zieglerfe

H.R.1275 – World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017.

That’s not a joke. That’s the actual title of the Obamacare replacement.

Update:

This is a different bill. So this one didn’t make it. Too bad. We almost had the World’s Greatest Healthcare Plan of 2017 but now we have to give up our iPhones.

Oh, Trump kind of plays this off as a joke except Trump never jokes:

Uh oh. Trump: "Jared's actually become much more famous than me. I'm a little bit upset about that." (via @MSNBC) pic.twitter.com/W2mGOSYpfb

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) June 6, 2017

Hmmm, where have we heard that before:

Australia’s Daily Telegraph reports:

As a coach on The Voice, Boy George is encouraging his artists to find a new meaning when covering iconic pop songs and it seems the Culture Club front man has been taking his own advice. The ’80s pop icon has rerecorded the Village People classic YMCA in order to shine a light on issues important to Australian youth like marriage equality, mental health and youth unemployment.

However, Boy George said that when he was initially approached by YMCA Australia to get involved, he was hesitant. “I thought absolutely not. How could you cover that song?” he said. “The thing about covering songs, you have to get inside the song and see if it works and when I started to listen to the lyrics they were weirdly revealing.” Now, after recording the song as part of the charity organisation’s new campaign, the 56-year-old loves the new, stripped back version. “I started to think, this is going to really work in my shows.”

We’ve reclaimed our song and @BoyGeorge has reimagined it to introduce the YMCA to a new generation. #WhyNot https://t.co/itETzx4Hag

— YMCA Australia (@YMCA_Australia) June 19, 2017

@YMCA_Australia ‘It’s fun to stay at the YMCA! https://t.co/4Jrn7ZHCDR

— Boy George (@BoyGeorge) June 19, 2017

(Tipped by JMG reader Jonathan)

The post AUSTRALIA: Boy George Covers Village People’s YMCA In Pitch For Marriage Equality And It’s Great [VIDEO] appeared first on Joe.My.God..

That took all of three hours. The Washington Post reports:

Preet Bharara, one of the most high-profile federal prosecutors in the country, was fired Saturday after refusing to submit a letter of resignation as part of an ouster of the remaining U.S. attorneys who were holdovers from the Obama administration, according to people familiar with the matter.

“I did not resign,” Bharara said on Twitter. “Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.”

On Friday, acting deputy attorney general Dana Boente began making calls to 46 prosecutors asking for their resignations. Such requests are a normal part of a transition of power from one administration to another, and about half of the 94 Obama-era U.S. attorneys had already left their jobs.

But Boente’s call to Bharara, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, appears to have left some confusion in its wake, in large part because President Trump met with Bharara soon after the election and had asked him to stay on.

During Friday’s call, Bharara asked for clarity about whether the requests for resignations applied to him, given his previous conversation with Trump, and did not immediately get a definitive answer, according to a person familiar with the exchange.

I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life.

— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) March 11, 2017

The post Trump Fires US Attorney Preet Bharara appeared first on Joe.My.God..

Dan Rather has gone viral with another Facebook rant. He writes:

Watergate is the biggest political scandal of my lifetime, until maybe now. It was the closest we came to a debilitating Constitutional crisis, until maybe now. On a 10 scale of armageddon for our form of government, I would put Watergate at a 9. This Russia scandal is currently somewhere around a 5 or 6, in my opinion, but it is cascading in intensity seemingly by the hour. And we may look back and see, in the end, that it is at least as big as Watergate. It may become the measure by which all future scandals are judged. It has all the necessary ingredients, and that is chilling.

When we look back at Watergate, we remember the end of the Nixon Presidency. It came with an avalanche, but for most of the time my fellow reporters and I were chasing down the story as it rumbled along with a low-grade intensity. We never were quite sure how much we would find out about what really happened. In the end, the truth emerged into the light, and President Nixon descended into infamy.

This Russia story started out with an avalanche and where we go from here no one really knows. Each piece of news demands new questions. We are still less than a month into the Trump Presidency, and many are asking that question made famous by Tennessee Senator Howard Baker those many years ago: “What did the President know, and when did he know it?” New reporting suggests that Mr. Trump knew for weeks. We can all remember the General Michael Flynn’s speech from the Republican National Convention – “Lock her up!” in regards to Hillary Clinton. If Hillary Clinton had done one tenth of what Mr. Flynn had done, she likely would be in jail. And it isn’t just Mr. Flynn, how far does this go?

The White House has no credibility on this issue. Their spigot of lies – can’t we finally all agree to call them lies – long ago lost them any semblance of credibility. I would also extend that to the Republican Congress, who has excused away the Trump Administration’s assertions for far too long.

We need an independent investigation. Damn the lies, full throttle forward on the truth. If a scriptwriter had approached Hollywood with what we are witnessing, he or she would probably have been told it was way too far-fetched for even a summer blockbuster. But this is not fiction. It is real and it is serious. Deadly serious. We deserve answers and those who are complicit in this scandal need to feel the full force of justice.

The post Dan Rather: #Flynnghazi Might Even Be Worse Than Watergate, Hollywood Would Reject It As Far-Fetched appeared first on Joe.My.God..

From the Southern Poverty Law Center:

Propelled by the Trump campaign and a new focus on the ‘alt-right,’ the Daily Stormer is now the top hate site in America. The celebrations at The Daily Stormer began early on Nov. 9, just hours after the presidential election was called for Donald Trump. And Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi who started the website in 2013, was in full-on arsonist mode.

“Female Hajis Fear to Wear the Headtowel in Public After Trump Win — You Should Yell at Them,” read one of the first post-election headlines written by Anglin that day. “Fear,” he wrote below. “Now is the time for it. We want these people to feel unwanted. We want them to feel that everything around them is against them. And we want them to be afraid.”

“This was not a presidential Election,” Anglin added. “It was a referendum on the international Jewish agenda. And the biggest part of that agenda is multiculturalism.” Anglin and his confederates had plenty of reasons to celebrate. The man Anglin had endorsed 17 months earlier, in the wake of Trump’s out-of-the-gate description of Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers, had won, shocking the entire American political establishment.

The campaign that preceded that victory, with its dog whistles to the racist right, had helped propel Anglin and his movement into public consciousness. Just three months earlier, The Daily Stormer had moved into the real world from cyberspace, setting up a “Troll Army” of activists who follow Anglin’s lead in the vicious online harassment of enemies of his movement.

And in July, four months before Trump’s win, The Daily Stormer had become the most popular English-language website of the radical right, eclipsing the Stormfront site that had held that position since the early days of the Internet.

I encourage you to read the full piece. It’s an eye-opener.

The post MAGA: Nazi Site The Daily Stormer Now Most Trafficked English-Language Hate Site Thanks To Donald Trump appeared first on Joe.My.God..

According to multiple reports on Twitter, US District Judge Ann Donnelly just issued a national stay on Trump’s executive order banning Muslims from seven nations from entering the United States. Story developing…

UPDATE: The Verge reports.

The federal court for the Eastern District of New York issued an emergency stay halting President Donald Trump’s executive order banning entry to the US from seven majority-Muslim countries tonight, following widespread protests at airports around the country.

The court ruled on a habeas corpus petition filed by the ACLU on behalf of Hameed Khalid Darweesh and Sameer Abdulkhaleq Alshawi, who were denied entry to the US upon landing at JFK airport in New York City and detained indefinitely by Customs and Border Patrol.

Darweesh spent a decade working for the United States military in Iraq as an interpreter and engineer and had been granted an entry visa after background checks; Alshawi had been granted a visa in order to join his wife and son who are already permanent residents of the US after their similar service with the US military.

Judge Ann M. Donnelly of E.D.N.Y. has granted a national stay of @POTUS anti-Muslim immigration order, in case brought by @dale_e_ho/@ACLU. https://t.co/UYvcvRrGk9

— Devin Driscoll (@short_pants) January 29, 2017

News of @ACLU victory/emergency stay reaches #SFO #MuslimBanprotest pic.twitter.com/A7ou6Ak07n

— Vivian Ho (@VivianHo) January 29, 2017

Broad and important nationwide stay granted! This means folks will not be deported. We will get you more information as we have it.

— Nat’l Imm Law Center (@NILC_org) January 29, 2017

Clarification:Stay covers the airport detainees and those currently in transit. Doesn’t change ban going forward. Prev unclear tweet deleted

— Jessica Huseman (@JessicaHuseman) January 29, 2017

Breaking: judge grants emergency stay for those who have arrived in US or in transit affected by President Trump’s travel ban

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) January 29, 2017

Copy of US district court EDNY order granting nationwide stay. #MuslimBan pic.twitter.com/VqiwgKPzAf

— Jamil Dakwar (@jdakwar) January 29, 2017

UPDATE II: See the order HERE.

The post BREAKING: Federal Judge Issues National Emergency Stay On Trump’s Executive Order Banning Muslims UPDATE: Stay Only Affects Current Detainees appeared first on Joe.My.God..

The Hill reports:

Arms-control groups said it was unclear what Trump meant by expanding and strengthening nuclear capability, but listed several possible scenarios: building more nuclear-capable systems than planned under the current modernization efforts, having nuclear-capable systems carry the maximum number of warheads possible, creating bombs with more kilotons of nuclear power and increasing the number of warheads in the nuclear arsenal, among other possibilities. Though it remains unclear what prompted the tweet from Trump, the timing raised eyebrows for two reasons.

First, it came a day after Trump met with the chief executives of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two of the country’s biggest nuclear weapons contractors. They are in competition, along with Northrop Grumman, to build the next generation of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Air Force, a project expected to cost at least $85 billion.

Second, it came hours after Russian President Vladimir Putin made his own statement about strengthening his country’s nuclear arsenal. “We need to strengthen the strategic nuclear forces, for that we should develop missiles capable of penetrating any current and prospective missile defense systems,” Putin said at a Russian Defense Ministry meeting, according to Russian news agency TASS.

Neither Putin nor Trump have indicated the statements were coordinated or in response to one another, but arms control groups were alarmed that they came so close together.

More from NBC News:

Donald Trump stunned nuclear experts Thursday by proclaiming in a tweet that the U.S. should “expand its nuclear capability,” something no president has called for in decades. While President Barack Obama has proposed a $500 billion plan to modernize the aging U.S. nuclear triad, no mainstream voices are arguing to increase the numbers of nuclear weapons beyond the 4,500 the U.S. currently possesses, several experts told NBC News.

“The thrust of U.S. nuclear policy for decades now has been to trim the fat off the U.S. nuclear arsenal,” said James Acton, co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At a certain point, you are just making the rubble bounce higher.”

Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, said that the Russians “see U.S. modernization plus missile defense plus conventional precision weapons as a serious threat to their nuclear deterrent … they have been doing nuclear saber rattling that has been unprecedented.”

Trump wants to expand our nuclear arsenal. I think of my aunt and baby cousin, found burnt in a ditch in Hiroshima. These weapons must go.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) December 22, 2016

The post Freakouts Follow Trump’s “More Nukes” Tweet Which Came Hours After A Similar Message From Putin appeared first on Joe.My.God..

DNA Info reports:

He’s not taking no for an answer. Mayor Bill de Blasio vowed Wednesday to fight Congress’ refusal to reimburse the full $35 million the NYPD is spending to protect President-elect Donald Trump and his family through the Jan. 20 inauguration — saying the paltry $7 million offered is insufficient.

“I’m disappointed. I think they should have done better by New York City but this ain’t over,” de Blasio said on the Brian Lehrer Show Wednesday. “There’s plenty of time for us to recoup the money we deserve.”

A Republican-led panel added only $7 million to a short term funding bill to reimburse New York City for its costs on Tuesday. That would only cover 14 days of protection at Trump Tower at the current cost of approximately $473,000 per day.

Congress’ decision drew immediate rebuke from New York City lawmakers. “I am extremely disappointed that the Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government does not fully reimburse the people of New York for the unprecedented security costs incurred to keep the President-elect and his family safe between the election and his inauguration,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney in a statement on behalf of the New York City congressional delegation.

The post NEW YORK CITY: Mayor Fumes After Congress Allocates $7M Towards City’s $35M Trump Tower Security Cost appeared first on Joe.My.God..

Washington Avenue. Photo: Raj Mankad.

The last time Houston made a bike plan was 1993. Many of the streets declared official bike routes then are among the least safe places to bicycle. Take Washington Avenue. Every few hundred feet, a yellow sign with an image of a bicycle declares “Share the Road.” The street, however, has no dedicated bicycle path — not even a narrow one. Cars race down the 12-foot-wide lanes feebly painted with ineffectual “sharrows” that have faded from the friction of tires. Only “strong and fearless” cyclists, who represent less than one percent of the total population, attempt such routes.

The signage on Washington is visual clutter, or worse. It sends the wrong message to potential cyclists, according to Geoff Carleton of Traffic Engineers. If the city designates a route for bicycling, he says, it should be comfortable enough for “enthused and confident” riders, not just the spandex-clad racers in pelotons. Ultimately, says Carleton, a city’s bike facilities fail unless they can reassure the largest segment, as much as 65 percent of the total population, of potential cyclists: those who self-identify as “interested but concerned.” (The other group is the “no-way no-hows.”)

The Houston Bike Plan, a new draft released by the City of Houston, details just such a future. Made public and presented to the Planning Commission, the plan was crafted by Traffic Engineers, Morris Architects, and Asakura Robinson, a team comprising most of the designers behind METRO’s New Bus Network, a dramatic reimagining and restructuring that’s receiving national attention for its success. A grant to BikeHouston from the Houston Endowment provided part of the $400,000 budget for the new plan with additional funds coming from the City, Houston-Galveston Area Council, and the Houston Parks Board.

The process involved extensive community outreach across class, race, gender, and ethnicity, as well as a study of all existing plans made by the city, management districts, parks, livable center studies, and neighborhood groups. The resulting draft is more a fresh start than an elaboration of the 1993 precedent.

The plan begins with an assessment of where we are today and makes distinctions between high- and low-comfort bike lanes. Only the high-comfort routes are kept in the plan moving forward.

As the plan’s introduction states, Houston has “made great strides in improving people’s ability to bike to more destinations.” The plan also notes changes in attitude and ridership levels, calls out “Sunday Streets … a great example of encouraging more people to get out and be active on Houston streets.” The most substantial improvement comes by way of Bayou Greenways 2020, the 150 miles of separated trails and linear parks along the bayous. (See our coverage of the 2012 bond measure funding this project, the progress of its construction, and the transformative impact it could have on our region.)

Approximately 1.3 million people — six out of 10 Houstonians — will live within 1.5 miles of these bayou trails when they are completed, but traversing those 1.5 miles can be a major challenge. When you map out this and other projects in the works, you see islands of bicycle-friendly territory and fragments of high-comfort bicycling facilities. Because the bayous run east-west, a lack of north-south routes could leave cyclists alone to contend with dangerous traffic and car-oriented infrastructure.

“If we do nothing beyond what is already in progress, we will have 300 miles of bikeways,” says Carleton, “but it won’t be a network.” Thus, the draft plan focuses on links that would build that network.

Ultimately, the vision is for Houston to become by 2026 a Gold Level Bicycle Friendly City according to the standards of the League of American Bicyclists. Currently, the city is Bronze Level.

Here, the plan is broken down into three phases: 1) Short-Term Opportunities, which could solve problems quickly and relatively inexpensively; 2) Key Connections, which are high-impact improvements that would require more investment; 3) Long-Term Houston Bikeway Visions, which are true transformations of infrastructure that would require substantial investments of money, time, and labor. Below, we look at each stage as a whole and at few routes in particular as examples.

Short-Term Opportunities

In the last Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey, more than a quarter of respondents rated traffic as their biggest concern. We all experience the traffic jams. The traffic, however, is not a uniform problem evenly distributed across the city. We have more miles of roadway per person than any other major city. And some of those roads have excess capacity. On those roads, car counts are low and the lanes are wide. And in those cases, we can both accommodate cars and add high-quality bike facilities for the cost of paint and labor.

For example, by restriping and resurfacing Polk Street and bolting down a few “armadillo” bumps, the bicycle-friendly neighborhood streets of the East End can be connected to Downtown and the existing dedicated cycle-track on Lamar Street. With a few other small tweaks to that Lamar track, you could ride from EaDo in ease past Discovery Green and the Central Library through Sam Houston Park and into Buffalo Bayou Park with all its new facilities and trails and reach Shepherd Drive.

“Polk Street is a layup,” says Carleton.

Another major short-term opportunity, one that bicycle advocates have salivated over for years, is Waugh Drive. (Waugh is one of those crucial north-south routes that, sadly, has proved deadly to cyclists, as Chelsea Norman was struck and killed here in 2013.) A dedicated lane from Fairview in Montrose over Buffalo Bayou, through the Washington Avenue area, and under I-10 would stitch together the bicycle-friendly neighborhoods of Montrose and the Heights. Here, the changes would require more than paint for restriping. Rebuilding the on and off ramps at Memorial Drive to make the angles sharper would be an expense, but not a monumental one, and it would have a dramatic effect on the speed of traffic.

Currently, the trails on Buffalo Bayou are more or less a recreational loop. With links to and from Waugh and Lamar/Polk, Buffalo Bayou would become a major node of the network.

West Dallas into Downtown and Austin-Caroline between Midtown and Downtown are among the other short-term opportunities. The estimated cost for all these projects in the draft plan is $22-$45 million, and they would expand our high-quality bikeways by an additional 250 miles.

Key Connections

Horses graze, wild parrots fly, and organic farms grow along vast utility corridors that run through many bustling Houston neighborhoods. A recent change in Texas state law enables Houston to work with CenterPoint and other landholders to build trails along these rights of way that are as ubiquitous as they are unnoticed.

One such corridor is parallel to Westpark. Presently, it crosses Southampton/Boulevard Oaks, Rice Village, West University, Gulfton, the “Gandhi District” of Hillcroft, and Sharpstown. Each of these areas have islands of bicycle-friendly streets, but making it across such a long swath today is difficult — and, in the case of a man commuting to work January 25, deadly. Still, you can see “desire lines” in the grass where pedestrians and cyclists have already made use of the utility corridor. Formalizing that, and reimagining it as part of a high-comfort side path along Westpark, would provide an additional mobility option to a broad cross-section of Houstonians. Gulfton is the most densely populated neighborhood in Houston and home to many immigrants who don’t have access to cars.

Another such connection is the Spring Branch Utility Corridor, which would link the existing trails at Addicks Reservoir to the White Oak Bayou trail. The challenge is crossing 290. But doing so would provide an incredible link all the way from the Energy Corridor to the Heights.

Parallel to Stella Link is the north-south corridor from Sims to Brays to Buffalo Bayou through Memorial Park where the aforementioned horses, parrots, and farms are. Another extraordinary link.

Other key connections are smaller in scope but similar in their impact as links between islands. We are intrigued by a short connection under 610 to Holmes Road. This short, relatively inexpensive project would provide access from a low-income, African-American neighborhood to the massive job center that is the Texas Medical Center.

According to the draft plan, $66-110 million for the key connections would add 90 miles of bikeway and provide links to 80 percent of the population and jobs.

Longterm Houston Bikeway Vision

Let us recall the 2002 Buffalo Bayou Master Plan. At the time, it seemed absurdly ambitious and expensive. And yet extraordinary changes have happened, built up over time, in steps small and epic. The piecemeal progress yielded not a piecemeal thing but a cohesive landscape, because the master plan was in place. In fact, the pieces are still coming together, as Buffalo Bayou Partnership continues adding amenities like new pedestrian bridges east of Downtown toward the eventual terminus of the trail at Hidalgo Park.

So, when we look at a long-term vision, we must think in terms that are appropriate for the future of the city. We must ask not only what kind of city we want to be in 15, 20, or 25 years, but what kinds of changes will have visited all cities by then? We must be visionary. As Rebuild Houston unfolds, the draft plan could guide where the most substantial investments in high-comfort bikeways are made.

If the draft plan map were made real over a number of years, a high proportion if not a majority of Houston’s growing population could commute, shop, and visit friends by foot or bicycle. The cost for the 200+ miles of off-street trails is projected at $214-347 million. The cost of an additional 800+ miles of bikeways would be included in street reconstruction projects. The total cost of all phases comes in at $306-$502 million with a total network of 1,656 miles. To put that in context, Houston has about 8,000 miles of roads. To put that in more context, in 2014 alone, roughly $3.5 billion was spent on mobility in this region by the city, the Texas Department of Transportation, Houston-Galveston Area Council, METRO, and Harris County. The proposed multi-year transformation of bicycle infrastructure is a steal by comparison.

We have both used bicycles as our primary mode transportation at various times. We have been able to enjoy the high-comfort of the Brays Bayou hike and bike trail and the paths at Hermann Park as well as flinch and fear the high-stress of the shared lanes on Waugh and Washington. Seeing plans like these gives rise to a mix emotions. Elation for the ambition and the potential of the plan. Relief that our experiences are named, that the terrifying stretches of road that ruin an otherwise beautiful, cost-effective, energy-efficient, environmentally sound experience are recognized. Sadness and grief for those who have died or been maimed at many of the spots where interventions are planned. We also struggle with cynicism that, even if this plan is adopted, it will not be implemented. And we worry that Houstonians will react with a mindset of scarcity, believing that a better bicycle network means less space for those in cars, or believing that paying for these infrastructural improvements and investments in mobility means less money for other ones.

The draft plan is not only a series of lines on a map. It includes policy recommendations and education programs. For the city to become a safe place for bicyclists, for the city to become one where the “interested and concerned” of the population not only begin to imagine themselves on a bicycle but feel free to use the city with the power of their own legs, for the city to continue to attract those who are less and less interested in owning cars, both the forms of our streets and the norms of our behaviors need to change. And that will take messiness and dialogue. This is the beginning.

Additional reporting for this post was provided by Allyn West.

Reuters reports:

You know, some yogalates could tackle those splendiferous moobs. Confused? Then turn to the Oxford English Dictionary which has included the words among more than 1,000 revisions and updates for its latest update.

Splendiferous, meaning full of or abounding in splendor, joins yogalates, a fitness routine combining pilates exercises with the techniques of yoga, and moobs, unusually prominent breasts on a man, as new entries to the 150-year-old dictionary’s collection of 600,000 words.

Other words and phrases in the latest edition include the “Westminster Bubble” of supposedly insular British politicians and civil servants, “gender-fluid”, meaning a person with a fluid or unfixed gender identity, and “YOLO” – an acronym for “you only live once”.

The Oxford English Dictionary is updated every three months, and September’s revamp marks the centenary of the birth of children’s book author Roald Dahl. It is littered with vocabulary described by another newly added word: “Dahlesque”.

The full list of new words is here.

The post New To The Oxford Dictionary: Squee, YOLO, Moobs, Gender-Fluid, Biatch, Butt-Fucker, Clickbait, Slacktivist appeared first on Joe.My.God..

#TellAJokeDay….As you wish

https://wolfr.am/f0d8tarc

Due to NRA lobbying, there’s a federal law that restricts having a searchable gun owner database. This is just nuts:

There is no national database of guns. We have no centralized record of who owns all the firearms we so vigorously debate, no hard data regarding how many people own them, how many of them are bought or sold, or how many even exist.

What we have instead is Charlie.

“Can I go smoke a cigarette while we discuss it?”

Anytime a cop in any jurisdiction in America wants to connect a gun to its owner, the request for help ends up here, at the National Tracing Center, in a low, flat, boring building that belies its past as an IRS facility, just off state highway 9 in Martinsburg, West Virginia, in the eastern panhandle of the state, a town of some 17,000 people, a Walmart, a JCPenney, and various dollar stores sucking the life out of a quaint redbrick downtown. On any given day, agents here are running about 1,500 traces; they do about 370,000 a year.

“It’s a shoestring budget,” says Charlie, who runs the center. “It’s not 10,000 agents and a big sophisticated place. It’s a bunch of friggin’ boxes. All half-ass records. We have about 50 ATF employees. And all the rest are basically the ladies. The ladies that live in West Virginia—and they got a job. There’s a huge amount of labor being put into looking through microfilm.”

I want to ask about the microfilm—microfilm?—but it’s hard to get a word in. He’s already gone three rounds on the whiteboard, scribbling, erasing, illustrating some of the finer points of gun tracing, of which there are many, in large part due to the limitations imposed upon this place. For example, no computer. The National Tracing Center is not allowed to have centralized computer data.

“That’s the big no-no,” says Charlie.

That’s been a federal law, thanks to the NRA, since 1986: No searchable database of America’s gun owners. So people here have to use paper, sort through enormous stacks of forms and record books that gun stores are required to keep and to eventually turn over to the feds when requested. It’s kind of like a library in the old days—but without the card catalog. They can use pictures of paper, like microfilm (they recently got the go-ahead to convert the microfilm to PDFs), as long as the pictures of paper are not searchable. You have to flip through and read. No searching by gun owner. No searching by name.

Very specially-designed gaming tables.

Vigilante wants to bring gaming, drinking, and socializing all together by opening a bar and restaurant built for board gamers by board gamers in Midtown Commons in Crestview. One of the co-founders, Preston Swincher, who is also CEO, explained, "We’re trying to really elevate the gaming in public experience into something new that it’s never really been before." He added that eating, drinking, and gaming are all "social experiences."

The highlight of the bar will be the fully customized tables made just for board gamers. Food and drinks can be placed on roll-out trays and cup holders so spills and messes are avoided. Plus, there are outlets, wifi, and even ethernet cable capabilities. Other features include a call for service button, and another button to raise a flag, indicating the table is looking for more players.

Before embarking on thoughtfully designing the space, the group released an extensive 10-15 minute survey to find what people really wanted from a board game bar, which was the "driving design force behind our big choices," Swincher explained. This led to healthier food options and offering non-messy dishes, which makes gaming cleaner. Future patrons wanted a place with a dimmer bar atmosphere but well-lit gaming tables. To solve that, the team placed track lighting that points straight onto the table, which is also stained with a non-reflective material.

There will be anywhere between 100 to 150 game titles available, all repackaged and placed in protective coverings so everything is easier to handle. Look out for classic games like Scrabble, chess, Catan, Cards Against Humanity, and others, including rarer ones. There will also be shorter social games. Guests are allowed to bring their personal sets, too.

Mock-up of the gaming table. [Photo: Vigilante/Facebook]

Every dish on the menu can be "eaten cleanly with one hand," like sliders instead of big burgers. Around 12 to 14 local Austin beers will be available at the bar, including Friends & Allies and Thirsty Goat.

Vigilante will have four different areas: the social lounge, made perfect for those quick games, with comfortable seating like couches. The general dining room will hold those custom gaming tables, and the bar area with ten to 12 seats. The two private dining rooms will be housed behind secret bookcase doors. Reservations for tables and games can be made. There will host plenty of events, from massive Dungeons and Dragons sessions, James Bond-themed poker nights, murder mysteries, and more.

The group is launching a Kickstarter soon, to help raise more money for construction. If that goes well, they’re thinking of adding a mezzanine with more seats. Vigilante is projected to open by August.

The Hill reports:

A political action committee focused on the size of Donald Trump’s hands is calling on the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to “release the measurements.”

A new ad, produced by Americans Against Insecure Billionaires with Tiny Hands PAC, asks viewers to sign a petition calling on Trump to disclose the measurements of his hands.

“It’s a dangerous time for Americans,” a narrator says in the video. “We need someone who can grasp the complexity of the world and hold off the decline of a great nation.”

“If the White House phone rings at 3 a.m., will his little hands even pick up the receiver?” one woman asks.

“With our new ad, Donald Trump can no longer hide his tiny hands from the American people,” the group’s spokeswoman, Katie Nguyen, said in a statement, “That is, of course, unless he tucks them back an inch or two until they disappear inside his big boy sleeves.”

The post New From Trump Has Tiny Hands PAC [VIDEO] appeared first on Joe.My.God..

The Washington Post notes the last night John Oliver devoted 22 “brutal” minutes to eviscerating Donald Trump. Oliver also has a plan:

Oliver offered a novel strategy for those who wish to battle Trump: refer to the candidate by “Drumpf,” what one biographer said the Trump family name was before it “evolved over the centuries.” Indeed, Gwenda Blair, the author of “The Trumps: Three Generations That Built an Empire” (2000), thought it was “fortunate” that “Drumpf” had become “Trump.”

“’Trump’ is a wonderful word, a marvelous name,” she wrote. “A name Dickens would surely have given to a prominent character if only he had thought of it, ‘Trump’ evokes trump card, trump hand, trump suit – all terms associated with winning. Whether Donald Trump could have had the same success with any other name is an intriguing question.”

This is the very question Oliver now wishes to explore. “The very name Trump is the cornerstone of his brand,” Oliver said. “If only there were a way to uncouple that magical word from the man he really is.” Oliver then proposed to do this — with “Drumpf” hats sold at cost at the website DonaldJDrumpf.com, the hashtag #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain, and an app that replaces “Trump” with “Drumpf” in web browsers.

The post John Oliver Rips Into “Serial Liar” Drumpf [VIDEO] appeared first on Joe.My.God..

Michelle Duggar’s Sacred Blessings 2016 Motherhood & Marriage Nature Calendar

Yesterday I started up leg four of the Furiously Happy book tour (click here for Minneapolis tonight) and I tweeted this:

Then twitter came to my rescue and throughout the night thousands of you shared your own cringey moments, which were so awesome that hotel security had to do a welfare check on me because I was laughing so hard the people next door thought I was dying.  I tried to convince them I was fine but I had tears running down my face and they were like, “Are you sure you don’t need help?  Is someone hurting you?” and I was like, “No, this is what I look like when I’m happy” and they left, as confused as most people who deal with me are.  I tried to storify the tweets to share them with you but there were too many and it kept crashing so instead I just decided to do a bunch of screenshots and share them here.  I waited until after 5 because you cannot read these at work.  You will hurt yourself.  In a good way.

Thank you, amazing people for reminding us all how stupid and adorable and ridiculous mankind is, especially as the rest of the world screams “ME TOO” at your mortifying confessions.  Also, if you don’t laugh in recognition of doing at least a quarter of these yourself you are probably in the wrong place or just haven’t lived long enough.  Just saying.

UPDATED:  This is not the end because mortification is the gift that never ends.  Links to more here.

After Target announced that they’d be doing away with gender-specific labeling in their toy and children’s bedding aisles, the conservative crowd went into total meltdown mode. A storm of people took to Target’s Facebook page to air their grievances, accuse the chain of pandering to liberalism, and announce a boycott (I give it a month, tops).

Fortunately, someone was handling these complaints in a timely fashion.

Unfortunately for the complainers, that someone was Mike Melgaard, a self-described “troll,” posing as a Target customer service agent.

He went by the handles “Ask ForHelp” and “Target Customer Service” — complete with the Target logo avatar. Hilarity ensued.

Here are our 10 favorites responses:

Trolling isn’t normally something to endorse, but this guy deserves a slow clap.

You can find his original post here.

liartownusa:

Shameful Dawn by United States Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia

“A terrifying look at America’s slick, glistening future…"—American Conservative

Photos: Swamplot inbox … Read More

Literally. Via Awesomely Luvvie:

I don’t understand humanity sometimes, and of course we’re heading for doom. Stephen Hawking said so and now I’m sure of it. I read an article yesterday about a dildo you can order with your loved one’s ashes inside. Don’t let something like death preclude your boo from having a hand in your pleasure life. DON’T LET IT. It is called 21 Grams, and was created by a dude named Mark Sturkenboom. He put the dildo as part of a package of mementos for your lost love. And it comes in a music box that is opened with a necklace. Is this travel-friendly? Let’s say you’re going somewhere and you’re not checking in your luggage, will be you able to take this through airport security? Will TSA stop you and confiscate your Ash Rabbit? Is this guaranteed to never break? I hope this dildo is sealed REALLY well because if it breaks somehow and powder of the dead ends up in your vaginal walls… talk about traumatic. 

Ash Rabbit. Hit the link for many hysterical comments. This one put me on the floor: "If you can’t make them come back from the dead, at least the dead can make you come from the back." (Tipped by JMG reader Jeff)

"Did you know that Skull & Bones, which is a major fraternal organization run out of Yale University, which Poppa Bush - George Bush - were all part of and many who are now part of the 620 billionaires and global and world leaders - the Conference On Foreign Relations - people who are making decisions in media and education and politics worldwide - have come through the Skull & Bones process. For the most part, in the initiation you lie in a casket and then members of the Skull & Bones on campus at the time will walk past the casket and urinate on you and defecate on you. You are also then expected to have anal sex - any member of Skull & Bones - you'll have to have - they'll have to insert their penis into your anus. George Bush had over 100 men insert their penis in his anus. Poppa Bush - old man Bush - the CIA chief - had over 100 men insert their penis into his anus. And every other member of Skull & Bones, this hideous group of the New World Order, has had - at least 100 times - a penis injected into their anus in order to be received and become a member of this elitist fraternal group called Skull & Bones. That is documented historical proof, you can check it out with Alex Jones." - Pastor James David Manning, "the sodomite slayer."

This will really appeal to a certain type of nerd: the complete archives of Popular Electronics magazine in PDF format. Popular Electronics was the most popular magazine about electronics for hobbyists and was published from 1954 to 1982. If you're interested in this, the rest of the American Radio History site is amazing as well.

Tags: magazines

Mike Huckabee, the man who wants to become President to protect us from an atheistic theocracy, has a solution to violence in this country, particularly in our schools.

Take a guess.

You’ll never figure it out.

Okay, okay… it’s more God. (Gotcha, didn’t I?)

Speaking at a conference arranged by televangelist Morris Cerullo, Huckabee recounted how, when he was a youngster, his public school was full of religion:

… And they would talk to us about Jesus. The Gideons would give us Bibles. And nobody got arrested. Nobody got sued. And by the way, nobody got hurt either. Because we were bringing Bibles to school, people weren’t bringing guns to school, except for the deer hunters who left them in their trucks. We prayed at my school. We prayed the first thing every day…

Huckabee’s absurd suggestion that people are getting arrested for praying in schools is the most reasonable part of this statement. It really is that bad. For starters, he’s wrong about school violence being new; we’ve had instances of mass school killings on our shores since 1764 (although those victims were clubbed rather than shot).

But if the Bible, or belief in it, really had the power he attributes to it — the ability to eradicate school violence — consider what kind of world we’d live in. Things like the Catholic Church’s “pedophilia scandal” simply wouldn’t have happened. If belief could stop school shootings, surely there wouldn’t be church shootings. Religious people could never have justified slavery, much less using Bible verses. Our prisons wouldn’t be overrun with religious people.

And yet, oddly enough, the wholesome properties of Bible belief that allegedly staved off school violence during Huckabee’s childhood somehow fall short in all of those cases — even when it comes to protecting children in a house of God from the predatory behavior of men in God’s service.

This is a self-congratulatory non-solution to the problem of school violence. Inundating children in religion will not, and never has, stopped bad things from happening. It is flattering to assume that a divine being has shared with you the One True Way. It is politically useful to suggest that you must force that One True Way on everyone else — for their own sakes, of course! But it does nothing to solve the actual problem — indeed, it worsens matters by distracting from real solutions, while throwing additional problems into the mix.

This self-assured religious hubris is no argument for disregarding church/state separation. On the contrary, Huckabee seems to make a strong case for the importance of that Wall every time he gives a speech.

(via Right-Wing Watch)

I've never looked closely at my dishwasher's instruction manual before, but apparently all the manuals tell you how best to load the dishwasher. Joe Clark went through a bunch these manuals and compiled screenshots of the "Loading Your Dishwasher" pages and put them on Flickr.

Tags: how to   infoviz   Joe Clark

Just as the plot of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is predicated around an innocuous object, like a puzzle box, that has the power to unleash untold pain on the world, so too has the podcast Serial proved to be a font, but for hilarious and diverting Internet content instead. Previously this corner of the Internet has covered several Serial parodies, a mashup of its opening Mail Chimp advertisement, and a version imagining the show’s intro using clips from Seinfeld, even going as far as producing its own podcast dissecting the show. But few things have been as alluring to would-be producers as Nick Thorburn’s now iconic Serial theme song. It’s been thoughtfully rapped over and provided backing for Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball.” But now Soundcloud user Fafu has posted what might be the definitive creation with his “Life After Serial,” combining an uptempo version of the aforementioned ...

I borrowed that laugh-out-loud line from the aptly named Vice; the site has a story on Mormon-themed porn, claiming that it’s a booming business.

Getting off on watching Mormons doing the dirty is a very specific taste, obviously, but catering to such niches is currently where the (porn) money is.

The founder of the pay site Mormonboyz.com, the pseudonymous Legrand Wolf,

… had his first locker-room experience at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. …

“Getting ready for my mission, I was finally exposed to [naked dudes] and I figured it out pretty quickly,” he told me. “But then I was around all these straight hot men, and I had to hide the fact that I was gay despite all this intimacy.”

Wolf eventually had sex with his mission trip partner, which the Mormons suggestively enough call a “companion.” After months of dropped hints and excruciating build-up, Wolf’s sexy French partner finally put the moves on him and they developed a loving relationship. Although his former companion is now married with kids, Wolf says their affair — and the sexual tension leading up to it — changed his life. At the very least, it’s the inspiration for ​MormonBoyz.com, the only gay porn site that caters to some very specific religious fantasies.

There’s also a sister pay site called Mormongirlz.com, started by Wolf’s friend Brooke Hunter. The front page features a photo of a wholesome-looking bare-breasted believer engaged in what looks to be the Book of Mormon.

(Heads-up to Hemant: I’m about to submit a $30 expense report under the heading web research. Hope that’s OK.)

So, what’s appealing about Mormon nookie? There’s the kinky connotation of polygamy, for starters. Joseph Smith loved him a wife or two (or fifty).

And to some,

… Mormon rituals definitely have an erotic flavor. When a young Mormon gets inducted into the temple, he or she gets “anointed” while wearing a sheet with a hole in the top. The elder then washes the newbie’s body, including his or her thighs and groin area. Then they put on the Temple Garment — or dowdy white underwear that devotees are required to wear at all times after the ceremony.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this ceremony is a common set on the site.

But Wolf and Hunter hope to never stop innovating. On Mormongirlz.com, we may soon see a recurring new storyline involving not just naughty fresh-faced missionaries, but also a “Mormon MILF.”

Sounds divine.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Earlier this month, blogger and concerned mother Becky Blackburn published a post in the Deseret News (I was hoping it was the Dessert News, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?) called “Why aren’t our kids going to church dances?”

Blackburn recounted a harrowing tale of the time she tried to strong-arm her 15-year-old son into having The Best Night Ever at his church dance. While that sounds like general “Parent of a teen” fodder, her article takes an odd turn right out of the gate:

I asked my son if he was going to go to the church dance, and he looked at me like I had asked him to jump over the moon. So I called one of his friend’s moms to see if she was making her son go, and a few hours later, a group of boys, some more reluctant than others, were on their way to the church without a basketball.

A miracle indeed.

Before my son left, my husband and I offered to pay him a dollar for every girl he asked to dance. He shrugged his shoulders and grunted, which of course means “yes” for a 15-year-old, and we were elated that we had thought of bribing our son to be a gentleman. Innovative parents were we.

As a childless person, I’m kind of struggling with this concept. I get that coercing kids to do, say, chores is pretty standard, but I’m not sure how I feel about trying to force an interest in the opposite sex through bribery.

After her son texted her about the ill-attended dance (“There are like 20 people here”), Blackburn seemed extremely concerned about the fact that the young’uns aren’t slow dancing enough. On one level, it sounds a bit like a woman lamenting the fact that something she so enjoyed in high school is no longer relevant to her own kids, which is understandable if not a little Grandpa Simpson-y.

But then she kind of begins digging a good-ol’-days hole that goes far beyond her own childhood:

Why don’t kids pair off for a dance anymore? Why is it so hard for boys to ask? Since asking a girl to dance is such a gallant thing to do, and since most 15-year-old boys are dying to be gallant, I don’t see what the problem is.

There are many words I could use to describe 15-year-old boys. “Gallant” isn’t on the list. (And where does she get her vocabulary from? Highlights for Children?)

What can we do about it? I have an idea that will solve this whole problem. Back in the times of Jane Austen, a lady was given a card that allowed fellows to reserve certain dances with her during the night. Those were the good ol’ days, when there were so many men wanting to dance with a girl that she had to make appointments. If a man asked a girl for the first two dances, then whoa! He was pretty into her. She could go home and put that card under her pillow, kissing his name to her heart’s desire!

How… quaint. What she sees as the “good ol’ days,” I see as a time when women had so little autonomy that they had to literally wait for men to come fetch them from their corners so they could enjoy the party instead of sitting quietly and being demure. At no point have I ever turned over my ability to select who I want to “dance with” (or talk to or date or marry) in exchange for gallantry.

Blackburn goes on to suggest a reinstatement of the dance card, but with a fun new coercive twist!

Maybe we need the dance cards now, but I think it’s the boys’ turn to get them. After a boy asks a girl to dance with him, she signs his card. Three signatures means he gets access to the refreshment table. Since his best friend Joe has been known to down six of Sister Brown’s famous peanut butter cookies in under two minutes, he quickly finds the girl closest to him, mumbles something unintelligible and points to the dance floor. She smiles at him and pulls out her pen.

Maybe 10 dances get him a free trip to Taco Bell.

How’s that for a pick-up line? “Wanna dance? If you do, I’ll be a tenth of a way closer to a burrito.”

Look, I understand that I come from a very (very very very) different background from Blackburn, but I don’t see what she’s trying to accomplish. Is she worried that because her 15-year-old isn’t slow dancing with girls, he has no interest in them? Or that the only way boys and girls can communicate (or court) is via the long-lost art of the slow dance?

Moreover, I’m not convinced that making social interactions a chore is the way to anyone’s heart. I mean, look at this:

Parents could be a great support. When the boy comes home, he better have 15 names on his dance card or it’s going to be 15 days before he sees his Xbox again. They may even have to call a few of the girls for verification, just to make sure the signatures aren’t forged by a few of the buddies who proudly claim they can write like a girl, but I’m pretty sure the system will work.

If the boy didn’t hate dancing already, mom’s phone calls to the girls’ homes should do the trick.

Can anyone with an LDS background/knowledge base shed some light on what the hell is going on here?

More interestingly, perhaps, is the fact that the title of Blackburn’s piece is never really addressed again: Why aren’t our kids going to church dances?

I have my suspicions. Perhaps dances outside of school are becoming antiquated, especially as young people have other means of socializing without the scrutinizing gaze of church leaders. I mean, the dances that she yearns for (forced slow dance after forced slow dance) sounds torturous to me, so I can’t blame the teenagers for wanting to avoid that mess.

One last thing to note is Blackburn’s summary of her own article:

Youth dances are becoming less popular as boys no longer ask girls to dance. Many youths are just sitting around at the dances or dancing in big groups, making dances less fun.

A) Nothing makes you sound older than calling young people “youths,” Liz Lemon.

B) Dancing in big groups is at least 50,000 times more fun than slow dancing.

Maybe kids aren’t going to church dances because their parents’ ideas of what’s “fun” hasn’t been “fun” since America gained independence. And I bet it wasn’t fun then, either.

(Image via Shutterstock)