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The Tories want Scotland to make a pinkie promise to accept whatever Brexit deal Westminster comes up with.
Still, it’s not like we should listen to Ruth’s opinion on anything much; her boss certainly doesn’t.
Theresa May doesn’t listen to Ruth on the topic of LGBTI rights nor, indeed, on anything much else.
Despite the entreaties that Ruth made to Theresa May after the latter announced her intention to make a deal with the arch-homophobes of the DUP and the assurances that she reportedly received that LGBTI rights wouldn’t be affected, Theresa went and appointed David Lidington as Justice Secretary, a man who has consistently voted against every single piece of legislation improving LGBTI rights.
Mind you, getting assurances from Ruth Davidson on LGBTI rights wouldn’t inspire much in the way of confidence at the best of times, as she seems to believe that the entire point of the campaign for LGBTI equality was “please don’t be nasty to gay people so that we can be Daily Mail readers too.” What we’ve been witnessing this past week is a shameless attempt by a politician who lost an election to act as though she’d won it.
Since her boss in London is attempting much the same trick it’s not like we should be surprised.
It’s the most brazen attempt at a power grab since one of the contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race hogged all the electrical sockets with his hair drier.
The Tories are doing deals with the orange-sashed DUP, they’re stirring up sectarianism in Scotland, and their media friends are silent all of a sudden about the Ulsterisation of our politics.
An elderly relative of mine is your archetypal west of Scotland Catholic, and he voted No in the referendum because, he said, he didn’t want to be “ruled by Presbyterians”.
So how’s that working out now, eh?
The facts are, however, that despite all the dirty deals, despite all the electoral spending, Ruth Davidson’s Conservatives (TM) won just 13 seats out of 59.
They fought the election on the single issue of opposition to another independence referendum, and they still lost.
Improving on the number of seats you achieved still doesn’t make you a winner, any more than improving your results in an arithmetic exam from an F to a D means that you’re now top of the class.
Scotland looked at Ruth Davidson’s party and still gave them a failing grade – all the Tory triumphalism in the world won’t change that simple arithmetical reality.
Federal employees should be fairly compensated and their benefits protected, according to the 2016 Democratic presidential candidates.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said as president that she would ensure feds are paid fairly through “appropriate pay raises” and would “oppose across-the-board arbitrary pay freezes, retirement cuts, or cuts to other employee benefits.” Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was a little more specific, saying the federal workforce deserves a pay raise “of at least 3.8 percent to keep up with cost-of-living increases” and pledged his “strong” support for the FAIR Act, pending legislation in both chambers that would give feds a 5.3 percent pay boost in 2017.
Clinton and Sanders were responding to a written questionnaire submitted to the 12 Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns still in operation in December by the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
As of March 24, only the Clinton and Sanders campaigns had responded to the questions, which covered a range of issues, including federal employee pay, union rights, and the privatization of government jobs.
“For far too long, the extreme right wing has demonized, belittled, and sought to destroy the federal workforce.
That is wrong, that is unconscionable, and that has got to change,” wrote Sanders in response to IFPTE questions asking the candidates if they would work to ensure pay raises for feds and protect their pensions.
“The fact of the matter is that no other worker has been asked to sacrifice more on the altar of deficit reduction than our federal workers.” Federal workers endured a three-year pay freeze between 2011 and 2013.
They’ve received across-the-board pay raises of 1.3 percent in 2016, and 1 percent each in 2015 and 2014.
All those boosts were below the percentage mandated by the formula in the 1990 Federal Employees Pay Comparability Act.
President Obama has proposed a 1.6 percent pay bump for 2017.
Clinton noted that her experience as secretary of State, New York senator, and First Lady have enabled her to witness “first-hand” federal employees’ contributions to the country.
“I was serving as Secretary of State when federal salaries were frozen in 2011, and I saw how difficult it was for employees to be told that even though they were working hard and their living costs were going up, their paychecks were not,” Clinton wrote in response to the IFPTE questionnaire.
“The government is not going to be able to recruit and retain the high-caliber employees it needs if it does not pay federal employees fairly for their work.” She also said that it’s “unfair to require additional increases in retirement contributions as a backdoor pay-cut for federal workers,” and pledged her continued support for veterans’ preference in federal hiring, in response to a specific IFPTE question.
As part of the 2013 budget deal, federal employees hired on or after Jan. 1, 2014, with less than five years of service have to pay 4.4 percent toward their pensions -- 1.3 percent more than employees hired after 2012 contribute to their defined retirement benefit, and 3.6 percent more than most workers hired in or before 2012 contribute.
Republican lawmakers since then have offered other proposals -- so far, unsuccessful -- to further increase the amount all federal workers contribute to their pensions.
Both Democratic candidates, unsurprisingly, also vowed to preserve the right of workers to collectively bargain, and to renew Obama’s 2009 executive order establishing a national labor-management partnership.
Clinton and Sanders also expressed similar opinions on privatizing federal jobs, arguing that contractors are often more expensive than federal workers.
Clinton said she opposed “numerous Bush administration proposals” to privatize the federal workforce while she was in the Senate.
“As president, I will oppose efforts to contract out work unless doing so is necessary, in the best interest of the federal government and is clearly cost effective.” Sanders said “we must do everything we can to make sure that federal workers are given the opportunity to provide the services that the American people need, and when we do hire contractors that they are held to the same high standards we expect of our federal workforce.” IFPTE’s questionnaire asked the candidates for their views on several other issues, including the minimum wage, trans-Pacific partnership, and guest-worker programs.
Click here to read Clinton’s responses to IFPTE’s questionnaire, and here to read Sanders’ answers.
On this episode of the Pony Bits Podcast, in case you couldn’t tell from the episode title, Jon and Colton tackle the subject of what exactly makes “Best Pony”.
Jon sets up his own diagram to go over important factors to consider such as design, type of pony and personality.
While they go over their own individual specifics of what they look for in their ideal “Best Pony”, Jon and Colton also talk about how realistic each of the Mane 6’s characters are, while juxtaposing that with how illogical the world they live in really is.
The podcast will be on hiatus until after October 19th when the duo will be back from Texas and can produce another episode, until then, enjoy the episode and send us some emails about your “Best Pony” requirements, the television show or the comics to read on the podcast at [email protected].
DOWNLOAD HERE Jon’s Diagram (http://i.imgur.com/xdV37QZ.png) Advertisements
The chance that intelligent life might ever encounter this interstellar mixtape—let alone listen to it—has always been infinitesimal.
Still, argued astrophysicist Carl Sagan, who helped select the tracks, "the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet."
There is indeed something lovely about sharing humanity with the universe in this way, as Megan Garber wrote last year: The Golden Records ... carry the transcendent aspects of human existence: the art, the beauty, the ache, the joy.
They offer what we have, and what we are, up to the cosmos.
But what if the improbable were to happen?
Here on Earth, 10-year-old CDs are puttering out.
What about a pair of 40-year-old records careening through outer space?
Even if extraterrestrials found and figured out how to work the Golden Record, would it play anymore?
Actually, yes, experts say.
"The gold records that were launched into space were specially constructed discs for the purposes of space travel," said Peter Alyea, a digital conservation specialist at the Library of Congress who specializes in audio recordings.
"I believe they were designed to last for a very, very long time and so should still be playable.
This kind of disc is not something you could buy commercially at a record store."
And besides, Voyager's Golden Record has thus far been kept safe from the elements—high temperatures, oxygen, water—known to deteriorate Earthly records.
(Voyager is now operating at about negative 110 degrees Fahrenheit.)
“If I had to guess, I'd say it's as fresh and new as the day it was placed aboard the spacecraft," said David Doody, an engineer on the Voyager mission at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an email.
"It's been stored in a vacuum more perfect than any attainable on Earth, and protected from dust and cosmic rays by an aluminum metal case."
That protective aluminum case has had quite the adventure—it got a dose of radiation near Jupiter and was blasted with space dust in Saturn's ring plane—but Doody says it has been "basically always shielded" at least enough to protect the record's functionality.
"In all, it might have lost a little luster at worst, in my humble opinion," he said.
"I'd also venture to guess that it would be in playable condition for many hundreds of millennia.” Which raises a theoretical question about what version of Earth the rest of the universe might first encounter, and what songs or sounds we might include today that didn't exist in 1977.
The Golden Record, after all, is more of a time capsule than a broadcast.
(It doesn't even include any hip-hop, which was still in its cultural nascence the year the Voyagers were launched.)
Of course many of the record's sounds have retained the timeless quality they must have had four decades ago—like this greeting from Kurt Waldheim, then the secretary general of the United Nations: We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship—to teach if we are called upon, to be taught if we are fortunate.
We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us, and it is with humility and hope that we take this step.
NASA has since moved on to new projects to share music with other galaxies, and humanity has graduated beyond the record as the go-to audio format.
In 2008, for instance, scientists beamed a song directly into deep space, aiming for the North Star 431 light years away from Earth.
That tune, a Beatles classic from the decade before Voyager launched, was "Across the Universe."
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2015 brought record passenger traffic to Bush, Hobby A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 lands at Hobby Airport in March 2015.
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 lands at Hobby Airport in March 2015.
Photo: Bill Montgomery, HC Staff Photo: Bill Montgomery, HC Staff Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close 2015 brought record passenger traffic to Bush, Hobby 1 / 1 Back to Gallery Houston's two major airports both set records for passenger traffic in 2015, the Houston Airport System reported Wednesday.
Hobby Airport had 145,202 international passengers between opening its international concourse in October - the first time Hobby has seen international flights since 1969 - and the end of the year, the Airport System said.
Hobby, overall, had 12.2 million passengers, up 1.8 percent from 2014.
Bush Intercontinental Airport saw its overall passenger count rise 4.2 percent to about 43 million.
The number of international passengers at Bush increased 8 percent to 10.6 million.
Combined, the Houston Airport System saw a 3.7 percent increase to 55.1 million passengers.
White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon told a group of House conservatives they had no choice but to back the GOP's ObamaCare repeal bill days before the bill was pulled, according to a new report.
Bannon confronted members of the House Freedom Caucus earlier this week during the White House's push for the American Health Care Act, Axios's Mike Allen reported Saturday in his newsletter.
"Guys, look.
This is not a discussion.
This is not a debate.
You have no choice but to vote for this bill,” Bannon reportedly said.
ADVERTISEMENT A Freedom Caucus member reportedly replied: “You know, the last time someone ordered me to something, I was 18 years old.
And it was my daddy.
And I didn't listen to him, either."
The conservative group met with President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE at the White House on Thursday, but the president reportedly did not want to discuss policy specifics of the healthcare legislation.
Freedom Caucus members were calling for additional changes to the GOP plan to further dismantle ObamaCare.
Trump singled out the caucus in a Friday morning tweet, arguing funding for Planned Parenthood would remain intact should members vote against the GOP plan.
“The irony is that the Freedom Caucus, which is very pro-life and against Planned Parenthood, allows P.P.
to continue if they stop this plan!” the president wrote.
A survey of jihadis in Austria reveal 21 percent of people who have either traveled to join Islamic State in Syria and Iraq or planned on doing it are women.
The study from the Austrian Green Party and the Ministry of the Interior reveals 59 out of 280 prospective ISIS members are women.
Close to half of responders who have been prevented from leaving Austria to join ISIS, 22 out of 50, were women.
“The number is unpleasant,” Berivan Aslan, a Green Party member of parliament, told The Local.
“I did not expect the percentage of female IS-sympathizers to be as high as 21 percent.” The figure in Austria is significantly higher than in Belgium, where just 17 percent of participants in a similar study were women.
Aslan said the idea of being the wife of a “hero” is appealing to young Muslim women in Europe.
“Disoriented young women in Western Europe feel attracted to IS-fighters and imagine that being on the side of a fighter building their own ‘state’ would afford oneself stability and meaning,” Aslan told The Local.
“In the Islamic Statement, women are given the role not only of the wife of a ‘hero’, but are also used as fighters and suicide bombers.” All-female ISIS cells have recently emerged in France, where a group of women were arrested after a car full of gas cylinders were found outside the Notre Dame church in September.
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Image caption Zack Davies attacked Dr Sarandev Bhambra on 14 January A man has been found of guilty of attempted murder after attacking a dentist with a machete and a hammer in north Wales.