Hacker CTurt announced a few days ago that he has “code execution on the PS4“.
Many asked for clarifications on this statement, others told me this
wasn’t CTurt’s exploit to release… details were obviously needed.
CTurt has contacted me lately to share a few details
PS4 Code Execution: Firmware 1.76 only
I
had the hope this would mean some cool stuff down the road for users on
current PS4 firmware. CTurt confirmed the exploit is 1.76 only. Now,
this could lead to additional information being found in the system for
owners of more “up to date” firmwares, but for now don’t expect anything
from this if you’re not on PS4 1.76
PS4 Code execution: for devs only
CTurt
mentions he was given information by flat_z for this. It was strongly
hinted to me that they are not the two only ones who know about the
trick used to get code execution on PS4 1.76. What CTurt told me is that
this is useful for devs only at this point. I assumed the trick is
shared between hackers (although I’m not sure it’s that much of a secret
at this point, people who’ve been following up on twitter can easily
find leads on the technique used – and yes, this goes through the webkit
exploit -) who are helping with the PS4 SDK.
CTurt
mentioned however, that if they reach a point where a homebrew launcher
can be made, he’ll consider doing a public release.
The traditional holiday cookout has its roots in the cooperation
between black and indigenous peoples struggling to get or keep their
freedom from colonialists
Barbecue
is a form of cultural power and is intensely political, with a culture
of rules like no other American culinary tradition: sauce or no sauce;
which kind of sauce; chopped or not chopped; whole animal or just ribs
or shoulders. And, if America is about people creating new worlds based
on rebellion against oppression and slavery, then barbecue is the ideal
dish: it was made by enslaved Africans with inspiration and
contributions from Native Americans struggling to maintain their
independence.
The common cultural narrative of barbecue, however, exclusively
assigns its origins to Native Americans and Europeans; the very
etymology of the word is said to derive from both Carib through Spanish (barbacoa – to roast over hot coals on a wooden framework) or from western European sources (barbe-a-queue in
French – “head to tail” – which fits nicely with contemporary ideas of
no-waste eating and consuming offal). Some American barbecue masters
have taken to attributing the innovation of barbecue to their German and
Czech ancestors.
If anything, both in etymology and culinary technique, barbecue is as
African as it is Native American and European, though enslaved Africans
have largely been erased from the modern story of American barbecue.
At
best, our ancestors are seen as mindless cooking machines who prepared
the meat under strict white supervision, if at all; at worst, barbecue
was something done “for” the enslaved, as if they were being introduced
to a novel treat.
In reality, they shaped the culture of New World
barbecuing traditions, from jerking in Jamaica to anticuchos in Peru to
cooking traditions in the colonial Pampas. And the word barbecue also
has roots in West Africa among the Hausa, who used the term “babbake” to
describe a complex of words referring to grilling, toasting, building a
large fire, singeing hair or feathers and cooking food over a long
period of time over an extravagant fire.
In the earliest colonial days, the West Indies served as a seed
colonies for the presence of enslaved Africans in the New World
especially because, within 10 years of European arrival, indigenous
Americans endured mass, genocidal losses due to the introduction of
diseases common in Europe. With only a few remaining Carib and Arawak
indigenes, Africans quickly became the majority on the islands and,
eventually, the Southeastern coast (where many island colonists
resettled in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, often with their enslaved people in tow).
In Jamaica, maroon rebels who resisted slavery
and formed their own settlements forged ties with rebellious indigenous
islanders in the West Indies and Latin America (leading, eventually, to
the modern form of barbecue known as jerking). Similar ties were
established in the first areas of the United States to see the arrival
of enslaved Africans, which occurred in 1526, after Spaniard Lucas
Vasquez de Ayllon died in an effort to establish a colony
in what we know now as South Carolina. Ayllon’s political successors
abandoned the area, leaving behind the enslaved Africans and the Native
Americans who had guided them there. With the Spanish had come pigs,
which became feral and to this day infest Southern woodlands. It was in
that context that barbecue made its debut on what is now American soil.
Enslaved Africans and Native Americans had a lot in common,
culinarily-speaking: they had been cooking and eating in similar ways.
despite an ocean between their civilizations. It only makes sense that,
when their food ways, crops, cooking methods and systems of preservation,
hunting, fishing and food storage collided, that there would be deep
similarities and convergences of technique, method and skill. And West
and Central Africans had always had their own versions of the barbacoa
and spit roasting of meat. While living in a tropical climate, salting,
spicing and half-smoking meat upon butchering was key to ensuring game
would make it back to the village with minimal spoilage. Festivals were
marked by the salting, spicing and roasting of whole animals or large
cuts of meat.
Thus, in colonial and antebellum North America, enslaved men became
barbecue’s master chefs: woodcuts, cartoons, postcards and portraits
from the period document the role that black chefs played in shaping
this very American, and especially Southern staple. Working over pits in
the ground covered in green wood – much as in West Africa or Jamaica –
it was enslaved men and their descendants, not the Bubbas of today’s
Barbecue Pitmasters, that innovated and refined regional barbecue
traditions. If anything, German, Czech, Mexican and other traditions in
South Carolina, Missouri and Texas were added to a base created by black
hands forged in the crucible of slavery.
In some ways barbecue is true Independence Day food. As European
Americans acclimated themselves to the custom of forsaking utensils and
even plates to eat more like enslaved Africans and Native Americans –
from spareribs to corn on the cob – they used their hands in an
unprecedented break with Old World formalities. It is not without some
irony that enslaved people, the earliest barbecue pitmasters, were
called upon to avail slaveholders and politicians with Fourth of July
barbecues meant to win over neighbors and constituents. When they
obtained their own freedom, the formerly enslaved celebrated Juneteenth
with none other than their favorite freedom food – barbecue.
Barbecue is now widely recognized as a staple of the American
culinary canon – so much so that at least three national holidays
(Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day) are associated with it.
Barbecue is laced with the aspiration of freedom, but it was seasoned
and flavored by the people who could not enjoy any freedom on
Independence Day for almost a century.
He is talking about issues that at one time formed the core of the
Democratic ideal. If you read some old speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt
and other New Deal Democrats, you'll see that Bernie has come back to
that core message; it is a message that saved America from going
Communist in 1933, and created a powerful middle class that helped this
nation become great. It created a 'great prosperity' from about 1950 to
1980 when the deterioration began.
So, you see, if you take a little longer view of history, you will
see that beginning in the 1980s, the Democratic Party began its
evolution toward the right as the Republicans 'evolved' even further
right.
In the context of history, Obama and Clinton are what used to be
called 'Eisenhower Republicans.' In fact, if you read Ike's brilliant
1963 essay, "Why I'm a Republican," and compare what he says in it,
you'll see that Obama and Clinton are a little to the right of the ideas
espoused therein, particularly on so-called 'free trade.'
So, what I'd say to you is that in Bernie, we have a reversal of the
destructive neoliberal/neoconservative 'evolution' of Dems throughout
the 80's, 90's, and 00's. Bernie is taking us back to the New Deal, which
is basically a set of policies to strengthen the American middle class.
Bernie does one better, though. He's got a good platform on racism and
reform of the correctional system.
This is why so many of us are responding to Bernie. The American
people are angry at how the game has been rigged against us, at how hard
it is to get ahead now, at how dim the futures of our children are
compared to ours. We are ripe for another New Deal - a Real Deal where
our interests are once again put front and center.
AP Photo
MOBILE, Ala. — It was immigration, not segregation, that
brought some 20,000 southerners — far fewer than predicted — out for
Donald Trump on Friday night, but the ghost of George Wallace loomed
large.
Wallace, an avowed segregationist, was the last
presidential candidate to win electoral votes as a third-party
candidate. The threat of Trump doing so, propelled by a hardline
immigration stance that many have condemned as racist, looms over the
Republican Party now as it did over the Democratic Party then, even as
the enthusiasm of his following, for once, fell far short of
expectations.
Wallace carried five Southern states, and Trump, who is
leading early national polls in the race for the Republican nomination,
touted his leads in Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida and
Texas.
Trump also panned birthright citizenship as a
bad deal for the U.S., saying, “We’re the only place just about that’s
stupid enough to do it.” Trump’s recently released immigration plan
calls for ending birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented
immigrants, which is guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, according to the
legal consensus, though Trump disputes that point.
Trump invited Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of Congress’s most
ardent immigration hardliners who helped the businessman craft his
immigration plan, to the podium, where the two embraced.
He
also attacked his favorite punching bag, former Florida governor Jeb
Bush, on the issue. “ Jeb Bush, ugh,” said Trump, pausing for dramatic
effect, before calling the former governor “totally in favor of Common
Core, weak on immigration.”
Praising a woman who had
brought Trump’s book “Art of the Deal” to the rally, he said, “I’ve got
to get her the hell out of here, she’s so beautiful.”
He went on to say, “I will protect women. It’s so important to me”
There
were also vestiges of Wallace’s Alabama, including on the sample
editions of “The First Freedom” newspaper one man handed out to drivers
as they entered the parking lot. The paper’s front page included a story
about “black-on-white crime in South Carolina” and an editor’s note
about German media’s silence about “the actual programs these peaceful
‘neo-nazis’ stand for.”
The vast majority of
supporters where white: of over 1,000 people waiting to enter on the
east of the Ladd Peebles Stadium at 5 p.m., eight were black.
A
black pastor opened the rally with an invocation, asking, “What if we
could replace hate with love?” He was followed by an all-black middle
school student council that led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance.
Marty
Hughes, 47, wore a camouflage hat with Confederate flag detailing and
said he liked Trump’s stances on immigration and taxes. He called the
removal this year of Confederate flags from government property across
much of the South “stupidity” and said he didn’t think a President Trump
would stand for it. He named Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and neurosurgeon Ben
Carson as other candidates who appealed to him.
Trump’s appeal to Leo Renaldo, is, “That he’s going to send them
packing,” explained the 65-year-old, who drove four hours from
Mississippi for the event, before his wife interjected, telling him,
“Don’t say that.”
“Legal immigration is fine,” added Renaldo.
“He tells it like it is,” said Bob House, 57, a maintenance manager, of Trump’s appeal. “None of this political correct stuff.”
Earlier,
the city said it expected 40,000 supporters at the rally, but various
media outlets estimated that the total was in the ballpark of 15-20,000,
leaving the stadium looking less than half full. Police officers at the
rally said they would not be providing a crowd estimate.
The
Trump campaign, which had said it expected 36,000 attendees, referred
POLITICO to Colby Cooper, chief of staff to the mayor of Mobile, who
said the city’s estimate was 30,000 attendees. “It’s an approximate
number,” he said.
“This is one of the largest events Mobile has successfully pulled
off, next to our Mardi Gras,” Cooper added. “We’re grateful to the Trump
campaign.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that 15,000
people attended a rally he held at a convention center in Phoenix,
Arizona, in July, but the room’s capacity was just over 2,000 people. A
convention center staffer at that event told POLITICO that the fire
marshal had permitted just over 4,000 people to enter the room for the
rally.
Trump continued to show a flare for
showmanship, as he has at previous rallies. “If it rains I’ll take off
my hat and prove once and for all that it’s real,” he said toward the
outset of the rally, before following through and showing the crowd his
hair, to loud cheers.
Before the event, his plane circled the stadium, eliciting a standing ovation.
By Leo W. Gerard International President, United Steelworkers
Confronted with a dire situation, a world power last week took strong action to secure its domestic jobs and manufacturing.
That was China. Not the United States.
China
diminished the value of its currency. This gave its exporting
industries a boost while simultaneously blocking imports. The move
protected the Asian giant’s manufacturers and its workers’ jobs.
Currency
manipulation violates free market principles, but for China, doing it
makes sense. The nation’s economy is cooling. Its stock market just crashed, and its economic powerhouse – exports – declined a substantial 8.3 percent in July – down to $195 billion from $213 billion
the previous July. This potent action by a major economic competitor
raises the question of when the United States government is going to
stop pretending currency manipulation doesn’t exist.
When will the
United States take the necessary action to protect its industry,
including manufacturing essential to national defense, as well as the
good, family-supporting jobs of millions of manufacturing workers?
The report, “Manufacturing Job Loss: Trade, Not Productivity is the Culprit,”
clearly links massive trade deficits to closed American factories and
killed American jobs. U.S. manufacturers lost ground to foreign
competitors whose nations facilitated violation of international trade
rules. China is a particular culprit. My union, the United Steelworkers,
has won trade case after trade case over the past decade, securing
sanctions called duties that are charged on imported goods to counteract
the economic effect of violations.
In the most recent case the
USW won, the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) finalized duties
in July on illegally subsidized Chinese tires dumped into the U.S.
market. The recent history of such sanctions on tires illustrates how
relentless the Chinese government is in protecting its workers.
Shortly
after President Obama took office, the USW filed a complaint about
illegally-subsidized, Chinese-made tires dumped into the U.S. market.
The Obama administration imposed duties on Chinese tire imports from
September 2009 to September 2012.
Immediately after the tariffs
ended, Chinese companies flooded the U.S. market with improperly
subsidized tires again, threatening U.S. tire plants and jobs. So the
USW filed the second complaint.
Though the USW workers won the
second case as well, the process is too costly and too time consuming.
Sometimes factories and thousands of jobs are permanently lost before a
case is decided in workers’ favor. This has happened to U.S. tire,
paper, auto parts and steel workers.
In addition, the process is
flawed because it forbids consideration of currency manipulation – the
device China used last week to support its export industries.
By
reducing the value of its currency, China, in effect, gave its export
industries discount coupons, enabling them to sell goods more cheaply
overseas without doing anything differently or better.
Simultaneously,
China marked up the price of all imports into the country. American and
European exporters did nothing bad or wrong, but now their products will
cost more in China.
Chinese officials have contended that the
devaluation, which came on the heels of the bad news about its July
exports, wasn’t deliberate. They say it reflected bad market conditions
and note that groups like the International Monetary Fund have been pushing China to make its currency more market based.
Right.
Sure. And it was nothing more than a coincidence that it occurred just
as China wanted to increase exports. And it was simply serendipity that
in just three days, “market conditions” wiped out four years of tiny,
painfully incremental increases in the currency’s value.
If the
value of the currency truly is market based and not controlled by the
government, then as Chinese exports rise, the value should increase.
That would eliminate the artificial discount China just awarded its
exported goods. Based on past history, that is not likely to happen. So
what China really is saying is that its currency is market based when
the value is declining but not when it rises.
China did what it
felt was right for its people, its industry and its economy. The country
hit a rough spot this year. Though its economy is expected to grow by 7
percent, that would be the slowest rate in six years. Its housing prices fell 9.8 percent in June. Car sales dropped 7 percent
in July, the largest decline since the Great Recession. Over the past
several months, the Chinese government has intervened repeatedly to try
to stop a massive stock market crash that began in June.
In the meantime, the
nation’s factories that make products like tires, auto parts, steel and
paper continue to operate full speed ahead and ship the excess overseas.
As a result, for example, the international market is flooded with under-priced Chinese steel, threatening American steel mills and tens of thousands of American steelworkers’ jobs.
As
EPI points out, that means more U.S. factories closed and U.S. jobs
lost. If China had bombed thousands of U.S. factories over the past
decade, America would respond. But the nation has done virtually nothing
about thousands of factories closed by trade violations.
The
United States could take two steps immediately to counter the
ill-effects of currency manipulation. Congress could pass and President
Obama could sign a proposed customs enforcement bill.
It would classify deliberate currency undervaluation as an illegal
export subsidy. Then the manipulation could be countered with duties on
the imported products.
Bond co-founded the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Community, served as the
president of the Southern Poverty Law Center at its founding, and led
the NAACP for a decade.
Bond went on to serve for 20 years. He was a public
opponent of the Vietnam War and a public supporter of the fights for
women's rights and gay rights. He taught a generation of college
students the history of the civil rights movement, including at American
University, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the
University of Virginia.
Not
only is Jeb! now fully embracing his brother’s disastrous, bloody war
of choice. He’s talking about it in a glib salesman way, reminding us
that the war was in fact “a pretty good deal” for his cronies:
for Halliburton spinoff KBR, the entire defense industry, and a
metastasizing web of private security contractors including disgraced
giant Blackwater. The families of the dead and wounded in Iraq might
disagree.
Things got worse in his speech Friday, where he
volunteered that “Paul Wolfowitz is giving some advice.” Wolfowitz, the
scowling face of the smug neocons.
I’ve asked this before: Does Bush even want to win?
Donald
Trump claimed Bush had his “47 percent moment” – the comment that
doomed Mitt Romney — when he suggested we’re spending too much on
women’s health. But his dumb remark about toppling Saddam being “a
pretty good deal” could rival that. Then again, there are so many contenders for the inconvenient, inadvertent truth-telling moment that could doom Bush:
suggesting underpaid American workers “need to work more hours;” that
“the federal government shouldn’t be doing this” when asked about the
minimum wage; arguing that we should be “phasing out” Medicare.
Of course he walked all of those remarks back. Let’s see if he tries to do the same with this one.
All
of these campaign flubs are occurring against the backdrop of the
strangest presidential primary of our lifetimes, in which Donald Trump
has taken the lead nationally, as well as in Iowa and New Hampshire,
with 16 lackluster rivals trying to catch up. For a while Bush
strategists were pretending the Trump candidacy benefited Bush, by
depriving his rivals of the attention they need to gain traction, and
predicting Bush would consolidate support as some of the bloated GOP
field dropped out. I used to think that myself, to be honest. But now
I’m not so sure.
Whose support does Jeb! think he will consolidate
as the campaign goes on? Which of the non-Trump candidates is likely to
throw him support? Sen. Ted Cruz and Ben Carson are surging after last
week’s debate, and neither man’s supporters seem a likely match for
Bush. Cruz is second so far in fundraising, so he isn’t going anywhere,
and if Carson stumbles, his voters won’t flock to Bush.
Among the
current bottom-tier candidates, who might be expected to leave the race
early — Governors Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, plus Mike Huckabee and
Rick Santorum — all are to Bush’s right and seem unlikely to throw him
their support (which is a collective 9.5 percent right now, anyway).
Sen. Rand Paul is flailing: he’s averaging 4.5 percent in national
polls and has fallen from third to ninth place in Iowa (once a
stronghold, thanks to his dad) and from third to sixth in New Hampshire.
But his supporters aren’t a natural for Bush, either.
Of the
candidates who are closer to the Bush wing of the party – Senators Marco
Rubio and Lindsey Graham, Governors John Kasich, Chris Christie and
Scott Walker, former Gov. George Pataki and perhaps Carly Fiorina – only
Pataki, Christie and Graham seem like contenders who aren’t contending,
and probably won’t. But by definition, that means none of them has much
support he can turn over to Bush if he leaves the race, since they’re
each polling between 0 and 3.8 percent.
For
now, Fiorina and Kasich are rising, so they’re not going anywhere soon.
Walker is sinking, but I have a hard time thinking that the ambitious
Wisconsin governor and his moneyed backers will pull the plug quickly
(although if Walker loses his neighboring state of Iowa, where he’s now
dropped from a persistent 1st place to 3rd, the humiliation might drive
him back to Madison). Rubio shares a natural constituency with Bush, and
you can imagine a scenario in which he could be persuaded by mutual
friends to step aside. But with Bush so weak, and with a decent war
chest, he might think it should be Jeb who steps aside. And he might
find others in the GOP establishment who agree.
Even if Trump
fades, who fattens up on his voters? It’s probably not Bush. Trump
fading or even dropping out would certainly shake up the race, and it’s
certainly possible, if not likely, that will happen. Trump skeptics
comfort themselves by saying his frontrunner status reflects his
celebrity as well as the crowded field – and that the 20-25 percent
support he’s getting in polls isn’t a commanding lead anyway.
But
that’s where Mitt Romney rode out much of the 2012 campaign: from June
2011 to February 2012, according to Real Clear Politics, Romney hovered between 20 and 28 percent in the polls.
For most of that time he was ahead of the pack, though he did surrender
the polling lead to Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain and Rick Santorum,
briefly. He only began to break away once he’d won some early primaries,
and some rivals dropped out.
Romney benefited from candidates to
his right splitting the Tea Party vote, while he chased out moderates
like Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty early. Conceivably Bush could benefit
from the same split on the right, especially if Trump stumbles. But
Bush was supposed to chase away a lot of his rivals with his presumed
electability and large war chest. With every gaffe and stumble, the myth
of his electability dissipates. He’s still got that war chest, though,
so we can’t count him out.
CNN Money investigates the crazed market for the video games of yore,
fueled by the likes of RetroLiberty, a YouTube channel about finding
vintage video games at swap meets or parking lot deals, and
Videogamesnewyork, a shop specializing in vintage game gear from the
last century.
From CNN Money:
Prices skyrocketed almost overnight, says JJ Hendricks, whose site Video
Games Price Charting tracks the going rate for vintage games. He
estimates the market for retro games is now worth about $200 million
annually. Hendricks once spent months negotiating with a mysterious
source in Canada to buy one of only two Powerfest 94 prototypes known to
exist (seen at right). He ultimately made the deal -- for $12,000 in
cash.
It's the perfect storm. Just as kids who grew up in the '80's and '90's
are reaching their thirties, the supply of vintage games is shrinking.
"I think it's just a nostalgia for when they were younger," says David
Kaelin, who runs the Classic Game Fest in Austin, Texas, and owns a
chain of shops, Game Over Videogames. "It was a more innocent time in
gaming. They were easier to pick up and play, less violent, more
universally accessible than they are now...."
"For retro gamers, one of the most important things is reliving that
experience you had when you were a kid," says (RetroLiberty's Aaron)
Stapish, who plays retro games about 30 hours a week. "So you want to
have the actual game, you want to actually put the game in the system
and hold it with the original controller."
Another week and another unnecessary and extremely tragic death of an
African American woman in police custody. The incident occurred in late
July in Cleveland, when Ralkina Jones was denied her medicine by
authorities. Cenk Uygur and John Iadarola (Think Tank), hosts of the
The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment
section below.
"A black Cleveland woman who died in police
custody pleaded with jail officials to properly administer her
prescription medications in the hours before her death.
“I don’t want to die in your cell,” she told officers in video released Tuesday.”
Jeb Bush, in his speech this week that was billed as a major foreign
policy address, “provided a distorted version of the U.S. troop
withdrawal from Iraq and an incorrect account of the origins of the
Islamic State,” according to McClatchy.
“Bush vowed that if elected he would expand U.S. military
intervention in the Middle East significantly. His version of events,
however, seemed intended to absolve his brother, President George W.
Bush, of blame in destabilizing the region while trying to pin the
region’s current bloodshed on President Obama and his former secretary
of state, Hillary Clinton.”
“Bush’s account of the withdrawal as a ‘case of blind haste’ omitted
the fact that it was his brother who’d set the withdrawal date of Dec.
31, 2011, in an agreement that he signed with the Iraqi government in
2008. He also neglected to note that the Iraqi government strongly
opposed the continued presence of U.S. forces.”
On 8/2/15 at Monmouth racetrack in New Jersey, the crowd was there to
cheer home state horse American Pharaoh after the Triple Crown winner
won another race. Stepping into the Winner's Circle, presidential
candidate and Governor Chris Christie must have thought it would be his
moment to bask in the glory of another large farm beast and receive a
bit of adulation himself.
Now, your average horse race fan is not
generally a bleeding heart liberal, but they do know how to cheer for
winners and how to treat losers. So they booed
Christie, loudly, the kind of boo that only a large percentage of a
crowd of 61,000 can make. Then they cheered the horse's trainer and
owner who said Christie's name, which led to more boos.
This really happened. The governor of New Jersey was given a huge,
audible hooting of derision from the crowd. Because the people of the
Garden State now fucking hate Chris Christie. He is the big-mouthed
motherfucker who promised to give a shit but turned his back on his
state for the chance to lose a presidential race. He was supposed to be
the straight-talking teller of hard truths, but he turned out to be just
another vindictive bully.
It worked for a little while, when Jersey
wanted him to take lunch money from the feds for Sandy relief. But once
Bridgegate and every other (so far minor) scandal took their toll, he
went from being the bruiser Jersey loved to the Bluto it wanted Popeye
to beat the shit out of. Christie was always a myth. He was always 300
pounds of shit in a 100 pound bag. Mythic images, though, are like
Icarus (and sometimes they are exactly Icarus), and this motherfucker
flew way too close to the sun.
So in Jersey, the state Christie has all but abandoned, the citizens are
alternately amused and disgusted at his flailing campaign. Here's Christie,
whose staff closed the George Washington Bridge as political
retribution and who himself canceled a new rail tunnel that would have
vastly improved life for the state's citizens, trying to say he's on the
side of commuters when it comes to the incredible failure of his
administration to do dick about the decaying mass transit
infrastructure: "Here's the way we fix it. If I am president of the
United States, I call a meeting between the president, my secretary of
transportation, the governor of New York, and the governor of New
Jersey."
You might think, "Hey, he's governor of New Jersey. Why doesn't he get a
meeting with the other parties?" But then you're thinking with your
rational brain and not your political pandering brain, which must
calculate how many blow jobs the Koch brothers will require for every
statement you make.
Christie the bully, the man who probably doesn't remember giving David
Wildstein shit swirlies in the locker room at their high school, emerged again yesterday on This Week with Jake Tapper's Resting Asshole Face.
Tapper asked, "During your first term as governor, you were fond of
saying that you can treat bullies in one of two ways — quote — 'You can
either sidle up to them or you can punch them in the face.' You said,
'I like to punch them in the face.' At the national level, who deserves
a punch in the face?"
Without missing a beat, Christie said, "Oh, the national teachers'
union," going on to explain, "They are the single most destructive
force in public education in America. I have been saying that since
2009. I have got the scars to show it. But I'm never going to stop
saying it, because they never change their stripes."
Drama queen rhetoric aside, a reflective man wouldn't readily admit that
he wants to punch in the face a group that represents significant
numbers of women. A thoughtful man might have said, "Democrats in
Congress," just to spread the pain. A wise man might have said, "Well, I
don't actually want to punch anyone in the face." Christie is neither.
And asking a bully who he thinks the bullies are is like asking a public
masturbator who the perverts are.
In Jersey, the citizens are gonna pop a cold one and sit on the shore
and bask in the last month of summer. They will watch Christie's
political death with the kind of joy one gets from seeing the asshole
who revs his engine blow it out. They will await their chance to boo
him again, ready to be in another arena and give a thumbs down.
In the first nationally televised 2016 presidential debate, Americans
got a glimpse at what their economic future might hold if one of the
Republican candidates becomes president -- and the picture wasn't
pretty.
Social Security is essential for workers and their
families who want to retire with dignity and independence and want to be
protected in the event of death or a disabling illness or accident.
Given the Social Security views of those who took the debate stage
Thursday night, Americans should be very worried.
Governor CHRIS CHRISTIE doubled
down on his destructive proposal to turn Social Security into a
means-tested welfare program. On top of that, he proposed raising Social
Security's full retirement age to 69, a thirteen percent, across-the-board benefit cut.
Like President George W. Bush before him, Governor Christie will, if
elected president, seek to destroy Social Security, while claiming to be
just "saving" it.
Christie's views on Social Security are extreme, fringe and totally out of touch with the American people. Polling released
last week by Social Security Works shows that Americans across the
board-- including majorities of Republicans and Independents-- oppose
cuts to Social Security and say they are less likely to vote for
candidates who support cuts to the program.
To his credit, MIKE HUCKABEE stands
firmly against benefit cuts, and with the American people. He wrongly
seems to believe that Social Security contributions have been stolen,
not merely lent and so must be paid back. But he is light years ahead of
all the other Republican candidates on this issue, with the exception
of DONALD TRUMP, who in April remarked,
"Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they
want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid. And it's not
fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the
sudden they want to be cut." He made clear, "I'm not gonna do that!"
Since
the others did not offer their views last night, here they are (with
the exceptions of Ben Carson and Jim Gilmore who haven't made their
views known.)
With
a looming retirement income crisis and growing wealth and income
inequality, expanding Social Security, not cutting it, is the right
policy. It is also what the overwhelming majority of Americans want. It
sounds like everyone but Huckabee and Trump are taking their Social
Security advice from their billionaire donors.
Last election, voters didn't realize that they had a choice, since President Obama, inexplicably and inaccurately, asserted in
a presidential debate against Mitt Romney, "I suspect that, on Social
Security, we've got a somewhat similar position," This time around, with
Democratic Presidential frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders
both advocating expansion, voters are likely to have a clear choice.
For the sake of their families' economic security, they should exercise
it wisely.
Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a rally in Dallas in July. (Mike Stone/Reuters)
Bernie Sanders came to Seattle on Saturday with plans to give two speeches.
The
first didn’t happen. An appearance by the senator from Vermont at an
event celebrating the anniversary of Social Security and Medicare was
scuttled after protesters from a local Black Lives Matter chapter took
over the stage.
Hours later, Sanders, who has been drawing bigger
crowds than any other presidential contender, drew his largest yet:
about 15,000 at the college basketball arena where the Washington
Huskies play.
Aides
said Sanders, who has emerged as the leading alternative to Hillary
Rodham Clinton for the Democratic nomination, spoke to a full house of
12,000 inside the arena and to what police estimated to be an overflow
of 3,000 people outside of it.
Sanders, a self-described
democratic socialist, was met with boisterous cheers as he decried the
political influence of the “billionaire class” and pledged to raise the
minimum wage, mandate family leave and push other policies that improve
the lot of the working class.
"This is the country we can create," Sanders said during an hourlong stump speech was broadcast live on social media.
The first event — which was held at a city park and live-streamed by a Seattle television station — went less swimmingly.
Sanders
was the final speaker on a long program held at a city park. Shortly
after he took stage, a small group of protesters from a Seattle chapter
of Black Lives Matter took the microphone and demanded that the crowd
hold Sanders “accountable” for not doing enough, in their view, to
address police brutality and other issues on the group’s agenda.
After
sharing a few local grievances with the crowd, including school
disparities and gentrification in Seattle, the protesters asked for a
period of silence to commemorate the one-year anniversary of Michael
Brown being shot and killed during a confrontation with a police officer
in Ferguson, Mo.
Event organizers allowed the period of silence,
as some in the large crowd booed and shouted for the protesters to
leave the stage. Afterward, Marissa Janae Johnson, who identified
herself as a leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Seattle, asked
the crowd to “join us now in holding Bernie Sanders accountable for his
actions.” She motioned for Sanders to join her at the microphone.
After
several minutes of frantic conversations, Sanders left the stage and
greeted people in the large crowd who had turned out to see him. Many
chanted his name.
In the hours that followed, several activists
took to social media to question whether Johnson was speaking for the
broader Black Lives Movement.
The
tense scene in Seattle was reminiscent of one July 18 in Phoenix, when a
larger group of Black Lives Matter activists disrupted a Democratic
presidential forum at the liberal Netroots Nation gathering that
featured both Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.
At the Netroots event, both O’Malley and Sanders were able to continue speaking, though neither filled their allotted times.
At
Saturday’s event, Johnson noted that O’Malley had since released a plan
on criminal justice, which calls for several policing reforms,
including widespread use of body cameras.
Though Sanders has not
formally released a similar plan, he has been speaking out about
policing issues, including during an appearance last month before a
gathering in Louisiana of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference,
one of the nation’s oldest civil rights organizations. In that speech,
he called for the “demilitarization” of police forces, an end to
privately run prisons and an effort to address the “over-incarceration”
of nonviolent offenders.
As Sanders left the event in Seattle on Saturday, he told reporters that he found the situation "unfortunate."
At
Saturday night's rally, Sanders made a brief reference to the early
episode, saying that "on criminal justice reform and the need to fight
racism there is no other candidate for president who will fight harder
than me.”
"Too many lives have been destroyed by the war on drugs," Sanders said. "Too many lives have been destroyed by incarceration."
Some
of his biggest applause lines came when he declared that college
education should be tuition free and that the United States should move
to a single-payer, "Medicare for all" health-care system.
Saturday
night's rally was the latest around the country where Sanders has
filled arenas and convention halls. By contrast, Clinton's largest
crowd, which her campaign estimated at 5,500, came at her formal kickoff
in June in New York.
Sanders is in the midst of a three-day
swing on the West Coast. Aides say the campaign is also expecting large
crowds at events in Portland and Los Angeles.
Fox News shows the nation how nuts the GOP has
become.
The Republican Party’s first official debate of the 2016 presidential
election showed the GOP’s leading candidates as not just all hard right-wingers,
but different shades of crazy.
There was Donald Trump, who will doubtless draw the most press attention by
declaring right off the bat that if he is not the nominee, he would seriously
considering running as an independent—which, as Fox News’ debate moderator Bret
Baier said, “would almost certainly hand over the race to Democrats and likely
another Clinton.”
That brought boos from the crowd and a spontaneous attack by Sen. Rand Paul,
who blared, “This is what’s wrong. He buys and sells politicans.” To which,
Trump replied, “ Well, I’ve given him [Paul] plenty of money.”
That feisty spree set the tone for much of the next two hours. Trump would go
on to explain that, of course, he spends money to buy politicans’ attention, and
failed to see anything at all wrong with that. When asked what he got in return
from Hillary Clinton, he said that she came to his latest wedding. But beyond
political gossip like that—or saying he was tired of being criticized for being
politically incorrect after crude and sexist statements about women—the Fox News
debate made it clear that most of the GOP’s leading candidates roughly fell into
two right-wing camps: truly crazed extremists (Donald Trump, Rand Paul, Ben
Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee) or blandly presentable right-wingers, whose
agenda is still remarkably out-of-synch with mainstream America (Jeb Bush, Scott
Walker, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie).
The blander crazies are probably the more dangerous crew, because even though
their policies are very far to the right—anti-abortion, anti-gay rights,
anti-tax, anti-immigrant, anti-government, anti-science—they will be portrayed
by mainstream media as moderates. Take reproductive rights, just an example.
Bush answered a question about being on the board of ex-New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg’s foundation, which has supported Planned Parenthood, by
saying that his record as governor was to lead the country in restricting
abortions, passing parental notification laws, outlawing late-term abortions,
and being first in the nation to have pro-life license places. That was the
quote-unquote, moderate response, when compared to Mike Huckabee, who said that
the next president must declare that the Constitution’s 5th and 14th amendments
protects the rights of the unborn “from the moment of conception.” Speaking of
the Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion rights, he said, “It’s time
that we recognize that the Supreme Court is not the supreme being.”
Other social issues followed the same arc. Early in the debate, one Fox
moderator pressed Ohio Gov. John Kasich for being a litte too much like St.
Peter because he expanded his state’s Medicaid program under Obamacare, which
Kasich defended. But when asked about same-sex marriage, he replied, “If one of
my daughters happened to be that…” Kasich quickly followed up by saying, he’d
love his daughters unconditionally, but such exchanges showed just how
immoderate the GOP’s supposed moderates are.
The more serious exchanges were interrupted by moments that were astounding
political theater, such as Trump sparring with Fox News’ Megyn Kelly who said,
“You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting
animals…’ Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect
as president?” Trump began his reply, saying, “I think the big problem this
country has is being politically correct… I frankly don’t have time for total
political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time
either. This country is in big trouble.”
Exchanges like that quickly ended and were followed by other zany questions,
such as asking Ted Cruz why he recently called Senate Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell a liar? To which, Cruz replied, because he was one—and the country
needed politicians who spoke the truth. “As Republicans, we keep winning
elections. We have a Republican House. We have a Republican Senate, and we don’t
have leaders who honor their commitments. I will always tell the truth and do
what I said I would do.”
When it came to specifics of what the candidates would do, the template was
roughly the same. The plan is to cut taxes and regulations to promote economic
growth, build up the military—including sending troops overseas fight a new
ground war with ISIS, and saying that this strategy worked for Ronald Reagan and
would surely work again. Of course, there were small differences. On
immigration, everyone objected to amensty for the undocumented already in
America, but some—such as Jeb Bush—said a pathway to legalized status was
needed, especially to ensure economic growth. Others were less charitable.
Trump, of course, said a new border wall needed to be built—but with a large
door in it for those following a legal process to enter.
The debate did showcase the candidates' political skills and that might shake
up their ranking in the polls. Chris Christie had a good night, feistily
dismissing questions about New Jersey’s lagging economy under his watch—it was
worse before he got there, he said—and eagerly attacking Rand Paul for his
opposition to NSA spying on Americans. Marco Rubio, who has the best smile of
anyone on the stage, didn’t say anything that was truly cringe-worthy, even
though he was fervently pro-life and almost libertarian on federal oversight—on
the environment and education. John Kasich appeared almost grandfatherly on
stage, projecting himself as a seasoned hand on budget and national security
issues. And Jeb Bush, when pressed on being the heir to a political dynasty,
replied he had a higher bar to prove himself with voters, which came across as
both insecure and honest. In contrast, Scott Walker, who didn’t make any
mistakes, came across with answers that seemed a bit too canned—practiced and
unengaging.
The crazies, however, may have won the night’s battle but set themselves back
in the longer war. Trump clearly distinguished himself as someone who really
doesn’t care what people think about him—he’s a businessman who will do whatever
it takes. The other outlying ideologues—Cruz, Huckabee, Carson, Paul—all seem to
be in narrower silos where their followers will love what they said, and how
they said it, but they’re less likely to break through to a larger base.
You can be sure that the Republican Party will declare their first debate a
great success. Millions of people watched. They saw candidates up close and
personal. Their remarks will surely shake up the race. And, to be sure, the
night will also be seen by Democrats as pure political manna from heaven—because
the modern GOP was on display in vivid color, and because it is not a party of
mere establishment right-wingers, but also out-and-out crazies running for the
presidency.
There may be 10 candidates in Thursday night’s prime time Fox debate,
but Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders thinks they will all be talking
about the same thing.
“When you watch that debate just imagine
if you are one of the wealthiest people in this country and extremely
greedy and selfish, and you’re going to have 10 candidates more or less
talking about your needs and not the needs of working people,” Sanders
said in a recorded interview with Ari Rabin-Havt on SiriusXM’s Progress
Channel.
Sanders believes he knows the agenda the GOP candidates will
break down and it is in strong contrast with the one espoused by the
Vermont senator.
Sanders, whose policies have associated him with
socialism for decades, knocked the Republican focus on tax cuts and
government spending.
“They want to give more tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires
at a time when the rich are getting much richer,” Sanders said. “They
want to cut or privatize Medicare, cut Medicaid, cut education, cut the
environmental protection agency.”
Sanders, who is one of the
biggest Senate opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline — and who has
criticized Hillary Clinton on not doing enough to combat climate change —
knocked the GOP for its views on the issue.
“There may be one or
two on there who actually have listened to the scientific community and
think that climate change is real. Most of them refuse to accept that,
and none of them are prepared to act aggressively to transform our
energy system,” he said.
The top 10 polling Republican candidates
will take the stage Thursday night for a two-hour debate in Cleveland,
Ohio. A “happy hour” debate will take place at 5 p.m. for the candidates
who didn’t make the top 10.
Michael Geist unpacks
the leaked documents, noting the treaty includes
anti-circumvention rules that extend beyond the WIPO Internet
treaties, new criminal rules, the extension of copyright term for
countries like Canada and Japan, increased border measures,
mandatory statutory damages in all countries, and expanding ISP
liability rules, including the prospect of website blocking for
Canada.
It
was supposed to be a routine meet-and-greet at a local New Hampshire
pizza parlor, but today’s campaign stop turned into a “Punk’d” episode
for Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker, after he was tricked
into posing with a phony check from the Koch brothers made out to him
for $900 million.
According
to the Guardian’s Sabrina Siddiqui, who shared an image of Walker
posing with the prop check, Walker appeared to believe he was posing
with a sign reading “Walker 4 President” before the sign was turned to
the cameras to expose its true sentiments:
Walker
appeared to have been trolled by a member of 350 Action, an
environmental group which has led the fight against the Keystone XL
pipeline and is calling on 2016 presidential candidates to refuse
campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies.
In a blog post
on July 15, one day before the date on the phony check presented to
Walker, 350 Action’s Jong Chin outlined the group’s efforts to push 2016
candidates on the issue of climate change in the early voting state of
New Hampshire before promising, “We have some time to work with, and a
lot of events to go to, including a couple Clinton and a couple Walker
events on Thursday."
But as 360 Action fellow Tyler McFarland explained on Twitter, the check was finally delivered to Walker today in Manchester:
According to the Center for Media and Democracy, the
Koch brothers have spent upward of $11.6 million to support Scott
Walker since he became governor of Wisconsin in 2011. And David Koch reportedly said that
the Republican nominee “should be Scott Walker” earlier this year,
although he and his brother Charles have yet to formally endorse a
candidate.
Garrett Greenwood plays Smash Brothers, and apparently quite seriously. So seriously that he needed to modify his controller with five Neopixels
so that it flashed different color animations according to the combo
he’s playing on the controller; tailored to match the colors of the
moves of his favorite character, naturally.
All of this happens with an ATtiny85 as the brains, which we find
quite ambitious. Indeed, Garrett started out thinking he could simply
read each of the inputs from the controller directly into the micro-controller at the heart of the whole thing, but then counted up how
many wires that would be, and looked at how many pins he had free
(six), and thought up a better solution.
Garrett’s routine instead reads the single line that the GameCube controller uses to send back to the console. The protocol is well understood,
using long-short and short-long signals to encode bits. The only trick
is that each bit is sent in four microseconds, so the decoding routine
has to be fairly speedy. To make it work he had to do quite a bit of
work. More about that, and the demo video, below.
Garrett’s current post only covers the hardware and use of the
thing. We’re waiting with baited breath for the software writeup. To
whet your own whistle, check out Garrett’s Github and browse through the code yourself. Our cursory read-through includes the following highlights:
Animations handled using the Protothreads library for lightweight micro-controller threads
Generally sexy coding, including a nice hand-built Makefile (the way we like ’em)
We don’t know how much free space you have, Garrett, but we think
it’d be cool if you could squeeze a serial bootloader into the chip, so
that you can update it more easily without opening and closing the case.
TinySafeBoot or (going old-school) Peter Dannegger / “Danni”’s fastboot might do you well.
Oh, and Garrett emailed us to say he’s looking around for a
plastics company to manufacture transparent backs for GameCube
controllers like his, and is thinking of running a Kickstarter if he can
find one. Keep your eyes out.
How to achieve what's posed in the headline? Be a police officer.
Only
in America could a man do what Officer Ray Tensing did — be filmed
blowing a man's head off, be filmed telling at least 21 lies about what
led to him blowing said man's head off, be charged with murder, strongly
condemned by the prosecutor, and then be free in a few hours to ask for his job back. Yes, he asked for his job back.
That's exactly what has happened in this case.
Because
it is incredibly gruesome, the Hamilton County District Attorney's
Office chose not to release, at first, the full video of the murder of
Sam Dubose by Officer Ray Tensing. I understand that, but by ending the
video after the fatal shot was fired, we were all deprived of the
opportunity to see something truly heinous — the outrageous fictional
story concocted by Ray Tensing to justify a completely avoidable murder.
See for yourself below.
It is this video, and this video alone, that caused Officer Ray Tensing to be charged with murder.
He was not caught in the vehicle. He was not dragged. He was not about to be run over.
In
the video, Tensing claims these things, over and over and over again,
and even feigns injury and pain from the dragging. His two fellow
officers can be heard saying that they saw it as well. All lies.
Incredibly, the DA decided not to press charges against these two additional officers, claiming that they participated fully in the investigation.
So incredible are Tensing and his union that they are actually claiming, in spite of the glaring video evidence, that he was fired from his job "without cause."
The
grievance said, "Officer Tensing was terminated on 7/29/2015 without
just cause for an on-duty fatal shooting. While Officer Tensing was
indicted on a charge of murder, the indictment is not a conviction.
Officer Tensing was also denied his due process rights of a
pre-disciplinary hearing under the contract."
The grievance asked for
Tensing to be reinstated immediately and "is to be made whole for all
back pay and benefits including but not limited to sick time, vacation
time, holidays, shift differential, pension contributions etc. afforded
under the current contract."
But the truth is even uglier than this. Officer Ray Tensing is receiving support and monetary pledges from
all over the country. Somehow, in spite of his heinous crime and
unethical attempts at covering it all up, he is now some type of folk
hero.
Ray Tensing is now free on bail, after only a few hours in jail. This is despicable.
While we have, for more than a decade, covered the extreme
vulnerabilities of voting machines and electronic tabulators and broken
numerous exclusive stories about it on both The BRAD BLOG and The BradCast,
my guest on today's show offers a number of additional ways - some of
which had largely never even occurred - by which bad actors could
disrupt U.S. elections.
Michael Gregg, IT security expert and COO of the private, Houston-based computer security firm, Superior Solutions wrote about some of those concerns recently at Huffington Post.
He joins me today to discuss several of the ways that U.S. democracy
could be disrupted by political hacktivists, election insiders or even
foreign entities and how we might not ever even know about it if they
did - thanks to the type of electronic voting systems we now use in
all 50 states and the different ways in which the public is now being
blocked from overseeing our own elections and election results.
"Attackers could potentially get in and do these things and it would
be very hard to prove. The scary part is, by the time any of this is
worked out, the election is over with, so it's too late," he tells me. I
ask him how elected officials in his home state of Texas - much of
which forces voters to use 100% unverifiable electronic voting systems
- react when he points out these concerns. "We've brought that up
multiple times, but that seems to be the powers that be, how they want
to do things."
Gregg, who I've never spoken to previously, concludes, as I have,
that paper ballots (hand-marked and hand-counted, in my case) are the
most secure way to run elections. "I agree with you 100%," he says. "If
you have a paper-based system, it's very very hard to attack, it's very
much easier to be able to detect those types of things."
As to Internet Voting, well, you'll want to tune in for this computer
security professional's opinion on whether or not the Internet can ever be secure enough to use for the most important aspect of our representative democracy.
Also today: New York Times digs deeper still on their inaccurate Hillary Clinton reporting (as we covered in great detail on yesterday's show);
Incurious global warming trolls fall, once again, for the old "Earth is
cooling" scam; The racist Charleston, SC church shooter pleads "not
guilty"; And Shell Oil evades activists to try and begin drilling in the
Arctic...
