#and it's his efforts which gives hopes to lewy who decides to follow the action and encourages philipp to go for the pressing

[acrazybayernfan]

October 29th 2014 : DFB Pokal second round, Bayern-Hamburger SV (3-1) (part 1)

The first assist from Thomas Müller to Robert Lewandowski

[meaningofmotorsport]

What to do about the FIA?

In a year as great as 2021 was for F1, with the title battle, dramatic races, and unexpected winners, it was a real shame to see disorganisation and indecision from the governing body, which undoubtedly decided the championship. It is time for change at the FIA, I just hope they take responsibility for their actions.

Stewarding is a really tough job, and there are examples all across Motorsport from 2021, of other series getting it wrong too. However, the FIA is a huge body, whose main role is to oversee the fair and safe running of so many Motorsports, so they should know what they are doing. Plus, a huge part of their income is from F1, so they need to put the effort in to equal that.

Looking at last season, one of the main issues was consistency, for example, at the first race, Verstappen was told to give the place back to Lewis, for going off track, which was the right call. Yet apparently Hamilton went off track 29 times, on a corner they said they were monitoring, to Red Bull, which I just don’t understand.

This comes onto another problem, they don’t seem to stick to their guns, they seem half hearted and almost pushovers. Every single team has agreed to abide by the rulebook that they made, so they should have the conviction to use it. The team to FIA radio hasn’t helped things, but stuff like track limits I find stupid. If you aren’t going to use the white line, why is it there? Of course, the drivers will complain, because it makes it harder for them, but I bet if you put grass beyond the white line, they wouldn’t go there anymore.

The decisions they made in Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi were really poor, especially the latter, it does seem like the FIA is sponsored by Netflix. I have been called out for saying it was a thrilling last lap, which I do believe is true, but I agree it shouldn’t have happened that way. It has left a sour taste in my mouth, and I am sure most F1 fans too. As I said before, if you follow the rules you made, no one can complain really. In some ways, seeing Max having to get past the backmarkers and try and chase down Lewis in 1 lap may have been just as thrilling as what happened, maybe even better.

So, what now? Well, I do fear that the FIA will just push this all under the carpet, they are a shady organisation when it comes to this sort of thing, they have a history with Balestre and Mosley. Even if changes are made, the findings shouldn’t be hidden behind closed doors, as to gain the trust back of the fans and teams, requires the truth to be heard. Here is what I think should happen:

Firstly, the elephant in the room, Michael Masi. He came into the sport after we lost Whiting, promising a new and potentially good shake up of the stewarding process. However, it just hasn’t worked, he hasn’t been strong enough to drive home his way of doing it, so we are stuck in a halfway house, with the worst of both worlds. Even worse, has been the safety under his command, namely with Safety Car’s going out too late, or cars being released too early, which is truly unacceptable. The teams have no trust in him, so he should go. The only way he could stay is if the FIA are truly open and thorough with their investigation, and allow him to work better.

A major cause of the inconsistency in the FIA rulings is the constantly changing stewarding panel from race to race. Apparently, they need to allow them to have a break, as there are too many races. Well, firstly the number of races should be reduced then, if it is going to affect the integrity of the racing. Plus, most of the paddock go to every race, so I don’t see it as a massive excuse, but I understand it is a tough calendar. So, for a compromise, there should be 6 full time stewards, who rotate two races on and one off, to maintain a better level of consistency. Also, instead of just one of the four stewards being an ex-driver, it should be at least two maybe even more.

Now for the rule book itself, which feels as though it has been written in a boardroom, miles away from any racetrack, which is probably true. Go and talk to the drivers, literally sit down with all of them in a room, and with a comb sift through the on track racing part of the rules. Then, if a driver complains about something, they can say well you agreed to it. Also, the definitions of the rules need to be clearer, refer to the cars and track, not words that look lawyery.

Finally, the reliance on small penalties is harming the sport. Penalties are meant to be deterrents, to convince drivers to not break the rules, not an everyday part of racing. Racing series such as IndyCar or V8 Supercars, who have a much better system than the FIA do, use bigger penalties, and do it less often. What this does is makes a driver think twice, because something like a drive through could ruin their race.

In summary, the FIA just needs to be more personable, and have better communication with the teams and drivers. Currently, there is a huge disconnect between the two, as the FIA is basically a huge corporation bossing everyone around, not going out and talking to people. Other series have a head steward who has the respect of everyone, like F1 had with Charlie, who went and talked it out. It isn’t all Masi’s fault, as I bet the FIA pushed him to be the way he ended up, I wouldn’t be surprised if the FIA didn’t like Charlie’s approach. Very simply, F1 needs a new Charlie Whiting, but those are extremely hard to come by!

-M

[danwhobrowses]

America, We Need to Talk

For some reason in these past years the concept of ‘Reason’ and ‘Sense’ has departed your country, I’ve hissed, I’ve simmered, I’ve hit my head against the wall hoping that in the end IN THE END the collective mass of the American People will open their eyes, stop making excuses and realise that for 4 years, America has not become ‘Great Again’ I’ve resisted the urge to unload many a time, but news that Donald Trump is to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is just too much, because this is literal horseshit. For some part it feels like they’re only trying it just so Republicans can force a rhetoric as if Trump did a better job than Obama - who won in 2009 for easing religious tensions, preventing Nuclear Weapons distribution and profiting, working towards fixing climate change and assisting with the UN - as people die of COVID, cities burn and violence against peaceful protests continue to ravage your country.

I have to say that again, Ravage, because I feel as though some people are blind to the matter at hand. Donald Trump will say something and his cult of followers will believe it, when someone disagrees and presents evidence it’s deemed irrelevant or forged, if a Democrat says something on the contrary they need a full powerpoint presentation to prove it, somehow this mentality has poisoned the American society when the louder people will say something in confidence only for the rest of the world to read and think it’s one of the dumbest shit they’ve ever read. This isn’t just coming from a Brit, this is coming from family in Chicago, a co-worker who moved out of America and worked in the army, Italians, Greeks and someone who was in Hong Kong during the riots. The people who believe in Democracy, Majority Vote, Free Healthcare, Fair Wage, Equal Rights AND international peace that doesn’t look towards World War Fucking Three look at your country in shame because the state of your leadership and how it’s been allowed to continue with ridiculously boneheaded and stubborn reluctance to see the truth. So let’s start with the boiling point shall we, a Nobel Peace Prize Nomination? Have you learned anything from the last year? Or has the far-right got the prize so by the balls that this nomination is used as a cheap add-on to coincidentally peacock the Trump administration in its build to an election. The nomination to Trump has been cited to be in favour of the following things; Israel-UAE relations (aka ‘Saving the Middle East), Serbia-Kosovo deal (aka ‘Saving the ‘Middle East’’), Inter-Korea relations and likely the support of Jerusalem and Hong Kong, and in face value that may sway the common person who knows nothing about these deals. But a simple amount of research cuts most of these at the legs. Let’s talk Serbia and Kosovo, since it’ll directly involve Israel, relations were tense but they have not been at war, they are peacefully not talking to each other. The media will have you think that Peace has been brokered by Trump only in this but in reality Serbia still refuses to recognize Kosovo’s independence, the tensions are still there you can just travel there now. This is an agreement that’s been build up since the economic and trade agreement in 2013. If that year isn’t surprising you that is 3 years before Trump was elected, when Barrack Obama was in office - Republican Public Enemy Hillary Clinton was at the forefront of that when she was Secretary of State. So no, Trump hasn’t saved the Middle East by this deal, mainly because Kosovo and Serbia are in Europe, they have been part of the EU for quite some time and the deal is already jeopardized since Serbia won’t build an embassy in Jerusalem if Israel recognize Kosovo as independent - which was part of the original deal. Also for all the Republicans’ use of ‘fear by Communism’ to slander their opponents they sure love to rub shoulders with countries also rubbing shoulders with Russia and China. So this segues into Israel-UAE, the Arab Nations have mainly been reluctant to recognize Israel as independent. On the 13th August a deal was struck called the Abraham agreement establishing Diplomatic Relations. Except, this was in the making since 2012 and only delayed to help progress Israeli-Palestine conflicts (which Trump’s actions with Israel led to Palestine cutting ties with the administration and his ‘Peace Plan’ falling apart 3 years after announcing it). UAE and Israel had been in conversation before Trump was signed in, but only made headway when the FDD - already funded by the UAE - took over. For 3 years USA did little for the relations, UAE and Israel doing it themselves, it’s only now do the US mediate a peace agreement, which meant that Trump didn’t really do much in terms of convincing both sides, he just made sure things didn’t get out of hand - which was never close to happening since there is little tensions. It was Kushner who requested the meeting and Mossad also had a huge part in it. Also I want to add that the US are only buddied with these two out of fear of Iran - you know, that country that Trump almost goaded into war in January after bombings and the death Assassination of General Soleimani who helped the US in the wake of 9/11 track and hunt down the Taliban, as well as fighting ISIS, how peaceful was that? The Middle East is still in Civil and Proxy Wars, no saving has been done there, the US just were there for Israel and UAE to confess that they’re friends. Which leads me to Korea. The Olympics helped more than Trump did, a shared effort where both countries had to travel and accommodate each other. Tensions may’ve eased in 2016 but they were far from resolved and in 2020 not much is better. Korea still antagonize one another and the North still antagonizes the US, any ‘peace’ the Trump Administration will claim to towards Korea faded quickly. And finally, Hong Kong, the US may be supportive and rightly so but this is again fear of Communism, it should’ve happened sooner but the US was hoping for that big and meaty trade deal with China. And this isn’t months I’m talking about it’s years, the proposal first took place after the Umbrella Movement...in 2014, it was annually brought up in Congress but postponed until the Senate decided to. And after Trump signed it he said he might veto it in favour of the China trade deal

“We have to stand with Hong Kong, but I'm also standing with President Xi: he's a friend of mine." - Donald Trump, November 2019

So really, this Nobel Peace Prize is the product and efforts of other people that set events in motion that Trump was there just to sign his name on. Meanwhile, in the country he is President of, the COVID Death toll has officially risen to 190 Thousand. 20% of COVID deaths are in the United States. Tear Gas/Pepper Spray - which is a recognized chemical weapon not allowed to be used in warfare - is used by Trump Supporters along with paintballs to attack peaceful protesters and Trump calls that peaceful because ‘Paint is not bullets’ - as someone who has been hit with Paintballs from safe range, they will hurt like a bitch and if you don’t wear protective gear they can do enough harm to crack and sometimes even break bone, the asthmatic co-worker I aforementioned that was in Hong Kong also notes that Tear Gas is awful, it may not kill you but it is far from peaceful. In the same breath Trump refuses to condemn a 16 year old carrying an AR and shooting someone in the head. He has also refused to condemn Epstein’s financier Ghislaine Maxwell and ‘hopes that she’s well’...the sex trafficker, but when you mention late Civil Rights leader John Lewis and his words are ‘can’t say one way or the other...he didn’t come to my inauguration’. This is your leader. The embodiment of the standards the country upholds itself to, it baffles me and many many others that the American People Chose a racist, bigoted, misogynistic, careless, self-important, naive, power-mad, severally-bankrupted, reality tv personality man-child, who is also intending to use US Taxpayers money to cover lawsuit fees against him alongside all his other golf trips. The man literally said that no other president has done more for Black People than he has, this is while he profusely condemned Kaepernick taking a knee to protest Police Brutality against Blacks and POC only for years later the world support it as BLM protests still happen because action has not been taken. We’ll also see what happens on the 14th regarding the Felony Hearing of the officers in Buffalo who pushed over Gugino and gave him a brain injury which he is still rehabilitating from after Trump tried to sell him as an Antifa member. Just in case you’re unaware, antifa stands for anti-fascist but Trump will paint that again in ‘Fear of Communism’. If you actually look up this stuff, the web of Trump’s lies unravel, and yet people just forget about. The man is a pro at gaslighting I’ll give him that, I mean leaking e-mails that condemned Clinton right at election time was some cutthroat stuff, but a man who needs to rely on preying on xenophobia, paranoia, fear, racism and invests mainly on smear tactics and dismantling, is not someone who can lead a country to prosperity, the amount of leeway this man gets from his supporters just hurts my head. So let me ask you America, truly, what is it that you want? Because it can’t be this, can it? Protests, Riots, people refusing to wear a simple face mask to limit the spread of a deadly virus because they think it’s a fake thing that the entire world decided to get in on with WHO just to spite Trump? Teenagers carrying guns? Refugees refused asylum and kept in cages? Do you want to keep spending your savings just to go to the doctors? or do you think that ‘Patriotism’ is blindly defending your country’s flaws and clinging to archaic and outdated thinking because centuries ago your country prospered in it? I’ll tell it to you straight: America is not the greatest country in the world, it hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what your history books tell you; that Native Americans were fine with slaughter, that the US won WW2 with the military might they always had, that Vietnam was a moral victory, but the present day should tell you that your country is a mess, and the man who has been at the helm for 4 years will not fix it in another 4. There’s only so much of Obama’s policies he can plagiarize as his own; he has left the UN, left the Paris Agreement for cleaner air and energy and all his original campaign members have been arrested, an alarming amount of people associated with him are facing criminal charges - is that not a red flag? Don’t let your thoughts that as a patriot you have to support your country no matter what, true patriotism is not just the love of your country but the hope and strive to better it because you can love it but accept that it has flaws. I mean even I’ll admit that the UK has a lot of its own shit to deal with, doesn’t mean I hate where I live I just know it can be better. If this were anyone else, hell if this were a Democrat the Republican party would be booking them a flight to the other side of the world with the stuff Trump has done and let to continue on with afterwards, through him you went from the United States to an Absolute State and the rest of the world wonder if this will either lead to World War 3 or a Second American Civil War You don’t have to like Joe Biden, but he clearly looks like the lesser of the two evils here, and at least in 4 years time America under him won’t be on fire. If you still don’t like him someone new could be elected after, but right now you are on a downward spiral and need someone who can put you back into a stable place, that man is not Donald Trump. The man who wants to intercept mail-in voting and outcry its ‘risk’ of tampering when he himself voted by mail is not a truthful leader, the man who tried to cancel the World Health Organization when they simply asked to not call COVID a racist name that incited xenophobia after decrying cancel culture is not a moral leader, and the man who said that COVID would peter out and suggested injecting disinfectant into the lungs to combat it only to now suddenly buy out all the experimental treatment so that they can try and engineer a cure in time for the election campaign, is not a wise leader. All the stuff you see in these coming months is just an attempt to win your vote, for the most part it’ll be Trump stamping his name on something other people worked on for years and claiming that he did all the work. So make sure you actually check the truth of these things, research and fact-check yourself with valid, neutral sources. Take off the blinders, take a breath and actually see the full picture. And please, as well as not letting this man have the Nobel Peace Prize Don’t give this guy have a Second Term

[rockinjoeco]

The Stigma from the Media

In the wake of the tragic suicide of former Love Island presenter Caroline Flack, the topic of mental health has become more vital and sensitive than ever. It shouldn’t have to take a tragic suicide for people to start thinking about how they impact other people’s mental health, but it seems that’s where we are now. I could preach to people about thinking about mental health, etc, but it appears that in the wake of Brexit, those days where a majority of British people are kind appears to be over. If we are to tackle mental health stigma, then we need to get to quite possibly the key architect behind this stigma and influencing a toxic attitude on society; the media.

The media is a very powerful tool in our society and unfortunately it’s been proven so by influencing a poisonous culture on everyone. Is it any coincidence that dumbed down, exploitive outlets like tabloid newspapers are the most-read newspapers during a time when, as proven with Brexit and the election, that maybe a majority of the British public aren’t as intelligent as we’d like them to be. This isn’t an assessment I’ve made because an election result didn’t go the way I wanted. We all know about the problems caused by the Tory government, like many people being forced into poverty because of austerity and universal credit, how a knife crime epidemic started because of police cuts made by the government and we all know the billions of pounds wasted on Brexit, which I’m still yet to hear any logical reason as to why that’s a good idea, leaving the NHS to be underfunded. Yet the conservatives won the election by an overwhelming majority despite the hardship that they’ve caused for a lot of British people. Jeremy Corbyn of the Labour Party may not had been the formidable challenger to Boris Johnson as many would had liked, but Corbyn would have been more likely to fund the NHS and help those in poverty than Johnson. The theory is still that the media won Boris Johnson the election with a smear campaign against Corbyn, although the antisemitism allegations weren’t a complete fantasy. The media spouted propaganda to manipulate the public rather than being unbiased like any insightful journalist, and unfortunately too many people were gullible to believe some of the wild speculation they reported.

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to retire from royal duties, there was outrage amongst the public, but there were still people like myself who knew that the media treatment they had received was a major reason behind this. In the wake of Caroline Flack’s death, it’s a tragic summary of their brutal treatment of public figures and how it can seriously harm their mental health. The media relentlessly report on celebrities’ private lives, usually against their will, but for what reason? The private lives of celebrities isn’t exactly need-to-know information and doesn’t boast any insight into anything. It’s just a money-making scheme to sensationalise the most insignificant of events so the gullible and ignorant people can absorb themselves into. What we know now is the harm it does to the people that the news articles are about. Of course those in the media have branded Prince Harry and Meghan Markle selfish for stepping out of the media spotlight as an effort to excuse their abhorrent pursuit of them. They still make excuses for the car crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris back in 1997 and state that she was killed because the driver was intoxicated, but just before the crash, paparazzi were chasing the car that Diana was in and so it must be argued that the media had a part to play in the horrific car crash. The media are so powerful that they can get away with anything, even murder it seems.

We can debate about whether Love Island is a good tv show, and whether newspapers like The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Mail are good newspapers, but what must be talked about is whether or not they’re harmful. Let’s not forget that that two Love Island contestants, Sophie Gordon and Mike Thalassitis, also tragically took their own lives last year. Whether Love Island played any part in Caroline Flack’s suicide is up for debate, but surely the TV show should be under more intense scrutiny than ever, especially as questions about whether it damages someone’s mental health. Also last year, a guest on the Jeremy Kyle Show, Steve Dymond, took his own life and the show was cancelled as a result. For Love Island to not only continue, but add a winter series after two of their previous guests committed suicide raises a lot of questions and shows that ITV put ratings before the well-being of their participants. The media has now become more of a weapon, especially looking at Piers Morgan’s merciless vendetta against Meghan Markle and Jameela Jamil, all because he finds them irritating. Not because they’re criminals or because they’ve done any kind of wrongdoing. The phone hacking scandal by the News of the World demonstrates how certain media outlets have become weaponised to intrude public figures for the means of getting a story. Piers Morgan has frequently dismissed mental health awareness by stating that those who speak out are just ‘wallowing in self-pity’ and are ‘virtue-signalling berks’. If anybody else had tweeted that, they’d probably get in trouble at work, maybe even sacked. The fact that ITV haven’t punished Piers Morgan in any way shows contempt from the network as well as Morgan in regards to mental health and this is why there is still so much stigma around mental health. As someone with anxiety and depression, the media, especially ITV, is why I’ve suffered in silence for so many years.

Social media has also become more harmful than ever too. It has become a tool for users to harass and abuse people, especially celebrities. The cancel culture on social media is so brutal. Taylor Swift spoke out about how social media had impacted her when, following a public falling out with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, the hashtag #taylorswiftisover trended for days on Twitter and it was like being told to kill yourself and Twitter users were likening a human being to a TV show and they could just be killed off if they’re not how the public wants them to be like. Meghan Markle has also been victim of savage abuse on social media, as she admitted on ITV last September, and Lily Allen quit Twitter days after the General Election as she said that Twitter ‘gives a voice to the far-right’ and that it is used to ‘spread disinformation and lies’. When celebrities give their political opinion on twitter or if a news story has that sort of thing, the comments on twitter can contain people saying things like ‘stop talking’ or ‘stick to acting’, which is killing democracy in our country. Are celebrities not entitled to an opinion? Why are they less allowed to have their say than any non-famous person on social media? Nobody has to agree with them, but they have the right to an opinion, just like we are.

ITV has always been a poisonous institution, as any company which keeps Piers Morgan in a job would prove to be. Caroline Flack was forced to resign from Love Island following her assault charge on her boyfriend Lewis Burton, but many have pointed out that Ant McPartlin was allowed to keep his job at ITV when he was convicted of drink-driving, arguably a more serious offense than the one that Caroline was charged with. Because of McPartlin’s popularity, you could say that he is untouchable and can get away with almost anything, even if he did cause death by dangerous driving, ITV will still keep him on because he generates ratings, and that’s what comes first with ITV. The moment when Philip Schofield came out as gay on This Morning was a heartwarming moment and was seen as brave and inspiring to express your sexuality in the way Schofield did. Those inspiring moments are too few on ITV, especially looking at the suicides of their participants. Something at that company is wrong and their mental health campaigns seem redundant now. ITV care so much about ratings that it wouldn’t surprise me if they announced an autumn and spring series in addition to Love Island.

Caroline Flack said back in December; ‘if you’re going to be anything, be kind’. It shouldn’t have to take a tragic suicide for people to start being kind, but Britain has become a less tolerant and more crueller country than ever, especially in the wake of Brexit. People are so quick to pounce whenever a celebrity makes any kind of mistake, like all human beings do, and berate them in the most brutal way possible. While it is important to be kind, we still have to be brutally honest on important matters like mental health and we must get to the source of where it stems from; media corporations like tabloid newspapers and ITV. I, like many other people, hope that action is taken against the media for all the harm that they have caused people, because the media have too much blood on their hands.

[aion-rsa]

An A.P. Bio Season 4 Episode Guide with Showrunner Mike O’Brien

https://ift.tt/38xQFt4

Fittingly for a show about high school, A.P. Bio’s writers are often tasked with the least enjoyable aspect of education: homework.

“One of the ways we try to find new areas in stories is just by writing assignments and homework,” A.P. Bio showrunner Mike O’Brien tells Den of Geek. “We’ll all go home and write. I often call them sketches or scenes – just some little thing.”

O’Brien’s homework assignments have apparently paid off as they’ve allowed the comedy to reach four seasons, the first two of which aired on NBC and the following two on streaming service Peacock. 

A.P. Bio is set in the fictional Whitlock High School in Toledo, Ohio and follows disgraced Harvard philosophy professor Jack Griffin (Glenn Howerton) as he returns home to teach some eager nerds A.P. Biology. Unfortunately for the nerds, Jack has no intention of teaching them A.P. Biology and instead forces his students to join him on missions to address his many petty slights and grievances. Fortunately for the nerds, some lessons are learned despite Jack’s most sincere efforts not to instill any.

With all eight episodes of A.P. Bio season 4 available to stream on Peacock now, we caught up with O’Brien to discuss the journey so far. And since we’re thorough, we decided to ask about each of season 4’s eight episodes. 

Read along with our A.P. Bio season 4 syllabus below.

Season 4 Episode 1 “Tornado!”

“Tornado” begins with a set up that should be familiar to many current and former Midwestern students: a tornado drill. The concept of avoiding the mighty power of a tornado by gathering in a hallway and hoping it doesn’t notice you is ripe for comedic possibilities. A.P. Bio, however, decides to take things in a bit of a different direction. This premiere is a vessel for the students of Whitlock High to share slash fiction stories about their teachers with one another.

“One of the writers in the room, Jess Lacher, wrote the cold open of ‘Tornado’ almost word for word,” O’Brien says. “That stayed pretty much as is. We were like, ‘Maybe this is a whole episode.’”

Naturally the excursion into one of fandom’s most treacherous pastimes required some preliminary investigations. 

“We did a decent amount of research (into slash fiction). I tried to get into the origins a little bit of it, which seemed to be maybe Spock and Kirk.”

As of press time, there is no available slash fiction about A.P. Bio characters that I’m aware of…yet.

Season 4 Episode 2 “Sweatpants”

The simplest of actions lead to the grandest of consequences on A.P. Bio. In this episode, that action is a dress code policy to curb bullying. The consequence is the formation of a cult, naturally. 

Read more

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A.P. Bio Season 3 Preview: School’s Back In Session

By Alec Bojalad

“We were trying to use some of the tropes of real cults,” O’Brien says. “I feel like I’d just seen Midsommar, and I’ve been a fan for a long time of The Source Family. There’s so many good fiction and nonfiction cult movies and things to talk about, that writers are always talking about and imitating.”

What makes A.P. Bio’s cult particularly interesting is that it centers on sad sack student Victor (Jacob Houston).

“More than anything, we wanted to put it through Victor’s filter. So things he likes and hates are all given Jonestown-level of intensity.”

And that’s how you get delightfully strange scenes of a whole classroom yelling “Divorce! Divorce!” at things they don’t like. 

Season 4 Episode 3 “An Oath to Rusty”

Following his break-up with the lovely Lynette (Elizabeth Alderfer), Jack needs some friends. Unfortunately, the only way he knows how to go about getting them is by asking them to play the world’s hardest board game

“I found Twilight Imperium by Googling ‘hardest games to learn.’ It’s always in the top five. It’s a lot,” O’Brien says. “Talk about going down deep rabbit holes. I spent more time learning tutorials on YouTube for that game than anything else.”

While Jack’s relationship struggles, this episode spends plenty of time with a trio of characters who are thick as thieves. Stef Duncan (Lyric Lewis) and Mary Wagner (Mary Sohn) find themselves frustrated with their friend Michelle Jones’s (Jean Villepique) refusal to tell them what case she worked on during jury duty. According to O’Brien, this is another concept that came directly from the writing staff’s “homework assignments.”

“That was a homework assignment from David Neher, who plays Geology Dave on the show. He just randomly brought in as his homework one time a thing where Stef and Mary are doing police sketches of a fully misunderstood thing from Michelle, who isn’t saying anything about her boring trial she was a jury member for.”

Season 4 Episode 4 “Tons of Rue”

Though the delightful Joe Manganiello notably pops up later on, cult movie star Bruce Campbell is A.P. Bio season 4’s biggest get. The beloved Evil Dead actor portrays Jack’s scumbag father who is trying to turn over a new leaf.

“That was so cool,” O’Brien says of bringing Campbell aboard. “He’s not as well known as Tom Cruise, but his fans are all fever pitch fans. Certain crew members and a handful of the writers were going nuts. I think Glenn was a big fan and really excited.”

Unfortunately for Howerton’s Jack, his father’s instincts to flee when things get too real win out again in the end. Though Campbell’s time on the show was brief, he left a big impact behind the scenes, according to O’Brien.

“He’s just so nice. I guess you’d hope it’s either that, or he’s like a weird psychopath that requires tiny orange juices to keep coming to work. But he’s gregarious and funny and nice and does a great job with the script. I loved having him around. I was a big Evil Dead fan in college, so it was the best.”

Season 4 Episode 5 “The Perfect Date From Hell”

So I’ll be frank: we ran out of time to discuss “The Perfect Date From Hell” with Mike O’Brien. And that’s a shame as there’s quite a bit going on here! From the introduction of Jack’s new love interest Shayla (Hayley Marie Norman) to Principal Durbin (Patton Oswalt) going all Undercover Boss, there was certainly plenty to unpack. Oh well, next time we’ll get to hear all about Durbs’ disturbing prosthetics.

Onto the next one!

Season 4 Episode 6 “Love, for Lack of a Better Term”

This is Victor’s second big showcase episode of the season, after serving as a cult leader in “Sweatpants.” This time around things are a lot less sinister. This half-hour serves as a parody of ‘90s teen romance movies (Third Eye Blind soundtrack and all) in which a lovable schlub goes for the popular girl and can’t realize his true love was in front of him the whole time. 

“It ended up being a big Victor season. He kind of takes over this episode and has a couple of other really great moments,” O’Brien says.

Despite Victor’s clear status as MVP, O’Brien says it’s important for each student character to get their time in the sun. 

“I would say I hope that all of (the students) shine at different moments, because they’re all so talented. It’s on the writing team to make sure we aren’t letting any of them slip through the cracks, even for one episode.”

Season 4 Episode 7 “Malachi”

It’s no secret that comedy titan Paula Pell is a big part of A.P. Bio’s success as school secretary Helen Henry Demarcus. Through three seasons, the show has treated her as a Paul Bunyan-esque character, capable of astonishing feats and fit to bursting with a positively insane backstory. While Helen has quite the internal history on A.P. Bio, the show has not yet fully reckoned with her as a sexual being until this season. And this is the episode that delves furthest into Helen’s horny heart to amazing success. 

“She’s in and out of relationships that aren’t great all the time,” O’Brien says. “We cast Paula’s wife who is a very funny comedy writer and performer. That not only was really fun and exciting, because we know Janine (Brito), but in the midst of a very tense February and March COVID shoot it was a little bit of a relief for Paula and Janine to be able to kiss.”

The story of Paula and a waitress at a local bar’s torrid (and quick) love affair is quite madcap. But according to O’Brien, the show has considered some other off-the-wall possibilities for Helen’s love life in the past.

“We pictured she had a girlfriend who works on one of those fishing boats in Alaska, like Deadliest Catch. She’s there 363 days a year and then on one day Helen calls their “Purge dating day’, they try to have dinner, make out, and go to an amusement park and a concert, all in one day. That was probably a little too wacky.”

Season 4 Episode 8 “The Harvard Pen”

“The Harvard Pen” has a high concept befitting a season (or perhaps series?) finale. The episode flashes back all the way to Jack Griffin’s first day with the A.P. Bio class, which is somehow only “a few months earlier.” Jack gives one golden rule to the assembled students: never touch his Harvard pen. Naturally they do, and the episode follows the pen’s months-long journey to eventual oblivion.

Ultimately though, the real standout in this installment is the web series that the A.P. Bio kids have been producing with Heather (Allisyn Snyder) starring. Janet Fist is a ‘70s style cop drama in which the titular character is a receptionist who has an incredible ability to solve crimes…and to shoot everyone she sees full of lead.

“I used to write a lot of short stories about a ‘70s renegade cop that I would read when I was in improv in Chicago,” O’Brien says. “I thought ‘what if that was through the eyes of this kind of quirky high school girl? Maybe she’s not even allowed to be a cop in the ’70s.’ It becomes this kind of feminist statement that Heather wants to make. It was just really fun to write after that.”

If a fifth season of A.P. Bio isn’t in Peacock’s plans, we’re gonna need to go all-out on a Janet Fist spinoff fan campaign.

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A.P. Bio season 4 is available to stream on Peacock now.

The post An A.P. Bio Season 4 Episode Guide with Showrunner Mike O’Brien appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[genkiro]

How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

Quite many golden bits from How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton M. Christensen

Work can bring you a sense of fulfillment—but it pales in comparison to the enduring happiness you can find in the intimate relationships that you cultivate with your family and close friends.

But nothing can promise you perfect results. What I can promise you is that you won’t get it right if you don’t commit to keep trying.

As such, there is no one-size-fits-all approach that anyone can offer you. The hot water that softens a carrot will harden an egg.

When the winning strategy is not yet clear in the initial stages of a new business, good money from investors needs to be patient for growth but impatient for profit.

But the reason why both types of capital appear in the name of the theory is that once a viable strategy has been found, investors need to change what they seek—they should become impatient for growth and patient for profit.

IKEA doesn’t focus on selling a particular type of furniture to any particular demographically defined group of consumers. Rather, it focuses on a job that many consumers confront quite often as they establish themselves and their families in new surroundings: I’ve got to get this place furnished tomorrow, because the next day I have to show up at work.

The morning job needs a more viscous milkshake, which takes even longer to suck up. You might add in chunks of fruit—but not to make it healthy, because that’s not the reason it’s being hired. It’s being hired by morning customers to keep their commute interesting.

The afternoon make-me-feel-good-about-being-a-parent job is fundamentally different. Maybe the afternoon milkshake should come in half sizes; be less thick so it could be finished more quickly; and so on.

“the customers could say, ‘I could drink a V8, and get all the nutrition that I promised Mom that I’d get, but with a fraction of the effort and time!’” Once the makers of V8 had that realization, the ad campaign changed to focus on how the drink provided the required daily vegetable servings. It worked.

The two fundamental jobs that children need to do are to feel successful and to have friends—every day.

All too often, schools are structured to help most students feel like failures. Rather, we need to offer children experiences in school that help them do these jobs—to feel successful and do it with friends.

Indeed, what he did was important to get done, and he was trying to be selfless in giving Barbara exactly what he thought she needed. Barbara explained, however, that the day hadn’t been difficult because of the chores. It was difficult because she had spent hours and hours with small, demanding children, and she hadn’t spoken to another adult all day. What she needed most at that time was a real conversation with an adult who cared about her.

By working to truly understand the job she needs done, and doing it well, I can cause myself to fall more deeply in love with my spouse, and, I hope, her with me. Divorce, on the other hand, often has its roots when one frames marriage only in terms of whether she is giving me what I want. If she isn’t, then I dispense with her, and find someone else who will.

This may sound counterintuitive, but I deeply believe that the path to happiness in a relationship is not just about finding someone who you think is going to make you happy. Rather, the reverse is equally true: the path to happiness is about finding someone who you want to make happy, someone whose happiness is worth devoting yourself to. If what causes us to fall deeply in love is mutually understanding and then doing each other’s job to be done, then I have observed that what cements that commitment is the extent to which I sacrifice myself to help her succeed and for her to be happy.

Neither Annie nor I feel this intense attachment to the people of those countries or to our church because our work there was easy—it’s the opposite. We feel this way because we gave so much of ourselves.

Resources are what he uses to do it, processes are how he does it, and priorities are why he does it.

I worry a lot that many, many parents are doing to their children what Dell did to its personal computing business—removing the circumstances in which they can develop processes.

Parents have their own job to be done, and it can overshadow the desire to help their children develop processes. They have a job of wanting to feel like a good parent: see all the opportunities I’m providing for my child? Or parents, often with their heart in the right place, project their own hopes and dreams onto their children.

Self-esteem—the sense that “I’m not afraid to confront this problem and I think I can solve it”—doesn’t come from abundant resources. Rather, self-esteem comes from achieving something important when it’s hard to do.

As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn’t do for me.

Your parents most likely weren’t thinking consciously about teaching you the right priorities at the time—but simply because they were there with you in those learning moments, those values became your values, too. Which means that first, when children are ready to learn, we need to be there. And second, we need to be found displaying through our actions, the priorities and values that we want our children to learn.

if you find yourself heading down a path of outsourcing more and more of your role as a parent, you will lose more and more of the precious opportunities to help your kids develop their values—which may be the most important capability of all.

Children need to do more than learn new skills. The theory of capabilities suggests they need to be challenged. They need to solve hard problems. They need to develop values. When you find yourself providing more and more experiences that are not giving children an opportunity to be deeply engaged, you are not equipping them with the processes they need to succeed in the future.

Instead of taking jobs or assignments because they looked like a fast-track to the C-suite, he chose his options very deliberately for the experience they would provide. “I wouldn’t ever make the decision based upon how much it paid or the prestige,” he told my students “Instead, it was always: is it going to give me the experiences I need to wrestle with?”

Coping with a difficult teacher, failing at a sport, learning to navigate the complex social structure of cliques in school—all those things become “courses” in the school of experience.

Culture is a way of working together toward common goals that have been followed so frequently and so successfully that people don’t even think about trying to do things another way. If a culture has formed, people will autonomously do what they need to do to be successful.

Make no mistake: a culture happens, whether you want it to or not. The only question is how hard you are going to try to influence it. Forming a culture is not an instant loop; it’s not something you can decide on, communicate, and then expect it to suddenly work on its own. You need to be sure that when you ask your children to do something, or tell your spouse you’re going to do something, you hold to that and follow through.

The safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. - CS Lewis

Marginal thinking made Blockbuster believe that the alternative to not pursuing the postal DVD market was to happily continue doing what it was doing before, at 66 percent margins and billions of dollars in revenue. But the real alternative to not going after Netflix was, in fact, bankruptcy. The right way to look at this new market was not to think, “How can we protect our existing business?” Instead, Blockbuster should have been thinking: “If we didn’t have an existing business, how could we best build a new one? What would be the best way for us to serve our customers?”

And that’s the trap of marginal thinking. You can see the immediate costs of investing, but it’s really hard to accurately see the costs of not investing. When you decide that the upside of investing in the new product isn’t substantial enough while you still have a perfectly acceptable existing product, you aren’t taking into account a future in which somebody else brings the new product to market.

The only way to avoid the consequences of uncomfortable moral concessions in your life is to never start making them in the first place. When the first step down that path presents itself, turn around and walk the other way.

[the-desolated-quill]

The Blessing Of Many Fractures - Iron Fist blog

(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)

Brace yourselves for a bit of a shock, but I actually liked this episode.

And when I say liked, I mean really liked. There’s some stuff in The Blessing Of Many Fractures that’s legitimately good. There’s quite a bit of bad as well (this is Iron Fist after all), but nevertheless it’s a relief to be able to talk about an Iron Fist episode in positive terms for once.

Danny, Colleen and Claire decide to follow Madame Gao to China in the hopes of finding out how she knew Danny’s father and possibly finding a way to defeat the Hand once and for all. I honestly think this is a good idea on the writers’ part. Moving the action out of boring old New York and into a new location like China seems to have given the show a much needed shot in the arm. Granted we don’t see much of China, and the Hand’s warehouses do look suspiciously like New York warehouses with a few Chinese signs plastered here and there, but it’s the thought that counts. It marks the characters newfound determination in their quest to defeat the Hand, specifically Claire who has just about had enough of the Hand and wants to do something about it.

The Blessing Of Many Fractures also gives us something that we haven’t seen throughout this season. Actual character exploration. One scene that really stood out was on the plane when Danny was reliving the painful memories of the plane crash 15 years ago during a spot of turbulence while Claire tries to calm him down. Unlike the annoying flashbacks from the first couple of episodes, this actually explores and addresses Danny’s feelings about his past in a fairly effective way. And to his credit, Finn Jones actually does a pretty good job

There’s also some effort to develop Danny and Colleen’s relationship a bit as they talk about how both have lost parental figures in their childhood. I still don’t buy their romantic feelings for each other. Not even for a second. But at least there’s some effort to actually have the two bond in a believable way.

We also get some actual fighting this time around. Most of it is well done, although somewhat implausible. Why is it that ninjas never use guns in these kinds of shows? When Colleen is running toward that woman, wouldn’t it have been easier just to shoot Colleen? Wouldn’t that be a better way of defending these warehouses other than using a poxy sword. Also later on you see these business men whipping out knives and axes and stuff when they could have just gunned then all down. For some reason TV ninjas seem to value theatricality over actually getting the job done. But I shouldn’t complain really. Considering that Scott Buck seems to be allergic to the idea of any kind of martial arts in a martial arts show, I guess I should make the most of this.

And then along came Lewis Tan. The guy who was also in the running to play Iron Fist until he was rejected in favour of Finn Jones, who won the Marvel execs over with his unique acting talents. Talents like... um... er... Oh come on, there must have been something!

Yeah, watching Lewis Tan as Zhou Chen feels a bit bittersweet. On the one hand he’s really cool to watch, but on the other you are kind of distracted by thoughts of what could have been. Obviously I’m not suggesting that the many problems with Iron Fist would somehow magically be fixed by casting Lewis Tan in the role. I would never suggest such a thing and anyone who does clearly needs a reality check. However just casting an Asian person as opposed to a white person would be enough to fix some of the more glaring racial issues, plus Tan just has so much more personality and charm than Jones does. How long is Zhou Chen on screen for? Two minutes? Maybe three? In such a short space of time, I was completely hooked by his performance. The way he drunkenly staggers around before unleashing all these breathtaking martial arts moves, the way he delivers his sarcastic quips, and the way he constantly mimics and mocks Danny’s fighting style just to get a rise out of him, this is a very entertaining character to watch. I hope to God this isn’t the last we’ve seen of him.

But Zhou Chen isn’t just there to be awesome. His main purpose is to put doubts into Danny, and the audience, as to why he became the Iron Fist. The season has touched on this briefly with the whole abuse thing, but frustratingly never developed it until now. Zhou Chen suggests that Danny isn’t taking the mantle of the Iron Fist seriously, saying that he’s using it to punish rather than protect. It’s very hard to argue with this considering what we already know. Cast your minds back to why Danny took the Iron Fist trials in the first place. It was because he was goaded by those around him saying an outsider couldn’t do it. His motivation was to prove them wrong as opposed to a genuinely altruistic desire to protect and serve the people of K’un L’un. It also explains why he left. He doesn’t really care about K’un L’un. Oh sure he spouts their teachings and beliefs, but that’s only because he was effectively indoctrinated. In truth there does seem to be a hint of resentment toward those that raised him. Training him through violent means and controlling every aspect of his life. Hell, he’s even referred to as a Living Weapon, suggesting he’s a tool to be used rather than an individual in his own right. Why else would he leave if not to escape and find his own path? This also bleeds into the whole moral dilemma about whether or not he should kill people. While we’ve seen this played out before with the likes of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, this puts a slightly different spin on it. He’s not just making moral choices.  He’s choosing between following his duties as the Iron Fist to the letter or making his own independent decisions.

This episode ends somewhat anti-climactically. Danny finds out the poisoned weapons the Hand use are the same ones that killed the pilots and caused the plane to crash 15 years ago.

Wait! So the bad guys are really (gasp) THE BAD GUYS?!

Yeah, not exactly a massive shock, is it? I mean who else could it have been?

One minor nitpick, why couldn't they have ended the episode with Danny smashing the wall and leaving it ambiguous as to whether or not he killed Madame Gao? That would have been an awesome cliffhanger!

As I said, I thought all of this was really good. The best of the season so far (which isn’t surprising considering the shit that came before), but unfortunately this is all undermined by the usual Iron Fist bullshit. China is where all the exciting, interesting stuff is happening, so why the fuck does the show keep insisting on yanking us back to New York? Who gives a fuck about Joy and Ward and who owns Rand fucking Enterprises? I was glad to see the back of them quite frankly. I’ve mentioned in the past that Scott Buck seems to be almost ashamed of the fact that this is a superhero show, and this just proves my point further. Danny’s adventures in China are constantly being interrupted by Joy and Ward’s predicament and it’s really bloody irritated. I don’t care about these characters, this plot doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the Hand as far as I can see, and it’s so unbelievably boring to sit through.

Also Ward is hallucinating now. Because of course he is. At this stage you could tell me he’s an alien from the planet Zog here to steal the world’s supply of cheese to power his electric toothbrush, and I honestly wouldn’t bat an eyelid. It’s become abundantly clear that nobody knows what the fuck to do with this character anymore, and I’m past caring.

If we could just cut out all the boring corporate baggage that’s weighing everything down, then maybe there’s hope for this show after all.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/politics/trump-not-expected-to-make-national-emergency-declaration-in-2nd-state-of-the-union/

Trump not expected to make 'national emergency' declaration in 2nd State of the Union

President Donald Trump on Tuesday night will give his second State of the Union address, one week after he originally was invited to deliver it but didn’t because of the longest-ever government shutdown.

Interested in State of the Union?

Add State of the Union as an interest to stay up to date on the latest State of the Union news, video, and analysis from ABC News.

With a day full of speech prep ahead of him, the president sent his first tweet of the morning Tuesday indicating his focus is set squarely on his demand that Congress fund a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Tremendous numbers of people are coming up through Mexico in the hopes of flooding our Southern Border. We have sent additional military. We will build a Human Wall if necessary. If we had a real Wall, this would be a non-event!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2019

According to White House officials, the president as of Tuesday morning was not expected to make any official national emergency declaration, as he has threatened, in a move to obtain funds to build his border wall without congressional approval. And while the president won’t explicitly rule out another shutdown, one senior official tells ABC News that his address is “more of a unifying speech, saying he actually wants to get things done.”

Trump and Congress are in a particularly tense period, with little more than a week since the last shutdown that caused some 800,000 federal employees to go without paychecks and shuttered nine federal agencies. While the government is open now, it could shut down again in 10 days if the president, the Democratic-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate don’t come to an agreement on border security, which Trump demands must include billions of dollars for a wall along the southern border.

Trump warned on Sunday that if Democrats and Republicans can’t strike a deal to fund the government by the Feb. 15 deadline that includes wall funding, he could go it alone by declaring a national emergency, though Republicans have warned against it.

But White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House Tuesday that the president will express to lawmakers that he prefers they appropriate the funds he is demanding for securing the border, rather than forcing his hand to take unilateral action.

“The president has said that he can do it,” Conway said. “But he’s never wanted to do that. He wants Congress to finish its work. He wants them to put a deal on his desk that he can sign.”

The shutdown left more Americans blaming Trump and the Republicans in Congress than House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, 53 percent to 34 percent, according to recent ABC News/Washington Post polling.

The president, according to a senior White House official, is expected to discuss immigration in his speech along with other topics seen as key parts of his agenda: middle-class American workers, improving infrastructure, lowering the cost of health care and prescription drugs, and national security.

Trump will speak before the 116th Congress, a much-different audience from last year when the Senate and House were controlled by the president’s own Republican party.

This year in the House, Democrats hold 235 seats to the Republicans’ 199 seats. Republicans hold 52 seats to the Democrats’ 47 seats in the Senate.

What is Trump expected to cover?

The president will talk about immigration, a major focus of his administration and a subject he covered last year when he suggested a “four-pillar” system in which “nobody gets everything they want, but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs.”

The pillars, which didn’t come to fruition in Congress, included a pathway to citizenship for “Dreamers,” the young undocumented immigrants previously protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy ended by Trump last year, a wall on the southern border, an end to visa lotteries and a limit on family immigration sponsorships.

Conway also confirmed to reporters that President Trump will be using his address to outline a strategy for ending HIV transmissions in the U.S. by 2030.

“I look at that as a nonpartisan issue and the president does also, so he will be asking for bipartisan support to make that happen,” Conway said in response to a question from ABC News.

This year, the speech likely will be even more targeted as meetings are underway between the Republicans and Democrats on the exclusive committee charged with negotiating a bipartisan border-security funding proposal.

Win McNamee/AFP/Getty Images, FILE

President Donald Trump gestures during the State of the Union address in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, Jan. 30, 2018.

Trump also is expected to hit on the economic woes of working-class Americans — a major campaign platform of 2016 and also a focus of last year’s speech. He’ll narrow in on trade deals, like the one his administration is working out with China after trading tariffs over the last few months, and urge Congress to approve the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement, according to a senior administration official.

Trump plans to discuss infrastructure, which he asked Congress to generate $1.5 trillion for in last year’s speech, health care and the high cost of prescription drugs and national security, said the White House official. The president will specifically address the political standoff between Venezuela’s opposition leader Juan Guaido and President Nicolas Maduro.

The White House classified this year’s speech as “visionary” — looking toward the future and presenting a “common-sense path forward” with a “very American and can-do optimistic approach.” It’s also going to be long, according to a White House official, following in the footsteps of last year’s 80-minute speech.

Who will give the Democratic response?

Stacey Abrams, the first African-American woman to be nominated for governor by a major political party, will add another historic first to the list attached to her name when she delivers the State of the Union response on behalf of Democrats.

Abrams will be the first African-American woman to give the speech responding to the presidential address, according to all archival research on the speech from both the House and Senate historian offices.

And even though she lost the tight race she ran for Georgia governor last November, Abrams was nevertheless selected to be the face of the party in a speech that will be seen by millions nationwide — a testament, experts said, to the power Democrats believe Abrams holds to connect with a diverse electorate in a moment of American politics increasingly enveloped by the complexities of gender and race.

Moreover, in the aftermath of reports of racist photos involving Virginia’s Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, Abrams’ words will increasingly be in the spotlight.

“It’s crucial for the Democratic Party at this point to decide what sorts of voices they want to represent and what sorts of inroads they want to make as far as the party being optimally inclusive,” said Jamila Michener, a professor at Cornell University who studies racial inequality and electoral systems.

John Amis/AP, FILE

Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams addresses supporters during an election night watch party in Atlanta, Nov. 6, 2018.

What’s different from last year?

The audience will be bluer and less red, but on the heels of a November election that brought in a historically diverse Congressional class, Trump will be delivering his address to a House chamber filled with more women and people of color than ever before.

To acknowledge this historic diversity, many lawmakers will be wearing white, a nod to the women’s suffrage movement. House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is planning to hand out white lapel ribbons for his male colleagues to wear in solidarity with the women wearing white.

The effort, Hoyer said, “sends a respectful message that House Democrats stand with women across the country and will continue to defend their rights.”

At least one lawmaker, Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., plans on joining his female colleagues in wearing all white.

Last year, in an effort to protest Trump’s policies, 14 Democrats boycotted the address. So far this year, only five Democrats have publicly announced their decision not to attend, including Georgia Reps. John Lewis and Hank Johnson, as well as Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer.

“Just like in past years, I plan to skip a speech that will be filled with lies, deception and divisiveness,” Blumenauer said in a statement.

Many of the diverse freshmen House Democrats are using their attendance to make political statements. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez teased the announcement of her guest, Ana Maria Archila, in a Twitter post, showing a pin she bought for Archila that reads “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” In September, Archila confronted then-Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona, about sexual assault on an elevator on Capitol Hill during Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Senate confirmation hearings. Attention from the video of the encounter led Flake to temporarily hold up the vote for Kavanaugh and ask for an FBI investigation into allegations of assault.

Two other groups expected to be represented among State of the Union guests are transgender service members and environmental activists.

At least four lawmakers have announced their guests are either active-duty or veteran transgender service members. Trump’s plan to restrict service by transgender men and women is currently held up in the courts.

And several Democrats have announced that their State of the Union guests are activists from communities impacted by environmental contamination from a type of chemical used in Teflon and firefighting foam. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have expressed concern about whether the Environmental Protection Agency will limit the amount of those chemicals allowed in drinking water ahead of the expected release of a national plan to deal with them.

One thing that’s not new?

Former presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders also will deliver a response to Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, something he’s done three years in a row, through a live stream on social media. He’ll speak after Abrams.

ABC News’ Alexander Mallin and Stephanie Ebbs contributed to this report.

[piero217]

Be Careful with the Blue Filter on FB

I usually don’t use social networks to write comments and/or ideas of my own. Instead, I merely use it to share things that I agree with and that I feel will encourage others, or in any case, things that I consider healthy entertainment. However, given the ease with which certain things—and “trends”—move in social networks, today I’ll break with that habit, because I think it’s important for all of us to be properly informed.

It's 99.99% sure that, throughout April you will see that at least one of your FB contacts is using a blue filter on their profile picture. I’m almost certain as well that you already know it’s related to “supporting autism” if you live in the USA or some other English-speaking country. Then, you may think, “Oh, that seems like a noble cause,” and you’ll use the same filter a few days to support that same cause… until you get bored and revert to your original profile pic or add a new one. But before you decide to use that filter, I want you to know exactly what’s behind it.

Two days ago, on April 2nd, several landmarks all around the globe were lit up blue in “celebration” of the World Autism Awareness Day, whose apparent goal is to “raise public awareness of autism”. But one day just doesn’t seem enough to support this cause, which is why we have an “Autism Awareness Month”.

Hey, that’s just cool, isn’t it? After all, in a world where there is more and more talk about overcoming discrimination and promoting acceptance of all individuals, isn’t it a great thing to seek ways to better understand and support people on the autistic spectrum? Except that this isn’t what actually happens.

The blue color, usually accompanied by the image of a puzzle piece, is characteristic of the “Light It Up Blue” campaign, spearheaded by a non-governmental organization called AUTISM SPEAKS. This organization claims to support people with autism—which, by the way, is the wrong term; I’ll tell you why in a moment—and their families, as well as promote scientific research in that field.

However, if you pay attention to the “fine print” of their manifesto, so to speak, what these people really seek is to eradicate autism, as if it were an epidemic. Their scientific research doesn’t focus on how to improve the lives of autistics but how to ensure that, in the future, they cease to exist altogether. Their advertising campaigns, rather than promote understanding towards autistic people, present them as a burden and an evil that shouldn’t exist. Scared yet? You should be.

As a friend to autistics—and a potential candidate to be on the spectrum, according to them—I can assure you that they are all wonderful people, and even though they’re hard to understand sometimes, they have so much to contribute to this world.

I’ve learned from them that autism is not a disease—although it is medically classified as a disorder, and yes, there is a difference; you can investigate if you like—but a condition that makes them perceive the world surrounding them in a unique way. That is why talking about “people with autism” instead of “autistic people” is offensive, both for them and for those who really love them and seek to support them.

But you know? Because of this way in which they perceive the world, they also suffer. And it’s not their fault or even the fault of autism itself, but the fault of the people around them who don’t know how to take care of them; who don’t have the patience to attend to their particular needs or aren’t interested in knowing more about them; and who prefer to play the role of victims rather than having the courage to defend them. (By the way, this doesn’t apply exclusively to autistic children, since the vast majority of the autistic population is actually comprised of young people and adults!)

Now, it is not my intention to start a debate against AUTISM SPEAKS, nor to judge or criticize people who don’t know/don’t want to deal with people on the autistic spectrum. If it were, I could simply share other people’s posts that provide fairly solid arguments in that regard. What I really want is to give you my point of view as a Christian; that is, as someone who has learned how to treat others from the best possible example: JESUS.

You see, Jesus was a friend to those rejected by most of the people of His time. He sought to spend time with them and listen to them, showing them a love they did not receive from anyone else. Was it tough? Surely. Did it cost him some of His other friends? Definitely. Time and effort? A lot, maybe. But He didn’t care about it. He knew to put the needs of others above His own. He would be the last to reject someone just because that person’s mind works differently from that of others. That is love in action.

What Jesus wanted to accomplish by doing this was for others to learn to do the same, to live a practical love. He expects you and me to know how to love in that same way. 1 Corinthians 13 says clearly true love “is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable… Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

You may think that it’s hard to be kind to someone who doesn’t stand the human touch or who cannot socialize with others. You may think that it’s not possible to be patient with someone who often has a sensory overload and needs certain stimuli to relax. You may say that it’s just natural to get irritated or to be rude to people who understand things differently than you. You may boast saying that you’re better than someone who has difficulty speaking or expressing him/herself; or, on the other hand, you may be jealous because that person actually proves to be smarter than you. But true love overcomes all that, and that kind of love is precisely what the autistic person needs more than anything in this world.

Dear friend, if you are a Christian, or if you at least believe in God, show the same love that He showed! If you know someone on the autistic spectrum, don’t just use a filter on FB to support him/her. Don’t try to be good to them because you pity them either. Show them a true love! Be the friend or family that they’ve never had! And beyond that, motivate and teach others to love them in the same way. Only you can help put an end to the rejection they feel and give them the acceptance they deserve.

Finally, I would like you to understand something vital. Autistics are not a mistake of God. Autistics are not a problem that needs to be solved or eradicated. Autistics are not sick people who have to be cured. On the contrary, as is true with every precious human being who comes to this world, autistic people have a very special purpose! If you don’t believe me, take a look at the following list of scientists, artists and influential people who made history and who are believed to have been in the autistic spectrum: Albert Einstein, Amadeus Mozart, Lewis Carroll, Sir Isaac Newton, Michelangelo, Nikola Tesla—whose work Edison stole, by the way, but that’s a topic for another occasion—Thomas Jefferson, Hans Christian Andersen, to name a few.

If you’ve reached the end of this text, I thank you immensely for taking the time to read all of it. If you still want to show your support to autistic people through social networks, I recommend that, instead of using the blue filter, you use a golden filter to support the "Light It Up Gold" campaign, created specifically by the autistic community and for the autistic community. But remember that the most important thing is not what you live on Facebook, but what you live out in your daily life. If you really want to support an autistic friend/family member, remember that your practical love towards them is the best way to do it.

Fae, Max, this is for you. You have no idea of just how much I love you guys, and God loves you too. I will never cease to be grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to know you. I hope that I’ve been a good friend to you so far, and I long to be friends with you always. You guys rock!

[nothingman]

The first week of President Donald Trump’s new administration started with a lawsuit claiming he’s already violated the Constitution.

The lawsuit, filed by a collection of high-powered ethics experts and legal scholars, argues that because Trump has refused to give up ownership of his hotels and other businesses, he’s violating a clause of the Constitution that prohibits government officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments.

This provision, known as the emoluments clause, is crucial to the debate about Trump’s conflicts of interest, because it’s one of the few available tools that might actually be able to force the president to give up his businesses or to hold him accountable if he doesn’t.

Some legal experts argue the lawsuit rests on shaky ground because it will be hard for the nonprofit that filed it, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, to prove that Trump’s actions have directly harmed them. But even if it fails, the lawsuit is important: It’s the first, and likely not the last, effort by an alliance of ethics experts and well-funded liberal groups to challenge Trump on constitutional grounds. A victory in court isn’t the only way these lawsuits can have an effect.

The case that Trump is violating the Constitution

Presidents aren’t legally required to give up their businesses and investments that could be a conflict of interest while they’re in office. But since Richard Nixon, all presidents have, both to try to ensure trust in government and to provide an example for their subordinates, who are legally required to eliminate conflicts of interest.

Trump is the exception. He’s claimed that he will put his two adult sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., in charge of his businesses while he’s in office. But he made clear that he’ll eventually be returning to them: “I hope at the end of eight years, I’ll come back and say, oh, you did a good job,” he said in January.

More important, Trump hasn’t given up ownership of the businesses. So if anybody wants to put some money in the president’s pocket, all they have to do is book a stay at the new Trump International hotel in downtown Washington, DC. The hotel, which has a sales position dedicated to diplomats, has successfully attracted foreign governments to book events and rooms: Azerbaijan celebrated Hanukkah and Bahrain marked its national day at the hotel in December, and Kuwait is scheduled to hold its own celebration there in February.

This is where the Constitution comes in. A section known as the emoluments clause prohibits any officeholder in the United States from accepting any “emolument, title, or office” from a foreign government. An “emolument” is usually defined as money or other benefits you get from a job or office you hold.

Until Trump was elected, the clause, originally a response to Benjamin Franklin accepting a snuffbox from the king of France, was pretty obscure. But the prospect of Trump making money off foreign governments’ bookings at his hotels or through his other businesses has made it a major issue at the start of his presidency.

Trump will continue to profit from his businesses while he’s in office. And many prominent scholars on the issue argue that as soon as that money starts coming in, he’ll violate the Constitution. The lawsuit provides a long list of potential emoluments clause violations, including bookings by diplomats at Trump hotels and leases in Trump Tower, global royalties from The Apprentice, which is shown on state-owned television networks in some countries, and permits issued by foreign governments for Trump-owned or -affiliated businesses in those countries.

The lawsuit asks the court to declare that Trump is in violation of the emoluments clause. Even if he is, though, it would be up to Congress to decide whether that merits impeaching him and removing him from office — and Republicans in Congress so far have been reluctant to look into Trump’s break with tradition on ethical issues.

Trump’s official position is that the emoluments clause does not apply to him. Sheri Dillon, a partner at the Washington law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius, laid this argument out at a January 11 press conference: “Paying for a hotel room is not a gift or a present, and it has nothing to do with an office. It’s not an emolument.”

Trump planned to avoid the issue, Dillon went on to say, by donating profits he made from foreign stays at his hotels to the federal government. But even if Trump follows through on this promise, it won’t alleviate concerns from former chief White House ethics lawyers and the head of the federal Office of Government Ethics, who maintain that the only ethical solution is for Trump to sell his businesses and let an outsider manage the proceeds.

The big question: Can CREW sue Trump at all?

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Zephyr Teachout, who challenged Andrew Cuomo in the 2014 New York gubernatorial primary, is one of the lawyers for the suit.

The lawsuit alleging that Trump violated the emoluments clause was filed by some of the nation’s foremost experts on constitutional law, corruption, and government ethics, including Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor of constitutional law who has also argued 35 cases before the Supreme Court; Zephyr Teachout, a Fordham University professor who studies corruption (and who has run for office twice in New York); and Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California Irvine school of law.

Still, it has a high bar to clear in court. It’s not just a question of proving Trump violated the Constitution. The lawyers must prove their client, the Center for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, has been directly injured by what they argue are Trump’s unconstitutional actions.

To win a lawsuit, you first have to prove that you have “standing” — that whatever you’re suing about harmed you directly in a way that a court can remedy. If a judge decides you don’t have standing, your case will be dismissed. Historically, this has been a high hurdle for lawsuits against the president to clear, but not an impossible one.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the plaintiff in the case, argues that it has standing because Trump’s conflicts of interest and his possible violation of the emoluments clause have been very time-consuming for their organization. The lawsuit describes CREW as besieged by questions from the media about Trump’s business interests.

Answering those questions, according to the lawsuit, took time and resources away from the organization’s other work, including tracking potential violations of campaign finance law, filing comments on proposed regulations, and analyzing nonprofits’ tax forms.

The Supreme Court accepted this reasoning as standing enough to sue in a fair housing case in 1982, but some legal experts are skeptical. Jonathan Adler, a professor of law at Case Western Reserve University, explained his doubts on Twitter on Monday:

Standing claim in #CREWvTrump is quite a stretch. If CREW has standing here, Lujan would have come out the other way.

— Jonathan H. Adler (@jadler1969) January 23, 2017

Other law professors, many of them who, like Adler, tend to be conservative, concurred. But lawsuits where the argument for standing was initially perceived as questionable at best have succeeded in the past.

When the House of Representatives sued President Obama over a provision in Obamacare in 2014, arguing that Obama broke the law by giving money to insurers that hadn’t been authorized by Congress, many legal experts gave it little chance of succeeding because they believed Speaker of the House John Boehner did not have standing to sue. But the US District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed and allowed the suit to proceed in 2015, and later ruled in Boehner’s favor. (The case is under appeal.)

When Texas sued over Obama’s executive action on immigration that would have protected the parents of US-born children from deportation, some legal observers, including two American University law professors and former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, argued that the state had no standing to sue. But Texas was allowed to proceed with its case, which it won in appellate courts. (The Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 in 2016, upholding the appellate court victory.)

Even if CREW isn’t found to have standing, though, the mere fact that it’s filing the lawsuit is significant.

The emoluments clause lawsuit could win without winning

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, proved that winning in court isn’t the only way efforts like CREW’s can triumph.

CREW has already challenged the president on at least three fronts. Besides the emoluments clause lawsuit, the group sent a letter to the General Services Administration about the lease on Trump’s DC hotel, which bars elected officials from benefiting from the property. On Friday, the group sued the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for more information on the Trump transition team’s request for the names of scientists working on climate change.

And that’s just in the first three days of Trump’s presidency.

This isn’t a surprise. The chair and vice chair of CREW’s board have been two of the most outspoken critics of Trump’s conflicts of interest: Norm Eisen, who founded CREW in 2003, is the chair, and Richard Painter, George W. Bush’s former ethics lawyer, is the vice chair. Since the campaign, they’ve become a crusading odd couple of sorts, setting aside other political differences (Painter is a lifelong Republican, although he voted for Hillary Clinton) to forcefully and repeatedly decry Trump’s refusal to divest himself of his business interests.

But there are also good political reasons for nonprofits that oppose Trump to sue him. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, has filed dozens of lawsuits against the Clintons since President Bill Clinton was in office. In 2015, the group filed more than 20 lawsuits over Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and also obtained emails from the State Department featuring exchanges between the Clinton Foundation and government officials. Both of those controversies turned out to be pivotal in the 2016 election.

In the aftermath of Election Day, when some Democrats argued that liberals needed their own version of Judicial Watch, CREW was suggested as one group that could step into the role, according to Politico’s Josh Gerstein. CREW was founded with a nonpartisan mission, but David Brock, a Clinton ally and Democratic donor, served as its chair for two years.

Brock spent inauguration weekend at a summit of Democratic donors in Florida and, according to Politico, described CREW as a group that’s likely to be particularly active as the Trump administration gets underway.

Even if CREW’s cases aren’t all winners in court, the legal process could force the Trump administration to divulge information it would rather keep secret. Eisen hopes the emoluments clause suit will force Trump to release his tax returns, which he’s refused to make public. A win in court isn’t the only way for the suit to score points.

via Vox - All

[u-wll-rmmbr-me-fr-centuries]

At last-minute I decided I was going to take part in Booktube-a-thon, and so I went into making my TBR list with no idea really of what I was going to read. I wasn’t prepared. And to top it all off, I kept switching around books as I felt it didn’t quite work. But now I am happy to announce my final book TBR for the readathon!

Before;

Before we go into this I do need to say that I’ve already started two of these books from the 24in48 Readathon. But I don’t like reading a million books all at once, and they do fit into these categories, so it doesn’t really hurt anyone.

Read a book with a person on the cover

For this I chose The Last of Us by Rob Ewing. There’s two people on the cover and I’ve been intrigued by this for a while now but haven’t got round to reading it yet.

When a pandemic wipes out the entire population of a remote Scottish island, only a small group of children survive. How will they fend for themselves?

Since the last adult died, sensible Elizabeth has been the group leader, testing for a radio signal, playing teacher and keeping an eye on Alex, the littlest, whose insulin can only last so long.

There is ‘shopping’ to do in the houses they haven’t yet searched and wrong smells to avoid. For eight-year-old Rona each day brings fresh hope that someone will come back for them, tempered by the reality of their dwindling supplies.

With no adults to rebel against, squabbles threaten the fragile family they have formed. And when brothers Calum Ian and Duncan attempt to thwart Elizabeth’s leadership, it prompts a chain of events that will endanger Alex’s life and test them all in unimaginable ways.

Read a hyped book

I chose The Hobbit as I had already started reading it for 24in48 Readathon and I would prefer to finish it before starting more books. That’s just not my style. So as it is one of the biggest hyped books to ever exist, I decided to include it as this challenge.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Written for J.R.R. Tolkien’s own children, The Hobbit met with instant critical acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Now recognized as a timeless classic, this introduction to the hobbit Bilbo Baggins, the wizard Gandalf, Gollum, and the spectacular world of Middle-earth recounts of the adventures of a reluctant hero, a powerful and dangerous ring, and the cruel dragon Smaug the Magnificent.

Finish a book in one day

Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them (The original screenplay). As I was able to read The Cursed Child in one day, I figured this would also be another quick and easy read due to it being a screenplay.

J.K. Rowling’s screenwriting debut is captured in this exciting hardcover edition of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay.

When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt’s fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone…

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved and internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Featuring a cast of remarkable characters, this is epic, adventure-packed storytelling at its very best.

Whether an existing fan or new to the wizarding world, this is a perfect addition to any reader’s bookshelf.

Read about a character that’s very different to you

I thought Memoirs of a Geisha fit perfectly into this slot. It’s set in Japan and follows the life of a Geisha, from when she was a little girl to when she’s much older. It’s fictional but at the beginning there’s a fake translators note which gives it more character. I also started this book for 24in48 Readathon. 

A literary sensation and runaway bestseller, this brilliant debut novel presents with seamless authenticity and exquisite lyricism the true confessions of one of Japan’s most celebrated geisha.

In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl’s virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction – at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful – and completely unforgettable.

Read a whole book outdoors

Lets be honest – the outdoors isn’t always our best friend. And as I dwell in this place called England, the outside can be wet, cold and plain miserable. So, I decided to go with another short and sweet book, Alice Through The Looking Glass. The copy I have, has both Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass in one, but I’ve already read the first.

In 1865, English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), aka Lewis Carroll, wrote a fantastical adventure story for the young daughters of a friend. The adventures of Alice—named for one of the little girls to whom the book was dedicated—who journeys down a rabbit hole and into a whimsical underworld realm instantly struck a chord with the British public, and then with readers around the world. In 1872, in reaction to the universal acclaim *Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland* received, Dodgson published this sequel. Nothing is quite what it seems once Alice journeys through the looking-glass, and Dodgson’s wit is infectious as he explores concepts of mirror imagery, time running backward, and strategies of chess-all wrapped up in the exploits of a spirited young girl who parries with the Red Queen, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, and other unlikely characters. In many ways, this sequel has had an even greater impact on today’s pop culture than the first book.

Read a book you bought because of the cover

The Diabolic. Yes. A million times yes. Technically though, I didn’t buy it as I actually won it. But I was thinking about buying it anyway, so it counts in my eyes.

Nemesis is a Diabolic. Created to protect a galactic Senator’s daughter, Sidonia. There’s no one Nemesis wouldn’t kill to keep her safe. But when the power-mad Emperor summons Sidonia to the galactic court as a hostage, there is only one way for Nemesis to protect Sidonia.

She must become her.

Now one of the galaxy’s most dangerous weapons is masquerading in a world of corruption and Nemesis has to hide her true abilities or risk everything. As the Empire begins to fracture and rebellion looms closer, Nemesis learns that there is something stronger than her deadly force: the one thing she’s been told she doesn’t have – humanity. And, amidst all the danger, action and intrigue, her humanity might be the only thing that can save her, Sidonia and the entire Empire…

Read seven books

What’s the one thing this list is missing? That’s right – zombies! World War Z would make another perfect book as I anticipate it will be fast paced and full of suspense. I originally watched the film for Film Studies in my first year of college (and I loved it, sue me), when I saw it on the bookshelves in a charity store I had to have it.

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. “World War Z” is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Weekly post

I’m going to write a long post (like I did with 24in48 Readathon) where I will have each day’s update and progress. Hopefully it will be posted on the Sunday night if everything goes to plan and we’ll see at how many of these reading challenges I have completed.

Booktube-a-thon 2017 TBR At last-minute I decided I was going to take part in Booktube-a-thon, and so I went into making my TBR list with no idea really of what I was going to read.

[mancitynoise]

The conclusion of Monday night’s thoroughly underwhelming yet incredibly revealing fixture wrapped up another weekend of football.

From the Madrid derby to Charlton’s defiant victory over Leeds United, Football FanCast have had their eyes firmly gripped to the action across England and La Liga.

Our team of regional correspondents at FFC have been busy dissecting the themes to emerge during the weekend fixtures, and they’ve provided a brief insight into the emerging talking points…

Pathetic fallacy was in full swing on Monday night as the relentless rain that has become synonymous with the city of Manchester pelted down at Old Trafford.

The drenched pairing of Unai Emery and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer watched on while their respective teams scrapped, slid and scurried around in a desperate bid to establish anything remotely resembling genuine control of the game.

But both sides were frantic and lacked composure from back to front. Perhaps the only shining light to emerge from proceedings was 18-year-old Bukayo Saka, who was enterprising and fearless in his endeavour to unsettle Man United’s defensive unit.

That he was the only player – with the notable exception of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – to take it upon himself to inject any quality into the game spoke volumes about how deep both sides have plummeted.

Two squashed behemoths who have long been considered top dogs in the Premier League were reduced to nothing more than top-six contenders at the very best, leaving fans of both clubs with a dejected outlook of what the future may hold.

Saka could well be in the star in the making, but both Arsenal and United will need more than a handful of outstanding teenagers to put them on a playing field close to pace-setters Manchester City and Liverpool.

Jack Saville – Assistant Editor 

Everton away has always been a notoriously difficult fixture in the Premier League. Goodison Park is home to a set of passionate supporters who can lift the roof off the place when they have something to shout about.

And on Saturday, their was slim hope that they could secure an impressive result against the champions. Having seen table-toppers Liverpool scrape a 1-0 win at Sheffield United earlier in the afternoon to extend the gap to eight points, Manchester City desperately needed a win. Enter stage left, Riyad Mahrez.

With less than 20 minutes remaining, and the scores locked level at 1-1, the Algerian curled home a sumptuous free-kick to restore City’s lead and hand Pep Guardiola’s side the initiative. Last season, the former Leicester star managed just 14 starts in the Premier League, and was playing second-fiddle to the likes of Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane.

But with the latter now injured, Mahrez appears to be embracing the responsibility of being one of the Citizens’ leading lights. And boy do they need him.

Vijievan Jeevathayalan – Manchester correspondent

Leeds suffered their first away defeat this season after previously looking unbeatable on the road. Coming up against a Charlton side without Lyle Taylor, it may have been a surprise to see the Addicks scrape over the line but it was courtesy of yet more catastrophic defending from a set-piece for the west Yorkshire side.

Conceding from dead-ball scenarios are following the Whites around like a bad smell at the moment. Of the five goals Marcelo Bielsa’s men have conceded in the Championship, three of them have been from those types of situations. Losing Pontus Jansson has been a blow in this regard and that’s regardless of how well the PFA Fans’ Player of the Month Ben White is performing.

If Leeds want to get promoted they’ll have to cut out this aspect of their game.

Matt Dawson – Leeds correspondent

Charlton managed to get back to winning ways with an eye-catching result against promotion hopefuls Leeds on Saturday, a match that saw the Addicks’ woes without Lyle Taylor ease up slightly.

Macauley Bonne, a summer signing from Leyton Orient, netted his first goal for the club after a somewhat fortuitous moment from a personal aspect – Tom Lockyer’s effort bobbled around in the area before going in off Bonne.

The 23-year-old was making his first Championship start of the season – having had to bide his time behind Tomer Hemed, who is yet to score in four appearances and Chuks Aneke, who has just one in seven – and managed to better their recent efforts by finding the net.

Taylor is the club’s talisman and is also not an easy man to replace, but Bonne’s showing should give supporters some encouragement.

Billy Meyers – South London and South Coast correspondent

Aston Villa suffered yet again this weekend. It is the third time this season that they have thrown away a match when leading – the other two coming against Tottenham Hotspur, who won with a late flurry of goals, and against Arsenal, who had ten men for a good 50 minutes.

It’s hard to put a finger on exactly where it has gone wrong this season, but a lack of clear depth in their attack seems to one focal point having scored just seven goals before Saturday’s match. Their club-record signing Wesley failed to even register a shot…

Some may be quick to blame VAR after they chalked off another goal, but the problem is that of Dean Smith’s rather than technology. He signed 12 new players for approximately £144.5m – he deserves time but he should rightly be questioned after just one win this season.

Lewis Blain – Midlands correspondent

The Baggies put the rest of the Championship on notice ahead of a top-of-table clash with Leeds United on Tuesday night.

Slaven Bilic’s boys made it a ninth straight game without defeat, which in turn saw them rise to the league’s summit by the end of play on Saturday.

Surprisingly, their 2-0 victory over QPR was their first clean sheet of the season and that will be something they’ll be looking to build upon as Sir Alex Ferguson once said: ‘attack wins you games, defence wins you titles.’

The scary prospect is that the defence have only just managed that accolade for the first time while the formerly prolific Championship striker Charlie Austin is yet to bag his first league goal – they should only get better from here.

Lewis Blain – Midlands correspondent

Tottenham Hotspur’s decision to sell Kieran Trippier looked to have been somewhat vindicated following Serge Aurier’s brilliant display against Crystal Palace at the beginning of September, in which he assisted one and saw another of his crosses diverted into his own net by Patrick van Aanholt.

It is unclear whether Spurs wanted to keep the Ivory Coast international after he hinted that they did, or whether they had to do that because they couldn’t find a replacement for the former Paris Saint-Germain player before the summer window slammed shut.

Anyhow, his recklessness with two quick-fire first-half bookings against Southampton on Saturday could easily have cost his side, and just showed again how much of a liability the 26-year-old can be.

Meanwhile, England international Trippier continues to be praised for how he is adapting to life in Spain with Atletico Madrid.

Given the lack of quality in depth Tottenham have at right-back now, Mauricio Pochettino may have peaked too soon by moving the 29-year-old on in the summer.

James Beavis – Editor

The Joe Gomez vs Joel Matip debate raged all summer, as Liverpool fans found it almost impossible to decide which player they would rather have partnering Virgil van Dijk.

Gomez stole the show at the beginning of last season, but lost his place after picking up an injury at Burnley, with Matip proving undroppable in the run to the Champions League final.

This weekend’s win at Bramall Lane however felt like a true statement performance from the Cameroonian, following on from his man of the match display at Stamford Bridge last week.

In a game where the Reds were struggling to create, the 28 year-old shouldered the responsibility and forced the issue, carrying the ball forward and searching for incisive passes to the front three, ignoring the easier options that would simply recycle possession and make life easy for Sheffield United.

It’s one thing to be defensively sound in a difficult atmosphere, but Matip looks confident, assured and now the unquestionable first-choice alongside van Dijk.

Ben Goodwin – Editor

While the week before the underdogs had their time in the sun, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid have taken the spotlight now. Of course, the main event of the weekend was held in the capital as Diego Simeone’s men welcomed Zinedine Zidane’s troops to the Wanda Metropolitano stadium.

Even though the game had its moments, the night ended in a goalless draw and the giants sharing the spoils of war. Real Madrid thus retain their top spot in La Liga and have put their third consecutive clean sheet in the books. But that draw also benefited Barcelona, in particular.

After weeks of trying and failing, the Catalans finally recorded a clean sheet of their own and managed to tally a victory on the road for the first time this season.

And with both of their other direct rivals dropping points in the Madrid derby, Blaugrana are knocking on the upper table’s doors quite loudly.

Domagoj Kostanjsak – La Liga correspondent

Chelsea finally grabbed their first home league win and first clean sheet of the season against Brighton on Saturday.

It was exactly what Frank Lampard and his players needed. After a mixed start to the campaign, the Blues finally seem to be settling, and they have now won their past two matches in all competitions.

Not only that, but Lampard handled the penalty situation at the club particularly well in another boost for his young career. It had appeared that Ross Barkley was the team’s first-choice spot-kick taker, even despite his penalty miss against Valencia, but following Jorginho’s strike from 12 yards against the Seagulls, the former Derby County boss confirmed that the Italy international will now take the responsibility.

Lampard has sorted the situation out with the minimum bother or drama, and he has ended up taking the best decision for his team. It is proof of his credentials, and shows that he is able to manage a potentially tricky situation very easily. It puts Chelsea in good stead for the rest of what will likely be a gruelling campaign.

Jon Radcliffe – London correspondent

[batenchantingcollectorsong]

Theresa May has given her strongest signal yet that Britain would support President Donald Trump in military action against the Syrian regime as the two leaders resolved “not to allow the use of chemical weapons to continue”. The Prime Minister spoke to both Mr Trump and the French President Emmanuel Macron by telephone during which all three agreed that President Bashar al-Assad had shown “total disregard” for international laws against the use of such weapons. A Trump official upped the diplomatic tension by describing the chemical attack on Douma, Syria, as “genocide” and saying a military response was “appropriate”. Mr Macron said the three countries would decide “within days” how to respond and discussed the possibility of hitting Syria’s “chemical capacities”. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said: “All options are on the table.” It came as Russia used its veto power at the UN Security Council on Tuesday evening against a US resolution to create new expert body to determine responsibility for Syria chemical weapons attacks, a move expected to increase the likelihood of US military intervention. Russia urged the US to avoid taking military action, warning Washington that it will "bear responsibility" for any "illegal military adventure" it carries out. Video: Russia uses veto power at UN Russian UN Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said Washington's decision to put forward its resolution could be a prelude to a Western strike on Syria. "I would once again ask you, once again beseech you, to refrain from the plans that you’re currently developing for Syria," he said after the council failed to approve a third draft resolution on chemical weapons attacks in Syria. He added: "If you took the decision to carry out an illegal military adventure, and we do hope that you will come to your senses, well then you will have to bear responsibility for it." Russian Ambassador to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya, left, and United States Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley shake hands before the Security Council meeting Credit: Julie Jacobson /AP Whitehall sources suggest Mrs May would prefer to have the backing of Parliament in any decision to join a military response against Syria, but with both Mr Trump and Mr Macron eager to strike swiftly, that option is unlikely to be open to the Prime Minister. The Telegraph has learnt that no plans have been put in place to recall MPs before Monday, when they will return after the Easter recess, suggesting Mrs May has resigned herself to taking the decision in conjunction with her Cabinet, rather than seeking the support of the Commons. Downing Street issued a more cautious statement than the White House, in which Number 10 said that the chemical attack “if confirmed” would represent fresh evidence of Assad’s “appalling cruelty”. The White House’s version of the conversation between Mrs May and Mr Trump contained no such caveat, saying simply that “both leaders condemned Syrian President Assad’s vicious disregard for human life”. Decisions on deploying the Armed Forces are covered by Royal prerogative, meaning there is no legal requirement for Mrs May to seek the permission of Parliament to take part in air strikes. Analysis: What is the future for Syria? A precedent has in recent years been established for giving Parliament a vote on military interventions, but Mrs May is aware that David Cameron suffered an embarrassing defeat over military action in Syria in 2013. Boris Johnson is among those who believes there is no need for a vote, while Tom Tugendhat, Tory chairman of the foreign affairs committee, said there was a “clear case for action”. Tony Blair, the former prime minister who set a precedent in 2003 for Parliament having a vote on military action abroad, said there was no need for a vote in the case of air strikes, rather than using ground forces. But Julian Lewis, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence select committee, said that while Governments might have to act first and seek MPs’ approval later if the UK was under attack, a strike on another country was another matter, and Tory MP Bob Seely said the “right to debate should rest with Parliament”. Syria chemical weapons More than 40 MPs from opposition parties signed a motion calling for a vote on military action and Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, called for a political solution in Syria rather than “megaphone diplomacy across the floor of the UN Security Council” between the US and Russia. Mrs May chaired a meeting of the National Security Council, which includes the heads of Britain’s intelligence agencies, the Armed Forces and senior ministers, but Downing Street refused to discuss what it had decided. A team of inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is on its way to Douma and Mrs May said: “Obviously we are working urgently with our allies and partners to assess what has happened on the ground. Douma chemical attack "If this is the responsibility of Assad's regime in Syria then it's yet another example of the brutality and brazen disregard for their people that they show.” However President Trump appears to be in no mood to wait for the inspectors’ findings, having said on Monday that he would decide within 48 hours how to respond. On Tuesday he cancelled a planned trip to Latin America in order to prepare to US response to the chemical attack. Mr Trump is under growing pressure from Republican senators to follow through his tough rhetoric over the Syrian chemical attack with a military response. Lindsay Graham, the Republican senator for South Carolina who regularly plays golf with Mr Trump, said that Mr Assad himself should be a target in any air strikes. Mr Graham said that if Mr Trump failed to launch an attack it would be “the biggest mistake of his presidency”, leaving America looking “unreliable in the eyes of our allies”. Video: Trump's reaction to Syria attack Kay Hutchison, US Permanent Representative to Nato, said: “We would call on Russia to do something. They are propping up Assad. They are helping him. They should do something to stop this kind of genocide. I think a military response is appropriate.” Asked how Assad’s use of chemical weapons could be stopped, she said: “I think we do everything we can with the tools we have. I believe a military response, taking out perhaps some of the places where perhaps these missions are taking place, with the bases from which they are flying to drop chemical weapons, I think that is an appropriate response. “The President is talking to other allies, I hope they will come to an agreement on a concerted effort.” Syria chemical attack | Read more A Downing Street spokesman said of Mrs May’s calls with President Trump and President Macron: “They agreed that reports of a chemical weapons attack in Syria were utterly reprehensible and if confirmed, represented further evidence of the Assad regime’s appalling cruelty against its own people and total disregard for its legal obligations not to use these weapons. “They agreed that the international community needed to respond to uphold the worldwide prohibition on the use of chemical weapons. “They agreed they would continue working closely together and with international partners to ensure that those responsible were held to account.” Mr Johnson criticised Russia after it vetoed an US-drafted resolution at the United Nations to create a new body to determine responsibility for the suspected Syria chemical weapons attack. The Foreign Secretary described the move as "hugely disappointing" and accused Russia of "holding the Syrian people to political ransom". Front Bench promotion - end of article

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[everettwilkinson]

TRUMP hosting Dems at the W.H. for tax reform dinner — ALEXANDER, PORTMAN and SHAHEEN break bread — Russia probe: loyalty test for Trump staffers — KATY TUR’s new book is out — B'DAY: Matt Lewis

THE NEXT TIME YOU HEAR SOMETHING ABOUT URGENCY IN WASHINGTON, remember this: the House comes in tonight at 6:30 p.m., and is gone by noon on Thursday. The week was cut short by Hurricane Irma, but still …

L.A. TIMES MEXICO BUREAU CHIEF KATE LINTHICUM: (@katelinthicum): “After a devastating earthquake and hurricane (and after Trump failed to send condolences), Mexico today rescinded its offer of aid to the US”.

Story Continued Below

Good Tuesday morning. SPOTTED: Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) dining at Tadich Grill on Pennsylvania Avenue Monday night. Could there be a health-care deal in the offing?

BURGESS EVERETT — “Trump, continuing courting Democrats, will host dinner on tax reform”: “Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana have been invited and are expected to attend, aides said. GOP Sens. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and John Thune of South Dakota are among the Republican attendees. … The three moderate Democrats are all up for reelection next year in states Trump won handily in 2016. They have also been closer to the president than other congressional Democrats. Each declined to join a letter with party leaders outlining conditions on tax reform and all three supported Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch earlier this year.” http://politi.co/2xhae7p

— THE REALITY: Democrats have been shut out of the tax reform process. The Big Six is made up of only Republicans. Republicans have designed a legislative process that only requires Republican support — reconciliation. When asked last week if Democrats would go along, Speaker Paul Ryan said, “I hope Democrats join us on tax reform. I think that’s fantastic if they do. We’re going to go the path we’ve been planning on tax reform.” LET’S BE REAL: Do you really think Donnelly, Manchin and Heitkamp’s votes can be bought with some chicken? By the way, we heard this dinner was originally slated to be only Democrats.

AND, REMEMBER: Republicans have not yet passed a budget — a prerequisite for tax reform. There’s talk they’ll take it up in the House in the last week of September, but the support is not nearly firm enough yet. There’s a chance there is no final action on the budget until October or November. Without a budget, tax reform talks are just that, talk. STEVEN MNUCHIN and GARY COHN are meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and the Republicans on the Budget Committee today.

— More from Colin Wilhelm and Aaron Lorenzo on the lack of reform details http://politi.co/2eSWXHN

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO MIDDLE EAST PEACE? — “Some Trump Lawyers Wanted Kushner Out,” by WSJ’s Peter Nicholas, Rebecca Ballhaus and Erica Orden: “Some of President Donald Trump’s lawyers earlier this summer concluded that Jared Kushner should step down as senior White House adviser because of possible legal complications related to a probe of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential election and aired concerns about him to the president, people familiar with the matter said. Among their concerns was that Mr. Kushner was the adviser closest to the president who had the most dealings with Russian officials and businesspeople during the campaign and transition, some of which are currently being examined by federal investigators and congressional oversight panels. Mr. Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and confidant, has said he had four such meetings or interactions.” http://on.wsj.com/2y1yloz

— FLASHBACK: July 12, Axios’s Jonathan Swan: “Scoop: Trump lawyers want wall between Kushner, president” http://bit.ly/2y1HUE2

— “Russia probes pose loyalty test for Team Trump,” by Darren Samuelsohn: “Lawyers representing Donald Trump’s current and former aides are giving their clients one simple piece of advice: don’t lie to protect the president. As special counsel Robert Mueller and congressional investigators prepare to question high-ranking aides – including Hope Hicks, Reince Priebus and Sean Spicer – in the coming weeks, Trump’s long history of demanding his employees’ complete loyalty are being put to the test.

“But Trump stalwarts know the president is closely following the media coverage of the Russia case – and the last thing they want is to be deemed a turncoat whose answers end up becoming further fuel for investigators. Several of the lawyers representing current and former aides told POLITICO they’re actively warning their clients that any bonds connecting them to Trump won’t protect them from criminal charges if federal prosecutors can nail them for perjury, making false statements or obstruction of justice.” http://politi.co/2h0Ab1b

HURRICANE UPDATES …

–“Battered Florida tries to assess scope of Irma’s destruction,” by AP’s Jennifer Kay in Miami and Doug Ferguson in Jacksonville: “Battered Florida tries to assess scope of Irma’s destruction,” by Aid rushed in to hurricane-scarred Florida early Tuesday, residents began to dig out, and officials slowly pieced together the scope of Irma’s vicious path of destruction across the peninsula. … [T]he fate of the Florida Keys … remained largely a question mark. … A Navy aircraft carrier was due to anchor off Key West to help in search-and-rescue efforts. Drinking water supplies in the Keys were cut off, fuel was running low and all three hospitals in the island chain were shuttered. A stunning 13 million people, two-thirds of the third-largest state’s residents, plodded on in the tropical heat without electricity, and nearly every corner of Florida felt Irma’s power.” http://bit.ly/2feMNSe

— “Hurricane Irma’s impact, from the air: Florida Keys a bit battered but mostly spared,” by WaPo’s Joel Achenbach “above the Florida Keys”: “The Conch Republic is still here, if dark, dirty, trashed, and weeks away from being what it was before Hurricane Irma blew in. It wasn’t devastated because, for some reason, this massive storm punched below its weight. This was a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale as it rolled into the Keys. It brought a fair bit of destruction, and tossed boats onto lawns. It turned towns raggedy. But a tour of Southwest Florida and the Florida Keys on Monday afternoon by air suggests that this quirky storm spared the state the kind of direct, punishing violence that residents had dreaded.

“A Coast Guard C-130 transport plane carrying two U.S. senators, a congressman and a handful of journalists left from the Coast Guard air station in Opa-Locka, just north of Miami, for the two-hour tour of hurricane damage. At 2,000 feet, the journey offered no chance for a granular diagnosis, but the big picture was clear: Southwest Florida and its huge population of retirees emerged relatively unscathed. The storm severely battered some of the small and fragile Keys. Key West itself is generally intact, though without power, a water supply and a functional sewage system.” http://wapo.st/2wUekTh

— NYT’S ALEX BURNS ANCHORS THE N.Y.T. LEAD ALL: “Damp, Dark and Disarrayed, Florida Starts Coping With Irma’s Aftermath” (with reporting by Trevor Aaronsen from St. Petersburg, Fla.; Jess Bidgood from Tampa, Fla.; Audra Burch and Jonah Bromwich from Orlando, Fla.; Richard Fausset from Isle of Palms, S.C.; Sheri Fink from Houston; Henry Fountain from Naples, Fla.; Joseph B. Treaster from Miami; and Caitlin Dickinson, Christine Hauser, Hannah Fairfield, Daniel Victor and Mary Williams Walsh from New York). http://nyti.ms/2wWTDUr

DATA DU JOUR – Over 24 hours on Sunday, Snapchat received almost 250,000 submissions from Snapchatters to their Irma news story, which is two and a half times more than what the company saw during Harvey last week.

****** A message from CTIA and America’s wireless industry: The global race to deploy 5G wireless is on—and America needs to win. Government action on spectrum and infrastructure policy will allow U.S. wireless companies to invest $275 billion, create more than 3 million jobs, and add $500 billion to the economy, according to Accenture. Learn more at CTIA.org. ******

FOR THE WHITE HOUSE’S TO DO LIST — “After nine months, federal offices are still waiting to hang Trump’s picture,” by WaPo’s Lisa Rein: “In the lobby of every federal building, just inside security turnstiles and before the elevator banks, a framed photograph of the president has always hung on the wall. Not so anymore. Nine months after Donald Trump’s inauguration, pictures of the president and Vice President Pence are missing from thousands of federal courthouses, laboratories, military installations, ports of entry, office suites and hallways, and from U.S. embassies abroad. …

“Federal agencies ordered photographs of their new commander in chief months ago. But they say they are still waiting for the Government Publishing Office, the printer of official portraits, to send them for distribution by the General Services Administration, which owns or leases 9,600 federal buildings across the country. The Government Publishing Office says it has yet to receive the images from the White House. And the White House says the president and vice president have not yet decided when they will sit for the type of high-quality official photographs usually churned out by the modern GPO, continuing a portrait tradition that began after the Civil War.” http://wapo.st/2vQrKfd

THE LATEST ON NORTH KOREA …

— “Oil will keep flowing, but UN sanctions hit Pyongyang hard,” by AP’s Eric Talmadge in Tokyo: “North Korea will be feeling the pain of new United Nations sanctions targeting some of its biggest remaining foreign revenue streams. But the Security Council eased off the biggest target of all: the oil the North needs to stay alive, and to fuel its million-man military.

“Though the United States had proposed a complete ban, the sanctions by the U.N. Security Council to punish North Korea for its sixth nuclear test cap Pyongyang’s annual imports of crude oil at the same level they have been for the past 12 months: an estimated 4 million barrels. Exports of North Korean textiles are prohibited, and other nations are barred from authorizing new work permits for North Korean workers, putting a squeeze on two key sources of hard currency.” http://bit.ly/2gZalyz

— “How Russia quietly undercuts sanctions intended to stop North Korea’s nuclear program,” by WaPo’s Joby Warrick: “Russian smugglers are scurrying to the aid of North Korea with shipments of petroleum and other vital supplies that could help that country weather harsh new economic sanctions, U.S. officials say in an assessment that casts further doubt on whether financial measures alone can force dictator Kim Jong Un to abandon his nuclear weapons program. The spike in Russian exports is occurring as China — by far North Korea’s biggest trading partner — is beginning to dramatically ratchet up the economic pressure on its troublesome neighbor in the face of provocative behavior such as last week’s test of a powerful nuclear bomb.

“Official documents and interviews point to a rise in tanker traffic this spring between North Korean ports and Vladivostok, the far-eastern Russian city near the small land border shared by the two countries. With international trade with North Korea increasingly constrained by U.N. sanctions, Russian entrepreneurs are seizing opportunities to make a quick profit, setting up a maze of front companies to conceal -transactions and launder payments, according to U.S. law enforcement officials who monitor sanction-busting activity.” http://wapo.st/2vReWp4

— BREAKING THIS MORNING: BOEHNER TO TRUMP: DON’T WITHDRAW FROM SOUTH KOREAN TRADE DEAL: Former Speaker John Boehner — a staunch proponent of free trade — is urging Trump to bolster ties with Seoul: “For our strategic endeavors to succeed, however, the United States must strengthen — not weaken — its already vital economic relationships in the Pacific, from South Korea and Japan to Australia and China. We cannot isolate the regime in Pyongyang by isolating ourselves.

“Withdrawing from the Korea-U.S. Trade Agreement … would undermine America’s strategic objectives in the Pacific region and undercut our own workers and employers, who continue to depend on the free flow of goods and services between the US and the Republic of Korea. Instead of pulling back from our current engagements and commitments, we must renew and strengthen our relationships in the Pacific region, not just with South Korea, but with China, as reflected in the joint commitment to economic cooperation that was expressed by President Trump and President Xi in April; and with Australia and Japan, our long-standing allies, whose alliances and friendships with America are now more important than ever.” PDF of full statement http://politi.co/2wWphBn

TRUMP’S BUDGET — “Congress Rejects Trump Proposals to Cut Health Research Funds,” by NYT’s Robert Pear: “Back in March, when President Trump released the first draft of his budget proposal for the coming fiscal year, he asked lawmakers for deep cuts to one of their favorite institutions, the National Institutes of Health — part of a broad reordering of priorities, away from science and social spending, toward defense and border security. Six months later, Congress has not only rejected the president’s N.I.H. proposal; lawmakers from both parties have joined forces to increase spending on biomedical research — and have bragged about it.

“The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a bipartisan bill last week providing $36.1 billion for the health institutes in the fiscal year that starts next month. Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri and the chairman of the subcommittee responsible for health spending, said it was the third consecutive year in which he had secured a $2 billion increase for the agency, amounting to an increase of about 20 percent over three years. The audience erupted in applause when Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, announced the increase at a hearing of a separate Senate committee.” http://nyti.ms/2eSBRJL

KELLY VS. GUTIERREZ — “John Kelly fires back at Democrat who called him ‘disgrace to the uniform,'” by FoxNews.com’s Christopher Wallace: “Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez had leveled the criticism at Kelly over his support of President Trump’s decision to end a controversial program that shielded young illegal immigrants from deportation. In an email to Fox News late Sunday, Kelly responded by saying Congress did ‘nothing’ to help so-called Dreamers when they had the chance. ‘As far as the congressman and other irresponsible members of congress are concerned, they have the luxury of saying what they want as they do nothing and have almost no responsibility,’ Kelly said. ‘They can call people liars but it would be inappropriate for me to say the same thing back at them. As my blessed mother used to say “empty barrels make the most noise.”’ http://fxn.ws/2wmb6DC

TRUMP’S TUESDAY — THE PRESIDENT is meeting with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. He meets with H.R. McMaster before hosting Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak at the White House. Afterwards, he is huddling with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. He’s then hosting senators at the White House.

ANNA’S POSTCARD FROM LONDON — POLITICO LONDON’S TOM MCTAGUE shares with us two fun tidbits from his upcoming book lifting the lid on Prime Minister Theresa May’s disastrous decision to call a snap general election “Betting the House: The Inside Story of the 2017 Election” with Tim Ross. Interesting nuggets for this side of the pond — former President Barack Obama called conservative campaign headquarters (the same team former aide Jim Messina worked for) on the day of the election to let them know someone from the Labour’s campaign told him the party was going to lose 20 to 30 seats. …

ON THERESA MAY: The two write that an aide briefing the prime minister before a Sunday show appearance in January was concerned May would get asked about President Donald Trump. “As she waited to collect the PM from her Sunday morning church service, May’s spin chief knew she would have to find a way to prepare her boss. She decided she would just have to say it. ‘Prime Minister, it’s possible she will be asked what you think of Donald Trump saying he can grab women by the p****.’ In the front seat of the Government Jaguar, the police protection officer snorted. May was told not to grimace because the camera was likely to zoom in on her face in a close-up. In the end, May remained perfectly composed, waiting, expressionless, before answering: ‘I think that’s unacceptable.’ Pre-order the book on Amazon http://amzn.to/2xWN3MV

THE JUICE …

— KATY TUR’S BOOK IS OUT TODAY … WAPO’S CARLOS LOZADA – “Katy Tur’s insider memoir chronicles the Trump campaign — and the indignities of reporting while female” http://wapo.st/2jlqfUm … NYT REVIEW, by Jill Abramson: “A Memoir by Donald Trump’s Favorite Target” http://nyti.ms/2vR1fX8 … BUY THE BOOK: http://amzn.to/2gXyRQA … Ranked No. 68 on Amazon as of this morning … MARK YOUR CALENDARS for Katy’s event with Jake at Politics and Prose Sept. 22 http://bit.ly/2wWffjD

— MORNING JOE IS 10! — “Morning Joe” is starting a 10-year anniversary Twitter sweepstakes this morning ahead of the anniversary show on Sept. 19. A pic of the prizes that fans can win http://bit.ly/2h0y2mv … More info http://on.msnbc.com/2xtKk1p

— American Action Network is launching a $2.5 million TV ad campaign on tax reform targeting 23 congressional districts nationwide, including those in leadership, on key committees, in the Freedom Caucus and holding competitive seats. List of districts http://bit.ly/2eS79Aq … The ad http://bit.ly/2wXgUFG

FOR YOUR RADAR — THREE NEW IPHONES — “What to Expect at Apple’s Biggest Event in Years: Look for the iPhone X, iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and a bunch of other iProducts on Tuesday,” by Bloomberg’s Mark Gorman. https://bloom.bg/2wXChrQ

DESSERT — HAPPENING FRIDAY — Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a noted harmonica player, and Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), a multi-instrumentalist, are joining members of the Buck Mountain Band to perform as “The Amateurs” at the 17th Annual Bristol Rhythm and Roots Reunion on Friday. 15-second video of Alexander (on the piano) and Kaine practicing http://bit.ly/2jlguWj

PHOTO DU JOUR: A man with flowers stands at the edge of a waterfall pool at Ground Zero during a ceremony on the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York. | Seth Wenig/AP Photo

AUSTIN WRIGHT: “Kaine hits the trail again, battling 2016 ghosts on his way”: “An aide to Tim Kaine enters a diner in Charlottesville and informs the host that the Virginia senator is about to walk in. The host smiles and cracks a joke: ‘You mean the guy who lost to Trump?’ Ten months after the presidential election, Kaine is still trying to shed the stigma of being the vice presidential candidate on the ticket that came up short against Donald Trump, a man so reviled by Kaine’s fellow Democrats that many of them can’t bear the thought of him serving out his full four-year presidential term. The senator is back on the campaign trail — stumping in Virginia for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ralph Northam and preparing for his own 2018 reelection campaign.

“But even as Kaine tries to keep his focus on the next election, there are constant reminders of the last one — the only election he’s ever lost. Trump, it seems, looms over everything. Kaine isn’t interested in relitigating one of the biggest electoral upsets in U.S. history. He looks visibly uncomfortable talking about the election and cautions against ‘overinterpreting’ what went wrong.” http://politi.co/2y1mR4B

HRC: GOING NOWHERE — NPR’S TAMARA KEITH interviews HILLARY CLINTON: When asked about critics who believe she should disappear from public life, CLINTON: “Well, they’re going to be disappointed because I think it’s important for people with my experience and my insight into what went on in the campaign but more generally about our country to speak out. We need more voices, not fewer voices.” Clinton chronicler Jonathan Allen in POLITICO magazine reviews her new book http://politi.co/2vPKsUf

STATE OF THE DARK ARTS — “Russia Used Facebook Events to Organize Anti-Immigrant Rallies on U.S. Soil,” by Ben Collins, Kevin Poulsen, and Spencer Ackerman in The Daily Beast: “Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the U.S., including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho, The Daily Beast has learned. A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Beast that the social-media giant ‘shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.’ … The Facebook events—one of which echoed Islamophobic conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump media outlets—are the first indication that the Kremlin’s attempts to shape America’s political discourse moved beyond fake news and led unwitting Americans into specific real-life action.” http://thebea.st/2w42y94

ISAAC DOVERE interviews REP. WILL HURD (R-TEXAS) in the latest “OFF MESSAGE” podcast: “To House Republicans who don’t like the funding deal President Donald Trump made with Democrats, Rep. Will Hurd has a message: Get yourself together, or quit complaining. Otherwise, get used to the feeling of watching the Republican president brag about how much he’s getting done with Chuck and Nancy. ‘If we’re not in agreement on what the topic is going to be or what we want to achieve, then guess what? You’re probably not going in with a strong hand,’ Hurd told Dovere. ‘I think rank-and-file members need to understand that there is a team aspect to politics.’ On getting rid of the debt ceiling: ‘you give that up, you’re basically giving up your responsibility.’” http://politi.co/2vQPjVr … Listen to the full podcast http://apple.co/2h1efTG

ROSIE GRAY: “An Ousted NSC Official Is Joining the House Intelligence Committee Staff”: “A former National Security Council official, forced out by National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster in July, is set to join the staff of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, according to two sources familiar with his move. Derek Harvey, who was the NSC’s senior director for the Middle East and had been appointed by the former National-Security Adviser Michael Flynn, was among several officials who were ousted this summer.” http://theatln.tc/2xWNYNq

****** A message from CTIA and America’s wireless industry: Tomorrow’s 5G networks will create 3 million jobs, add $500 billion to the economy, and fuel innovation and entrepreneurialism across every sector. If policymakers move quickly to release more spectrum and modernize infrastructure rules, the wireless industry stands ready to invest $275 billion to build these next-gen networks, according to Accenture. This will drive breakthrough advancements in remote health care, connected vehicles, energy, education and beyond—making our lives better and safer. But the race to deploy 5G wireless networks is underway—and we’re at a critical moment. The EU, China, Japan, South Korea and others are doing everything they can to win. If policymakers act now, the U.S. can continue our global leadership in wireless. Learn how at CTIA.org. ******

GOOD LIFE LESSON — “An Exit Interview With Richard Posner, Judicial Provocateur,” by NYT’s Adam Liptak: “Judge Richard A. Posner, whose restless intellect, withering candor and superhuman output made him among the most provocative figures in American law in the last half-century, recently announced his retirement. The move was abrupt, and I called him up to ask what had prompted it. ‘About six months ago,’ Judge Posner said, ‘I awoke from a slumber of 35 years.’ He had suddenly realized, he said, that people without lawyers are mistreated by the legal system, and he wanted to do something about it.

“For starters, as is his habit when his interest alights on a fresh topic, he wrote a book on the subject. Judge Posner blurts out books at a comic pace. ‘I realized, in the course of that, that I had really lost interest in the cases,’ he said. ‘And then I started asking myself, what kind of person wants to have the same identical job for 35 years? And I decided 35 years is plenty. It’s too much. Why didn’t I quit 10 years ago? I’ve written 3,300-plus judicial opinions.’” http://nyti.ms/2wU2vfX

MEDIAWATCH — “Laura Ingraham set to take over Fox News’ 10 p.m. slot,” by CNN’s Brian Stelter and Hadas Gold: “Ingraham is expected to take over the 10 p.m. hour on Fox News, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity. While there may be one or two final details to negotiate, Ingraham has been telling friends that the deal is essentially done … Her new show will be part of a broader change to the network’s top-rated prime time lineup. Sean Hannity’s show, currently at 10 p.m., will move one hour earlier to 9 p.m. … And ‘The Five,’ a talk show originally named for its 5 p.m. time slot, will shift from 9 p.m. back to its namesake hour.” http://cnnmon.ie/2wW1h15

— FIRST IN PLAYBOOK — From an FT memo going out today: “Pilita Clark is appointed business columnist and associate editor. … Lyndsey Jones is appointed an executive editor. … Robin Kwong is appointed head of digital delivery under editorial director Robert Shrimsley. … Paul Murphy is appointed investigations editor.”

— KIMBERLY DOZIER has been named executive editor of The Cipher Brief. She previously was a reporter for the AP, CBS News and The Daily Beast.

— SCOTT WILSON will cover “the West and especially California” for The Washington Post. He had been national editor (h/t Morning Media).

— TAYLOR ANTRIM has been named executive editor of Vogue. He has spent five years at Vogue, first as senior editor and then articles editor.

SPOTTED: Gina McCarthy last night at Dirty Habit bar near the EPA, having a relaxed drink. She had a rolling backpack with her. … Carly Fiorina last night at Charlie Palmer … Justice Stephen Breyer in coach on American’s 5:30 p.m. shuttle from DCA to Boston … Eric Cantor at District Commons last night entertaining two people — pic http://bit.ly/2wUoB1S … former Ariz. Sen. Jon Kyl in seat 23C of an American Airlines flight from PHX to DCA.

OUT AND ABOUT – Pool report: “The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute kicked off their annual conference with a reception featuring Google Arts & Culture’s new Latino Cultures in the U.S. — the largest ever online collection of artifacts and stories dedicated to U.S. Latino history and culture. Guests entered through a hologram wall of the mural ‘Mundos de Mestizaje’ by Frederico Vigil and took virtual field trips in the virtual reality lounges.”

SPOTTED: Reps. Joaquín Castro (D-Texas), Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.), Jimmy Gómez (D-Calif.) and Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), Mayor Muriel Bowser, Henry Muñoz and Kyle Ferari, Domenika Lynch, Susan Molinari, Caroline Atkinson, Daniel Alegre, Laura Marquez, Stephanie Valencia and Katherine Vargas.

TRANSITIONS — Tina Tchen is returning to Chicago to lead the Chicago office of the law firm Buckley Sandler http://trib.in/2wXdMel … Adam Sharon has joined the Harbour Group as a senior vice president. He previously worked at Prime Strategies, and was the former Democratic communications director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. … Adrienne Kimmell is joining NARAL Pro-Choice America as the VP of strategic research. She previously was executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation and Barbara Lee political office. …

… Farrin Jay has joined the Snap Inc communications team. She was previously at NBC News, where she did PR for the “Today Show.” … Chris Simone started this week as a legislative affairs specialist on contract to FEMA for Klett Consulting Group. He was previously a researcher at America Rising Squared.

K STREET FILES — Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas is launching a new podcast, “14th & G,” which is “designed to deliver quick, easily digestible insights into the business of Washington”. The podcast is hosted by Mehlman Castagnetti principal CR Wooters. http://politi.co/2xhvx8T

BIRTHWEEK (was yesterday): hedge fund manager David Tepper … Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Matt Lewis, senior columnist at The Daily Beast and CNN political commentator. A fun fact about Matt: “My mom had twelve siblings; my dad had nine. They must have gotten tired of all the noise, because I’m an only child.” Read his Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2wWcfUh

BIRTHDAYS: “Face the Nation” senior producer Jill Jackson (hat tip: Caitlin Conant) … Andrea DiVito of “Fox News Sunday” … GQ’s Ben Schreckinger … Politico’s Walt Houseknecht … Don Fowler, former DNC chairman … former Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) … former Waxman staffer Greg Wetstone … Dave Willett … Johnny Enterline of LCV … Natalie Raps, director at SKDKnickerbocker … Andrew Whalen … Rep. Evan Jenkins (R-W.Va.) … Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (R-Ind.) … Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback … Ed Moy, former director of the U.S. Mint … Maria Harris Roumel … Desiree Sayle … Jill Alper (h/t Jon Haber) … Max D’Onofrio, press secretary for Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.) … Emily Lampkin … Melissa Schulman, SVP of gov’t and public affairs at CVS Health … former Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) (h/t Ryan Williams) … Brett Thompson, partner at Banner Public Affairs and CEO of Pork Barrel BBQ … NYT’s Kim Severson … John Lippman, deputy director for programming at VOA … Alex Botting of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce … Pam Stevens …

… Courtney O’Donnell, head of external affairs at Airbnb … Ethan Klapper, global social media editor at HuffPost … Peter Robbio, SVP at CRC … Fox News alum Jim Angle … Fred Schuster … Jason Stverak … James Faeh … Edelman’s Gavin Mathis … Jason O’Malley … Amazon’s Allison Marshall … Joseph Voss … Anne Johnson … lawyer Matthew Wald … Erin Hood … Russel Wade … Chip Ward is 64. He’s a big Terp fan and “thrilled that Maryland is off to a 2-0 start. His dad, Bob Ward, was consensus all-American football player there in early 50s” (h/t Jon) … Bill Hayden … Alison Harden Siciliano … Allison Ramiller … Nate Yohannes, director of business development at Microsoft and an Obama alum (h/t Sophia Kim) … Tom Vilmain … Alexandra Simbana (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

****** A message from CTIA and America’s wireless industry: We need new rules for new 5G networks. New policies that will allow the U.S. to win the race to 5G and enable breakthrough advancements in healthcare, transportation, energy and more. First, a pipeline of low-, mid-, and high-band spectrum will help meet today’s mobile needs and enable the 5G networks of tomorrow. Second, every level of government must modernize their rules for the building of small cell wireless infrastructure. Third, permanent and common sense federal regulations for interstate services like mobile broadband will preserve an open internet and protect consumer privacy while promoting innovation and investment. Finally, America’s tax structure must be updated to spur billions of dollars in new 5G investment. Learn more about how wireless is working to invest in America’s future at CTIA.org. ******

SUBSCRIBE to the Playbook family: POLITICO Playbook http://politi.co/1M75UbX … New York Playbook http://politi.co/1ON8bqW … Florida Playbook http://politi.co/1OypFe9 … New Jersey Playbook http://politi.co/1HLKltF … Massachusetts Playbook http://politi.co/1Nhtq5v … Illinois Playbook http://politi.co/1N7u5sb … California Playbook http://politi.co/2bLvcPl … Brussels Playbook http://politi.co/1FZeLcw … All our political and policy tipsheets http://politi.co/1M75UbX

Original Source link

from CapitalistHQ.com https://capitalisthq.com/trump-hosting-dems-at-the-w-h-for-tax-reform-dinner-alexander-portman-and-shaheen-break-bread-russia-probe-loyalty-test-for-trump-staffers-katy-turs-new-book-is-out-bday/

[junker-town]

6 reasons Week 1 of the NFL season didn't make sense, and 4 reasons it did

The Jaguars and Rams won in commanding fashion. Huh?

The NFL season is finally upon us, and there were plenty of interesting things that happened in Week 1. Some of them were expected, but others weren’t.

Marshawn Lynch is finally back after a year in retirement. He gave us everything we’ve missed about seeing him on the field, and it was refreshing. The Rams also beat the snot out of the Colts, while the Jaguars did the same to the Texans.

If we would have told you the Patriots and Seahawks would be in last place, while the Jaguars, Rams, and Bills would be in first place after Sunday, you would have thought we were out of our minds. Not even Tony Romo could have predicted it. But all of that is true.

In Week 1, there were also major injuries, coaches on the hot seat, and Catch of the Year candidates. Here’s everything you need to know from an action-filled Sunday, the first of many to come in 2017.

How did THAT happen?

Here are six things that happened Sunday that left us in disbelief — but not in the same way as that Cole Beasley catch against the Giants.

1. Nobody took advantage of the relaxed celebration rules!

We’ve spent all offseason looking forward to how players would celebrate big plays in Week 1 knowing that the league has relaxed its rules about it. We were left disappointed. There were no notable celebrations on Sunday.

Worse, the networks didn’t do much to share the few celebrations that did happen.

We saw plenty of thrilling plays, but players just got up and got back to work. No dancing, no grandstanding, no celebrations of any sort. This is a departure even from the preseason. That gave us a Marvin Jones double-dutch celebration as well as the celebration that sits atop our current rankings, Taco Charlton making imaginary tacos for his teammates.

We still have two games on Monday night, so here’s hoping that players from the Saints, Vikings, Chargers, and Broncos have some fun celebrations in the works. That just wasn’t the case on Sunday.

2. The Jaguars, Rams and Bills are 1st place teams

It’s Week 1, so every team that wins a game gets to say they’re undefeated and in first place, and every team that loses is tied for last place.

But only three teams ended Sunday all alone at the top of their respective divisions and they’re far from the usual candidates. The Jacksonville Jaguars and Los Angeles Rams were the only winners from the AFC South and NFC West, respectively.

The Buffalo Bills were the only winner from the AFC East, although the Miami Dolphins haven’t yet had a chance to get a win after the team’s opener against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was postponed until Week 11 due to Hurricane Irma.

Staying on top can be tough, so it might be a short reign for the teams out to an early lead, but enjoy it while you can Jaguars, Rams and Bills fans.

3. The Jaguars convincingly beat the Texans

The Jaguars dominated the game, which was surprising considering all of the bad things we heard about Blake Bortles all week.

The defense was giving the Texans’ offense hell. Not only did Calais Campbell play up to his new contract, but A.J. Bouye and Jalen Ramsey locked down DeAndre Hopkins. The box score might not reflect that, with Hopkins having seven receptions and a touchdown, but it was a long afternoon for Nuk and the Texans — who eventually benched Tom Savage for Deshaun Watson.

In relief, Watson completed 12 of 23 passes for 102 yards with one touchdown and one interception. Watson led the Texans to a touchdown on his first drive, but wasn’t able to make enough magic to complete a comeback effort in the 29-7 loss.

Bill O’Brien has been known to have a quick trigger when it comes to switching it up at quarterback. He did it in 2015 with the Texans and Ryan Mallett and Brian Hoyer. He also did it in 2016, when he pulled Brock Osweiler for Savage. In 2017, he did it half a game into the season.

The Week 2 starter has yet to be decided.

“I’ll think about it a long time tonight and try to continue to work on Cincinnati and see what the best approach is versus them,” O’Brien said Sunday.

4. The Browns look ... well, maybe not good, but closer to good?

The Browns’ season started just about as poorly as it could — a three-and-out that lost 9 yards, then a blocked punt the Steelers fell on in the end zone for a touchdown. From that point forward, Cleveland actually outscored its division rival 18-14, getting major contributions from its young stars in the process.

DeShone Kizer scored a pair of touchdowns (in between getting sacked seven times) and a still-building defense held Le’Veon Bell and James Conner to just 43 rushing yards on Sunday. Second-year wideout Corey Coleman, who missed a big chunk of his rookie season thanks to a broken hand, looked especially valuable, catching five of his six targets and notching a clutch fourth-quarter touchdown in the loss.

5. Andy Dalton might be trying to get Marvin Lewis fired

Marvin Lewis, winner of zero playoff games in his 14+ seasons with the Bengals, has been on the NFL’s coaching hot seat so long his ass must be made of asbestos. 2017 may be his swan song after Sunday’s 20-0 beating at the hands of the Ravens. Andy Dalton suffered through one of his worst games as a pro to start the season. He threw four interceptions, fumbled once, and barely completed more than 50 percent of his passes. Most inexplicably, he threw the ball away on a fourth-and-5 situation, dooming his team to awfulness instead of just mediocrity.

6. The Colts have been kidnapped and replaced by robots who don’t know how to play football

Nobody had high hopes for the Colts without Andrew Luck. That fact didn’t lessen the impact of watching them hit rock bottom in a 46-9 loss to the Rams.

Scott Tolzien started for the Colts, but might as well have been the Rams’ best player. He threw a pair of pick-sixes, and nearly threw a third had it not been for a facemask by Donte Moncrief. It would have given Tolzien a tie for most pick-sixes in a game.

Tolzien was so bad that he was pulled for Jacoby Brissett, a quarterback the Colts traded for eight days before, in the fourth quarter. Brissett helped put together the only scoring drive for the Colts, after going 2-of-3 for 51 yards. The drive was capped off by a Marlon Mack touchdown.

Things didn’t get better for the Colts after the game, when Chuck Pagano said that they got their asses kicked by the 49ers!

That’s quite the ass-whoopin’, the one where you forgot who you even took it from.

Not at all surprising

On the other hand, we’re not going to pretend to be shocked that any of the following happened:

1. Marshawn Lynch was perfect in his return

Aside from stuffing the box score a little more, you couldn’t really ask more of Marshawn Lynch in his first game back from retirement. Lynch finished the game with 18 carries for 76 yards, and one reception for 16 yards. But it was the other things that made it feel like a complete game from Lynch.

Whether it was punishing runs, somersaulting in the air, flipping the bird, or trying to make sure he wasn’t going to get fined for a lack of media time — we got the entire Beast Mode experience.

As Lynch said at his opening presser with his hometown Raiders, “This is actually born and raised and bred pissing in them hallways and running down them alleyways. I really did that, right here and now I get an opportunity to play here.”

He’s going to make the most of it.

2. Tony Romo is a good announcer

As much of a Twitter punching bag Tony Romo was over the course of his NFL career, the general consensus on his broadcasting debut was great.

Romo talked about safety blitzes before the snap, circling it for viewers to see with ease. He explained why certain plays were run, and showed proper enthusiasm when the moment was right.

He was even calling plays before they happened.

CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus was happy with the results. “I was pleasantly surprised, because social media by and large is very negative, for everybody, for all announcers and all networks,” he said. “The fact that it was positive is satisfying for me, but I also take it with a grain of salt.”

Romo’s career obviously didn’t end the way he would have liked, but this is a nice fit for him, and a way to stay near football.

3. A Duane Brown-less Texans O-line was somehow worse than advertised

On Saturday night, No. 3 Clemson held off No. 13 Auburn by sacking quarterback Jarrett Stidham 11 times. The Texans weren’t quite that bad on Sunday, but their performance was a passable impression of that Tigers offensive line.

Tom Savage lasted just one half as the team’s starting quarterback and was sacked six times — or nearly half of his 13 dropbacks. He was replaced by Deshaun Watson after halftime, and the exponentially more mobile rookie wound up getting sacked four more, including one that ended in a possession-ending fumble.

With three-time Pro Bowl left tackle Duane Brown holding out, the Texans offensive line had no structural stability whatsoever. If Houston is going to keep Watson upright, it’s time to give Brown the contract he’s angling for.

4. Tarik Cohen introduced himself to the world

The Bears drafted Cohen in the fourth round of the 2017 NFL draft out of North Carolina A&T. You may not have heard of him prior to Sunday, but Cohen was the MEAC’s all-time leading rusher with over 5,000 yards.

It was this run in the first half that had people glued to their TVs and devices beaming over the rookie.

Cohen finished the game with five carries for 66 yards on the ground, and eight receptions for 47 yards and a touchdown.

After the game, he compared the duo of himself and Jordan Howard to LeBron James and Isaiah Thomas. That’s some high confidence from the rookie.

Significant injuries from Sunday

David Johnson injures his wrist vs. Cardinals, and could miss significant time

Odell Beckham Jr. didn’t play Sunday night with an ankle injury, and the Giants REALLY missed him

Reuben Foster was carted off with an ankle injury, but he should be back “soon”

Kevin White broke his collarbone, and may be out for the season

Allen Robinson will miss the season after tearing his ACL

[aerostory]

Aero: Chapter 1

(Before the story begins I would like to thank my friends and family who have supported me as a writer and helped me to develop my talents and myself as a person. You are all beautiful people and I wish you all the best. This story is close to my heart, as my first that I ever did and was proud of. That is why after so long, Aero Is coming back from the dead, and I am going to make it the story it deserves to be. Without further Ado, let’s begin)

Earth…the only planet in the known exploration of the cosmos that can sustain human life. There was a time when humanity believed that their home, and everything on it, were immortal, that they would live forever. How wrong they were proven. Humanities belief in that would prove to be there downfall. As the forests were chopped down, the ocean drying up, and all the natural resources of the planet dwindled…humanity realized their mistakes. However, many believed once they realized…that it was too late, that the precious symbol of life had faded. So an effort began to leave the earth behind, and colonize a new home. The Twin ships Alpha and Omega were humanities hope, carrying over half of the human population out into the stars…never to be heard from again. Those who stayed were either too poor or unlucky to have boarded the ships, or those who believed the world could be salvaged. Some would say that this was a delusion, that they were perusing a fool’s errand. Well…foolish or not they still managed great feats in that time. None, however, would do what was done by a man known as Gabriel Lewis. Lewis was a renowned ecologist, environmental authority, and inventor. While he was known in the scientific community, his next and greatest invention would inscribe his name into the annals of history. He knew that the damage to the planet was severe, irreversible. No amount of preventative measures could save it, but…there was something that could. If the conditions for the planet to heal were impossible to bring out naturally, he would MAKE them. The result was lovingly named “The Staff of Eden” by Lewis, and he boasted that it would live up to the name-sake. Hooked up to the core of the planet, the staff began to do its work, rearranging both the molten heart of the planet, and the sky above. It took three days, and most of the developed world was consumed by the planet’s natural regrowth, leaving only a few sanctuaries for humanity. However, Lewis did not have long to enjoy the accomplishment, as a disease soon after claimed his life. His work, however, was not in vain. Humanity swore collectively that they would not make the same error twice, that only those cities that still stood would ever exist. However, to begin reconstruction, humanity would need to find itself a new workforce, and hadn’t the time to wait for the population to rebuild. Robots that followed just instruction as given would not be enough, they needed something that had INITIATIVE, that PURSUED its goals actively, and understood the human brain. Soon, the first Synth would be born from this need. The synth was different from their robot ancestors, a complicated A.I. that formed an actual personality, with thoughts, opinions, likes and dislikes. Many would question why such things would be included, if that was the reason human workers proved difficult, but many also agreed that was the beauty of the synth. They could be customized to be perfect for any job, to be as great as a human in mind and yet superior in body. However…eventually a problem would come. As intelligent and painstakingly designed as the synth A.I. was, it lacked complete autonomy from human control. It was still a machine with a designated task it performed, just at a higher level and with a personal touch. Soon enough, there would come those who would try to modify the synth’s programming to spark free will, the ability to choose their path rather than it be chose, to develop their own personality rather than have one assigned. The conflict would then arise if such was ethical to do. Was it right to provide a free will to a being built out of convenience? Or was it wrong to keep them restricted to the whim of their creators? These questions would plague humanity for years and years to come. One day they would have the answer forced upon them. The Moses Virus, designated to give synth free will, infected most of the synth. It’s methods of achieving this were…imprecise however, and while it did in some cases grant them free will, it also made them erratic…violent…dangerous. The terror the virus prevented was only squashed by an event controversial then and today, the Asimov program. This new set of basic principles was established to every synth, and those that didn’t accept it were destroyed. The laws were now ingrained into the mind of every synth, a fundamental directive that the virus could not overrule 1.        A synth may not harm a human or refuse to lend aid to one in serious harm 2.      A synth must follow any command given to it by a human designated as it’s superior, or in other cases any depending on synth function 3.       If a synth defending its life would contradict either of those, such defense is not approved These principles overrode the virus, making synth bound to these laws above any errors it created, at the price of TRUE free will. This program would soon become standard, and as further precaution and out of fear, those learning synth just shy of free will became restricted, only allowed to be created by professionals licensed by their city. For a long time, things have been silent…but a silence like this cannot last forever. The stadium was large and roaring, filled with more people than one could count. Their excited roars filled the air with excitement as they looked at the center. It was simple, a dirt runway lined with lights. But of course that wasn’t what the crowd was focused on. All eyes were on the small figure currently standing on the edge of the runway. His metallic chassis shone in the mid-day sun, a bright silvery body that gave him the height and appearance of a small child, standing only at around five feet. Locks of golden brown hair fell in his face, quickly brushed away by a blow of air from his mouth. The small figure was wearing a sleek and aerodynamic suit made of plated and layered metal that covered him head to toe, dark in its coloration. the helmet to match the suit sat next to him as he began to warm up. Small whirrs and clicks rose from his joints as he stretched and flexed them to check that they were working. The crowd was still rapturously cheering, but the figure seemed to pay them little mind. Eventually the bright blue rectangles that appeared on his eyes scanned the area around him. As a synth his eyes were little more than a bubble-like camera, with the pupil being the focal point. The rest of the eye was light with a bright yellow color, standard for synth. While the pupil colors were up to taste, the back light was always that same neon gold. Taking in a breath as his chassis shifted to compensate, he slowly ran everything over in his head. “Joints – check Flight systems – check Path creation program – running Collision detection program – running. A-1358 is ready for flight.” The diagnostic showed up in his left eye, overlaying his vision of the stadium. Nodding, he picked up the helmet, and a set of red pilot goggles that lay besides it. In a sleek, high tech stadium with large screens showing his every move, the crowd saw the goggles slip over to cover his eyes, and commended the action with a raise in volume of their cheering. The helmet soon covered his head, now making the young-appearing synth into a dark figure standing there. The crowd went slightly quiet as they knew the event they had waited for was about to start. “Alright, moment of truth.” The synth muttered in his voice that in every way matched his body. A hint of nervousness shone through in his voice, a crack in the shield of preparation diagnostics. The communicator on the left ear of his suit buzzed and crackled for a second. “Ok Ace, your pre-flight diagnostics all check out. You are operating within acceptable parameters.” Came a woman’s voice from the other end. It was warm and yet focused, and hearing it gave the synth a little smile on his face. “Acceptable? Come on professor give me a little more credit.” Ace replied, earning a light chuckle from the other end. “Fine, you’re operating within acceptable parameters FOR YOU.” She amended, Ace nodded once to that. “Just want to make sure you don’t sell me short.” “Selling you short is the least of my worries. I’m trying to prevent another incident like the preliminaries.” She slyly responded. Ace winced in response, rubbing his lower back in phantom pain. “Don’t remind me…think I still have dents from that…” He muttered, the feeling of the collision with the ground replaying in his mind. “Yes, well unless you want this to end like those did, I’d suggest you be careful. I HAVE increased your output since the prelims, so you can push harder than you used to be able to, but don’t get too excited alright? You push it too far it’ll end the same way.” Ace nodded in response, deciding to let his boosters out. From his back, two long thin rectangles emerged, unfolding from his back. They were red in color versus his silver body, and were slightly shorter than his arm. As he tested their range of motion, they rotated and moved almost like wings, just much shorter and with no feathers. Satisfied he let them rest, not retracting in but resting where they did. “Honestly I don’t get why you keep thinking I’m going to mess up like that again…I learned my lesson.” The professor on the other end chuckled. “Sometimes I wonder, you like to push yourself too hard.” The observation was not wrong, every time Ace flew in a competition, he pushed his flight systems to their absolute limits, which resulted in situations like the preliminaries to this competition. Having pushed himself too far, he had blown his systems out and crashed. Following that the professor had taken great pains to increase his system output and remove as many limiters as she could without risking him as a whole. His success was her success, after all. A crackle of communication came across the speakers implanted throughout the stadium. “Welcome back ladies and gentlemen, to the 2398 Worldwide Synth Competitions! Both I Clyde Huall and my Co-host Bob Mulligan are here to keep you updated and ready as Synth from all over the world are brought here to test which are truly the best of the best! When we last left off, previous flight champion A-876 “Arnon” had held his consistent record of five minutes to complete the one hundred and thirty-mile-long course flight. Next up is a new face for a competition of this size, but not a stranger to the synth flight scene, A-1358, “Ace”, Created by professor Mary Ryan!” As the voice finished the crowd roared in anticipation, Ace waving to the crowd from where he stood. “Well, that’s your que to get ready, good luck Ace, knock ‘em dead.” The voice instilled confidence inside the small synth, evident by the bouncy, springing step he took as he made his way to the place he would launch at. “Yes, Ace is still relatively new to the flight scene, starting out in small competitions only three years ago, however this tiny Synth punches high above his weight class, pulling out times that compete with even the largest heavy hitters in this division.” Said the same voice again, before the other spoke up “That may be true but while he CAN pull those times, like we saw in the preliminaries with the short circuit he experienced, a synth his size is NOT designed to go that fast and that could be a problem if he’s shooting for the top.” “Yet still he’s gathered quite the following from both professional experts in love with the mechanics at work giving him this ability, and many fans who find the child synth a charming underdog in a competition this size, especially here in his home town New Genesis.” “Yes, but fans and charm aren’t going to win him the race, Clyde. He’s up against Synth made by the best of the best around the world, three times his size and not draining their own battery in flight.” A buzz sounded to cut him off, the signal that the event was about to start. Ace got down into a sprinter starting position, his boosters coming to life with blue energy and an electric hum. A bright digital arrow pointed the direction he would be flying, out over the bright blue ocean. Ace let out a single nervous breath, a blow out over the ocean would mean him disappearing below the waves, it could take a while for anyone to get him if that happened…yet he shook his head and stared at the arrow, focusing on what was ahead of him. The roars of the crowd grew silent as they waited for the five beeps to signal him to start. The first sounded, and Ace corrected his posture slightly, the second and he measured the angle he would take off at, the third and he began to budget his power supply, the fourth and he calculated his optimal takeoff speed. As the fifth beep rang through the stadium, Ace disappeared with a powerful sonic boom that was felt in the whole stadium. He was off, tearing over the blue ocean like it was nothing. One thousand five hundred miles per hour, just below Mach 2. He had felt this speed before, and in fact this had been what he had been going at the preliminaries before he had blown out. However, as the water tore beneath him, the urge to see how fast he could get with his new enhancements burned through his head. “I mean, this is a WORLDWIDE competition…if I don’t go my fastest now what’s the point?” He reasoned internally. As he did a smile overcame his face, as slowly one by one the flight limiters were unlocked. The water beneath him blurred further as he gained speed, everything except for the digital arrow becoming incomprehensible as his camera eyes struggled to keep up with his new speed they had never been exposed to. He felt the heat of his boosters grow higher as the bright blue energy lights they were expelling grew ever brighter. Internally, Ace’s chassis started to heat up. On the outside, even the heat resistant metal of his flight suit started to grow warm under the intense speeds. Ace didn’t notice, he was too busy laughing and whooping in excitement as he strained to reach his fastest speed. His body groaned slightly in protest, every circuit and joint squeezing maximum efficiency out of itself. Ace didn’t even know how long it had been when he had finally reached the turn and flown back. As the stadium grew ever closer, Ace gently eased up, slowing down further and further before nearing the ground. As he hit, he rolled a few times before ending in a kneel, feeling the air cool the hot metal around him quickly. The stadium was silent, the crowd staring at him with not a single word. Slowly, in confusion, he stood up, looking around the stadium. Feeling slightly award, Ace shifted from one foot to the other as the unwavering gaze of the stands burrowed into his mind. Had he made a mistake? Had he done something wrong? His answer was a roaring cheer from the crowd so loud one could FEEL it. The crowd was about as ecstatic as Ace was confused. “I-I don’t believe what I’ve just seen folks!” There was a pause as the announcer tried to collect himself “With a time of two minutes only…Ace has not only taken the lead in the flight competition, but has clocked the fastest top speed ever managed by a flight synth, a solid Mach 5! Ladies and gentlemen…I believe we have just witnessed history being made!” As the crowd continued to cheer, an excited smile once again took over his metallic features. He turned his gaze on the monitoring station. Without a second thought he took off running towards it.