Octopus Overlords

Defiant wrote:For any West Wing fans, CJ giving a real press briefing

Moliere wrote:Presidential Proclamation -- Loyalty Day, 2016

How can this possibly not go wrong?

GreenGoo wrote:What on earth could have compelled him to do this?

Wikipedia wrote:Loyalty Day has been recognized with an official proclamation every year by every president since its inception as a legal holiday in 1958.

hepcat wrote:What'ya know, I just learned something new.

CNN has now beaten Fox News in prime time ratings for five out of the last 8 months. They have also scored wins in weekend ratings and are closing the gap in daytime ratings as well. Overall, where CNN used to have less than half of Fox News’ overall viewership, they now are behind Fox News by a measly 9%, and they continue to dominate MSNBC.

GreenGoo wrote:

hepcat wrote:What'ya know, I just learned something new.

+1.

AWS260 wrote:

GreenGoo wrote:What on earth could have compelled him to do this?

Wikipedia wrote:Loyalty Day has been recognized with an official proclamation every year by every president since its inception as a legal holiday in 1958.

The holiday was first observed in 1921, during the First Red Scare.[2] It was originally called "Americanization Day,"[3] and it was intended to replace the May 1 ("May Day") celebration of the International Workers' Day,[citation needed] which commemorates the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago.[4]

During the Second Red Scare, it was recognized by the U.S. Congress on April 27, 1955,[5] and made an official reoccurring holiday on July 18, 1958 (Public Law 85-529).[1][6] President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed May 1, 1955, the first observance of Loyalty Day.[

El Guapo wrote:And of course the minute a president says "eh, screw it, Loyalty Day is legacy McCarthyite bullshit", and doesn't issue a proclamation, there will be a slew of "President [So-and-So] hates America so much he / she refused to support Loyalty Day, an occasion that Presidents of both parties have used for decades to encourage people to support America. Why doesn't President [So-and-So] support America?" ads within a week.

Rip wrote:

El Guapo wrote:And of course the minute a president says "eh, screw it, Loyalty Day is legacy McCarthyite bullshit", and doesn't issue a proclamation, there will be a slew of "President [So-and-So] hates America so much he / she refused to support Loyalty Day, an occasion that Presidents of both parties have used for decades to encourage people to support America. Why doesn't President [So-and-So] support America?" ads within a week.

Yea, I'm totally sure that is why he did it and why a President Hillary would as well.

You forgot to add that Trump is McCarthy incarnate and given the chance will embrace it because it is his favorite holiday.

El Guapo wrote:And of course the minute a president says "eh, screw it, Loyalty Day is legacy McCarthyite bullshit", and doesn't issue a proclamation, there will be a slew of "President [So-and-So] hates America so much he / she refused to support Loyalty Day, an occasion that Presidents of both parties have used for decades to encourage people to support America. Why doesn't President [So-and-So] support America?" ads within a week.

The President is requested to issue a proclamation

Pyperkub wrote:

El Guapo wrote:And of course the minute a president says "eh, screw it, Loyalty Day is legacy McCarthyite bullshit", and doesn't issue a proclamation, there will be a slew of "President [So-and-So] hates America so much he / she refused to support Loyalty Day, an occasion that Presidents of both parties have used for decades to encourage people to support America. Why doesn't President [So-and-So] support America?" ads within a week.

It's not like there's a choice, it's written into the law that the president has to make the declaration.

hepcat wrote:Drumpf is about to face adults. I think he's in for a rude awakening.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu — who is supposed to be in charge of the government, according to the country's constitution — abruptly announced he won't seek to continue in office, as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to press for more executive power.

After meeting with Erdogan in the capital city of Ankara, Davutoglu told a news conference today that there will be an extraordinary congress of the ruling AK Party on May 22 and that he won't be standing for party leader, thereby ending his term as prime minister after just 20 months.
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Although Erdogan left the party when he was elected president, he is expected to have a major role in choosing the next prime minister, as he did when Davutoglu was named to replace him as prime minister.
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Sinan Ulgen, a Turkey expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says Davutoglu might have agreed with Erdogan on most matters, but was apparently faulted for not pushing hard enough to change Turkey's Constitution to strip executive powers from the prime minister's office and shift them to the presidency.

Isgrimnur wrote:
Erdogan fancies himself a mini-Putin, I would imagine.

About four in 10 Americans (41 percent) said the United States does “too much” to help the world solve its problems. Among Trump supporters, that share jumped to 54 percent.

While a slim plurality of Americans (49 percent to 44 percent) said they think that U.S. involvement in the global economy is a bad thing, rather than one that creates new markets and fosters growth, 65 percent of those backing Trump were negative on that count.
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More than eight in 10 Republican or Republican-leaning voters who support Trump (85 percent) ranked the refugee crisis as a major threat to the U.S., compared to 74 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats.

Nearly eight in 10 Trump supporters (78 percent) said they oppose increasing aid to foreign countries, while strong majorities backing Trump also indicated opposition to importing goods from developing countries as well as increasing U.S. companies’ investment in developing countries.
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The lack of enthusiasm for global involvement is not reflected in widespread support for military action against the Islamic State. Majorities of all voters, regardless of party or preferred candidate, said they approve of the campaign in Iraq and Syria. And about seven in 10 Trump supporters said they support sending ground troops to the fight, roughly the same proportion as Cruz and Kasich voters.

Isgrimnur wrote:Dawn of a new isolationism.

About four in 10 Americans (41 percent) said the United States does “too much” to help the world solve its problems. Among Trump supporters, that share jumped to 54 percent.

While a slim plurality of Americans (49 percent to 44 percent) said they think that U.S. involvement in the global economy is a bad thing, rather than one that creates new markets and fosters growth, 65 percent of those backing Trump were negative on that count.
...
More than eight in 10 Republican or Republican-leaning voters who support Trump (85 percent) ranked the refugee crisis as a major threat to the U.S., compared to 74 percent of Republicans, 55 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats.

Nearly eight in 10 Trump supporters (78 percent) said they oppose increasing aid to foreign countries, while strong majorities backing Trump also indicated opposition to importing goods from developing countries as well as increasing U.S. companies’ investment in developing countries.
...
The lack of enthusiasm for global involvement is not reflected in widespread support for military action against the Islamic State. Majorities of all voters, regardless of party or preferred candidate, said they approve of the campaign in Iraq and Syria. And about seven in 10 Trump supporters said they support sending ground troops to the fight, roughly the same proportion as Cruz and Kasich voters.

Backing the ultimate distillation of modern consumer culture, and yet being opposed to the globalization that underpins the whole thing.

At least 23 Texas towns have now repealed local sex offender ordinances after the threat of legal action forced many to strip their laws, or end up in court.

Earlier this year, the small Wise County town of Rhome repealed its ordinance.

Mayor Michelle Pittman says as a "general law" community of less than 5,000 people, they were informed by lawyers for Texas Voices for Justice and Reason they didn't have the power to have a local law on the books.
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News 8 has been following the story for months, ever since the town of Alvarado in Johnson County hinted last year it may face a legal challenge over part of its ordinance.

In January, even more towns started to repeal their laws, while others decided to fight the lawsuits.

Attorney Richard Gladden, who filed on behalf of Texas Voices, says about two dozen towns have fully repealed local laws dictating everything from where sex offenders can live to if they need to post sex offender signs during holidays like Halloween.

The lawsuits cite a little-read 2007 legal opinion from then-Attorney General Greg Abbott, who wrote that general law towns “…may not adopt an ordinance restricting where a registered sex offender may live” because they don’t have constitutional authority to do so.

Home-rule cities — those with populations over 5,000 - aren't impacted.

General law cities are smaller cities, most of which are less than 5,000 in population. All general law cities operate according to specific state statutes prescribing their powers and duties. General law cities are limited to doing what the state authorizes or permits them to do. If state law does not grant general law cities the express or implied power to initiate

Approximately seventy-five percent of all Texas cities operate under the general laws; the remainder are home rule cities. “General law” is a term used to describe all of the state laws applicable to a particular class of things. A general law city, therefore, is one that is subject to all of the state laws applicable to such cities, most of which are found in the Local Government Code.a particular action, none may be taken.

lOn Thursday evening, a 40-year-old man — with dark, curly hair, olive-skinned and an exotic foreign accent — boarded a plane. It was a regional jet making a short, uneventful hop from Philadelphia to nearby Syracuse.
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The curly-haired man tried to keep to himself, intently if inscrutably scribbling on a notepad he’d brought aboard. His seatmate, a blond-haired, 30-something woman sporting flip-flops and a red tote bag, looked him over. He was wearing navy Diesel jeans and a red Lacoste sweater – a look he would later describe as “simple elegance” – but something about him didn’t seem right to her.
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The woman wasn’t really sick at all! Instead this quick-thinking traveler had Seen Something, and so she had Said Something.

That Something she’d seen had been her seatmate’s cryptic notes, scrawled in a script she didn’t recognize. Maybe it was code, or some foreign lettering, possibly the details of a plot to destroy the dozens of innocent lives aboard American Airlines Flight 3950. She may have felt it her duty to alert the authorities just to be safe. The curly-haired man was, the agent informed him politely, suspected of terrorism.

The curly-haired man laughed.

He laughed because those scribbles weren’t Arabic, or some other terrorist code. They were math.

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.
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They might even have discovered that last year he was awarded the Carlo Alberto Medal, given to the best Italian economist under 40. That’s right: He’s Italian, not Middle Eastern, or whatever heritage usually gets racially profiled on flights these days.
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Menzio says he was “treated respectfully throughout,” though he remains baffled and frustrated by a “broken system that does not collect information efficiently.” He is troubled by the ignorance of his fellow passenger, as well as “A security protocol that is too rigid–in the sense that once the whistle is blown everything stops without checks–and relies on the input of people who may be completely clueless. ”

Tom and Jerry cartoons and video games are behind a rising tide of violence in the Middle East, Egypt’s top intelligence agency said on Tuesday.

“[The cartoon] portrays violence in a funny manner, and gives the impression that, yes, I can hit him, and I can blow him up with explosives,” Salan Abdel Sadeq told the audience at a conference titled “The Media and the Culture of Violence,” at Cairo University.
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Abdel Sadeq, head of Egypt’s State Information Service, also said that video games are partly to blame for violence and extremism in the region.

“Video games are spreading…it has become normal for a young man to sit for long hours playing video games, killing and spilling blood. He is happy and content with that.”

The official also warned that Egypt’s internal media production, though produced for a domestic audience, has an impact on the country’s international image.

Despite warning against the dangers of violent video games and cartoons that normalise violence, the Egyptian government is not understood to be planning to censor such output.

The official’s comments have been greeted with ridicule on social media.

Isgrimnur wrote:

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

The mayor of Jackson, Mississippi is once again on the receiving end of ridicule after a video of him highlighting workers filling potholes in his town led followers to find an earlier tweet claiming that they could be repaired with the power of prayer.

Mayor Tony Yarber — who also is the founder and pastor of the Relevant Empowerment Church — filmed a public service announcement this week for “We Are Jackson,” excitedly announcing that potholes in the southern town were in the process of being repaired by city workers.

A search thorough Yarber’s Twitter timeline turned up a tweet [Aug 12 '15] of the mayor previously stating they could be filled with prayer.

“Yes….I believe we can pray potholes away. Moses prayed and a sea opened up. #iseeya #itrustHim #prayerworks.” Yarber tweeted.

Defiant wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

To be fair, Differential Equations is somewhat scary. Never liked that class.

Defiant wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

To be fair, Differential Equations is somewhat scary. Never liked that class.

Pyperkub wrote:

Defiant wrote:

Isgrimnur wrote:

Yes, math. A differential equation, to be exact.

To be fair, Differential Equations is somewhat scary. Never liked that class.

Differentials were easy, integrals were hard.