“you shot at my gun, now i’m going to shoot you”
- us foreign policy
“The white establishment is now the minority,” O’Reilly said. “And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama. Overwhelming black vote for President…
Look, I can see how it’s not particularly feminist to play the princess in the tower, waiting to be saved. But as a black woman- we’ve never been afforded that luxury. There was no man coming to save you; it wasn’t part of the story. In some ways, this telling is a statement of empowerment.
“
| — | Kerry Washington in the December issue of Elle, talking about her character in Django Unchained. (via yoyomar) |
On Obama’s climate adaptation policies:
In a move surely designed to side-step Congress, Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality issued instructions to all federal agencies on how to adapt to climate change. All agencies, from the Food and Drug Administration to the Department of Defense, will be required to analyze their vulnerabilities to the impacts from climate change and come up with a plan to adapt. Thousands of governmental employees will be trained on climate science, like it or not.
The changes aren’t limited to just federal agencies. Countless numbers of private businesses that sell, build, provide logistics or maintenance, or anything else to the government will be forced to comply with new Federal climate adaptation guidelines—all because of Presidential Executive Order 13514.
How far reaching is this adaptation action? The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is holding a training and workshop conference on Obama’s Executive Order in May. NDIA is the primary private industry group that supports the Department of Defense. To be clear, NDIA connects the DoD to bomb makers Raytheon, bullet manufacturers Sierra Bullets, and the designer of the stealth bomber, Northrup-Grumman. Now NDIA is training defense contractors on climate science and analysis based on a little known Executive Order.
How did this happen?
In a move surely designed to side-step Congress, Obama’s Council on Environmental Quality issued instructions to all federal agencies on how to adapt to climate change. All agencies, from the Food and Drug Administration to the Department of Defense, will be required to analyze their vulnerabilities to the impacts from climate change and come up with a plan to adapt. Thousands of governmental employees will be trained on climate science, like it or not.
The changes aren’t limited to just federal agencies. Countless numbers of private businesses that sell, build, provide logistics or maintenance, or anything else to the government will be forced to comply with new Federal climate adaptation guidelines—all because of Presidential Executive Order 13514.
How far reaching is this adaptation action? The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) is holding a training and workshop conference on Obama’s Executive Order in May. NDIA is the primary private industry group that supports the Department of Defense. To be clear, NDIA connects the DoD to bomb makers Raytheon, bullet manufacturers Sierra Bullets, and the designer of the stealth bomber, Northrup-Grumman. Now NDIA is training defense contractors on climate science and analysis based on a little known Executive Order.
How did this happen?
“
| — | “Obama’s “Secret” Climate Adaptation Plan.” His little discussed - but very powerful - executive order on climate change would most definitely be dismantled by a Romney administration… (via climateadaptation) |
Machine turns vote for Obama into one for Romney
A Pennsylvania electronic voting machine has been taken out of service after being captured on video changing a vote for President Obama into one for Mitt Romney, NBC News has confirmed.
http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/06/machine-turns-vote-for-obama-into-one-for-romney/
(Photo by J.D. Pooley/Getty Images)
“My wife and I went to the voting booths this morning before work. There were 4 older ladies running the show and 3 voting booths that are similar to a science fair project in how they fold up. They had an oval VOTE logo on top center and a cartridge slot on the left that the volunteers used to start your ballot.
I initially selected Obama but Romney was highlighted. I assumed it was being picky so I deselected Romney and tried Obama again, this time more carefully, and still got Romney. Being a software developer, I immediately went into troubleshoot mode. I first thought the calibration was off and tried selecting Jill Stein to actually highlight Obama. Nope. Jill Stein was selected just fine. Next I deselected her and started at the top of Romney’s name and started tapping very closely together to find the ‘active areas’. From the top of Romney’s button down to the bottom of the black checkbox beside Obama’s name was all active for Romney. From the bottom of that same checkbox to the bottom of the Obama button (basically a small white sliver) is what let me choose Obama. Stein’s button was fine. All other buttons worked fine.
I asked the voters on either side of me if they had any problems and they reported they did not. I then called over a volunteer to have a look at it. She him hawed for a bit then calmly said “It’s nothing to worry about, everything will be OK.” and went back to what she was doing. I then recorded this video.
There is a lot of speculation that the footage is edited. I’m not a video guy, but if it’s possible to prove whether a video has been altered or not, I will GLADLY provide the raw footage to anyone who is willing to do so. The jumping frames are a result of the shitty camera app on my Android phone, nothing more.”
Informed decision? Do you think this country was founded on informed decisions? Columbus thought he was in India! And did he worry about being wrong? No! He just called everybody Indians! And we still do it today. Why? ‘Cause. You want to be an American? You fill out that ballot because you don’t know what you’re doing! Just like when we named this country after the 4th or 5th guy who discovered it, Amerigo Vespucci. Who cares?
“
| — |
Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) on 30 Rock. (via lights-make-bodies-blurry) Yes! Was looking for this. (via espritfollet) |
The best #NaNoWriMoOpeners tweets (Volume 1)
#NaNoWriMoOpeners has been the funniest hashtag we’ve seen in months. We picked out dozens of our favorites, then boldly proclaimed this “Volume 1” because we’re sure there’s still plenty of funny left.
This really is the best hashtag of the year. I’ll compile a second volume later today.
National Novel Writing Month begins today, and with it, the celebration of internet culture known as #NaNoWriMoOpeners:
NaNoWriMo is something of an online tradition, when people who may not do much reading and certainly even less writing agree to put inexperience behind them and create an entire novel in 30 days. Like looking at a schematic an eight-year-old has drawn up for a treehouse, most NaNoWriMo works focus on wish-fulfillment at odds with basic rules, helpful guidelines, good taste or reality. NaNoWriMo also doesn’t seem to impart many lessons — or at least heeded lessons. An unstructured exercise only works as a learning tool if you have willing readers with a critical eye or the kind of self-awareness that allows you to discover the errors in style and structure you missed while writing. Mostly, it relies on the familiar non-writer’s fallacy that writing is like talking, and anyone can do it. You already tell funny stories out loud, so the essential difference between that and a novel is time: novels are longer, and writing is slower because there’s typing involved. NaNoWriMo is a game of endurance, and nothing makes that more obvious than reading its output. Which is why, thankfully, nobody here has written one. Like last year, a group of Twitter wags have instead written only the opening lines to masterpieces that the universe, in its wisdom, will one day complete via random chance.
#NaNoWriMoOpeners is the best time of the year. Don’t forget this gem:
