Hillary Rodham Clinton has served as secretary of state, senator from New York, first lady of the United States, first lady of Arkansas, a practicing lawyer and law professor, activist, and volunteer. Clinton ran for president in 2016, championing her belief that Americans are stronger together and making LGBTQ equality a pillar of her campaign with the most robust and ambitious LGBTQ plan any candidate for president has ever laid out. In July 2016, she became the first woman to earn a major party’s nomination for president, and went on to earn nearly 66 million votes — nearly 3 million more than Donald Trump. In her concession speech on November 9, 2016, she called on supporters to “never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” Inspired by the widespread activism after the election, Clinton founded Onward Together, an organization that works to advance progressive values by encouraging people to organize, get involved, and run for office. http://www.HRC.org
Post-World War II Utopia > SPRAWL > predicting on mass commuter culture, incredibly expensive where millions get spent on infrastructure . . . It's eating-up The East Valley . . . is it "a neighborhood"? a "Master-Planned Community"?
Published on Aug 6, 2016
Views: 31,252
--Jeff Speck, city planner and author of Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time, joins David to discuss "why suburbia sucks," explaining the elements of suburbia that run counter to how human culture tends to prefer being organized.
--On the Bonus Show: Updates on the new website, snooping on wireless keyboards, a bus owner blocking a rail study, and more...
Poll: Legal Marijuana Support At Record High In U.S
Tom Angell , Contributor
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own
According to a report in Forbes yesterday, nearly two out of three Americans now support legalizing marijuana cannabis.
The 64% of Americans who say cannabis should be legal in a new Gallup poll released on Wednesday represents the highest level of support in the organization's 48 years of polling on the topic.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans continue to warm to legalizing marijuana, with 64% now saying its use should be made legal. This is the highest level of public support Gallup has found for the proposal in nearly a half-century of measurement.
The latest figure, based on an Oct. 5-11 Gallup poll, follows shifts in the U.S. legal landscape regarding marijuana since Gallup's 2016 measure. While still illegal at the federal level, the issue was featured on a number of state ballot initiatives in 2016, and with eight states and the District of Columbia having fully legalized marijuana, more than one in five Americans live in a state where they can legally enjoy use of the drug. Majority of Republicans Now Support Legalizing Marijuana
Bottom Line As efforts to legalize marijuana at the state level continue to yield successes, public opinion, too, has shifted toward greater support. The Department of Justice under the current Republican administration has been perceived as hostile to state-level legalization. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions could find himself out of step with his own party if the current trends continue. Rank-and-file Republicans' views on the issue have evolved just as Democrats' and independents' have, though Republicans remain least likely to support legalizing pot. READ MORE > forbes.com
Released just before Halloween, George Clooney's sprawling comedic thriller takes to the screens nation-wide and here in Mesa on Friday, October 27th just in time for Trick-or-Treat:
So far what's in the bag for this 1950's-era action-packed oh-so-retro slow-slam are mixed audience reactions.
The question is open how it will play both here in Mesa - a Melting Pot of Diversity where [to borrow a phrase from one reviewer]
We demand our civil rights to live where we want and with who we want. And with God's help, we will overcome."
The new movie joins the big screen line-up for cinematic interpretations of that great American Promised Land arrives in Post-World War 2 Suburbia where white couples get married and breed, the wives do the shopping, the husbands do the working and the kids like to play baseball . . . too good to be true for sure. It became the Utopia we created for what is now three generations after The Baby Boomers.
Suburbicon (2017) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures
COMMENTS > We've sniffed the rot beneath these manicured lawns too many times before
5:06 AM PDT 9/2/2017 by David Rooney
"It's almost inevitable, while watching Suburbicon, that you find yourself wondering about the movie Joel and Ethan Coen might have made of it, had they gone ahead with their original script. Perhaps an anarchic comedy in the constantly surprising vein of Raising Arizona? Or a daring mix of grotesque violence and deadpan humor along the lines of Fargo? In the hands of director George Clooney, the material has some nasty charms, for sure. But it pushes too hard from the start, then steadily goes off the rails from dark to dyspeptic, lacking the originality, bite or tonal consistency to make up for dipping from a very familiar James M. Cain well. Its bigger problem is a timely subplot about virulent racism among white Americans that comes off as a mishandled afterthought. Paramount's best bet is to push the novelty of Matt Damon and Julianne Moore playing characters who appear on the surface to be regular 1950s archetypes — the dependable breadwinner and the sweet-as-pie homemaker, respectively — before being exposed as amoral schemers when their bad decisions unravel. But there's been a long history of more incisive movies about the poisonous soul lurking beneath the reassuring cookie-cutter order of suburban America, and this one ultimately brings little that's fresh. . . A cute opening sequence, styled as a video promo for potential residents, touts Suburbicon as "a melting pot of diversity," drawing folks from places as far apart as New York, Ohio and Mississippi. But every happy family in the kitschy illustrations is lily-white, signaling a restrictive environment, even if it's not declared as such. The cheery mailman gets a shock when he knocks on the door of a new resident and discovers that the African-American woman he assumes to be the maid is actually the lady of the house, Mrs. Meyers (Karimah Westbrook). That alarm instantly spreads, sparking a rabid town hall meeting at which homeowners protest the perceived violation of their community and the inevitable drop in property values. While it's not subtle, their appropriation of liberal language for their cause gets the point across: "We demand our civil rights to live where we want and with who we want. And with God's help, we will overcome." Link > http://www.hollywoodreporter.comincludes a podcast and video of three stars __________________________________________________________________________
How movies like ‘Suburbicon’ attempt to deconstruct American suburbs
The wives do the shopping, the husbands do the working and the kids like to play baseball in “Suburbicon,” a fictional American town that lends its name to George Clooney’s new film, which arrives in theaters Friday, Oct. 27. As it turns out, this clean-cut, post-War scenario is too good to be true. Although “Suburbicon” begins as the story of a wholesome-seeming family — Matt Damon and Julianne Moore play dad and mom — it ends in violence, bloodshed and murder. . .
To a generation that lived through World War II, the suburbs promised peace, quiet, fresh air and a relief from urban congestion and crime. (It also drove white flight, as “Suburbicon” makes clear in a racially-charged subplot.)
Over the years, the suburbs have served as a backdrop for horror (“A Nightmare on Elm Street”), social commentary (“The Stepford Wives”) and, lest we forget, feel-good comedy (“Mr. Mom”).
Here’s a quick survey course in suburban cinema, broken down into five categories:
READ MOREan excellent round-up by reporter Rafael Guzman
Forbes says it's a somewhat low-profile debut for such a promising picture, with reviewer Scott Mendelsohn adding,I like what Clooney was going for, but he didn’t quite pull it off. Ironically enough, while Suburbicon may not be the movie we need right now, it may well be the movie we deserve.
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival to mixed reviews, and as we know movies of this nature (adult-skewing, non-tentpole, not necessarily crowd-pleasing) are at a comparative disadvantage even compared to three years ago. Absent much in the way of Oscar buzz or positive narratives, this one may struggle. The good news is that director George Clooney usually makes a point to keep his budgets in check when he makes old-school, adult-skewing studio programmers like this. I don’t have the exact budget for this one, but I’m betting that Clooney didn’t spend too much of his investors’ money.
Scott Mendelsohn's Review: There are three distinct movies somewhat at war with each other in Suburbicon, and only two of them really mesh together while the third essentially sabotages the overwhelming narrative. To wit, the George Clooney-directed film, written by a discarded Joel and Ethan Coen screenplay (from 1986) isn’t content to just be a nasty bit of suburban film noir. The film also contains a subplot loosely based on the true story of Daisy and William Myers, an African American couple (with a young son) who moved into a lily-white suburban neighborhood and were greeted with jeers, vandalism and riots from their tolerant Northern neighbors. At a glance, the story of the Myers is itself ripe for a cinematic telling, even if it didn’t have a conventional three-act structure (they lived in the home for four years and protests just trickled out after about two years). So, while Clooney and friends may mean well in exposing the outright racism present in supposedly liberal enclaves, the choice to use that story as topical seasoning for a black comedy about duplicitous white folks feels like a metaphor for Hollywood’s feelings on racial inclusivity in general. . . Suburbicon is a story about a middle-class dad (Matt Damon) who attempts to cope with the home invasion murder of his wheelchair-bound wife (Julianne Moore). I guess this is a first-act spoiler, but you can probably guess that Gardner and Aunt Margaret (also Moore) had something to do with it. Noah Jupe is terrific as the young son, and the film’s best moments are when he’s dealing with the unthinkable truth about his father and his aunt. At times, with its "child’s eye view" of the crime melodrama and racial strife, it feels like Clooney is trying to craft a more cynical take on To Kill a Mockingbird. Had that been the entire movie then the Myers’ subplot might have been applicable (Espinosa gets the most dialogue among his family) as part of a child’s-eye view of societal bigotry and parental betrayal. But, perhaps because Matt Damon and Julianne Moore are movie stars, we also get a bunch of scenes of Damon and Moore doing their best to dig themselves out of a hole. This stuff is not without entertainment value, and it picks up when Oscar Isaac shows up as a suspicious insurance investigator. But the emphasis on the adults just makes the racial strife subplot look that much more exploitative. . . Away from would-be Oscar contention and away from the current conversation about racial and gender inequities in mainstream Hollywood, Suburbicon is an entertaining potboiler that looks great and boasts a fine cast. Even within context, Matt Damon’s growing reputation as maybe not the greatest wonder boy in Hollywood history is put to good use (his final scene belongs on a highlight reel). I may have been offended by how the film appropriated painful black history for seasoning in an otherwise lily-white crime melodrama, but I was mostly entertained and it’s at least one-third of a great movie. Whether that counts as a recommendation is up to you. . .
"There’s little question that former Facebook executive and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya thoroughly enjoys challenging the way that startups are funded. Because he has the hot hand, so to speak, he’s able to get away with it, too. Last month, for example, Palihapitiya’s firm, Social Capital, took the unusual step of raising $600 million in an IPO for a SPAC called Social Capital Hedosophia. The shell company will use the money to acquire all or part of a privately held tech company, thereby taking it public and circumventing what Palihapitiya sees as the unnecessarily long, expensive and distracting process of going public.
Now, Social Capital has another trick up its sleeve. It’s beginning to invest in far-flung startups, sight unseen."
QUESTION: Is Social Capital innovating its way into trouble? https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/25 Social Capital manages $1.8 billion worth of assets and has reportedly deployed two-thirds of its third, $600 million, early-stage fund, which it closed in 2015. How it works: entrepreneurs from anywhere in the world can fill out a questionnaire, then submit revenue figures and either raw engagement or transaction logs (or both) to Social Capital, including sometimes by granting the firm direct access to the cloud services they use. It’s entirely self-serve. If Social Capital likes what it’s sees, it will write a check of up to $250,000. If it doesn’t, it will at least deliver feedback to the startup regarding tweaks it might make to its business model. (Entrepreneurs interested in applying can let the firm know here.)
How can Social Capital possibly know how to improve a company’s business model when it hasn’t even met its founders?
One of the newest in the cast of characters who's been dis-robed two times as the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court and given a new identity - and a costume change - for his first public début on the American political stage joining the new Greatest Show-on-Earth Political Circus of All-Time where Trump is the Circus Master for all the elephants in-the-room of the Grand Old Party GOP that's pooping-out big loads of pure shit from the shotgun attack dog mind of Steve Bannon, The Top Dog of Alt-Right Media.
Bannon couldn't get muzzled during the short stint and stunts in The White House trying to compete as the Prez's mouthpiece. Bannon is back at Breitbart, turned loose to lead the pack of attack dogs on the establishment Repub elephants who can't get whipped, punished or beaten to perform. They can, however, choose to leave "The Big Tent" with fear when hot air and hot-head candidates heat up the political climate where they can't win or hold onto their elected seats. That leaves empty seats waiting to be filled by new characters.
As we all know there's there's "no romance-without-finance". Politics is the game of finance over principles and integrity, more beholden to special interests than the public. Yesterday we found out how re-invented judge Ron Moore garbed as gun-toting upholder of the law, holds up instead a hand-gun with Old Glory as his backdrop.
Squeaky cleaned-up image
Moore forms fundraising pact with national GOP The anti-establishment Alabama Republican will raise money with the RNC and NRSC. Blogger Note...and Who will they get it from? The Koch Brothers, The Mercers,
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"Roy Moore has campaigned as Mr. Anti-Establishment. Now, he and the establishment are starting to link up. The Alabama Republican’s Senate campaign on Tuesday signed a joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee, National Republican Senatorial Committee and the Alabama Republican Party, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. Moore, who was twice ousted as chief justice of the Alabama state Supreme Court, has largely based his Senate run around his promise to make life difficult for Washington’s entrenched class, including his own party’s leadership. . . Link > http://www.politico.com
