interesting things
Bloomberg: One month has passed since 20 children and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School. No words could do justice to the horror we felt. No pictures could convey the anguish and grief of the survivors and their families.
via NYDN Rss Article only http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/beat-nra-article-1.1238573?localLinksEnabled=false&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nydnrss%2Fgossip%2Frush_molloy+%28Gossip%2FRush+%26+Molloy%29
Last month in an appearance on Meet the Press, New York Times columnist David Brooks said that Mayor Bloomberg might be “counterproductive” as a spokesman for gun control because the movement needs to win over “rural and red America.” As Frank Rich put it: “Translation: He’s an East Coast Jew.” Bloomberg shot back at Brooks in a Sunday interview with the Washington Post, saying, “Incidentally, just define David Brooks … As I remember, he’s got to be in the 1 percent — the amount of money he makes as a columnist. I don’t know where that came from.†He also provided more fodder for Brooks, saying of gun rights advocates who think the government is out to get them, “the general public that thinks this is meshugana.†But supposedly, Bloomberg is fine with others taking the lead on his pet issue. “And so we’re not going to be the star,†Bloomberg said. “My interest is in having this done. I don’t need to get credit for it.â€
Of course, Bloomberg still wants to play a large role in the push for stricter gun laws, but he’s content to let his super-PAC do the talking. In the last election Bloomberg donated $10 million to five candidates who oppose the NRA and four won. “It seemed effective, and I’m certainly going to take a good, hard look at next time,” says Bloomberg. “You can organize people, I can write checks.â€
That’s not to say that Bloomberg is following anyone else’s lead on the issue. While many fellow gun control advocates think they’ll need to vote out Republicans to get reforms passed, the mayor believes that if the GOP can have a change of heart on immigration, they can do the same on guns. “Somebody got them the way they are now,†he says. “Why can’t you change them?†It did take the loss of a presidential election for some Republicans to change their tune on immigration — and the shift has yet to result in any new legislation — but if anyone has the time and money to devote to a longshot effort like breaking up the GOP and the NRA, it’s Mayor Bloomberg.
Read more posts by Margaret Hartmann
Filed Under:
the third terminator
,gun control
,michael bloomberg
via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/bloomberg-split-nra-gop.html
The retirement of the boss of one of Somalia’s biggest pirate gangs is the latest indication that the world’s navies may be winning the war against a scourge plaguing Indian Ocean waters.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/11/top-pirate-quits-as-tide-turns-against-somali-raiders/
“Half of all the mass shootings in the history of the United States have occurred since the assault gun ban expired in 2005.”
via The Daily Beast – Latest Articles http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/11/bill-clinton-thinks-high-capacity-clips-are-nuts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thedailybeast%2Farticles+%28The+Daily+Beast+-+Latest+Articles%29
Since two “hippie types” were arrested two weeks ago for keeping a small arsenal of weapons and bomb-making supplies in their Greenwich Village apartment, we’ve heard conflicting opinions on how seriously we should take their interest in explosives. One source called the Dalton and Harvard grads, “well-to-do junkies, not terrorists,” and Aaron Greene told the Post that he’s just an “outdoorsman” who planned to go out into the country and set off some “experimental fireworks.” Former bouncer Max Fish countered that the case should be taken more seriously since Green did time for stabbing him with a butcher knife. After hearing the latest details in the case, we have to side with Fish. NYPD spokesman Paul Browne says Greene recently told acquaintances that he was “making bombs” to “blow up” Washington Arch. It also seems he was starting to move past the planning stage; he was spotted sprinkling a white powder on the sidewalk inside Washington Square Park and hitting it with a rock, setting off an explosion.
Investigators believe the powder was the highly explosive chemical HMTD, which was found in the apartment Greene shares with Morgan Gliedman, leading police to evacuate nearby buildings. Police sources also say they found letters believed to be written by Greene that suggest he wasn’t all about peace and love, or even innocently blowing things up in the woods. One letter repeats the word “kill” and the phrase “kill them all,” and is signed the lightning-bolt symbol associated with Hitler’s SS.
On Wednesday, police raided the Orangeburg, New York home of correction officer Daniel Whittaker based on Greene’s claim that he’d given some of his weapons to “a friend in law enforcement.” They found several legally owned rifles. “They searched my house for no reason. I was charged with no crime,†said Whittaker. “There was no person charged in this area. All (the authorities) did was come and destroy my stuff.†Police say Greene is the “the focus of the investigation,” and Gliedman, who gave birth to their daughter while in custody, has been released on bail into a drug treatment facility.
Read more posts by Margaret Hartmann
Filed Under:
crimes and misdemeanors
via Daily Intelligencer http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/bomb-hippie-planned-to-blow-up-washington-arch.html
William A. Ackman and Daniel S. Loeb became business rivals on Wednesday, with hundreds of millions of dollars in play over Herbalife. | Diminished profits have forced Morgan Stanley to cut back its trading desk, raising questions about the firm. | Jacob J. Lew, President Obama’s chief of staff and former budget director, has been tapped to be the secretary of the Treasury. | Amid criticism, the board of the American International Group decided not to join a lawsuit against the federal government.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/battle-lines-drawn-over-herbalife/
The $1 trillion platinum coin seems too wacky; the 14th amendment too risky. But could IOU’s be the solution to an impasse on raising the nation’s borrowing limit?
Yes, and President Obama should publicly adopt the idea, Edward Kleinbard, a University of Southern California law professor and former chief of staff to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, argues in a Thursday New York Times op-ed. If lawmakers can’t reach an agreement before the nation hits its debt ceiling–which could happen as soon as next month–then Obama should have a backup plan of issuing IOU’s in place, Kleinbard argues.Â
“[Obama] should threaten to issue scrip—’registered warrants’—to existing claims holders (other than those who own actual government debt) in lieu of money. Recipients of these I.O.U.’s could include federal employees, defense contractors, Medicare service providers, Social Security recipients and others.â€
Kleinbard is hardly the first to propose the idea. Slate’s Matt Yglesias suggested it in early December. And New York Times Op-Ed columnist and Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman argued for such IOU’s on Monday, though he called them “Moral Obligation Coupons.†In Krugman and Kleinbard, the idea has found two prominent proponents.
Without congressional intervention, the government is expected to reach its debt ceiling in the second half of February, the Bipartisan Policy Center predicts. The only thing preventing a devastating national default, which could have ripple effects around the globe, are a handful of hail-mary proposals:
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/economy/the-latest-debt-ceiling-proposal-issue-iou-s-20130110
Hagel’s way of doing business has been proven unpopular.
via POLITICO – TOP Stories http://www.politico.com/story/2013/01/hagel-may-regret-not-having-made-more-senate-pals-85984.html
Paragraph, a New York-based startup that provides a range of digital author services like apps, released the first issue of its new weekly short story iPad magazine, Paragraph Shorts, on Thursday.
Paragraph Shorts is a little like a Flipboard for short stories, but rather than an algorithm, it uses humans to find short stories — in text, video and audio formats — across the web (from outlets like The New Yorker, The Paris Review and The Moth), then aggregates them and distributes them through a free iPad app. When a Paragraph Shorts reader flips his or her iPad to landscape mode, social features appear, including the Twitter and Facebook streams of the stories’ authors and the magazines they were published in.
Paragraph Shorts aims to add value through curation, introducing readers to authors and publications they might not have known about otherwise. “By curating the best short stories, and offering them to people who might not have known they existed, Paragraph will create a link between great literary magazines and readers who are eager to kill fifteen minutes in a quality manner,†Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, said in a statement.
Of course, killing fifteen minutes reading a short story through an app doesn’t necessarily extend to a subscription to the publication it came from. But all the stories that Paragraph features are already free online, so the app’s main benefit to the stories’ publishers is to drive traffic to their websites and to increase social media around them. The company is also considering exclusive content at some point.
Paragraph founder Ziv Navoth previously ran marketing and partnerships at AOL. Paragraph is self-funded by Navoth and his partner, Edo Segal, who also run two other businesses: Enhanced ebook and app platform Holopad and ebook distribution platform Convertabook.com.
 |
 |
via paidContent http://paidcontent.org/2013/01/10/paragraph-launches-an-aggregated-lit-mag-for-the-ipad-age/
