News Miscellany

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Man Dressed as Batman Is Chasing Off Frightening Clowns in North England | Hollywood Reporter

[Angakuk]

I have a colleague who is into clowning. He recently attended a workshop where one of the presenters was a clown who does his clowning in the D.C. area (not a politician). He reported that as he was on his way to perform at a birthday party, already in clown mode, he was pulled over by a cop. When the cop asked for his drivers license (I can just picture the cop saying "this picture doesn't look like you") he also handed him one of his business cards. The cop let him continue on to his gig.

Last week one of the kids in my confirmation class said he saw a creepy clown in a neighboring small town. Someone asked him where the clown was and he answered that it was under the bridge south of town. I politely informed him that if it was under a bridge it must have been a troll. I suppose that is an easy mistake to make.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

One thing about living in Santa Carlita I never could stomach; all the damn clowns.

Clowns Win Another Round in Southern California | Mother Jones

[Ari]

I like clowns,

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

UK government proposes issuing Britons with unique porn-viewing ID numbers / Boing Boing

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

UK government proposes issuing Britons with unique porn-viewing ID numbers / Boing Boing

5318008

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

5318008

8675309

[Watser?]

I guess I'll throw this in here too: What The Bankruptcy Of White House Policy Means For Israelis And Palestinians | Huffington Post

Such scolding words, however, shrivel into nothingness in the face of a single number: 38 billion. With its latest promise of military aid, the United States has essentially sanctioned Israel’s impunity, its endless colonization of Palestinian land, its military occupation of the West Bank, and its periodic attacks by F-16 fighter jets and Apache helicopters using Hellfire missiles on the civilians of Gaza.

Yes, Hamas’s crude and occasionally deadly rockets sometimes help provoke Israeli fire, and human rights investigations have found that both sides have committed war crimes. But Israel’s explosive power in the 2014 Gaza war, fueled in large part by American military aid and political support, exceeded that of Hamas by an estimated 1,500-to-1. By one estimate, all of Hamas’s rockets, measured in explosive power, were equal to 12 of the one-ton bombs Israel dropped on Gaza. And it loosed hundreds of those, and fired tens of thousands of shells, rockets and mortars. In the process, nearly 250 times more Palestinian civilians died than civilians in Israel.

[Watser?]

I could have put this in the Why the mainstream media suck thread...

A German Neo-Nazi shot four police officers today, and the mainstream media are barely interested | EvolvePolitics.com

[But]

Originally Posted by Watser?

I could have put this in the Why the mainstream media suck thread...

A German Neo-Nazi shot four police officers today, and the mainstream media are barely interested | EvolvePolitics.com

I wouldn't call them neo-nazis, they are their own very small group of fringe nutcases. They want a monarch, after all. I don't think it's being ignored, I just checked two big sites (Spiegel and Sueddeutsche) and both have several articles at the top of the page.

I think in some sense the opposite is happening - they aren't really organized and have been mostly ignored, but because one of them happened to have guns and used them, the media are trying to detect a pattern.

[Ensign Steve]

Originally Posted by specious_reasons

The cypress trees are shedding their older needles now, and the wind and rain makes it all come down at once. My driveway was a brighter orange than Trump.

Plus branch and leaves from various other trees in the neighborhood.

Not literal tree shit, just a bunch of shit coming off the trees.

That's tree jizz.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Long-time Arizona sheriff Arpaio trails in re-election bid: poll

Bye, Felica.

[Angakuk]

If they aren't going to throw the s.o.b. in his own jail, then the least they can do is vote him out of office. It's the right thing to do and it's long overdue.

[JoeP]

China is getting more (or just continuing to be) heavy-handed in Hong Kong, and there are shenanigans over blocking the appointment to the LegCo of more independence-minded members.

I caught this on the Economist Espresso yesterday, but it's a daily thing and doesn't seem to be archived - and I can't find any corroboration of this specific detail - so here's a screenshot.

[Watser?]

Wallonia's parlement refuses to agree to CETA: Canada-EU trade talks with Wallonia collapse as Freeland heads home - Politics - CBC News

Going to a demonstration in Amsterdam tomorrow against the treaty, so this is p. cool. I don't care why they did it, I'm just glad they did.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by JoeP

I'm assuming (given no other sites corroborating it) this a machine translation error that slipped through.

show spoiler

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

White powder at Clinton campaign HQ 'non-hazardous' - CNNPolitics.com

And here I thought it was Donald getting his coke delivery address mixed up.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Cyanide & Happiness (Explosm.net)

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

This guy on the subway has something to say about being "a big, black guy with a hoodie." pic.twitter.com/B8kPtkWWO3

— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) October 22, 2016

[erimir]

Originally Posted by erimir

I'm from Cleveland. Nobody knows shit about the supposed man the team name is honoring, except that they're supposed to say they're honoring a former player. That's the extent of it. I never heard Louis Sockalexis's name when I lived there. I did hear people say that Chief Wahoo was the name of the player and so the logo honors him too. It's not. Chief Wahoo is just an offensive racial caricature, nothing more, and has no connection to Sockalexis. Chief Wahoo was not his nickname or anything.

Apparently I missed one other detail: Sockalexis never played for the Cleveland Indians.

The Cleveland Indians were originally from Grand Rapids and moved to Cleveland after Sockalexis's retirement. The Cleveland Spiders were a different team.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Oh hey, speaking of Venezuela:

Venezuela's parliament votes to try President Maduro - BBC News

[Watser?]

Butbutbut...

We weren't speaking of Venezuela.

Or the Matilda Incident. We don't mention the Matilda Incident.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Watser?

But seriously, folks

We weren't speaking of Venezuela.

Or the Matilda Incident. We don't mention the Matilda Incident.

Fixed bold.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by Kamilah Hauptmann

Long-time Arizona sheriff Arpaio trails in re-election bid: poll

Bye, Felica.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio is officially charged with criminal contempt in racial profiling case - LA Times

Dig dig dig!

Heigh Ho - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -...

[Watser?]

As a soldier, Abramovich was severely wounded in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He suffered burns over most of his body when he tried to pull the members of his crew out of the burning tank that he was driving. He was later awarded a medal for his heroism.

The aforementioned film shows Golan chasing after Abramovich, screaming, “You are a traitor to your people, you piece of garbage! It’s too bad you didn’t burn to death in your tank. … He’s the reason that the soldier [Azaria] is in jail.”

Gal was shocked, and rightly so. It is quite possible that his well-honed senses warned him that Golan had caused enormous damage to the right’s public image and the struggle to obtain the release of Azaria, who is now on trial. As Gal wrote on his Facebook page, “There is a vast chasm separating Amnon Abramovich and me, a C-H-A-S-M. Nevertheless, it disgusts me to see one Jew say to another Jew, ‘It’s too bad that you were only injured in your tank during the Yom Kippur War, and that you weren’t killed.’ There is no place for that. It is inappropriate.”

Suddenly the roles were reversed. From that very moment, Gal himself became a “leftist” and punching bag for the right. A thick shadow was cast over his reliability. He was pummeled on his Facebook page in a campaign led by Golan and his friends. While the online discussion shows that Gal tried to explain why Golan and his friends are actually harming the right-wing cause, no one paid him any attention.

Israeli far-right activist betrayed by his own