Sometimes there are images that so perfectly encapsulate a moment in time that all you can do is marvel. They’re the kinds of things that will show up in history textbooks, the kind of thing that high school students will look at when they’re trying to understand a previous era.
I think Cleveland.com reporter Jeremy Pelzer has taken just one of those images: a photo of two men at a Trump rally in Ohio on Saturday night wearing shirts that say “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”
These men, named James T. Alicie and Richard M. Birchfield, are a perfect encapsulation of the way Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party in his image — abandoning its traditional positions on issues ranging from Russia to trade in favor of Trump’s positions on these issues. The photo is also an extremely clear way of understanding how deep hatred of Democrats is warping the Republican Party, part of a phenomenon political scientists call “negative partisanship.”
Saudi State Media Posted a Photo That Sure Looks Like a Threat to Attack Toronto
Just when you thought we could close out a day with only a few totally insane things happening, we discover that a Saudi Arabia state media Twitter account sent (and then deleted) a message that seemed to threaten a 9/11 type event on Toronto.
The photo, which was part of the ongoing feud between Canada and Saudi Arabia over the latter’s imprisonment of activists, appeared to show an Air Canada plane headed towards the Toronto skyline. Pretty bold for a country that was home to 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers.
The tweet was soon deleted by the account, which was run by Saudi government media. The account put the post back up, with the threatening language intact, minus the photoshopped plane. Then the KGA Infographics account tweeted an apology, claiming that the plane was meant to represent the Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia returning home, after being expelled last week. Now, the entire account has been deleted.
This whole saga began last week, when Canada’s official foreign policy account tweeted that they were “gravely concerned” about a surge in arrests of women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia.
The FCC just admitted it lied about a cyberattack to avoid net neutrality comments
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission voted to overturn net neutrality rules, a move that millions of people protested in comments sent to the FCC. But many more were unable to leave comments, as the FCC’s public commenting system went down following a late-night John Oliver segment in which he exhorted viewers to leave their comments with the FCC.
The public excuse for that technical failure was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common and crude hacking tool that generally uses hundreds of thousands of devices (many of them hacked) to overwhelm a service with traffic. The inspector general has investigated the issue and is set to release a report, which has been seen by the FCC but not yet made public. Thanks to some statements from the FCC, however, we can guess that the report confirms what pro-net neutrality groups have been saying all along: The “attack” was totally bogus.
“With respect to the report’s findings, I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former Chief Information Officer (CIO), who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “This is completely unacceptable. I’m also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn’t feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office.”
That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year . We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models.
Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights.
We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.
Our (ten-year-old) French cars have headlights that turn with steering input. When you're on a freeway on-ramp, you see where you're going. That's a good thing!
You may have read about the massive migrant problems in Calais. They are not accustomed to high-speed roads. One evening, maybe 10PM, we were heeded home. For some totally unknown reason, I slowed way down... just before about fifty migrants crossed the highway. Fifty black men, dressed in black, in a black night. If I hadn't slowed down, I would have killed a dozen.....
One of SpaceX’s powerful new Falcon 9 rockets pulled off its second mission tonight
SpaceX’s used Block 5 rocket successfully took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:18AM ET, deploying the Merah Putih satellite just over half an hour later. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster also performed another successful landing on one of the company’s drone ships in the Atlantic, becoming the 28th booster that SpaceX has ever recovered.
Americans want paid parental leave. The Rubio-Ivanka plan is a sorry attempt.
The Senate went on summer break this week, after a lame attempt to give working parents some relief.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Economic Security Act for New Parents last week, with support from White House adviser Ivanka Trump. The full text of the bill hasn’t been released, but it’s been sold as providing parents with “paid parental leave” after the birth or adoption of a child.
The bill is not, in fact, paid leave. It’s another version of unpaid leave that working parents in the United States would have to pay for themselves. A summary of the bill shows that it would merely let workers access some of their Social Security retirement income in advance to make up for some of the wages they would lose when taking parental leave. Workers would still bear the cost of taking time off — by delaying their own retirement.
The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave to working parents, and Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly support the creation of such a program. The problem is that no one seems to agree on how to pay for it, and Rubio’s bill is the weakest proposal yet because Social Security, as it stands, is in trouble .
Parents taking the option will receive a Social Security benefit to use for at least two months of leave across their household. o The benefit amount is large enough that nearly all parents making below median family income of about $70,000 will be able to take two months leave at over 70 percent of their wages. o Many parents, especially those with low incomes, will be able to finance longer three months of leave with the amount of the benefit.
GM Places Gun Against the Head of the Chinese-made Buick Envision
We previously reported that General Motors was seeking an exemption from U.S. tariffs that could affect the domestic wellbeing of the Buick Envision, the brand’s Chinese-made utility vehicle positioned between the Encore and Enclave. At the time, GM hadn’t weighed in on if it would pull the model from the United States if it didn’t get a pass into the country.
Since then, General Motors President Dan Ammanm has said the exception is the only way the automaker sees itself being able to continue selling the model in America. The automaker confirmed that the Envision’s domestic sales are insufficient to rationalize U.S. production but noted GM needed the model to have a complete lineup against brands like Audi, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz.
Buick's sedans are selling in homeopathic doses in the US. The SUVs, Enclave, Envision, Encore, are doing fine... but they could be re-badged tomorrow.
GM USA would be just Cadillac and Chevrolet. How the mighty have fallen..........
Yes, sad to see their loss. I equated their loses to the recent demise of Mercury, leaving only Ford and Lincoln as GM is Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC. What is the health of GMC these days?
Of course, Edsel went by the way side when was much younger.
... and all the marques that weren't "Big Three". Raymond Loewey singlehandedly made mediocre Studebaker machines into works of art. Kaiser/Fraser made decent cars, but couldn't keep the supply chain rolling. AMC...
President Admits Trump Tower Meeting Was Meant to Get Dirt on Clinton
President Trump said on Sunday that a Trump Tower meeting between top campaign aides and a Kremlin-connected lawyer was designed to “get information on an opponent” — the starkest acknowledgment yet that a statement he dictated last year about the encounter was misleading.
Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and the role his son Donald Trump Jr. played in hosting it. The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.”
But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children.
That statement is being scrutinized by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining a broad array of Mr. Trump’s tweets and public statements to determine whether he made them as part of an effort to deceive investigators.
Kansas is struggling financially. But for Republican Kris Kobach, the race for governor is all about illegal immigration.
Kris Kobach didn’t mention the persistent budget woes plaguing Kansas. He said nothing about the documents released hours earlier that showed a commission he helped lead for President Trump uncovered no evidence to support claims of widespread voter fraud.
Instead, standing before ranchers huddled inside the muggy entrance hall to the Fort Scott Livestock Market on a recent evening, Kobach quickly got to the core issue of his candidacy for governor: illegal immigration.
“The status quo has become untenable,” Kobach said, his voice rising. “It’s time we stop illegal immigration in Kansas.”
“Right on!” a man shouted.
Kobach’s eyes widened, like a football coach giving a locker room pep talk, and he nodded. It would, he said, be a time for change.
For more than a decade, Kobach, who serves as Kansas’ secretary of state, has waged a national campaign to combat illegal immigration. He’s filed lawsuits, drafted controversial legislation and heralded Trump’s promises of a strong border. Now, as he seeks the Republican nomination for governor here on Tuesday, Kobach hopes his tough-on-immigration views will carry him to the top job in Topeka.
The rhetoric often plays well, even if it doesn’t match the demographic reality.
Kansas has about 2.9 million residents, about 87% of them non-Hispanic whites.
Fewer than 1% — or 75,000 — of the estimated 11.1 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally lived in Kansas in 2014, according to the most up-to-date figures from the Pew Research Center derived from federal survey data. The Pew report said from 2009 to 2014 the number of immigrants in Kansas illegally dropped by about 20,000.
For Kansas, arguably, more pressing issues persist.
From Vox :
Trump’s Republican Party, explained in one photo
I think Cleveland.com reporter Jeremy Pelzer has taken just one of those images: a photo of two men at a Trump rally in Ohio on Saturday night wearing shirts that say “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.”
These men, named James T. Alicie and Richard M. Birchfield, are a perfect encapsulation of the way Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party in his image — abandoning its traditional positions on issues ranging from Russia to trade in favor of Trump’s positions on these issues. The photo is also an extremely clear way of understanding how deep hatred of Democrats is warping the Republican Party, part of a phenomenon political scientists call “negative partisanship.”
But before the science, the photo:
From Splinter :
Saudi State Media Posted a Photo That Sure Looks Like a Threat to Attack Toronto
Just when you thought we could close out a day with only a few totally insane things happening, we discover that a Saudi Arabia state media Twitter account sent (and then deleted) a message that seemed to threaten a 9/11 type event on Toronto.
The photo, which was part of the ongoing feud between Canada and Saudi Arabia over the latter’s imprisonment of activists, appeared to show an Air Canada plane headed towards the Toronto skyline. Pretty bold for a country that was home to 15 of the 19 September 11th hijackers.
The tweet was soon deleted by the account, which was run by Saudi government media. The account put the post back up, with the threatening language intact, minus the photoshopped plane. Then the KGA Infographics account tweeted an apology, claiming that the plane was meant to represent the Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia returning home, after being expelled last week. Now, the entire account has been deleted.
This whole saga began last week, when Canada’s official foreign policy account tweeted that they were “gravely concerned” about a surge in arrests of women’s rights activists in Saudi Arabia.
...
From BGR :
The FCC just admitted it lied about a cyberattack to avoid net neutrality comments
The public excuse for that technical failure was a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack, a common and crude hacking tool that generally uses hundreds of thousands of devices (many of them hacked) to overwhelm a service with traffic. The inspector general has investigated the issue and is set to release a report, which has been seen by the FCC but not yet made public. Thanks to some statements from the FCC, however, we can guess that the report confirms what pro-net neutrality groups have been saying all along: The “attack” was totally bogus.
“With respect to the report’s findings, I am deeply disappointed that the FCC’s former Chief Information Officer (CIO), who was hired by the prior Administration and is no longer with the Commission, provided inaccurate information about this incident to me, my office, Congress, and the American people,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement. “This is completely unacceptable. I’m also disappointed that some working under the former CIO apparently either disagreed with the information that he was presenting or had questions about it, yet didn’t feel comfortable communicating their concerns to me or my office.”
...
From Autoblog :
Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating
That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year . We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models.
Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights.
We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.
The last think that I would expect to hold a car back is it's headlights.
Actually... they're very, very important.
Our (ten-year-old) French cars have headlights that turn with steering input. When you're on a freeway on-ramp, you see where you're going. That's a good thing!
You may have read about the massive migrant problems in Calais. They are not accustomed to high-speed roads. One evening, maybe 10PM, we were heeded home. For some totally unknown reason, I slowed way down... just before about fifty migrants crossed the highway. Fifty black men, dressed in black, in a black night. If I hadn't slowed down, I would have killed a dozen.....
Hasn't Citroen done that for a good long time?
Now that is a scary thought, running down a group of people.
My Kia Sorento has headlights that follow the turning of the the steering wheel.
Hyundai/Kia make some good products. Hard to beat for price / performance.
From The Verge :
One of SpaceX’s powerful new Falcon 9 rockets pulled off its second mission tonight
SpaceX’s used Block 5 rocket successfully took off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 1:18AM ET, deploying the Merah Putih satellite just over half an hour later. The Falcon 9’s first stage booster also performed another successful landing on one of the company’s drone ships in the Atlantic, becoming the 28th booster that SpaceX has ever recovered.
...
From Vox :
Americans want paid parental leave. The Rubio-Ivanka plan is a sorry attempt.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) introduced the Economic Security Act for New Parents last week, with support from White House adviser Ivanka Trump. The full text of the bill hasn’t been released, but it’s been sold as providing parents with “paid parental leave” after the birth or adoption of a child.
The bill is not, in fact, paid leave. It’s another version of unpaid leave that working parents in the United States would have to pay for themselves. A summary of the bill shows that it would merely let workers access some of their Social Security retirement income in advance to make up for some of the wages they would lose when taking parental leave. Workers would still bear the cost of taking time off — by delaying their own retirement.
The United States is the only industrialized country that doesn’t guarantee paid parental leave to working parents, and Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly support the creation of such a program. The problem is that no one seems to agree on how to pay for it, and Rubio’s bill is the weakest proposal yet because Social Security, as it stands, is in trouble .
...
Great con job.
Ummm... K? ... ???
It's from Marco Rubio and Ivanka Trump.
Did you really expect something for the common man?
From TTAC :
GM Places Gun Against the Head of the Chinese-made Buick Envision
Since then, General Motors President Dan Ammanm has said the exception is the only way the automaker sees itself being able to continue selling the model in America. The automaker confirmed that the Envision’s domestic sales are insufficient to rationalize U.S. production but noted GM needed the model to have a complete lineup against brands like Audi, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz.
...
I think that Buick can kiss this model goodbye in the US.
Yes. And without it, it's more than possible that Buick can kiss its ass good-bye, too...
I am thinking the same about the standard Ford Focus which had production moved to China.
There is a new crossover Focus model to be made here, and hopefully we will get the to be made in Germany RS and ST models still.
Buick's sedans are selling in homeopathic doses in the US. The SUVs, Enclave, Envision, Encore, are doing fine... but they could be re-badged tomorrow.
GM USA would be just Cadillac and Chevrolet. How the mighty have fallen..........
Sort of like Ford has become just Ford and Lincoln.
Chrysler has even had a worse go.
Except for the Charger, Plymouth was always my favorite Mopar.
Oldsmobile, Pontiac...
Yes, sad to see their loss. I equated their loses to the recent demise of Mercury, leaving only Ford and Lincoln as GM is Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC. What is the health of GMC these days?
Of course, Edsel went by the way side when was much younger.
La Salle was before my time.
... and all the marques that weren't "Big Three". Raymond Loewey singlehandedly made mediocre Studebaker machines into works of art. Kaiser/Fraser made decent cars, but couldn't keep the supply chain rolling. AMC...
But hey! Now we have all sorts of foreign cars!
From The New York Times :
President Admits Trump Tower Meeting Was Meant to Get Dirt on Clinton
Mr. Trump made the comment in a tweet on Sunday morning that was intended to be a defense of the June 2016 meeting and the role his son Donald Trump Jr. played in hosting it. The president claimed that it was “totally legal” and of the sort “done all the time in politics.”
But the tweet also served as an admission that the Trump team had not been forthright when Donald Trump Jr. issued a statement in July 2017 saying that the meeting had been primarily about the adoption of Russian children.
That statement is being scrutinized by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is examining a broad array of Mr. Trump’s tweets and public statements to determine whether he made them as part of an effort to deceive investigators.
...
I'm shocked, just shocked.../s
Yes... I understand...
It is so... unexpected........
From The Los Angeles Times :
Kansas is struggling financially. But for Republican Kris Kobach, the race for governor is all about illegal immigration.
Instead, standing before ranchers huddled inside the muggy entrance hall to the Fort Scott Livestock Market on a recent evening, Kobach quickly got to the core issue of his candidacy for governor: illegal immigration.
“The status quo has become untenable,” Kobach said, his voice rising. “It’s time we stop illegal immigration in Kansas.”
“Right on!” a man shouted.
Kobach’s eyes widened, like a football coach giving a locker room pep talk, and he nodded. It would, he said, be a time for change.
For more than a decade, Kobach, who serves as Kansas’ secretary of state, has waged a national campaign to combat illegal immigration. He’s filed lawsuits, drafted controversial legislation and heralded Trump’s promises of a strong border. Now, as he seeks the Republican nomination for governor here on Tuesday, Kobach hopes his tough-on-immigration views will carry him to the top job in Topeka.
The rhetoric often plays well, even if it doesn’t match the demographic reality.
Kansas has about 2.9 million residents, about 87% of them non-Hispanic whites.
Fewer than 1% — or 75,000 — of the estimated 11.1 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally lived in Kansas in 2014, according to the most up-to-date figures from the Pew Research Center derived from federal survey data. The Pew report said from 2009 to 2014 the number of immigrants in Kansas illegally dropped by about 20,000.
For Kansas, arguably, more pressing issues persist.
...