constitutional Violation: When the Law Fails to "Promote the Progress of Science" (While Promoting Practically Everything Else)], draft of a forthcoming book, February 21, 2020.
*** Also see Martin Paul Eve, [https://eve.gd/2020/05/23/if-i-could-radically-reshape-copyright-law/ If I could radically reshape copyright law for research], May 23, 2020 ([https://perma.cc/U9VV-PLSK perma.cc link]): "I would make it so that research produced by employees at publicly funded research universities could not be placed under copyright....I would allow academic researchers to re-use and to re-publish material, even that in copyright, that is necessary for their work....I would extend the current copyright exemptions for text and data mining to a blanket non-commercial research exemption. I would add an allowance to circumvent any API rate limiting or other technological protection measure for the purposes of mining material for research purposes."
Another example is the March 2020 study in which Mike Thelwall and Amalia Mas-Bleda wanted to see how often research papers in different fields were framed by explicit questions. Because they needed to crunch the full-texts of the papers under study, and wanted to crunch millions of them, they focused on OA papers that permitted that kind of access and analysis.


Key obstacles preventing attainment are limited budget (53%), privacy/security concerns (47%) and clinical resistance to the adoption of digital technologies (43%).
The promise of connected healthcare, however, is being leveraged today by Rush University Medical Center and the Rush System for Health in Chicago. This system, which encompasses multiple hospitals and healthcare providers across the city, is using both AT&T's 5G network and its multi-access edge computing (MEC) cloud-based edge IT service environment.
Working with Rush, AT&T Business is helping to deliver on the connected healthcare promise through 5G technologies by expanding telemedicine, delivering near real-time remote healthcare monitoring and delivering a capability to transmit large imaging files quickly. According to Anthem, 86% of doctors say wearables, which are a common type of remote monitoring, increase patient engagement with their health. Additionally, wearables are predicted to decrease hospital costs by 16% in the next five years.
With 5G, healthcare systems can enable mobile networks to handle telemedicine appointments, which can significantly increase the reach of the program. When healthcare systems utilize this technology, patients can often get treated sooner and have access to specialists otherwise not available. It can also allow doctors and other staff members to collaborate more efficiently. According to a study by Market Research Future, this is a crucial need because the telemedicine market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.5% from 2017 to 2023. By using IoT devices, healthcare providers can monitor patients and gather data that can be used to improve personalized and preventive care.
Adding a high-speed 5G network to existing architectures can help quickly and reliably transport substantial data files of medical imagery, which can improve both access to care and the quality of care. An example is the Austin Cancer Center where the PET scanner generates huge files — up to 1 gigabyte of information per patient per study. With 5G they can now send study results as soon as the patient leaves the scanner.
44% of Caregivers surveyed are using Mobile devices for virtually seamless access to patient data.
79% of hospitals surveyed are using Enhanced in-room entertainment and education.
In accomplishing digital transformation, healthcare organizations must leverage secure telecommunications and digital technologies. AT&T can help these organizations transform the continuum of care—from the waiting room to the operating room, to the living room—with edge-to-edge technologies, including networking, mobility, cybersecurity, Internet of Things, and more.
Visit https://www.business.att.com/industries/healthcare.html for more information.


Hey all, I am still alive!
I've been away from the mini scene for several years due to some relocation, new jobs, and starting up grad school again. I think it was a good time to take a break at that time due to burn out as well. So a lot of real life has been deterring me from my mini life and now I am sort of refreshed and missing the scene. There are really no projects in progress at the moment, though I do want to make some more kits and finish up some pending projects eventually (you know, like the Nyne or the Hello.Shawn). Right now, I am just easing my way back into blogging and hope to maintain it somewhat… at least once a month gosh darnit!
You might have noticed some minor changes to the blog… or maybe not, I've kind of forgotten everything myself. But I am moving to a new WPtheme, which means re-visiting a lot of the old posts so I can edit it to fit the theme (notice the missing photos), so please be patient while I try to get things back into working order… starting right at the very first post! Hello Miniature World! Ahhh… a trip down memory lane.
P.S. The image is an old one from the Coventry Cottage heyday.
XCurve Table Featured as TeamMIDS Mini of the Week!
Why hello there!! 😀 It's so nice to see you.
Nice to see you too Brae! Your work is amazing as usual!
Hey there… I missed you!
Hi! It is nice to see you! Wellcome back!
Thank you Kikka! I am glad to be back!
I'm so glad you're back! I'm looking forward to seeing your posts!
I am glad to be back! I was stalking your blog too… I really, REALLY miss minis.. just no room to put anything anywhere!


Matte paint finishes are a growing trend in automotive customization. This finish offers a unique look to your vehicle and gives you color options as well a gradation of matte colors. We welcome all vehicles,...old or new and cutom or factory.


text:
Startups In Japan Have Trouble Pivoting
by admin May 29, 2019 June 4, 2019
This informative article is part of Tech in Asia's partnership with Disrupting Japan whereby we publish the revised transcripts with the show's podcast interviews with Japanese business people. This is certainly intensely revised with the original transcripts. For the full interview, go right here.
Japanese startups have difficulty pivoting. While using the country's consensus-driven approach to selection earning and the value it areas on social harmony, it's tricky for people today to face up and say, "I believe we're using the wrong route in this article."
But some Japanese startups happen to be in a position to pivot their way as a result of a lot of enterprise versions. One these business is DeNA, a well-known gaming startup in the dotcom era. Its co-founder and a lively angel trader in Japan, Shogo Kawada, requires us via how the corporation has pivoted from auctions, e-commerce, to mobile gaming, and also the challenges it confronted.
Notify us the story of DeNA
We started out DeNA being an e-commerce auctions organization. It first started its PC-based auction company in 1999. Whenever we started out, there was no Yahoo Auction. Of course, eBay currently existed within the US, but there was not a giant C2C marketplace in Japan.
We experienced an alliance with Recruit and Sony for the time, and we utilized their consumer foundation to start out our C2C marketplace. But in September, Yahoo entered the Japanese sector and leveraged their powerful traffic.
They had been the number 1 while in the industry at the time. We chased them for many years, nonetheless, they had been nevertheless number 1.
How did you pivot?
C2C was a winner-takes-all industry. It absolutely was financially rewarding, but we had an exceedingly tricky time. So, we made a decision to also do business enterprise in e-commerce browsing. We built some revenue, but we weren't strongly successful. That was 2003, and there was no apple iphone or smartphones. So, people didn't imagine in acquiring something through their cell phones.
At the moment, Japan had companies with every month material subscriptions. So, it was a really easy business enterprise design, and there was just about no e-commerce action. Telephones at that time only experienced bluetooth, so business people didn't think that folks could enter their names and addresses by this kind of a small unit.
But get young Japanese women's high school students, by way of example. They use their mobile phones with such acrobatic skill. They might use the buttons to jot down extended mails and in many cases a novel. I realized this simple fact, so we made a fresh variety of C2C sector.
When iPhones grew to become preferred, why didn't DeNA seize the marketplace?
DeNA's mobile auction marketplace was basically primarily based on the subscription model employed in the aged cell phone infrastructure, which was totally distinct from the smartphone. Yahoo Auction could not go into mobile, as well as the old cell phones couldn't enter into the smartphone business TodayKos.
Why do you're thinking that major companies miss options to pivot?
Just one facet is simply because there is plenty of money-tens of millions-involved. Which is a major danger. They are earning a huge selection of millions in income yearly, but for them, the financial commitment is usually a huge point.
It's also complicated since platforms maintain modifying. Obviously, most people utilize smartphones, but all world-wide-web organization players believe that the following platform innovation is coming. So, they continue to keep getting ready for virtual reality or combined reality. Some companies, regardless of whether they're really very good for the smartphone small business, also facial area these types of dilemmas.
What produced you retire from DeNA to become an advisor and angel investor?
Just before I started DeNA when I was a university college student, my close friend and I struggled to start out our own business. That was within the late 1980s and early 1990 when the Japanese fiscal situation was nevertheless very old-style. There was no "risk money" and world wide web.
So, I made a decision to carry on to graduate college rather. It was there which I achieved the online marketplace. I noticed it's possible and determined that I'd do a web company sometime.
But I felt that Japan wasn't the nation in the capitalist; it is rustic for socialism. So, I discovered the most significant detail Japan needed was an investor, a capitalist. I decided that I'd turn out to be a capitalist someday and commit in the youthful generations and in technological know-how.
I relished starting up DeNA and expanding it. But when I was 39 decades old, we went to the US. At the moment, the iphone was just unveiled, and there was none in Japan but. We fulfilled about 10 folks there and seven of these were currently making use of an iphone. Which was a surprise. I thought that it may be too late to get started on investing after I grow to be 50.
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text:
Theater owners wait to learn whether state will allow sale of beer at the movies
Jan 08, 2020 Michael Hallisey Entertainment, The Spot
Should Gov. Andrew Cuomo have his way, movie theaters across the Empire State will be allowed to serve beer.
The governor unveiled his intention to propose an amendment last Friday, Jan. 3, for the upcoming State of the State address. Legislation would allow local movie theaters to serve alcohol. It's a means of providing yet another attraction to theaters competing against a stay-at-home-and-stream-it community.
The amendment would not only help movie theaters sell alcoholic beverages, giving them more revenue and craft producers additional retail outlets, it would modernize New York's Alcoholic Beverage Control law to help higher education institutions train the next generation of the craft beverage workforce.
"New York's craft beverage industry is flourishing thanks to eight years of targeted investments and forward-thinking policies that are attracting new businesses and supporting our booming tourism industry," Cuomo said. "This measure will remove outdated Prohibition-era rules that hamper private sector investment, ensure we're training the next generation of workers in a critical industry and give more New Yorkers the opportunity to responsibly enjoy a drink at the movies."
As a way to boost the state craft beverage industry, Cuomo is proposing an amendment to the ABC law to allow the sale of beer, wine, cider, mead and spirits at movie theaters.
"We are thrilled that the governor and his team are adding this important initiative," said Joe Masher, president of NATO NYS and chief operating officer of Bow Tie Cinemas. "We have fought long and hard for movie theaters without full kitchens and permanent tables at every seat to have the ability to apply for a liquor license with the State Liquor Authority. Theaters all across the state will be able to provide an important amenity to its guests, promote New York State wine and craft beverages, and the tax revenue generated from alcohol sales will benefit the state."
Current state law only allows movie theaters with full kitchens and tables inside the screening rooms to offer the sale of alcohol to their adult customers. With increased competition and diversification of video content creation and consumption methods, movie theaters faced with competition have been investing in upgrades and advancements to the movie-going experience. While these investments are attracting new audiences, they have increased operating costs with many theaters struggling to pay for these upgrades without additional sources of revenue.
"I want to thank the governor for his continued support," said Lynn Kinsella, owner, The Aurora Theater. "With the changes to the industry such as the conversion to digital projection, fighting against piracy, new streaming services and sophisticated HD home theaters, small movie theaters are facing even higher costs. To adapt, movie theatres are looking for new ways to enhance the movie going experience, including providing alcoholic beverages to offset these rising costs and retain employees. This proposal helps me do that and frankly without it, it will be hard to survive."
Under Cuomo's proposal, adults holding tickets to movies rated PG-13 or higher could purchase alcoholic beverages, provided only one drink could be sold to a customer at a time. This proposal will provide theater operators with additional revenues, assist in the economic development of downtowns, and provide New York craft producers with additional retail outlets.
"We are very excited that the governor will be making the alcohol proposal in movie theaters a priority in his State of the State," said Robert Sunshine, executive director of the National Theater Owners of New York State. "With all the competition coming from media and steaming services, it is critical for movie theaters to be able to offer this amenity to its customers. It is necessary for movie theaters to have this ability to serve alcohol so they can compete with other entertainment sectors."
The legislation should prove to be a boon for local craft beverage companies that have flourished in recent years. Over the past eight years, Cuomo has worked to modernize laws and has launched promotional campaigns to make it easier to start and grow new craft manufacturing businesses. Since the his first Wine, Beer and Spirits Summit, the number of farm-based licenses has increased by over 181 percent from 282 in October 2012 to 792 today.
New York now ranks in the top five in the U.S. for its number of craft beverage producers in every category. The state ranks first in U.S. for the number of hard cider producers, second in craft distillers, third in breweries, and fourth in the country for the total number of wineries.
However, the idea that Netflix and other streaming services are killing the movie theater industry rings hollow. Movie distributors and cinema owners at last year's CinemaCon were optimistic of the current consumer climate.
The domestic box office enjoyed a record-breaking year in 2018, racking in $11.9 billion. Nearly 75 percent of the American population saw at least one movie, representing a 5 percent rise in the number of movie tickets sold.
Bow Tie Cinemas, Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Bethlehem cheer team placed in top 10 nationally There are 600,000 first-time stroke victims in the U.S. each year and no one suspected her to be one
Michael Hallisey
Michael Hallisey is managing editor of Spotlight Newspapers.
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text:
Icon: Clint Eastwood
When the most legendary badass in Hollywood decides he wants to make a sprawling, costly film about rugby and South Africa, well, who's gonna stop him? (Even when he titles it, um, Invictus.) Michael Hainey talks to Clint Eastwood about the well-earned art of doing whatever the hell you want
By Michael Hainey
Photography by Martin Schoeller
clint eastwood, pure and simple? Here it is: He gives a guy hope.
For all of us who have wondered if we'd ever achieve our dreams—when in our head all we can hear is the tick, tick, tick of the clock and that goddamned voice saying, "It's too late. You're too old to go for it. You'll never achieve it"—there's Clint. In this youth-obsessed world, the guy is the patron saint of late bloomers.
Think about it: His breakthrough role—playing the Man with No Name in those spaghetti Westerns? He's in his midthirties when he does those. He doesn't direct his first movie, the still riveting_ Play Misty for Me_, until he's 40. And Dirty Harry? He's 41 when he makes that (and even then, he gets the role only after Sinatra pulls out).
But here's where things get really crazy. In 1993 he shows up at the Academy Awards with Unforgiven. He is 62 and has never won an Oscar. The film wins four, including Best Picture and Best Director.
And then this happens: The guy doesn't hang it up—he only starts getting stronger. He goes on a stunning run of creativity that a man half his age would kill for. Eastwood is now 79, and in the seventeen years since Unforgiven he has made fifteen movies. Three of those have been nominated for Best Picture, and he has been nominated for Best Director or Best Actor an additional four times. All told, he now has four Oscars, and his films have won another seven.
He has made sixty-six movies. He's acted in fifty-seven and directed twenty-nine. Now he's about to release his sixty-seventh: Invictus. He directed and produced it, and it's the true story of how Nelson Mandela (Morgan Freeman) and the captain of the overwhelmingly white South African rugby team (Matt Damon) used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to bring the country together.
his hands are soft. And he might be the only guy alive who makes you envy crow's-feet. His eyes are a beautiful light blue.
I meet him outside a soundstage at Warner Bros., and he suggests we walk to his office, a little Mission-style bungalow in a shady corner of the lot. He walks with a steady, smooth gait—he's six feet three—and when he talks it's in a quiet, soothing voice. Not that crusty Dirty Harry thing.
Outside one soundstage, a taping of Ellen has just ended, and a gaggle of women spills out. As we approach, one or two of them realize, "Hey, isn't that—? It is!" But no words come from their agape mouths. Clint smiles and nods at them, tugs at the brim of a hat that doesn't exist, and says, "Ladies...." Then he keeps walking.
When we get to his bungalow, he's hungry. He asks if I want a sandwich, and I say yes. He shows me into what I guess you'd call the living room. There's a leather couch and a coffee table. Beside the couch there's a chair. Clint looks at the chair for a minute and then says, "Well, I guess you could sit down." I sit. Then he says, "I'll go make us some lunch."
The room is dark, and the only light is what's left of the hard, white afternoon sun that bounces in through the windows. It's a plain room. Aside from the furniture, the only things in it are an old upright piano and, on the wall above the couch, an Italian poster of Clint for Per un Pugno di Dollari.
A few minutes later, Clint comes back.
"Here's a sandwich," he says. "Hope you like it." He puts a plate in front of me: lunchmeat turkey, lettuce, tomato, and mustard on whole wheat.
Clint moves toward the sofa. When he sits, it's like one of those big Giacometti _Walking Man _sculptures trying to sit. He's all legs. It takes a minute, but finally he gets comfortable, extending his legs onto the coffee table, his sandwich in his lap.
Why Invictus? Why now?
I'm not an objective party. But the world needs this kind of story nowadays. It's just&everybody's so screwed up. Nobody knows where they're heading. It seems like our country's in kind of a morbid mood, because of the recession or whatever. I think our politicians could learn a lot from Mandela.
What do you think they could learn?
About racial relationships and such. It just seems like we're making a lot of mistakes on this whole calling everybody racist. Everybody's calling everybody morons and nuts. We're becoming more juvenile as a nation. The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits. People 50 years old acting like that. In_ Gran Torino_, I play a guy who's racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you're never too old to learn and embrace people that you don't understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.
Invictus is set in South Africa in 1995, but I think it's impossible not to see it as a metaphor for America in 2009. For instance, there's a scene where some white guys are protesting against Mandela at a rugby game. They may as well be yelling, "We want our country back!"
** **Mandela was so different from where we are. I mean, Mandela invites his jailer to his inauguration. But Mandela, he's in prison twenty-seven years, he had a lot of time to think. He philosophized. He came out almost as this perception, or taught perception, of what Christ would be like if he existed: a guy who would forgive.
Seventeen years ago, you made Unforgiven. I feel like the title of this movie could be Forgiven—it's a movie that's all about forgiveness and redeeming yourself.
Yeah, and it's Mandela's unconquerable soul. You should never give up your inner self.
In Invictus, that poem that Mandela quotes, the poem that gave him strength in prison and is the title of the movie—
By William Ernest Henley, yeah.
Did you know those were Timothy McVeigh's last words? He quoted that last couplet—
"Master of my fate..."
"I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul."
Well, if you're gonna go out, you might as well have a nice quote. [laughs] That seemed to be Mandela's favorite poem. I think we use it effectively in there.
Is there anything you'd sacrifice yourself for?
** **[long pause] I'm sure there is. But mine's more basic. It would be family. It comes down to the basic reason for the male being here, other than propagating, which is to defend and protect the family. [pause] But it would probably stay at that level. How far out the friendship chain it would go, I don't know. [laughs]
When you met Mandela, did you learn anything from him on how to be, how to live?
Eh, no, because he was a guy who had a lot of faults. He was not very attentive to his children. And he had problems with women. I guess he liked... Ah, I mean, there's nothing wrong with that.
He said with a grin.
His private life was probably not as great as his public life. He's a man underneath it all.
Do you hope that people will look at this movie and learn anything?
Well, they'll take it on a lot of levels. It seems like we're stepping on our dicks all the time. Jimmy Carter accusing people who disagree with the president of being racist. The president sides with the black professor rather than the policeman. Everybody just ready to jump down everybody else's throat. You know, sure, that was a mistake, because [Obama] started out perfectly: "I don't have the facts." That was time to stop. Carter is just kind of a senile old guy, I guess, and it's something about being an old guilty southerner that makes you want to be perceived as doing penance for all the years you probably cast a lot of aspersions on black people when you were younger, or something like that. I don't know. Maybe that's not a fair judgment, but it just seems like what we're doing. Those are just two examples.
What we're doing on both sides of the political spectrum, right and left, is just yelling at each other. I look at the TV, and if you disagree with somebody, they are a fucking fruitcake, moron, screwball, stuff like that. We can be much more tolerant of people if we want to, but the extremists on both sides are the ones who ruin it for the rest of us.... There's so much transmission and very little reception. You watch MSNBC or Fox. They're not listening. They're just all talking over. Very few people, when you watch, really let a person finish their thought. They just want to stomp them down right away. Like a bug. Step on it before it bites you. I won't go on those shows for that one reason.
I've always considered myself a social libertarian: Leave everybody alone. Quit trying to force everything down everybody's throat. But maybe that's just dreaming in this world today.
Do you have a code you live by?
Be honest with yourself. Honest with what you know and what you don't know. I just believe in being straight-ahead with people.
Your persona is all about physical toughness. But I think in your life and work what you value above all is mental toughness. It seems to me what you really abhor in people and society is mental weakness.
I think so. I mean, God gave you a brain. Do the best you can with it. And you don't have to be Einstein, but Einstein was mentally tough. He believed what he believed. And he worked out things. And he argued with people who disagreed with him. But I'm sure he didn't call everybody jerks.
What drives you?
As I get older, I tend to put more into family than I used to. Because when I was younger, I was looking to get the brass ring, and like every actor, you think every job's your last job. So when you get the brass ring, you play the hand for as long as you can. And then one day you wake up and realize, "Jesus, I've been doing this a long time, and I'm still playing the hand. Why not just keep rolling? There's no reason to have anxieties." So what drives me? I like working. That's when I'm feeling my best. And the people around me know that. My wife knows that. But she knows I'm a loyal citizen to the family. And that wasn't necessarily a given thing. That was acquired.
**Do you still meditate? **
Twice a day.
**How does that work for you? **
It works great. Because it just gives you a chance to gather your thoughts. I'm religious about it when I'm working.
**So how... **
I visualize whole sequences in the morning, before I go. I believe in whatever self-help you can give yourself, whether you believe in Buddha or whatever. I used to be much more of an agnostic. I'm not really a person of an organized religion. But I'm now much more tolerant of people who are religious, because I can see why they got there. I can sympathize.
So meditation with me was just a self-reliant thing. I've been doing it almost forty years. But I don't go out and sell it. A lot of other people find meaning some other way, screaming in the street or whatever it is that gets it for you. Or checking out the girls. [laughs] No, I'm past that. I'm living in my state of monogamy quite happily. I never thought I'd get there, but I did. It feels good. I like myself better than I did.
**Better than when you were not monogamous? **
Because I have more respect. Because I found the woman I really was always looking for. And I'm giving her the respect that I should give her. So I like myself better for doing that.
Before you met your wife, do you think you didn't fully respect women?
No, I think I respected women. [smiles] I think when you're younger, you're driven by a lot of hormonal effects. I just—it's like Everest: "Because it's there." [laughs]
And there's certainly a lot of "there" in Hollywood.
There's a lot of "there." [laughs] So you kind of go, Okay.... And you're young, and you're kind of stupid. But I certainly don't feel that way now. Though certainly the leopard spots don't go completely away.
**When you find real love, it fills a hole in you. What was the hole in you? **
Well, it was the whole me. But it took me until I was 65 to get there. There's a lot of people who learn a lot faster than me, that's for sure.
You said once you regret that you never had the chance to work with the John Fords, Howard Hawkses, and William Wellmans—that generation of directors. In thirty years, are people going to say, "I didn't get a chance to work with Mr. Eastwood"?
Yeah, maybe.
What will we lose with your passing?
I don't know. Just that everybody, at that time... I had been a kid growing up in the '40s watching pictures by Ford and Raoul Walsh. Hitchcock and Huston. And they were very influential on me. They all just told stories. They didn't necessarily follow one genre—whatever they felt like doing. But I do believe I came along at the right period for me. Because when I started directing, not many actors were doing it. There had been precedent before that, dating back to Stan Laurel. But I was just determined. I said, "Someday I'm gonna look out there and I'm not gonna like what I see. And I don't necessarily want to be out of the business. I like doing this." So I took it on. I never did get to that day where I said I'd quit. I've flirted with the idea a lot lately, but every once in a while a script comes along and I think, That's a challenge that I haven't been able to do before.
You talk about "story." When you were a kid, did you have a favorite story that your mother read you? What's the first story you remember loving?
I used to love those Freddy the Pig stories. There was a series of books, one was called The Ignoramus, or something like that. They were about barnyard animals that talked. The head of it was Freddy the Pig. And I remember those were fun to read. Those were my earliest books. And then I loved Treasure Island and all that stuff—adventure stories. Life was pretty simple then. Because you didn't sit and watch television all the time. There was the radio. Everything was listening, so you imagined everything.
**There's a nice little moment in Changeling when the boy sits up in front of the radio and we watch him listening. **
We used to do that, visualize it all. So you're not seeing somebody else's interpretation of it visually; you're seeing it with your interpretation. So probably from a directing standpoint, it's better, because you're seeing it the way you would do it. There's an art to listening. There's not much of it going on in the world. But it's... As an actor, it's the most important single function.
**Well, that would be reacting. **
Exactly. You've got to digest what somebody's saying and then react to it, come back accordingly. But if you don't have that ability to listen, then you're never going to be able to act.
**Do you believe in reincarnation? **
[laughs] No.
**So what happens to Clint Eastwood when Clint Eastwood's no longer here? **
That's the end.
No heaven, no hell? Just end of story?
You know, I'm a show-me kind of guy._ [laughs]_ I would love to... I'm thinking that's another dream. Mankind has a lot of dreams, and one is immortality. Some religions advocate that if you believe, you'll live forever. That's fine. That'd be cool. But I don't know anyone that's ever happened to. [laughs] But if you believe in reincarnation, you're putting too much on the other side. If you do believe in God, or you believe in some sort of creation, or you believe in evolution, you're given one shot at it. And you should do the best you can with that shot. And you should respect that. And I suppose you should be thankful that you've been given the ability to do certain things in life, and be appreciative, and move on. And not be greedy enough to want to stay around forever.
You've been around for a long time.
Yeah. I'm not one of these guys who want to check out early. But when you check out, it's when you're supposed to check out. You know, I take care of myself.
**Is there a special diet you're on? **
The only thing special about it is I just try to watch the intake of saturated fats. I was blessed with a reasonable system that just never put on a lot of weight, so I always took advantage of that. I remember I had a friend who had been in the war in Korea and had been shot up a lot. He came back and he became very religious, and he'd always preach, "God gives you one body; you should take care of it. God gives you one mind; you should take care of it." And I've never philosophized or expounded on philosophies that I've had, but I basically feel that way. I believe that you've got one brain, and so why would you become a junkie and wreck it?
**You've never done drugs? **
No. I got all the way through the '60s and the '70s on beer. I just never got into drugs. I always thought beer and a couple other things were about as good as I wanted to know about.... [laughs]
**What's the "couple other things"? **
Well, you know, just general sort of life experiences, that's about it. [grins] I just... If it got any better than that, I wouldn't want to know about it.
Were you close to your mother?
I was. She died a few years back. She was 97.
**What did you learn from her? **
I watched how she changed philosophically. Over the years, she always loved to read. I guess she was a late bloomer, too. I don't know if she read that much when we were growing up, 'cause both my parents worked most of the time, to make ends meet.
**Are there qualities of her that you have? **
I never analyze myself too much. I don't know if it's afraid of what you'll see, or afraid it'll go away, or whatever. None of the above. It's, um—I don't think inwardly very much.
**But you're meditating twice a day. You're not thinking about yourself? **
No. You're thinking about sort of putting yourself in the state of ultimate relaxation. Yeah, you just let it happen. Whatever happens. But, um, I don't know. Shit. [laughs]
**One of your sons is in this new movie. How do you counsel your sons about manhood, being a man? **
It's really difficult. You just try to give them local morals. You know, you let the woman go through the door first. Why? Because you're stronger, you're younger. It's your duty as a man. That's what you're here for, to take care of things. And nowadays I don't think men are taught that. It wasn't a macho thing; nobody felt they had to kick over the table and act tough to prove they were men. I'm fond of telling this story—I remember meeting Rocky Marciano. We shook hands. It was a real light handshake, like he was a concert pianist. I walked away and thought, Yeah, Rocky Marciano doesn't have to grab you. He knows he could kill you. He's a real guy.
So be strong and protect yourself, emotionally and physically. But don't—you don't have to take any crap from the world, but at the same time, you don't have to go looking for crap, either. Don't let the feminist revolution turn you into an anti. Women really do want your help, and that's why we're on the same planet, the same level.
**Do you have a Rosebud, like in Citizen Kane? **
I have a little bear that has a suit and a hat, sort of a brown fedora. It belonged to my grandfather and then to my dad's brother and then my dad. So I'm figuring this little guy is probably a hundred and a half.
Tell me about your father's death, in 1970.
It really affected me. And I'm gonna tell you why, because he&just dropped dead.
**And he was 63. You were almost 63 when you won your first Academy Award. **
Yeah. [pauses] Well, I was up at Lake Tahoe with my wife and my son Kyle, who was 2 years old. And I got the phone call that my dad had just died. And it really got to me because of the usual guilt that people have, and you wish, "Why didn't I spend more time with him? Ask him to play golf more often or something? And hang out. And just say, 'Dad, let's go have a beer or something.' " But you sort of take for granted your parents are there; you think they're gonna be there forever, especially at that age. I guess a lot of people go through that. While I didn't feel I was singled out for anything, I felt it's probably the natural way to feel.
With my mother, it was different. I knew that she was into her nineties, and I knew that the time was gonna come fairly soon. And at 97, you're figuring, Is she gonna make it? My last words to her were, "Come on. Three more years and you make the big century!" And she said, "I don't want to do it." So I asked the cardiologist, "Do we put her on IV and get her going?" But he says, "You're gonna have somebody who is really pissed." And I said, "Yeah, I can't defy her wishes." So I let her go.
**You have young children. Do you ever worry that at your age you will not live to see them grow old and be there for them? **
Nah. Probably just as well. _[laughs] _It may be better off for them. Everybody is going to go through certain variations of the thing, and that's the way it's gonna be.
**Did your father's death change how you lived? **
He believed in hard work. Everything that built this country. "Nothing comes for nothing," he'd say. "You have to work for whatever you get." When I told him I wanted to go and be an actor and I was gonna drop out of school because seventy-five bucks a week sounded like a lot to me, he says, "God, don't do that. Continue your education." He says, "Don't get in this dreamworld shit." That was his deal. Yet he would have loved to have been an actor. He was a much more outgoing person than I am. He was the kind of guy everybody liked.
But once you succeeded as an actor, did he support you?
** **God, yeah. In fact he joked about all of that—"I told him not to do it!" He laughed at himself about it. I always wish he could have gone longer, to see Unforgiven. Which my mother did. She got to enjoy all that.
**Is there a person from history you most admire? **
Churchill, I guess, because he always had these profound statements and he was such a character. He was a little round guy. He was sort of like Alfred Hitchcock. I remember I went into Hitchcock's office one time. This was toward the end. And he had an office at Universal which he went to every day. He asked me to meet with him about a part. And this ecutive over there, he called me and said, "The picture's not gonna get made, anyway." I said, "Why?" and he said, "I don't think he's got the strength to do it." And I said, "Well, I'd love to meet him." So I went into his office, and he was sitting in there. And he never moved. His eyes just picked me up coming in the door, and he just followed me across the room. Like the cat and the canary or something. But it was amazing. We got along famously. We talked about his movies, and I told him how, in Play Misty, I was thinking in terms of some of his ideas.
**Which ones? **
Just general suspense. But we got to intellectualizing our movies, and he said, "You must remember one thing—it's only a movie." I said, "Yeah, you're right. It won't cure cancer or any other disease in the world, but it might make somebody happy somewhere." He said, "Yeah, that's about it."
**I just watched Misty the other night. **
Had a lot of fun making it. First film. Everybody remembers their first film. Everybody remembers their first a lot of things. [long pause]
**You look like you just went somewhere in your head. What are you thinking? **
Ah, you just go back. It's hard to believe that was 1970. Long time ago. Lot of films under the bridge since then.
At this point, there's a knock at the door and a young woman comes in—one of his assistants.
_ "Sorry to interrupt, Clint, but your four thirty is here."_
"My four thirty?"
_ "The doctor," she says. "Remember?"_
_ "Oh, right," Clint says. "Tell him I'll be a few more minutes."_
What do you have to see a doctor for? I ask.
_ "Eh, I gotta do an insurance physical before I start my next movie. They wanna see if I'm living."_
_ He laughs._
**So you still work out every day? **
In the morning, I usually get up and do the elliptical. I try to do thirty minutes on that. And then, in the evening, I'll pump some iron. And I stretch. Sometimes my wife and I go on vacation, and she'll wanna do a yoga class, and I'll say, "Yeah, I'll take it with you."
**What was your first date with her like? **
My wife and I had our first legitimate date at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur. I remember we were having dinner, looking out at the ocean, and she says, "Why don't we go down to Esalen?" For locals, they'll let you in after one [a.m.] for five bucks or some ridiculously low price, and you can go sit in the hot tubs. I said, "Yeah, that's cool."
That's clothing-optional down there....
Yeah. So there was a couple sitting in one of these big tubs at one end of the room, and we went down to the other end where there was nobody. So I took off my clothes and jumped into the tub. And she was all embarrassed. She said, "You're not putting on a bathing suit or anything?" And I said, "Hey, when in Rome..." That was the beginning. Now we have an almost 13-year-old.
**Are you a spiritual man? **
I'm spiritual in the way that I—things move me. If I look in the Grand Canyon, I'm moved.
**Do you believe in the idea of a soul? **
Yeah, I do. I believe you have a conscience and you have a soul. I don't know if it's injected into you; I think it's probably something inherited. Maybe it comes from your upbringing, or maybe it comes from experiences in life, successes or disappointments or a combination of all of the above. But I do believe in a soul. Soulful things, soulful music. Sometimes I think what it must have been like to be the first guy to circle around the moon and then come out from behind it and see the earth down there. Must have been some kind of moment.
**Do you remember the last time you cried? **
_[long silence] _Yeah, I don't think too much about it. I mean... Well, my daughter had a big white cockatoo. We get all the stuff from the ASPCA. The vet calls us and says, "Hey, we've got this thing here." And I say, "We can't have any more animals!" But my wife, Dina, is a sucker for them. She brings 'em home. This cockatoo had kind of a tough life; it didn't listen to people. The previous owners put it outside, and it got its wing torn off by a raccoon. But it was a good bird. And my 12-year-old loved it, and so did Dina. I'd drive all the way from Monterey to Los Angeles and I'd bring the bird, have him sitting on my shoulder.
**You're like a road pirate. **
Exactly. So one day I put it on the side of a fountain [at our house]. And I went in to talk to my wife, to make sure the bird went to the vet because it needed to get its nails clipped. And when I came back out it had fallen in the fountain and drowned. And I had to go tell my daughter about it. And my poor little daughter, she was devastated. So... [pauses, his eyes well up] I love animals. This animal was a pain in the ass, but he was a character. He gave everybody a lot of laughs.
**People say that about you, too. **
That's true. And they're right. We got all kinds of animals at home. Jesus Christ, we've got pigs, we've got chickens and birds and a rabbit. I got this crazy rabbit that just follows me around all the time like a dog. Augie's his name.
**He lives in the house? **
Yeah. This rabbit's crazy, and he just loves hanging out with me.
michael hainey is gq'_s deputy editor. _
Related Stories for GQClint EastwoodMen of the YearCelebrities


text:
Q: Get data from bootstrap datetimepicker I'm trying to get the date values to query my database. I keep getting undefined. I have checked all the documentation and I cannot find a way to get data. I'm using this bootstrap datetime picker
HTML file:

    Start Date

        <input class="form-control" size="16" type="text" value="" readonly>

    <input type="hidden" id="from" value="" />

JavaScript file:
$(".to").datetimepicker({
    format: "yyyy-mm-ddThh:ii:ssZ",
    onSelect: function() {
        endValue = $(this).datetimepicker('getDate');
    }
});

//console.log(endValue);

A: I don't see an onSelect event in the docs at all so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. Nor a getDate. You can get the value from the same input the datepicker is assigned to. Once you get to the last screen of the datepicker widget, it 'changes' the value of the associated input. Listen for change events on that box to know when it's happened.
$(".to > .form-control").on('change', function( evt ) {
    var date = $(this).val();
    console.log( date );
});

A: $(".to").datetimepicker()
        .on('change', function( evt ) {
        startValue = $('#to').val();

    });

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


# Remove glass from picture frame and lay on top of aluminum foil.
# Add drops of alcohol ink onto glass.
# Pour 91% isopropyl alcohol on top of glass and lift up the glass edge to mix.
# To set art, spray with frosted spray paint.
# (Optional) Place glass back into frame with paper backing.


California's Contractors State License Board (also known as the CSLB) issues licenses and regulates the state's construction industry. With around 290,000 contractors in the state, the Board wants to ensure that consumers are protected from potential financial harm. The B&P Code Section 7071.6 explains the surety bond requirement.
Contractors must meet the strict regulations to obtain a license which includes passing a criminal background check, completing training or an apprenticeship program, and maintaining liability insurance (for LLC's only).
A $15,000 to $150,000 Disciplinary Surety Bond is required when a contractor has been disciplined by the State for a license violation.
Effective January 1, 2019, the CSLB will no longer accept a certificate of deposit instead of a surety bond. They will accept a cash deposit or cashiers check in the amount equal to the surety bond amount.
Pass the written Law and Business examination and a specific trade examination or meet waiver requirements.
Complete the California Contractor's License Application, Certification of Work Experience form and if applicable the Owner-Builder B-General Building Construction Project Experience form and pay the license and application fee for each license classification requested. (Effective July 1, 2017 the license and application fees are increasing).
Applicants must prove that they have at least four years of experience in the license classification in which applying for (must have been completed within the last 10 years).
Obtain workers compensation insurance if the contractor has employees.
Limited liability companies must obtain liability coverage of at least $1,000,000 to a maximum of $5,000,000. The liability amount is based on the number of personnel on record on the license.
Partnerships, corporations and limited liability companies must be registered with the Secretary of State and be in good standing.
The premium you pay for a California Contractor's License Surety Bond is dependent on credit and the bond amount required. Bond amounts over $50,000 will require business and personal financial statements.