Octopus Overlords

Isgrimnur wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:10 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:09 pm

gilraen wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 4:05 pm

pr0ner wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 9:35 am David Koch has passed away.

One down, so many more to go.

Did they bury him with his money?

You have to build his funeral pyre with it to ensure one last F-U to the planet.

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 7:54 pm Thing is, unless they buried him with his money, his legacy will live on. And on. And on...


See you in hell, Koch. Or was that Dubai.

Kraken wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 10:35 pm

LawBeefaroni wrote: Fri Aug 23, 2019 7:54 pm Thing is, unless they buried him with his money, his legacy will live on. And on. And on...


See you in hell, Koch. Or was that Dubai.

Not to minimize his toxic politics -- far from it -- but it bears remembering that Koch also did some good in the world. I'd be surprised if that was his only act of philanthropy.

“I don’t talk to fucking Jews,” Dye told the New Jersey Globe during a very brief telephone interview. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Dye was fired from his job with the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development last week after the Globe reported that he had made anti-Semitic and anti-Latino comments on his personal Facebook page.

Dye wrote:What You Are Seriously Watching Here Is ( “COINTELPRO & JEWISH MEDIA PROPAGANDA ASSASSINATION HIT TEAM” ) At Work & It’s That Racist Gary Schaer Behind It All & He Is Using The Jewish Media To Get Me Fired From A Job

Defiant wrote: Fri Aug 30, 2019 12:25 am Passaic NAACP President to Reporter: ‘I don’t talk to fucking Jews’

“I don’t talk to fucking Jews,” Dye told the New Jersey Globe during a very brief telephone interview. “Get the fuck out of here.”

Dye was fired from his job with the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development last week after the Globe reported that he had made anti-Semitic and anti-Latino comments on his personal Facebook page.

He later posted a facebook rant in which he says he never said such a thing, and blamed the "Jewish media" for portraying him as anti-Semitic.

A North Carolina judicial panel rejected state legislative district maps Tuesday, saying legislators took extreme advantage in drawing voting districts to help elect a maximum number of Republican lawmakers. The judges gave lawmakers two weeks to try again.

The three-judge panel of state trial judges unanimously ruled that courts can step in to decide when partisan advantage goes so far it diminishes democracy. Their ruling comes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June in a separate case involving North Carolina's congressional map that it's not the job of federal courts to decide if boundaries are politically unfair — though state courts could consider whether gerrymandering stands up under state laws and constitutions.

The state judges found that the way the majority-Republican General Assembly redrew legislative district maps in 2017 violated the rights of Democratic voters under the state constitution's equal protection and freedom of assembly clauses.
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The court gave lawmakers until Sept. 18 to again redraw maps to be used in next year's elections. The judges said they would appoint an outside referee to advise them in next steps, including drawing maps if lawmakers miss their Sept. 18 deadline.

The judges also raised the possibility they would postpone the state's March primary for legislature or other offices if they feel it's necessary.

A Monticello tour guide was explaining earlier this summer how enslaved people built, planted and tended a terrace of vegetables at Thomas Jefferson’s estate when a woman interrupted to share her annoyance.

“Why are you talking about that?” she demanded, according to Gary Sandling, vice president of Monticello’s visitor programs and services. “You should be talking about the plants."

At Monticello, George Washington’s Mount Vernon and other plantations across the South, an effort is underway to deal more honestly with the brutal institution that the Founding Fathers relied on to build their homes and their wealth: slavery.
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The changes have begun to draw people long alienated by the sites’ whitewashing of the past and to satisfy what staff call a hunger for real history, as plantations add slavery-focused tours, rebuild cabins and reconstruct the lives of the enslaved with help from their descendants. But some visitors, who remain overwhelmingly white, are pushing back, and the very mention of slavery and its impacts on the United States can bring accusations of playing politics.
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Visitor reviews of Monticello on travel site TripAdvisor are overwhelmingly positive. But the negative comments are increasingly likely to blast the amount of time devoted to slavery, decrying “political correctness” and the bashing of a giant of American history. Two years ago, only a couple of the poor reviews mentioned slavery. This year, almost all of them do.
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Staff at James Madison’s Virginia estate, Montpelier, get complaints every month that a 10-minute video they show is pushing propaganda. The film traces slavery’s effects through history, from Jim Crow and economic inequality to gerrymandering and redlining.

Todd Palin appears to have filed for divorce from former Alaska governor and one-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his wife of 31 years.

In a document filed Friday in Anchorage Superior Court, Todd Palin, 55, asked to dissolve the marriage, citing an “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.”

Smoove_B wrote: Mon Sep 09, 2019 7:57 pm I guess given her history, this is political - but Sarah Palin and her husband are divorcing:

Todd Palin appears to have filed for divorce from former Alaska governor and one-time vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, his wife of 31 years.

In a document filed Friday in Anchorage Superior Court, Todd Palin, 55, asked to dissolve the marriage, citing an “incompatibility of temperament between the parties such that they find it impossible to live together as husband and wife.”

Max Peck wrote: Wed Apr 12, 2017 3:13 pm Charging Bull artist wants removal of Fearless Girl statue

On Saturday afternoon, Wall Street’s long-suffering “Charging Bull” endured yet another attack that left it with a six-inch-long gash above its brow, along with a dozen deep scratches. The alleged culprit? A Texas man wielding a fortified metal banjo.

Tevon Varlack, 42, of Dallas was charged with criminal mischief and disorderly conduct on Saturday in connection with the vandalism.

A witness told the New York Times that Varlack was cursing President Trump as he swung the banjo against the bronze sculpture, sending loud clanging through the Bowling Green park in Manhattan’s financial district and startling tourists hoping for a photo with the bull’s famous gonads. Police declined to confirm this, writing only that the man responsible for the attack was “ranting incoherently.”
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According to a criminal complaint filed Sunday, Varlack was playing loud music from a portable speaker while hacking at the statue. When an officer picked up the “metal imitation banjo,” Varlack reportedly said, “I did it. The banjo and speaker are mine."

Fernando Luis Alvarez, a gallery manager who works with Di Modica, told the Times that repairs could cost between $75,000 and $150,000.

Daehawk wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:57 pm Guy does donuts on Trump's golf course

I wonder which family member undocumented immigrants he will hire to repair the greens?

The override isn't complete — the Senate still must hold a vote on the issue, but Republicans there need only one Democrat to join them to secure victory. Senate absences also could make that easier.
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Cooper vetoed the budget on June 28, saying the two-year spending plan lacks Medicaid expansion for hundreds of thousands of low-income adults, contains paltry raises for teachers and unnecessarily gives corporations additional tax reductions. The veto and lack of an override had led to an 11-week budget impasse. Republicans have said Cooper won't negotiate unless Medicaid expansion is approved, too. Cooper said he just wants the topic to be on the table.

Daehawk wrote: Wed Sep 11, 2019 11:23 pm With the holidays coming up and seeing Trump on tv I realized that if he was a member of The Spice Girls he would be Pumpkin Spice.

The US and Brazil have agreed to promote private-sector development in the Amazon, during a meeting in Washington on Friday.

They also pledged a $100m (£80m) biodiversity conservation fund for the Amazon led by the private sector.

Brazil's foreign minister said opening the rainforest to economic development was the only way to protect it.

Ivanka tells donors she got her moral compass from her dad

Kraken wrote: Mon Sep 16, 2019 10:14 pm Remember when R&P was a sleepy backwater? When you could go weeks, or even months, without really paying much attention to Washington? I wonder if Sleepy Joe could bring back boredom.

Australian intelligence determined China was responsible for a cyber-attack on its national parliament and three largest political parties before the general election in May, five people with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

Los Angeles County prosecutors say they have charged Democratic fundraiser and LGBTQ activist Ed Buck with running a drug house and other crimes after a man overdosed on methamphetamine at Buck's apartment last week. The man survived, but two other men have died from overdoses at Buck's apartment in the past two years.

Buck was arrested Tuesday night — after months in which activists and relatives of the men who died have called for criminal charges related to the suspicious circumstances around the deaths of 26-year-old Gemmel Moore in 2017 and 55-year-old Timothy Michael Dean in January.

Buck, who is 65, is now facing felony counts of battery causing serious injury, administering methamphetamine and maintaining a drug house.
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Advocates for Moore and Dean have long accused Buck of being a sexual predator who lured gay, at-risk black men to his home in West Hollywood. As member station KCRW reported this summer, Buck is alleged to have pressured men to do drugs, particularly crystal meth.

When Moore died, police say they found drug paraphernalia littered around the scene in Buck's home, including syringes, pipes and plastic bags. The coroner blamed the death on an accidental overdose, but a homicide inquiry was launched after Moore's journal was published weeks later. In it, Moore blamed Buck for introducing him to methamphetamine.

"I honestly don't know what to do. I've become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that," Moore wrote, according to his family's website. He added, "Ed Buck is the one to thank."

hepcat wrote: Wed Sep 18, 2019 3:48 pm The recent firing of Shane Gillis from SNL almost immediately after he was hired, coupled with a few other high profile take downs (or in some cases, attempted take downs) of comedians, writers and just your average person on the street, is (in my opinion) one of the greatest cultural threats we've seen in a while - "cancel culture", is the term, I believe.

I don't find Gillis particularly funny, but I sure as hell wouldn't want someone going back and putting the works of true comic geniuses like Mel Brooks or George Carlin under the same puritanical lens with the sole intent of destroying their lives. I'm fine with calling folks out on their past behavior, but let's not hang people in the square.

Sigh, I guess the concept of the commensurate response died the moment social media was invented.