Sunday, June 17, 2018

Monticello Officially Recognizes The Rest Of Thomas Jefferson’s Children

Our founding father, my 6th great-grandfather, had 6 children with his slave Sally Hemings

Friday, June 15, 2018

Judge sends Russian spy Paul Manafort directly to jail

Paul Manafort will be jailed after being accused of witness tampering while awaiting trial on federal conspiracy and money-laundering charges brought by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The order to imprison resident Trump’s former campaign manager came Friday in a federal court hearing after Manafort had been asking to post a $10 million bond and end seven months of home detention.

It was not immediately clear when Manafort would be imprisoned or where. Proceedings before U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the District of Columbia were ongoing.

The order marked the latest fall for the political power broker and confidant of Republican presidents dating to George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

Prosecutors alleged that by committing a new crime while on release, Manafort violated terms of his home confinement in Alexandria, Va., and they asked the judge to revoke or revise it. 

Trump tries to ‘steal the grief’ of fallen soldiers

Lawrence O'Donnell reacts to Donald Trump's lie about the parents of American soldiers killed in the Korean War, and explains that Donald Trump's lying is unique in American history.

Thursday, June 14, 2018

Baby Boomers Are Responsible For Unleashing Mad Man Trump On The World


Just look at what we’ve done to this poor country. Bill Clinton, the first Baby Boom president, is ours, complete with the cigar and stained blue dress and denial that he “had sex with that woman.”

On his heels came Baby Boomer president number two, George Bush, who along with Baby Boomer Vice President Dick Cheney, lied us into the most disastrous war since Vietnam and the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Barack Obama was a reprieve, but look who’s in there now, flapping his tiny hands and tweeting his tiny tweets and disassembling everything from our federal government to the Western Alliance, but Donald J. Trump, Baby Boomer resident number three.

Trump is 72. I’m 71, and I’m ashamed. Every morning I wake up and realize that me and my generation unleashed this flaming madman on the world, and I want to crawl back under the covers and hide. WTF were we thinking?

I lived in New York during the years Trump was surfing the tabloid wave to fame and invented fortune, and we just sat there and lapped it up. Oh, look! Another photo of Trump boogieing at Le Club, the private watering hole in the 70’s on the Upper East Side where boomers went to show off and misbehave. I wasn’t a member, but I went to Le Club with friends who were. I saw Trump making a fool of himself in there, his arm slung over the shoulders of this hot babe or that one, tie flying as he pretended to do The Hustle, or whatever it was we were doing back then. I’d be sitting across the room at a table, sucking up bottles of champagne charged them to someone’s membership account, laughing at the big buffoon with the weird hair (even then!) acting like he owned the world.

That was the problem, see? We all acted like we owned the world. On any given night, me and my boomer pals and our boomer girlfriends and wives were swinging at Le Club, or bouncing from table to table at Elaine’s, chumming it up with Carl Bernstein and Nora Ephron and Gay Talese, or this week’s hot literary agent or last week’s hot movie star.

I wrote a story once called “Felker’s Fall,” about how Clay Felker, who owned New York Magazine and the Village Voice, lost his empire to Rupert Murdoch. The first paragraph was set in Elaine’s, describing the minions hovering around Felker at his premier table up front on The Row where the A-listers sat. They “pecked at him like ducks,” I wrote, because Clay was On Top, and he was at Elaine’s, and so was I, and Elaine’s was The Place to Be, and we Ran the World, or thought we did.

We weren’t princes of the city. We were princes of the fucking universe. We were forever ascendant. There was no place to go but up. Nothing was going to stop us. Our friends were running movie studios out in L.A. They were Senior Editors at the top publishing houses. They edited the big-time magazines. They signed pay checks to us, and initialed our expense accounts, and put us in First Class on planes to The Coast. We chowed down at The Palm. We lunched in the Grill Room at The Four Seasons, alongside the swells we were moving in on and taking over their fiefdoms in advertising and journalism and film and politics and finance.

Over there across the room too many times to count was Trump. My name was on The List at the Door at Studio 54. One night I went to Elizabeth Taylor’s birthday party there, the night she rode into the room on a white stallion, and you could practically hear the hoovering sucking noise of coke going up a hundred nostrils at once. There was Trump, standing with Roy Cohn and Halston and Calvin Klein, and it was all one big happy family. Shirtless waiters in short-shorts were passing by with trays of the bubbly. Trump was waving to this starlet, groping that one. Roy Cohn was watching it all with his lizard eyes, scanning the room for somebody who was an easy touch, somebody who would be impressed with meeting Donald Trump, somebody the two of them could take on a ride for tens of thousands or maybe a cool mil the next day.

And everywhere was our generation. We ran the list at the door. We got you into the VIP area. We dealt the coke. We owned the night.

Look at what we were doing! Trump was surfing the tabloid wave? Hell, the day after the Elizabeth Taylor party, Robin Leach, a tabloid hack who would go on to become the host of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” called me up and said if I didn’t mind, he was going to put me in his column as the date of some starlet a flack friend of his was pushing. I had a novel on the bestseller list. I was “hot.” What did I do? I said, go ahead! All grist for the mill. Long as you spell my name right.

There I was later that day, in a tabloid column, dating some starlet I’d never heard of. I didn’t grope her — hell, I didn’t even know her — but I was no better than Trump.

Just over the horizon: Clinton. We ran him, we elected him, and we stood by as he and his whiz-kid meritocratic oligarchs started running the SS United States aground. Years later, I realized that the apotheosis of the baby boom buffoonery was the so-called “Renaissance Weekends,” an invention of boomers, by boomers, for boomers. Do you remember those clubby clusterfucks? They were weekend “retreats” held at cushy resorts down on Hilton Head Island for “leaders” in finance, government, the media, religion, business, medicine, technology and the arts.

Even before Clinton took office as president, he and Hillary were regulars, and once he was president, the damn Renaissance Weekends turned into a Domestic Davos. In 1993, his first year in office, the retreat’s founder, Philip Lader (by then, deputy White House Chief of Staff) and President Clinton hosted a New Year’s Eve panel on “What I’ve Learned,” while Hillary and Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun led a discussion on “Choices.”

“What I’ve Learned?” “Choices?” Jesus. They may as well have had a bunch of boomer geniuses on a panel called “Whither Peace?” and probably did.

You know who else attended those intellectual circle jerks? Boomer luminaries like the journalists Wolf Blitzer, Howard Fineman, Joe Klein, and Andrea Mitchell; Senators Chuck Robb, Ernest Hollings, and Barbara Mikulski; Governor Evan Bayh of Indiana; and singer Mary Chapin Carpenter.

You get the picture. The goddamned things cost $1,500 a couple to attend, and that was a lot of money back then. Do you think any of the regular Joes and Janes who ended up voting Trump into office were invited, or could afford to attend? If they showed up, do you think Andrea, or Wolf, or Howard or any of the rest of them would have given them the time of day?

Not likely.

Boomers patched together this teetering edifice with “merit” and “achievement” and “elite education” and “expertise,” and it was such a gigantic fake that all it took to bring it down was a half-assed push by a certifiable goofball like Donald Trump. I’ve wasted literally thousands of words in these pages cataloging Trump’s lies, but the biggest lie of all was the ersatz boomer machine that begat him.

He didn’t come from nowhere. He came from our loins. We birthed him. We sat by and laughed while he piggy-backed on the baby boomer scam that what really mattered was graduating from The Right School, having your name on The List at the Door, getting The Best Table at the Hottest Restaurant, living at The Right Address, and finally, having the Coolest Guy as our president. For boomers, life has been high school forever.

The thing about Donald Trump is that he was never one of the Cool Guys. He was the schmuck over there across the room who was feeling up women and picking our pockets while we looked the other way. He ran a campaign that said, you know the club they would never invite you into? I’ve been there, and it’s all bullshit, and I’m going to tear it down, the whole stinking meaningless system run by these people who have looked down on you from their suites in Davos and the Renaissance Weekends, the places they kept you out of while they were making decisions about your lives and not listening to anything you had to say.

He sold it to the people we left out like a condo with marble bathrooms in one of his buildings, the kind of gaudy show places we laughed at while our pals at the elite levels of boomerdom pontificated on panels like “Whither Peace?”

I laughed at him while he was running back in 2016. I pointed at the TV screen and held my sides as he howled his gibberish at rally after rally after rally. He was the same buffoon he had been in New York when he ruled the tabloids with his marital exploits and buildings with stories he never built that we never bothered to count.

That was the problem. With the exception of a few intrepid reporters like Wayne Barrett, we never bothered to count the fake floors in his buildings he never built, or track his pay-offs to crooked pols, or catalog his chumminess with gangsters. But he was ours. We made him. We delivered him to you.

We sat there and laughed at him on his stupid reality TV show. We laughed at him as he told lie after lie about Obama’s birth certificate. We ignored him when he was sending us signals about what a racist he was with his war on the Central Park Five. And we laughed when he stood up there in 2016 and actually told us that when he reached the White House, he was going to tear the whole fucking thing down.

Donald Trump is our fault. He was in the headlines for decades pulling his scams, telling his lies, flaunting his fakery. He was one of us, and he was telling us exactly who he is, and we didn’t take him seriously.

We didn’t do shit about him. I, for one, am ashamed.

Wednesday, June 13, 2018

Conservatives Finally Speak: "He's Acts Like He's A King"

Posted by Rude One

Finally, at long last, Republicans could take no more.

Senator Ted Cruz said, "Undeterred, resident Trump appears to be going forward. It is lawless. It is unconstitutional. He is defiant and angry at the American people. If he acts by executive diktat, resident Trump will not be acting as a resident, he will be acting as a monarch.”

Lou Dobbs pronounced that resident Trump's actions are "evidence of his unilateral, even occasionally authoritarian inclination."

Senator Rand Paul claimed, "The resident acts like he's a king. He ignores the Constitution...These are not the words of a great leader. These are the words that sound more like the exclamations of an autocrat." Indeed, Paul went so far as to tweet out a photo of a crown, scepter, cape, and throne with the words, "The 'residentt who thinks he's a king' starter pack."

The Speaker of the House said, "The resident has said before that 'he's not king' and he's 'not an emperor,' but he sure is acting like one."

Chris Christie exhorted, "This resident wants to act as if he is a king, as if he is a dictator." And Jeb Bush added, "To use executive powers he doesn't have is a pattern that is quite dangerous." Texas Governor Greg Abbott said that Trump "is acting as a king, acting as a dictator" by doing what is "absolutely contrary to what the Constitution allows."

Conservative editorial writers finally got into the game, with one at USA Today saying, plainly, "The idea that resident Trump acts as if he is the king of the United States or a tyrant, instead of resident, has become a cliché." Asking for a restoration of the balance between Congress and the resident, Charles Cooke, in the National Review, opined, "The United States is a constitutional republic, replete with a set of rules that govern how power may be wielded and by whom. There exists no provision within its codified order that ties the power enjoyed by each branch to that branch’s transient popularity. If there is a constitutional problem with the scope of the administrative state, it obtains regardless of the opinion polls."

But, in honor of that valedictorian from a high school in rural Kentucky who, in his speech at graduation, said he was quoting Trump, to great applause, only to reveal that the line was really from Obama, obviously every single one of those conservatives was talking about President Obama and not Donald Trump.

They were upset about some executive orders by Obama, mostly the one that expanded immigration enforcement protection to the parents of kids born in the U.S., but also ones on guns and transgender rights, and they cried out that Obama was a king, which is something that the Tea Party had been saying from the second Obama was elected.

The difference back during Obama's presidency is that many on the left and center-left were uneasy with the executive orders, too. There is a consistency here that conservatives, who didn't give a damn when George W. Bush used signing statements and executive orders with alarming frequency, certainly lack when it comes to Trump's assertions of a tyrannical authority to proclaim himself innocent of crimes by self-pardoning.

Ted Cruz refused to answer a question about it. Rand Paul said such an action would be "condemned," but that Trump has the right to do it.

Some on the right were more consistent, having qualms about Trump's self-pardon. Cooke in the National Review again explained that Congress needs to act (which it won't). Christie at least admits it would be a political problem, even if he doesn't declare that Trump thinks himself a king.

At the end of the day, each president has pushed the limits of presidential power. Congress and the courts are supposed to keep them in check. But Congress hasn't done that. Now, we can argue about whether Bush blocking funding for stem cell research or Obama deciding how immigration law enforcement are valid exercises of executive power. Still, each was asserting their power in pursuit of a policy goal, which doesn't take away the troubling part of it, but, at the very least, the justification was for their view of the greater good.

But Trump is asserting something quite different than either of them, and it's of a piece with his entire residency. By saying that he can pardon himself and that it is impossible for him to obstruct a Justice Department investigation because he's the ostensible boss of it, Trump wants to contort executive power merely to protect himself (and, presumably, his family). He is above the law and has absolute and uncheckable power when it comes to federal laws, especially when he's in trouble.

In other words, everything that conservatives falsely feared about Obama is true with Trump. And their refusal to broadly condemn it means that they're just fine with a dictator, as long as he's a rich white guy who hates immigrants and cuts taxes.

Tuesday, June 12, 2018

Constitution Talk

Larry Kudlow has a heart

By Jeremy Diamond, CNN

US resident Donald Trump's chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow suffered a heart attack, the resident tweeted as he arrived for his summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Our Great Larry Kudlow, who has been working so hard on trade and the economy, has just suffered a heart attack. He is now in Walter Reed Medical Center," Trump tweeted, 25 minutes before he was set to meet with Kim for the first time.
Kudlow, 70, was not traveling with the US resident in Singapore, but he had just returned to the United States from the G7 summit in Canada, where trade tensions dominated the atmosphere.

The Washington Post reported that Kudlow's wife, Judith Kudlow, told the newspaper, "He's doing fine" and the doctors are "fabulous."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed the resident's tweet in a statement Monday night.

"Earlier today National Economic Council Director and Assistant to the resident Larry Kudlow experienced what his doctors say was a very mild heart attack," Sanders said.

"Larry is currently in good condition at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and his doctors expect he will make a full and speedy recovery," she continued. "The resident and his Administration send their thoughts and prayers to Larry and his family."

Kudlow's heart attack came less than three months after Trump tapped the former CNBC host and commentator to chair the White House's National Economic Council.

Kudlow has been at the center of the US resident's trade feuds in recent months, joining US delegations in Beijing and Canada to address trade disputes. Though he has long been opposed to tariffs, he has supported Trump's decision to erect tariffs against both China and key US allies like Canada, Mexico and the European Union, calling them a useful tool.

Kudlow was front-and-center in the administration's rebuke of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Sunday, accusing Trudeau of having "kind of stabbed us in the back" during a news conference after Trump had departed the summit early.

Vice President Mike Pence also tweeted Monday night that he and second lady Karen Pence "are praying for our dear friend @Larry_Kudlow tonight."

Kudlow suffered a cocaine and alcohol addiction in the 90's, taking leave from the financial firm Bear Stearns to check himself into rehab.

He told The New York Times in March he has been sober for 23 years, calling it "the center of my life."

Monday, June 11, 2018

After fleeing the G-7 in a pique, Trump the Russian spy traitor heads to Singapore

By Hunter


QUEBEC CITY, QC - JUNE 09:  US President Donald Trump leaves after holding a press conference ahead of his early departure from the G7 Summit on June 9, 2018 in Quebec City, Canada. Canada are hosting the leaders of the UK, Italy, the US, France, Germany and Japan for the two day summit, in the town of La Malbaie.  (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The chicken and his spare ribs
The United States government is currently headed by a traitor. We should mention that before anything else, and keep mentioning it until it finally dawns on the nation that puttering around on the outskirts of that conclusion is doing nobody any good, and is doing a great deal of harm.

All currently available evidence supports this statement. We know from the emails released by Trump Jr. that the campaign orchestrated a Trump Tower meeting between themselves and Russian government go-betweens specifically for the purposes of receiving information about his opponent, during the midst of a Russian espionage campaign against that opponent. We know from the text of that email that the meeting was arranged as "part of" the Russian government's support for Donald Trump, making certain that Trump and his team knew their collaboration was with a foreign government. We know that as sitting resident Donald Trump, when confronted with the imminent public exposure of this meeting, ordered and orchestrated a statement intentionally designed to cover up its true purpose.

And we know the meeting was not isolated, but part of an ongoing effort by numerous members of the Trump campaign to seek out Russian "channels" during a period of time in which, according to the now-public determinations of our nation's various intelligence agencies, the Russian government was conducting both espionage and propaganda campaigns against the U.S. in order to throw that election to Trump's team.

So that makes Donald Trump a traitor to his nation, according to the dictionary definition of the term. What that makes Republican lawmakers still seeking to sabotage the government investigation of his acts–from the unsubtle Nunes to his consistent enabler, Paul Ryan–is open to debate.

At present, however, the traitor is in Singapore, likely getting a good long preparatory nap before meeting with a North Korean dictator who he has treated with more respect than he has mustered for the leaders of most of our nation’s allies. He has just left a summit with those allies in which he skipped out on some meetings, arrived at others late, badgered the other leaders about tariffs that appear to exist primarily in his mind, and scuttled whatever progress the rest of the group thought they were making with a cowardly statement released only after he had fled the scene because he is a gigantic baby.
Take a moment to absorb not how petulant, but how genuinely cowardly this man is. He had to flee the meetings before taking this bold new stand of … reversing himself on a largely meaningless diplomatic letter. He imagines himself a great negotiator, but every negotiation he has ever had, from his hotel business to international “diplomacy”, seems to universally consist of Donald Trump pouting, whining, and reversing himself on whatever he previously agreed to just as soon as the ink has dried. This is not genius. It is petulant tantruming, but of the sort that we revile in our children but celebrate in any sociopath with a few million dollars to play with.

Trump's only notable non-tantruming contribution to the G-7 summit, however, was to insist that the very nation whose espionage he has repeatedly publicly dismissed and whose aid he conspired with others to cover up be re-admitted to the elite group. His argument was that Russia did not invade Ukraine; past U.S. leaders, in their weakness, made them invade Ukraine. This logic is so self-evidently stupid that willful treason is, if anything, the generous interpretation. The ungenerous interpretation is incompetence, buffoonery, or dementia.

But we have still not come to terms with any of this, as a nation, in large part because each of Trump's failures is so foundational that the nation's press cannot grasp—or willfully refuses to grasp—its implications. His campaign indeed conspired, with full knowledge, with a Russian government plot against America. He has, as resident, sought to personally enrich himself and his family using the trappings of office—openly and repeatedly. He has, as resident, pardoned political allies and demanded investigations of, and imprisonment of, government officials investigating crimes committed by other allies. These are things that happen in other countries, in failing democracies and in authoritarian-minded kleptocracies; our press, largely dull-minded and self-captured by a mantra that suggests there is no true good or bad, in political acts, no truth-telling or lying, and when it comes down to it no true laws at all, only an infinite murk of partisanship that must be balanced, word for word and column for column, at all costs, continues to write about it as if every one of them has joined the celebrity gossip beat.

And so on the eve of a Trump summit with a North Korean strongman, the press is still full of cartoonishly silly hot takes on how the buffoonish, self-absorbed hotel magnate and gleeful traitor, on the heels of a summit with close U.S. allies in which he proved the clown at every opportunity, might somehow transform his mattress-buying and contractor-stiffing talents into Churchillian greatness.
When President Trump declared that he did not really need to prepare for his legacy-defining meeting with North Korea’s leader, he drew sighs or snickers from veterans of past negotiations. But he had a point: In his own unorthodox way, Mr. Trump has been preparing for this encounter his entire adult life.
This, by the way, may be the stupidest thing ever written in the New York Times, opinion or otherwise, ever. I challenge you to find a worse one.

We do not know how this new "summit" will go, and that is entirely because Trump is such a buffoon that any and all outcomes are possible, from the establishment of friendly ties to a rogue nuclear dictatorship to the child leaving in a huff because he does not like any given statement, decoration, or dessert. North Korea has accomplished what they set out to from the outset; within their nation, they will point to the summit as the arrival of their dictatorship as true world power, as the evidence that the rogue nuclear program for which their citizenry suffered innumerable hardships was indeed the path to national greatness their leader had promised all along.

Trump's desires are the same, and that should be more alarming than it is. He has no goal other than recognition of his own legitimacy and greatness; even the most dull-minded in the press are willing to admit that his motive for a North Korean summit is simply because he wishes to be perceived as doing something past American leaders could not, or would not. His motives are strictly self-promotional, yet again; his instincts are to coddle those leaders who have something he desires—the possibility for self-promotion or other personal gain—while dismissing those leaders who he perceives as being unwilling to offer such. As with his petulance towards U.S. allies like Canada and his obsequious toadying to his own personal ally Putin, whether the outcome is good for the nation or is bad is irrelevant; Donald Trump came into the office as a traitor to begin with. He does not give a damn what fires he starts in his quest for supposed personal greatness. But still, we will persist in pretending at some greater design; we will insist on pretending the traitor is something better than he is.

He is not, of course. He has never been. Donald Trump has been a cretin his whole life, a snide racist and a gleeful cheat, a man whose wee little empire has been built from petty grifts and exists in a fog of money-launderers and thugs. He is a traitor, but the press, his party, and his willing allies will still persist in not discussing that part it until he has either lost power, rendering such criticisms impotent, or he has done something so immeasurably worse that pointing it out no longer even rates as controversial.

Why is this traitor still in office? Send this mother fucker a message this November, and vote all of the Republican cocksuckers that support this moron out of office.  dlevere.

Saturday, June 9, 2018

The 101 Most Useful Websites On The Internet

Here are the most useful websites on the Internet that will make you smarter, increase productivity, and help you learn new skills. These incredibly useful websites solve at least one problem really well. And they all have cool URL's that are easy to memorize, thus saving you a trip to Google. 

Source

The Most Useful Websites and Web Apps

  1. archive.is — take a snapshot of any web page and it will be exist forever even if the original page is gone.
  2. autodraw.com — create freehand doodles and watch them magically transform into beautiful drawings powered by maching learning.
  3. fast.com — check the current speed of your Internet connection.
  4. slides.com — create pixel-perfect slide decks and broadcast your presentations to an audience of any size from anywhere.
  5. screenshot.guru — take high-resolution screenshots of web pages on mobile and desktops.
  6. dictation.io – accurate and quick voice recognition in your browser itself.
  7. reverse.photos — upload an image and find similar pictures on the web.
  8. copychar.cc – copy special characters and emojis that aren’t on your keyboard.
  9. codeacademy.com – the best place to learn coding online.
  10. noisli.com — ambient noises to help you improve focus and boost productivity.
  11. iconfinder.com – millions of icons for all kinds of projects. Also try icons8.com and flaticon.com.
  12. jotti.org – scan any suspicious file or email attachment for viruses.
  13. wolframalpha.com – gets answers directly without searching   – see more wolfram tips.
  14. flightstats.com – track flight status at airports worldwide.
  15. unsplash.com – the best place to download images absolutely free.
  16. videos.pexels.com — an online library of free HD videos you can use everywhere. Also see videvo.net.
  17. Also see: The Best Android Apps
  18. everytimezone.com – a less confusing view of the world time zones.
  19. e.ggtimer.com – a simple online timer for your daily needs.
  20. random.org – pick random numbers, flip coins, and more.
  21. earn.com — replace your email with a mailbox that pays when you reply to someone’s email.
  22. myfonts.com/WhatTheFont – upload an image of any text and quickly determine the font family.
  23. fonts.google.com – the best collection of open source fonts that you can use anywhere without restrictions.
  24. fontstruct.com — draw and build your own fonts and use them in any application.
  25. calligraphr.com — transform your handwriting into a real font.
  26. regex.info – find data hidden in your photographs – see more EXIF tools.
  27. youtube.com/webcam — broadcast yourself live over the Internet without any complicated setup.
  28. remotedesktop.google.com — access other computers or allow others to remote access your computer over the Internet.
  29. homestyler.com – design from scratch or re-model your home in 3D.
  30. pdfescape.com – lets you quickly edit PDF in the browser without Acrobat.
  31. draw.io – create diagrams, wireframe and flowcharts in the browser.
  32. web.skype.com — make voice and video calls in your browser with Skype.
  33. onlineocr.net – recognize text from scanned PDFs – see other OCR tools.
  34. wetransfer.com – for sharing really big files online.
  35. file.pizza — peer to peer file transfer over WebRTC without any middleman.
  36. snapdrop.com — like Apple AirDrop but for the web. Share files directly between devices in the same network without having to upload them to any server first.
  37. hundredzeros.com – the site lets you download free Kindle books.
  38. app.grammarly.com — check your writing for spelling, style, andgrammatical errors.
  39. noteflight.com – print music sheets, write your own music online ( review).
  40. translate.google.com – translate web pages, PDFs and Office documents.
  41. kleki.com – create paintings and sketches with a wide variety of brushes.
  42. similarsites.com – discover new sites that are similar to what you like already.
  43. bubbl.us – create mind-maps, brainstorm ideas in the browser.
  44. color.adobe.com – get color ideas, also extract colors from photographs.
  45. canva.com — make beautiful graphics, presentations, resumes and more with readymade template designs.
  46. lmgtfy.com – when your friends are too lazy to use Google on their own.
  47. midomi.com – when you need to find the name of a song.
  48. history.google.com —  see all your past Google searches, also among most important Google URLs
  49. faxzero.com – send an online fax for free – see more fax services.
  50. tinychat.com – setup your own private chat room in micro-seconds.
  51. privnote.com – create text notes that will self-destruct after being read.
  52. domains.google.com – quickly search domain names for your next big idea!
  53. downforeveryoneorjustme.com – find if your favorite website is offline or not?
  54. gtmetrix.com – the perfect tool for measuring your site performance online.
  55. builtwith.com — find the web hosting company, email provider and everything else about a website.
  56. urbandictionary.com – find definitions of slangs and informal words.
  57. Also see: The Best Mac Apps and Utilities
  58. seatguru.com – consult this site before choosing a seat for your next flight.
  59. flightstats.com – Track flight status at airports worldwide.
  60. mymaps.google.com – create custom Google Maps with scribbles, pins and custom shapes.
  61. snopes.com – find if that email offer you received is real or just another scam.
  62. typingweb.com – master touch-typing with these practice sessions.
  63. todo.microsoft.com — a beautiful todo app and task manager. Also see Trello.
  64. minutes.io – quickly capture effective notes during meetings.
  65. talltweets.com — Turn Google Slides in animated GIF presentations.
  66. ifttt.com – create a connection between all your online accounts.
  67. namechk.com — search for your desired username across hundreds of social networks and domain names.
  68. gist.github.com — create anonymous and secret text notes and much more.
  69. flipanim.com — create flipbook animations, includes an onion skin tool to let you see the previous frame as you draw the next one.
  70. powtoon.com — create engaging whiteboard videos and presentations with your own voiceovers. Also see videoscribe.co.
  71. clyp.it — Record your own voice or upload an audio file without creating any account. Also see soundcloud.com.
  72. carrd.co — build one-page fully responsive websites that look good on every screen.
  73. spark.adobe.com — make stunning video presentations with voice narration and wow everyone.
  74. anchor.fm — the easiest way to record a podcast that you can distribute on iTunes without have to pay for hosting.
  75. duolingo.com — learn to speak Chinese, French, Spanish or any other language of your choice.
  76. webmakerapp.com — an offline playground for building web projects in HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
  77. pixton.com — create your own comic strips with your own characters and move them into any pose.
  78. designer.io — a full-featured vector drawing tool that works everywhere.
  79. sumopaint.com – an excellent layer-based online image editor.
  80. vectr.com — create vector graphics and export them as SVG or PNG files.
  81. twitterbots — create your own Twitter bots that can auto-reply, DM, follow people and more.
  82. headspace.com —  learn the art of meditation and reduct stress, focus more and even sleep better.
  83. class-central.com — a directory of free online courses offered by universities worldwide.
  84. googleartproject.com — discover museums, famous paintings and art treasure from all around the world.
  85. instructables.com — step-by-step guides on how to build anything and everything.
  86. flowgram.com — make data-driven graphics, charts and infographics. Also see adioma.com and eas.ly.
  87. marvelapp.com — create interactive wireframes and product mockups.
  88. slide.ly — make marketing videos and branded stories for Instagram, Facebook and YouTube trailers. Also see animoto.com and biteable.com.
  89. gohighbrow.com — Take bite-sized courses on a variety of topics, chapters are delivered by email every monning.
  90. htmlmail.pro – send rich-text emails with gmail mail merge.
  91. wirecutter.com — whether you need a vacuum cleaner or an SD card, this is the best product recommendation website on the Internet.
  92. camelcamelcamel.com — Create Amazon price watches and get email alerts when the prices drop.
  93. mockaroo.com — download mock data to fill the rows in your Excel spreadsheet.
  94. asciiflow.com — a WYSIWYG editor to draw ASCII diagrams that you can embed in emails and tweets.
  95. Also see: The Best Add-ons for Gmail, Docs and Sheets
  96. buffer.com — the easily way to post and schedule updates on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Google+ and Facebook.
  97. 10minutemail.com — create disposable email addresses for putting inside sign-up forms.
  98. whereami — find the postal address of your current location on Google maps.
  99. sway.com — create and share interactive reports, newsletters, presentations, and for storytelling.
  100. Also see: The Best Websites to Learn Coding
  101. apify.com — the perfect web scraping tool that lets you extract data from nearly any website.
  102. thunkable.com — build your own apps for Android and iOS by dragging blocks instead of writing code. Also see: glitch.com.
  103. zerodollarmovies.com — a huge collection of free movies curated from YouTube.
  104. upwork.com — find freelancers and subject experts to work on any kind of project.
  105. duckduckgo.com – a clean alternative to google search that doesn’t track you on the Internet.

Friday, June 8, 2018

Charles Krauthammer says he has 'only a few weeks left to live'

By Brian Stelter

Charles Krauthammer wearing a suit and tie smiling at the camera© Fox News

"This is the final verdict. My fight is over."

Charles Krauthammer, the famed conservative columnist, informed readers on Friday that he is confronting an aggressive form of cancer.

"My doctors tell me their best estimate is that I have only a few weeks left to live," he wrote.

Krauthammer shared the devastating news in a short, matter-of-fact note on the website of the Washington Post, where he has been a columnist since 1984.

"I leave this life with no regrets," he wrote in the farewell message. "It was a wonderful life -- full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended."

Krauthammer was also a longtime commentator on Fox News.

He had to step away from both jobs last August for surgery to remove what he called a "a cancerous tumor in my abdomen."

There were numerous complications.

"Special Report" anchor Bret Baier occasionally gave updates to viewers about Krauthammer's recovery.

"Colleagues and viewers alike had held out hope that he would return to the evening show he helped establish as must-viewing," Fox's story on Krauthammer noted on Friday.

Last month Baier offered some good news via a message from Krauthammer: "The worst now appears to be behind me."

But then Krauthammer received the worst possible news.

"Recent tests have revealed that the cancer has returned," he explained Friday. "There was no sign of it as recently as a month ago, which means it is aggressive and spreading rapidly."

In his note to readers, he thanked colleagues, readers, and viewers "who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life's work." He wrote: "I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation's destiny."

Nintendo Switch Super Smash Bros.

To celebrate the launch of the newest game in one of their most beloved franchises, Nintendo is holding a tournament dubbed the Super Smash Bros. Invitational 2018, and they’ve invited some of the biggest names in the competitive scene to face each other in the new Smash” for Switch, including luminaries like Armada, MkLeo, and ZeRo.  

Variety caught up with two of these Smashers to ask them their thoughts on the new game, the future of the competitive game, and what they hope to get out of the E3 tournament come Monday. 

Trump will have ‘the same fate as Nixon’ writes MSNBC’s Morning Blow Joe Scarborough

Trump is hurtling toward a Nixonian ending


resident Trump at the White House on Thursday. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
The anniversary of Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination has long served as a stark reminder of all that was lost on that day in 1968, and of what American politics might have become had the New York senator survived that turbulent year. Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the tragedy saw a deluge of tributes remembering a man both haunted by history and driven by the vision of an America redeemed. 

Esquire’s Charles Pierce this week describes Kennedy as a man uniquely capable of standing against the “foul gales” that were then rising in American ­politics. Pierce believes, as do I, that Kennedy’s election to the presidency could have healed a nation pushed to a breaking point by a cacophony of cultural tremors. Despite campaigning against the bleak backdrop of Vietnam, torched American cities, heightened racial ­tensions and political assassinations, RFK would have stitched together the shredded fabric of American culture and healed the soul of a country that remains, as Pierce writes, “perpetually ­redeemable.”

In a new book, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham reminds readers of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s belief that for all of this country’s failings, the trend of American civilization is forever upward. That is an invaluable reminder during a time when the president proclaims his power unrestrained by Madisonian checks and balances, including ignoring federal subpoenas, killing Justice Department investigations, obstructing justice to protect his personal interests and even pardoning himself. The resident’s hapless lawyers seem to have convinced Donald Trump, like Richard M. Nixon before him, that “when the resident does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

But that twisted interpretation of presidential authority is dead wrong. Even in resident Trump’s America, no man is above the law.

It may come as little relief to those unsettled by the commander in chief’s autocratic impulses that this resident will likely face the same fate as Nixon if he acts upon his lawyers’ ignorant legal opinions. But perhaps take comfort from Meacham’s insight in “The Soul of America” that “to know what has come before is to be armed against despair.”

History does, in fact, show that a president cannot pardon himself. Days before Nixon resigned in 1974, the Justice Department issued an opinion that echoed centuries of American and English law by declaring, “Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself.“

The history of Bill Clinton’s presidency also undermines recent claims from Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that Trump is legally entitled as resident to ignore a subpoena from Robert S. Mueller III. 

But do not take my word for it. Read instead Giuliani’s own words from 1998. “You gotta do it. I mean, you don’t have a choice,” the former U.S. attorney said of Clinton’s legal options if he received a federal subpoena to testify to Whitewater investigators.

Other claims of unchecked residential authority by Trump and his lawyers are so preposterous that they warrant little discussion here. What Time magazine describes as the White House’s “increasingly broad claims of presidential impunity” would likely be struck down in a unanimous opinion by the Supreme Court. And even Trump’s most timid quislings on Capitol Hill would never suggest (like Giuliani) that Trump could have murdered former FBI director James B. Comey and escape indictment as long as he was in office. Perhaps there are constitutional excesses that even Trump apologists will not yield to in their unending efforts to defend Trump.

On the same day Americans marked a half-century since Kennedy’s death, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) defended the FBI investigation into Trump’s campaign and told reporters that no man is above the law. Ryan’s performance may have met only the bare-minimum standard for political courage. But as one who still sees America as perpetually redeemable, forgive me for believing this president’s worst instincts will be checked, our country’s rule of law will be preserved and the upward arc of American civilization that FDR once spoke of will again be restored.

Wednesday, June 6, 2018

A retrospective of Unreal, from the people who made it

Unreal turned 20 years old this month. The extraterrestrial first-person shooter spawned (and showcased) a game engine whose descendants still motor on today.

To commemorate all those screaming prisoners and innocent alien creatures killed at the hands of jumpy players, Brendan Caldwell got in touch with a handful of the original team and asked them to share their memories of making the first Skaarj conflict.

This is how Unreal was made, from the perspective of the programmers, designers, artists and musicians who were there.

Saturday, June 2, 2018

Note to Racists: It's Not Racist To Call You "Racist"

Posted by Rude One

Let's get this out of the way early here so you can determine if you want to continue: If you voted for Donald Trump, you are racist. If you still support Donald Trump, you are racist. You are racist because you are supporting someone who is not just personally racist but who wants the nation to have policies and laws that are racist. Even if you are a rich person who is just a greedy asshole and voted for Trump for the tax cuts, you are still a racist.

I am making this distinction not because I want to excuse Trump's racism on a personal level, but as a way of trying to explain to racist Trump voters why they are racists even if, in their hearts, they believe they have no issue with people of other races. That part doesn't matter if you helped put someone in office who regularly says racist things and regularly, deliberately does things that target non-whites, including the Muslim travel ban, the savage immigration policies, and the attacks on African Americans who protest violence against them. You can't say, "I believe that everything Trump is doing is making America great again" and then follow that with "But I'm not racist" because that's plainly a lie.

Are we clear then? I am calling you "racist" because you're racist.

Earlier this week, when I implied that Trump voters are racist because Roseanne Barr showed how racist they are, someone tweeted at me that racism is "Taking a group of people and bunching them up in assumptions and accusations." I've gotten this quite a bit, that because I say Trump voters are racist, I'm engaging in a type of racism. But that leaves out a crucial aspect about racism. Can you guess? It's that it's based on race. It's not simply any random "group of people" who have some unifying belief. If you take race out of "racism," then you don't even have the word.

You wouldn't think that would have to be explained, but this is the way we live now.

After Barr said that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett looked like an ape, several people responded by pointing out how Bill Maher and many others have said that Donald Trump looks like an orangutan. Of course, that's because of his hair and weird tan, both things he chooses. Believe it or not, he wasn't born orange.

Still, if you don't understand how comparing a black person to any kind of monkey taps into an entire history of racial bigotry and degradation, then you're too stupid to understand any of this and should probably spend your time jacking off on r/The_Donald. The same thing goes if you don't understand how Samantha Bee calling Ivanka Trump a "feckless cunt" is different than what Barr said. It's not racism. And you have to struggle to make it sexist.

Calling you "racist" isn't political correctness run amok. It isn't an attempt to shut down debate. It isn't even really meant as an insult (even though, yes, it is one). It's a way of defining your beliefs. If you think that people should be treated differently because of the color of their skin or if you voted for leaders who believe that and act on it, then what else should you be called? I mean, "Republican" works, too, except that there are still one or two Republicans who aren't motivated by hatred of non-whites. So "racist" is just a shorthand way to describe an ideology. And, yeah, I do think racists are bad people because, well, they're racists. But that's not racism on my part.

You wanna call that prejudice? Fine. You're right. You've nailed me. I am prejudiced against racists. I don't think those people (yes, "those people") should have a voice in the public sphere. They should be treated as pariahs, mocked, and condemned until they are too ashamed to say those things out loud. You have free speech, sure, and the rest of us have the free speech to say that you are pathetic and have stopped the human race from advancing and that you should be accountable for the horrible things you say and do. Because, see, you're a racist.

The other thing that Trump's racists like to say is "What about Bill Clinton?" Or, as my tweeter accused, "You're putting people in a group and saying they all act/think the same? You're are a Democrat, so since Bill Clinton was as well, then you're a womanizing weasel. See how ridiculous that is?" Yeah, it is ridiculous, but only because of how false it is to even begin to equate the two. See, it's not just about the failings of two flawed men.

Calling out Trump and his supporters for racism is different than supporting Bill Clinton, who you can accuse of all kinds of things in his personal life but whose policies did not reflect whatever level of repugnant you think Clinton is. You might think Clinton is a rapist, but he did not try to pass laws to make it easier for rapists to rape nor did he pardon rapists. You might think Clinton was a serial sexual harasser, but he never tried to get legislation passed that would legalize sexual harassment. I'm not excusing Clinton. I was very clear back in the 1990s that Clinton should have resigned or temporarily stepped aside during the Lewinsky saga because of the massive distraction that it was and that fooling around with an intern was pretty fucked up.

But here is the difference, and it's subtle, so see if you can follow along:

When Donald Trump says or does something racist, you cheer. When he says, "Build the wall," you chant it. When he calls immigrants "animals," you scream your approval. When he called for a "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," you shouted how much you love him. And when he issues executive orders that break up immigrant families or threatens to deport DACA recipients or calls places "shitholes," you say he's just doing what you elected him to do. That's because you're racist.

On the left, we never cheered for Bill Clinton's affairs or alleged harassment. At worst, we said it was a personal issue between him and Hillary. At best, we condemned him. If I recall, my exact quote in 1998 was "If you're gonna be president, keep your dick out of it." So, no, it's not comparable. Not even vaguely.

My advice, racists? Do like all of the overt racists are doing and own that shit. Or, if you don't want to be called "racist," if being called a "racist" makes you feel bad or ashamed, then stop being racist. And that would mean no longer supporting Donald Trump.

But you won't do that because you're a racist and you're too fucking dumb to get out of the pit of shit you love wallowing around in.

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

‘Roseanne’ Canceled By ABC After Roseanne Barr’s ‘Repugnant’ Comments, Network President Says

Roseanne Barr, you are in no position to talk about ANYONE'S looks, your dumb, fat, non-National Anthem singing ass deserves to get fired.  dlevere.

 Cancellation is ‘the right thing,’ Disney CEO Bob Iger tweets Tuesday

Roseanne Barr waded into racial waters on Monday, suggesting that former Barack Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett is a product of the Muslim Brotherhood and the “Planet of the Apes.”



Last Updated: May 29, 2018 @ 11:22 AM

ABC has canceled “Roseanne” after Roseanne Barr’s racially charged tweet about Valerie Jarrett Tuesday morning, with Disney CEO Robert Iger tweeting that the decision was “the only thing to do here,” and “the right thing.”
“muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj,” Barr said earlier on Tuesday in response to a Twitter thread about Jarrett, a former adviser to Barack Obama.

Monday, May 28, 2018

Using DnSPY With Cheat Engine To Get Those Hard To Find Values

Special thanks to AgntLuck from the Discord channel. Today we learn how we can use another software in combination with Cheat Engine to help us find codes better, easier and more efficient than hunt and peck, trial and error.



Download dnSPY:

https://github.com/0xd4d/dnSpy

Penguin thinks we're Nazis


10 ways Donald Trump has dishonored American veterans

By Sarah K. Burris

Memorial Day was the holiday meant to honor fallen soldiers, but somewhere along the line it has become a day that also honors all veterans. Regardless of whether the holiday is Memorial Day or Armistice Day, resident Donald Trump is likely to mark the day claiming that he honors veterans who fought for America. It’s an interesting tactic given his history disparaging veterans, attacking Gold Star families, mocking prisoners of war, getting into a public battle with the family of a soldier that had just been killed.

Then there are the broken promises for the Veterans Administration. That alone could make for an even longer list.
However, as the resident celebrates fallen soldiers Monday, here are 10 of the times he did the opposite:

1. The John McCain attacks
“He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured, OK?” Trump said at a 2016 campaign event.



A few days later Trump even doubled down on his remarks.

2. Trump goes after the Khan family for speaking out in support of Hillary Clinton at the Democratic convention.
“Go look at the graves of brave patriots who died defending the United States of America. You will see all faiths, genders, and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing — and no one,” Khizr Khan said.

In the days that followed the statement, Trump went into full attack mode. He did everything from claim Khan’s wife wasn’t allowed to speak because she is a Muslim wife. He claimed he made sacrifices because he “created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures.” He even began spreading a conspiracy theory that came from some right-wing fever dream that Khan was secretly a “Muslim Brotherhood agent.”

It’s been almost two years and Trump has never apologized.

3. “My personal Vietnam”
Trump got five draft deferments while Vietnam raged for nearly 20 years. Trump had bone spurs, though. While we’ve heard about his medication list, height, weight and other factors, but the president’s physician, and former nominee to chair the Veterans Administration, never gave a status update on the spurs that kept him out of serving his duty.

He didn’t miss out, however. Trump said that his sex life was like his own personal Vietnam.

“I was dating lots and lots of women,” he said in 2004. “I just had a great time. They were great years, but that was pre-AIDS, and you could do things in those days that today you’re at risk doing. AIDS has changed a lot.”

“It is a dangerous world out there — it’s scary, like Vietnam,” he continued. “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

4. Promise the moon but give them pennies.
Twice, Trump promised that he would be donating to veteran causes. The reality, however, was another story. While campaigning in 2016, Trump indicated that he has sent nearly $6 million to different veterans groups nationwide, but when Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold called every veterans advocacy organizations to uncover who got what and how much, the donation was a little closer to nothing.

Despite making the claim for months, the money miraculously appeared to various organizations in the days that followed Fahrenthold’s report and questions for Trump.

5. The Niger widows.
The families that lost their husbands or sons in the Niger ambush didn’t get a call from the resident for nearly two weeks. When the call finally came it was only after the resident was blasted publicly in the press.

Except, when he called one family, he completely flubbed the call. Instead of taking the high road, Trump moved on to blast the family and a local Congresswoman and friend of the family who mentored the Sgt. La David Johnson.

If that isn’t bad enough, when Trump was blasted for his behavior, he swore that he had done more for Gold Star families than anyone. He even went so far as to claim that former President Barack Obama never called the families. Not only was the claim false, families who had received that heartbreaking call stepped up to call out the lie.

6. The $25,000 promise.
Chris Baldridge’s son was killed in June 2017 by an Afghan police officer. Over the phone, the resident told Army Sgt. Dillon Baldridge’s family how sorry he was. The father lamented how hard the family has struggled financially.

“He said, ‘I’m going to write you a check out of my personal account for $25,000,’ and I was just floored,” Baldridge told the Washington Post in an interview. “I could not believe he was saying that, and I wish I had it recorded because the man did say this. He said, ‘No other resident has ever done something like this,’ but he said, ‘I’m going to do it.'”

The interview took place five months after the promise. The check hadn’t arrived. After publicly outcry at another Trump lie, the White House told The Post “The check has been sent.” Better late than never.

6. Trump’s lie he fixed VA wait times.
Everything was supposed to change. Finally, the White House would have an advocate for the veterans, Trump claimed in 2016. But, his promises haven’t proved much in terms of action.

One thing Trump said he would change are the wait times at the VA. During at least two events in 2017, Trump swore he’d fixed it.

“I used to go around and talk about the veterans and they’d stand on line for nine days, seven days, four days… 15 days. People that could have been given a prescription and been better right away end up dying waiting on line,” he said during a July speech. “That’s not happening anymore.”

It was.

“Now [veterans] go right outside, they go to a doctor in the area, we pay the bill, and it’s the least expensive thing we can do and we save everybody’s life and everybody’s happy,” the resident claimed.

Except, they still wait. The Government Accountability Office quotes says that they still wait on average 81 days.

7. The backlog in veteran disability claims
Trump signed the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017 in August, saying that they were working to streamline disability compensation appeal claims for veterans.

It’s great for new vets applying for disability. For those who were stuck in the system, the wait continues as the legislation did nothing to reduce or address the current backlog or address appeals after denials. There are over 470,000 veterans stuck in the backlog. Former VA Secretary David Shulkin said that it would take $800 million and 10 years to clear the backlog of appeals.

They wait still.

8. VA’s Veterans Choice Program emergency funding ran out before it was supposed to.
Someone didn’t do their math correctly. When Congress passed and Trump signed the $2.1 billion in emergency funding for the VA’s Veterans Choice Program, it was supposed to keep the program afloat until February 2018. It ran out two months early.

9. Trump’s hiring freeze
Like many Republicans, Trump wanted to stop government from hiring new people, so he placed a freeze on any agencies bringing in new staff. For veterans looking for jobs at the Pentagon, in the social services or anywhere in government, they were locked out. While many might think it’s a small number, in 2015 The Hill reported that one-third of those applying for federal government jobs were veterans.

For understaffed agencies like the VA, the hiring freeze only made things worse.

10. Trump’s budget hurts veterans.
The Trump White House lacks a basic understanding for the daily life of those coming home from war and being discharged face. When Republicans sought to cut food stamps, they seemed to forget 1.5 million veterans use food stamps. Data on active-duty soldiers isn’t available because the Pentagon doesn’t share it. In 2013, however, 23,000 active-duty troops use food stamps.

Trump’s budget would gut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), by $17 billion for the 2019 budget.

“Veteran-specific benefits and services fall short of meeting the needs of veterans and their families, many of whom struggle to meet basic needs even with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) supports,” the Center for American progress reported in 2017. “More than 3.9 million veterans live paycheck to paycheck—meaning their family incomes are less than twice the federal poverty level, or less than $50,000 for a family of four.”

So, if the resident touts his “many successes” that show how he has “done more for veterans than any president in the history of the world,” Americans can remind him what he has really done.