Octopus Overlords

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:51 pm Vets should be made citizens on the spot after service.

Well, there’s two points that are critical for the U.S. It’s the unions. That why you have to destroy the unions. You destroy solidarity. It’s same reason for the attack on public schools, the attack on social security. These are all based on the idea that somehow you care about others, the community, and so on, and that’s completely unacceptable in a culture where you want to try to concentrate wealth and power. You don’t want people to have anything to do except to try to gain whatever they can for themselves. In that case, they’ll be very weak, of course. It’s only when you organize together than you can confront private capital.

Daehawk wrote: ↑Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:51 pm US Army veteran deported to Mexico
Ok lets get the first thing out of the way. Why are illegals allowed into the military to start with?

LordMortis wrote: ↑Mon Mar 26, 2018 3:30 pm Friend posted this today and one passage in particular hit me right in the yarbles and pretty much sums up my separation of conservatism. (Forget the unions part. )

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspecti ... y-and-more

Well, there’s two points that are critical for the U.S. It’s the unions. That why you have to destroy the unions. You destroy solidarity. It’s same reason for the attack on public schools, the attack on social security. These are all based on the idea that somehow you care about others, the community, and so on, and that’s completely unacceptable in a culture where you want to try to concentrate wealth and power. You don’t want people to have anything to do except to try to gain whatever they can for themselves. In that case, they’ll be very weak, of course. It’s only when you organize together than you can confront private capital.

Psychopaths, by definition, have problems understanding the emotions of other people, which partly explains why they are so selfish, why they so callously disregard the welfare of others, and why they commit violent crimes at up to three times the rate of other people.

But curiously, they seem to have no difficulty in understanding what other people think, want, or believe—the skill variously known as perspective-taking, mentalizing, or theory of mind. “Their behavior seems to suggest that they don’t consider the thoughts of others,” says Baskin-Sommers, but their performance on experiments suggests otherwise. When they hear a story and are asked to explicitly say what a character is thinking, they can.

On the face of it, this makes sense: Here are people who can understand what their victims are thinking but just don’t care. Hence their actions.

Two men have been charged with fatally stabbing an 85-year-old French Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust – and Paris prosecutors say the death is being probed as an “anti-Semitic murder.”

Mireille Knoll, 85, who escaped a notorious roundup of Parisian Jews shipped off to Auschwitz, was found dead Friday with 11 stab wounds in her torched apartment in Paris’ eastern 11th district.

The public prosecutor’s department in Paris opened its probe into “a murder based on the assumption that the vulnerable victim belonged to a specific religion.”

Knoll’s killing took place a year to the day after the murder of Sarah Halimi-Attal, 65, whose killing prosecutors believe was anti-Semitic. A neighbor threw her out the window of her Paris apartment while shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” — “God is greatest” in Arabic.

hepcat wrote: ↑Tue Mar 27, 2018 11:59 am Very tragic. Unfortunately, I suspect that the reply Rip is really looking for is "goddamn Muslims!".

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange's internet connection at its embassy in London, preventing him from communicating with the outside world.

The move is to prevent the WikiLeaks founder from interfering in other countries' affairs, Ecuador said.

It comes after Mr Assange questioned accusations that Moscow was responsible for the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy and his daughter in the UK on 4 March.

Mr Assange was granted political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012.

He was initially staying in London to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning over allegations of sex crimes, which the 46-year-old has always denied.

The Swedish authorities have since dropped their investigation, but Mr Assange believes he will be extradited to the US for questioning over the activities of WikiLeaks if he leaves the building.

Moliere wrote: ↑Thu Mar 29, 2018 3:49 pm Use the nuke map to find out if a nuclear blast will reach you.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2017 7:33 pm Affluenza mom

A Texas judge has declined to revoke bond for the mother of a teenager who used an "affluenza" defense regarding a fatal drunken-driving wreck after prosecutors said she carried a rifle and sipped beer.

Judge Wayne Salvant on Thursday urged Tonya Couch, who's free on bond, to "use common sense" pending her trial on hindering apprehension of a felon and money laundering charges. Prosecutors wanted her returned to jail.

Witnesses testifying for prosecutors Thursday alleged Couch carried a rifle at a gun show over the weekend and sipped beer at a restaurant last month.

Tonya Couch, the mother of "affluenza" teen Ethan Couch who is accused of helping him flee to Mexico in 2015, was sent back to jail Wednesday after a failed drug test.

Couch, 50, had been free on bond while awaiting trial. It was not made public what substance she tested positive for, but conditions of her bond prohibit her from using or possessing any controlled substances, marijuana or alcohol.

Couch is awaiting a May trial date on charges of money laundering and hindering the apprehension of a felon. She is accused of withdrawing $30,000 from a bank account and hiding with her son in Mexico after he missed a probation appointment in 2015.
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Ethan Couch is scheduled for release on April 2 once he completes his two-year sentence for violating the terms of his probation.

A 43-year-old Texas woman was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday for voting in the 2016 election while she was still on supervised release for a felony tax fraud conviction from 2011, the Star-Telegram reported.

The woman, Crystal Mason, reportedly said in court that she did not know she was not allowed to vote and that no official involved in her felony case told her that she wouldn’t be able to vote until she had finished serving her sentence and supervised release. She had already served about three years in federal prison for a tax fraud crime.

“I inflated returns,” Mason said, according to the Star-Telegram. “I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. … I didn’t even want to go vote.”

Enough wrote:This is so many shades of awful, I just can't go along with five years in the slammer for this:

A 43-year-old Texas woman was sentenced to five years in prison Wednesday for voting in the 2016 election while she was still on supervised release for a felony tax fraud conviction from 2011, the Star-Telegram reported.

The woman, Crystal Mason, reportedly said in court that she did not know she was not allowed to vote and that no official involved in her felony case told her that she wouldn’t be able to vote until she had finished serving her sentence and supervised release. She had already served about three years in federal prison for a tax fraud crime.

“I inflated returns,” Mason said, according to the Star-Telegram. “I was trying to get more money back for my clients. I admitted that. I owned up to that. I took accountability for that. I would never do that again. I was happy enough to come home and see my daughter graduate. My son is about to graduate. Why would I jeopardize that? Not to vote. … I didn’t even want to go vote.”

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:28 am Voter turn out is low and this woman gets 5 years for voting. I bet she never votes again in her life, even if she's eligible.

5 years for casting 1 vote in a sea of 30 million votes (or whatever). 5 freakin' years.

That sounds like justice to me.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Wed Apr 13, 2016 12:45 pm Affluenza teen gets jail time:

Ethan Couch appeared in adult court for the first time Monday, when a judge announced he is ordering the 19-year-old to serve four 180 day terms consecutively, one term for each of the four people who died in a 2013 drunken driving wreck involving the teen.
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The judge also set several conditions for Couch's probation when he does leave jail. Couch will not be allowed to drink, use drugs or drive, and he will be required to meet regularly with a community supervision officer.
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The adult court judge could make prison a condition of any future probation violation. In such a case, Couch could face up to 40 years behind bars -- 10 years for each of the four people who died in the 2013 wreck.

Ethan Couch, the young Texas man at the center of the so-called affluenza case, was released from jail this morning.
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After leaving the Tarrant County jail this morning, Couch was sent to meet with probation officers in a separate building. He was released from the probation office later in the morning.

"[Couch] will now serve the remaining six years of his period of community supervision under the terms and conditions imposed by the court," his lawyers, Scott Brown and Reagan Wynn, said in a statement to ABC News. "From the beginning, Ethan has admitted his conduct, accepted responsibility for his actions, and felt true remorse for the terrible consequences of those actions.

Holman wrote: ↑Mon Apr 02, 2018 2:22 pm Looks like Affluenza is incurable.

Eight people died in three Indian states on Monday as tens of thousands of lower-caste Indians demonstrated violently against a recent Supreme Court ruling that they say dilutes protections for the Dalit community.

Protesters halted railway traffic, forced shops to close and made their presence felt in at least 10 states. As the day began, protests were peaceful, but they quickly turned violent, with local media reporting clashes between police and protesters in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere. Violent protests were reported in at least seven states.
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In Punjab, the state with the highest percentage of India's low-caste Dalit population, protesters effectively shut down the northern state, forcing the government to halt public transportation, close banks and educational institutions and postpone high school board exams.

Not all the protests were violent or as large in scale, with peaceful demonstrations occurring in Delhi, the nation's capital.

In Hinduism's caste system, Dalits are traditionally at the bottom rung. Members of the higher caste sometimes consider them impure, and in certain places, they still aren't allowed to enter the homes or temples of the upper-caste community or share utensils with them.

This practice, despite being unconstitutional, is still prevalent in parts of India, and Dalits continue to struggle with instances of discrimination, exclusion and violence.

Earlier on Monday, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad accused opposition parties of politicizing the issue. He said that the government does not agree with the Supreme Court's order on the issue and has filed a review petition asking that the judgment be revised.

On March 20, the Supreme Court ruled that police couldn't immediately arrest someone upon the filing of criminal charges under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, which governs how the government prosecutes cases of hate crimes against lower-caste people and people belonging to tribal communities.

The court's judgment allows police to conduct a preliminary inquiry into the accused before the beginning of a formal investigation. The aim is to prevent false accusations.

Members of the Dalit caste say the court ruling will add an additional obstacle to having formal charges brought against people who commit crimes against them.
Police registered more than 47,000 cases of crimes against people belonging to a lower caste or from a tribe in 2016, according to the latest national data.

An angry mob of anti-vaccine parents shook their fists and screamed, “You are going to hell!” and “You Democrats destroy America!” at New Jersey lawmakers who voted to make it harder for families to obtain religious exemptions from immunizations Thursday.

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Jul 26, 2017 11:54 am Two New England senators caught on hot mic

Susan Collins (R) ME and Jack Reed (D) RI

In a more salacious part of what was recorded, Collins then addressed a radio interview in which US Representative Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, suggested that if Collins were a man, he’d have challenged her to a duel for opposing the Senate Republicans’ Obamacare overhaul bill.

‘‘Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?’’ Collins asks.

‘‘I know,’’ Reed replies. ‘‘Trust me. Do you know why he challenged you to a duel? ‘Cause you could beat the s___ out of him.’’

‘‘Well, he’s huge,’’ Collins replies. ‘‘And he — I don’t mean to be unkind, but he’s so unattractive it’s unbelievable.’’

‘‘Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?’’ she continues, referring to an infamous photo of Farenthold.

Three months have passed since Rep. Blake Farenthold promised to repay the $84,000 he used in taxpayer money to pay the settlement of a former aide who accused the Texas Republican of sexual harassment and other improper conduct.

There is no indication that the congressman has done so yet and repeated requests for comment on this story to his office by CNN for an update have gone unanswered.

Rep. Blake Farenthold announced he's resigning from the House of Representatives effective Friday, a few months after news broke he used taxpayer money to pay a settlement to a former aide who accused the Texas Republican of sexual harassment and other improper conduct.

After his announcement, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which works to elect GOP candidates to the House, requested he pay back the money that was used for the settlement.
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Within minutes of his announcement, Farenthold appeared to have deleted his official Twitter account.
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The House Ethics Committee announced late last year it would investigate Farenthold for allegations of sexual harassment from his former aide, Lauren Greene, who received the $84,000 settlement after she sued Farenthold in December 2014 for gender discrimination, sexual harassment and a hostile work environment.

Farenthold denied some of the allegations against him but apologized using for inappropriate language and his role in creating a hostile workplace. Farenthold had vowed to repay the taxpayer money used for the settlement in December, but as of last month he had not yet paid back that money.

At least one person sustained a serious injury in the blaze.

At least one person sustained a serious injury in the blaze.

Donald Trump wrote:Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!

NYT 12/30/1998 wrote:
Archie Spigner, the chairman of the City Council's Housing and Buildings Committee, said yesterday that he received a telephone call this week from Donald J. Trump, the real estate developer, who expressed concern about the high cost of installation and other problems that he had with sprinklers. Mr. Trump confirmed yesterday that he had ''received and placed calls'' from and to various city officials.

Steven Spinola, the president of the Real Estate Board of New York, an industry group, said yesterday that most fatal fires occur in two- and three-family homes, not in high-rise buildings that have fire-resistant construction.

He and Mr. Trump said that in addition to being costly -- up to $4 per square foot to equip an entire building, Mr. Spinola said -- sprinklers were also prone to vandalism and mishaps, and widely disliked by tenants for esthetic reasons. ''We believe that the code that exists in New York City basically gives us the safest buildings,' Mr. Spinola said. 'We don't believe sprinklers are necessary to have the safest buildings.'