October 28, 2016

NATION UNSURE IT CAN TOLERATE THIRTEEN MORE DAYS OF RUDY GIULIANI

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—With thirteen days until his scheduled return to oblivion, many Americans are unsure if they can tolerate that much additional exposure to Rudy Giuliani, a leading psychologist said on Wednesday.

As millions of Americans actively count down the days until Giuliani disappears forever, thirteen more days of him “seems like a lifetime,” Davis Logsdon, a psychologist who has been studying the Giuliani ordeal, said.

“Americans’ traumatic experience of Rudy Giuliani in 2016 has gone through several phases,” Logsdon said. “First, they struggled to remember who he was. Then, once they remembered, they recoiled in horror. Finally, they began actively wishing he would go away forever. That is the phase many people find themselves in today.”

Even as they long for the day when Giuliani resumes his rightful place in obscurity, many Americans are experiencing feelings of anger and disbelief that he was permitted to crawl back into their consciousness to begin with, Logsdon said.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/nation-unsure-it-can-tolerate-thirteen-more-days-of-rudy-giuliani

October 23, 2016

Thousands of California soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war

Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.

Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.

Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html

This is not good.

October 22, 2016

Donald Trump’s fine art of losing

In 1983, Donald Trump bought one of the teams in the new United States Football League, with grand plans of making himself the center of sports — the center of everything — in New York. He would build Trumpdome for his New York Generals to play in. He would then use his team as leverage to merge into the far more lucrative NFL.

By 1984, when his plan didn’t work, he came up with another one — sue the NFL for $1.3 billion instead, claiming antitrust violations. Technically, he won the suit — but the jury award totaled $3.76 in the end. (No, that is not a typo.) To Trump, however, this was a huge victory.

“After taxes, I would say I lost $3 million,” he said at the time, but “I got a billion dollars of free publicity.”

How does Donald Trump lose? The answer, apparently, is that he never does. At least not in his own mind. To review his life and talk to people who have watched him for decades is to realize that he has never once seen himself as anything but the victor. And that realization both explains much of his 18-month campaign for the White House and gives hints as to what might happen should he lose on November 8.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trumps-fine-art-of-losing-192113945.html

October 21, 2016

Tesla releases video of fully autonomous Model X electric car

Tesla announced on Wednesday that from now on all of its electric cars will be built with the components required to turn them into fully autonomous vehicles at a later date. Now chief executive, Elon Musk, has released a video showing what that really means.

The video shows a Tesla Model X driving out of a garage, picking up a human driver – who is required to be in the driving seat for the car to legally self-drive in the US – and then driving itself around some public roads, navigating junctions and highways before returning to a parking lot, letting out the human driver and then going off to park itself.

It’s an impressive feat for a car that shows no visible signs of the typical paraphernalia required to pull off the stunt. Google’s car, for instance, has a large spinning lidar on the top and various other visible signs of automation.

Musk said that the release of the video was the cause of Tesla’s delay announcing the inclusion of the eight cameras, 12 ultrasonars and radar being embedded in each new Tesla car.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/20/tesla-releases-video-of-fully-autonomous-model-x-electric-car

Pretty impressive video at the link -- even seems to recognize stoplights. Autonomous driving will be here sooner than most people think.

October 18, 2016

Trump Maps Out Plan For First 100 Days Of Not Conceding Election

NEW YORK—Assuring the nation he would work quickly and tirelessly to carry out his agenda, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump reportedly issued a press statement Monday mapping out his first 100 days of not conceding the 2016 election.

“I will get to work on day one questioning the final vote tally, and I promise that I will not rest during my first week until I’ve discredited Hillary Clinton’s victory with repeated accusations that she orchestrated a widespread conspiracy to steal the election,” read the message from Trump in part, which went on to note that the candidate had already assembled a team of top legal experts to help him transition to a full-time schedule of filing lawsuits against state and local election boards and major media outlets.

“Within my first 10 days, I will introduce a comprehensive plan for my disgruntled supporters to march on the White House, and by day 30, I will submit a formal petition demanding Clinton’s immediate removal from office. In addition, throughout the entire 100-day period, I vow to keep the American people fully updated on my progress by continuing to appear on radio and television programs, commenting on current affairs and criticizing Clinton’s history of misconduct as if I’m still in the running to be president.”

Trump added that while the first 100 days will be an important measure of his success, his vision goes far beyond those initial three months, and he looks forward to fiercely disputing the legitimacy of a Clinton presidency for the next four years.

http://www.theonion.com/article/trump-maps-out-plan-first-100-days-not-conceding-e-54230

October 17, 2016

Donald Trump, the Worst of America

Donald Trump has virtually stopped trying to win this election by any conventional metric and is instead stacking logs of grievance on the funeral pyre with the great anticipation of setting it ablaze if current polls turn out to be predictive.

There is something calamitous in the air that surrounds the campaign, a hostile fatalism that bespeaks a man convinced that the end is near and aiming his anger at all within reach.

As his path to victory grows narrower, his desperation grows more pronounced.

Last week a steady stream of women stepped forward to accuse Trump of some form of sexual assault, abuse or inappropriate behavior. Trump’s response has been marked by a stunning lack of grace and dignity, let alone contrition or empathy, a response much like the man himself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/17/opinion/donald-trump-the-worst-of-america.html

October 16, 2016

Why I left the Republican Party to become a Democrat

The most important thing we have learned this year is that, when the Republican Party was hijacked by a dangerous fascist who threatens to destroy the institutions that make America great and free, most Republicans up and down the organizational chart stood behind him and insisted he ought to be president.

Some did this because they are fools who do not understand why Trump is dangerous.

Some did it because they were naïve enough to believe he could be controlled and manipulated into implementing a normal Republican agenda.

Of course, there were the minority of Republicans who did what was right and withheld their support from Trump: people like Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, and Hewlett-Packard CEO and megadonor Meg Whitman, the latter of whom called Trump "a threat to the survival of the republic."

http://www.businessinsider.com/why-i-left-republican-party-register-democrat-2016-10

October 15, 2016

No pay, no expenses, no laws for Venezuela's opposition lawmakers

They say they have not been paid for two months, have had their electricity cut and are sometimes banned from flights - and the laws they pass are blocked anyway.

Venezuela's opposition lawmakers accuse the socialist government of sabotaging their work after winning a majority in congress last December.

The pro-government Supreme Court has blocked all congress' bills from becoming law. Earlier this week, the high court also allowed President Nicolas Maduro to present the 2017 budget without congressional approval.

On a smaller scale, congressmen say they are also being blocked from doing their job because of lack of state resources.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/no-pay-no-expenses-no-laws-venezuelas-opposition-204446048.html

October 14, 2016

Maduro bypasses Venezuelan legislature on budget

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro can pass his 2017 budget without the approval of the opposition-majority legislature, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, triggering an outcry from the leftist leader's opponents.

Maduro and the National Assembly have been at each other's throats since the center-right opposition took control of the legislature in January, ending the left's 17-year monopoly on power.

Lawmakers accuse the president of stacking the Supreme Court with allies in the dying hours of the previous legislative session, then using the court to hamstring the new National Assembly.

In the latest spat, the Supreme Court ruled Maduro -- the political heir to late president Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) -- can bypass the legislature and have the court itself ratify the budget as a decree.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/maduro-bypasses-venezuelan-legislature-budget-212429597.html

October 12, 2016

TRUMP EXPANDS ATTACKS TO INCLUDE GEORGE CLINTON

Unveiling a strategy that some Republican insiders deemed unwise, Donald Trump on Tuesday unleashed a blistering attack on George Clinton.

In a furious tirade at a rally in Youngstown, Ohio, the Republican Presidential nominee seemed to take his audience by surprise by tearing into Clinton, the founder of the legendary funk ensembles known collectively as Parliament-Funkadelic.

“Anyone who is knocking me for my locker-room banter has never heard ‘Atomic Dog,’ ” Trump told his audience. “It’s disgusting.”

“If I went around saying, ‘Why must I feel like that, why must I chase the cat, it’s the dog in me,’ the media would kill me,” he added.

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/trump-expands-attacks-to-include-george-clinton