LibertyVoter.Org

By Erin Keane, Salon

When I graduated college in the late ’90s, I carried forth into the cold wage-paying world the career wisdom of Lloyd Dobler on how to avoid losing my soul to undesirable work. Big-hearted slacker Lloyd (John Cusack), the hero of Cameron Crowe’s 1989 romantic comedy “Say Anything,” is asked by the father (the late, great John Mahoney) of his date, valedictorian Diane Court (Ione Skye, in a once-in-a-generation role), what he wants to do now that they have graduated from high school.

We already know Diane is going on to big things, and it is understood that Lloyd is, well, not.

“You mean like a career?” Lloyd asks earnestly. “Um, I don’t know. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, sir. And I would have to say, considering what’s waiting out there for me, I don’t want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don’t want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed. Or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. So as a career, I don’t want to do any of that.”

Not buying anything sold or processed — or the inverse — seemed like good advice to my inexperienced ears at the time. After four years of university newspaper editing I had decided not to pursue a journalism career — too stressful, I decided — and slid into a nonprofit communications gig instead. Fast-forward through graduate school and getting a book published, then a few heartbreaking cycles of academic job applications just as the bottom fell out of that market seemingly for good, and I ended up back in journalism in the end, which was even more stressful than I had imagined at 21. But at least I wasn’t buying anything sold or processed, I told myself.

In other words, in the framework I had for it at the time — based solely on the half-baked wisdom of a fictional teenage kickboxing aficionado and hopeless romantic — at least I didn’t have to show up to …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Melanie McFarland, Salon

Director Ramin Bahrani doesn’t have to do much to make Ray Bradbury's cautionary 1953 novel “Fahrenheit 451” scream its familiar warning to 2018 audiences.

Indeed, what was nightmarish speculation for Bradbury 65 years ago is basically our reality now, specifically his idea of television screens the size of walls and a population that medicates its problems.

Many of us will watch Bahrani's cinematic adaptation “Fahrenheit 451,” making its TV debut Saturday at 8 p.m on HBO, on the small screens integrated into our mobile devices. They'll access his film via internet and data connections that make it possible to see it any time, and anywhere.

Technology has more or less made Bradbury’s nightmare all but a fait accompli. We should thank our stars that we're not heating our homes with the innards of public libraries at this point.

Among Bradbury’s best known stories, “Fahrenheit 451” seems well-suited for a high-end cinematic treatment by master of blockbusters, someone of Steven Spielberg’s or Ridley Scott’s caliber. 

It also could be exciting in the hands of a director skilled in delivering unapologetic bombast. Imagine it rendered with the level of bluster dreamt up by the likes of ‘90s-era Paul Verhoeven. Do you recoil at that idea? Go ahead. But then consider how well “Starship Troopers” holds up even now. Scratch that — especially right now.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with middling, B-grade sci-fi. I’m a big fan of it, actually. Even the weirdest, most baffling shreds of “what if” concepts can be reasoned into some version of legitimacy, if you choose to engage in such mental gymnastics. We have to believe they’re telling us something worthwhile.

This designation — middling — does not apply to Bradbury’s story, mind you. His masterful distillation of post-World War II, McCarthy-era paranoia mixed with a fear of intrusive technology spoke to its time with such clarity and force that it became a work for the ages.

Bahrani’s “Fahrenheit 451,” which he co-wrote with Amir Naderi, …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Ladd Everett, Salon

Since America’s instant check system for gun buyers went online in November 1998, the gun control movement and its allies in Congress have made the expansion of the system their  primary focus. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)  was designed to be fast and easy. Licensed dealers call in a prospective gun buyer’s information to an FBI call center in Clarksburg, West Virginia, where checkers run the name through three separate computer databases of past criminal offenders and those adjudicated for mental illness. The process takes only a few minutes.

But the efficiency comes with a price. NICS has failed spectacularly in one high-profile shooting after another, allowing individuals with a history of violence and/or severe mental illness to legally purchase weapons later used in a slaughter.

By ignoring this problem with NICS, gun control advocates seem to be forgetting the history of the Brady Bill and the method by which computer background checks came into being. The NRA, not the gun control movement, was the creator of the FBI call-in system. The system was designed to fail from the start.

*  *  *

The deliberate mediocrity of our background checks has its roots in an era when stopping violent gun buyers was a hopeless exercise.

President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Great Persuader, lobbied hard for the Gun Control Act of 1968, which he said should prevent “hardened criminals, or alcoholics, or drug addicts or mentally unstable” citizens from buying guns. But Congress sent him a weak bill, which he reluctantly signed on Oct. 22, 1968, with an accompanying statement:

This bill — as big as this bill is — still falls short, because we just could not get the Congress to carry out the requests we made of them. I asked for the national registration of all guns and the licensing of those who carry those guns. For the fact of life is that there are over 160 million guns in this country — more firearms than families. If guns are to be kept out of the …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Melanie McFarland, Salon

The bride was 15 minutes late leaving the hotel where she and her mother were sequestered prior to the ceremony, but somehow made it to the church right on time.

Her dress, simple and unadorned by crystals, seed pearls or any other frippery, is a Givenchy designed by Clare Waight Keller. A long lace veil flows behind her in place of a lengthy train. Upon it, subtly embroidered, are the 53 flowers representing each territory of the British Commonwealth.

At a distance, on what looks like a clear day borne by the softest of breezes, the veil looks impossibly like light. But as she is accompanied down the aisle by her father-in-law and the future king Charles, Prince of Wales, one imagines that the unseen load of expectations the bride bears with her even now is heavy. One suspects that at times in the coming months and years, it will feel like the weight of the world.

But for a couple of hours on Saturday morning, on May 19, 2018, the loving television coverage of His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales’ wedding to American actress Meghan Markle, hereafter to be formally known the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, allowed viewers around the world to hold it with them, to feel its transformative significance more than its burden.

The happiness of the occasion, the affection the bride and groom have for one another, is demonstrable. The event was star-studded but not entirely stiff — a merger of old pomp, new glamour and real joy.

It didn’t matter what your local time was when they exchanged their vows; it didn’t matter if you were in your pajamas drinking coffee or somewhere fancier sipping champagne. Cameras put millions of us close enough to the heart of St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle to witness Harry drop any pretense of reserve as he first took in the sight of Meghan, to read his lips as he told her, “You look amazing.”

They giggled at the swell of cheers rising from the crowd of …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Martin Cizmar, Raw Story

Police do not yet know why Dimitrios Pagourtzis committed a massacre at his Texas high school.

While Pagourtzis has admitted to the shooting, which started in an art class, and police have found a note detailing his anger before killing 10 people, the motive has not yet been revealed.

His parents—whose gun he took to commit the attack and who didn't stop him from posting pictures of firearms on social media prior to the attack—have said they don't know why he killed.

But now the mother of one of the victims is stepping forward with a possible motive.

Sadie Rodriguez is the mother of Shana Fisher, who was killed in the attack. The Dallas News is reporting that Rodriguez said her daughter had spurned Pagourtzis' romantic advances a week before he walked into her art class and killed her and others.

“He continued to get more aggressive,” Rodriguez said in an interview conducted with the paper via Facebook. “She finally stood up to him and embarrassed him.”

Rodriquez is raising money in her daughter's memory.

“My daughter was the most sweet and shy young lady,” Rodriguez wrote on Facebook. “She never hurt anyone. This boy. I can't even do this. I cant even finish this. It isn't even fair.”

…read more

Source: ALTERNET