Florida State Seminoles

[eCat]

anyone catch the 60 minutes the other night on AI?

IBM's Watson is doing some amazing stuff

After see that its very possible that AI will find the cure for cancer.

Also, Japan has a 100mph pitcher who also hits like Barry Bonds. He's coming to America next year but will only play if he can pitch and hit including days he isn't on the mound.

[Professor Tiger]

Has that player's hat and shoe size grown substantially in his late 20's?

[eCat]

Pruitt starts the process to roll back overreaching water rights rules put in place under the Obama EPA.

the EPA redefined a portion of the clean water act to say that navigable waters ways including creeks, canals and runoff areas. It resulted in some very absurd situations where people couldn't build houses on their own land, farmers couldn't plow fields and so on. This is along the lines of those rules that said you couldn't collect rainwater. Just way off the reservation.

[eCat]

Who’d have guessed that, as far back as the 1930s, it was the mob who would give homosexuals a place to mingle, hook up and eventually coalesce as a movement — by running the city’s underground gay bars.

Two conditions brought these seemingly oppositional groups together. One: It was illegal to be gay, with police routinely hauling in homosexuals on charges of lewdness or indecency. Two: The Mafia, principally Vito Genovese, controlled Manhattan’s West Side, including the Village.

In short, a gay bar was an illegal business — or at a minimum, a business subject to relentless harassment. Yet where most New Yorkers saw deviance, the Mafia saw profit. Same as with gambling, prostitution or bootlegging, all it took was the customary payoffs for cops to look the other way.

“New York State’s liquor laws barred ‘disorderly’ premises,” writes C. Alexander Hortis in his new history, “The Mob and the City,” adding that the State Liquor Authority and NYPD used this excuse to close hundreds of bars in the 1930s and ’40s that catered to “homosexuals soliciting partners.”

Enter the wiseguys. It was Mafia bosses who founded hot spots, from the famed Stonewall Inn to the lesbian haunt the Howdy Club to the 181 Club, known as “the homosexual Copacabana.” And it was Mafia muscle running the clubs behind the scenes. In La Cosa Nostra-speak, the finocchio — “fairies” — were good business.

“I was the safest on the streets of New York that I had ever been,” said one gay-club bartender. “If anybody ever threatened me or intimidated me, I had recourse. I had been stopped by the police and . . . all I had to do was give them the name of my employer and they let me go, because we were both working for the same people.

“The law made the gay bars illegal. The Family made it operable.”

In particular, the Stonewall Inn holds a peculiar place in the confluence of gays coming out and goombahs staying out of sight. The largest gay bar in America, it opened in 1967 with the backing of the Genovese crime family. It had no fire exits, no running water to wash glasses, and the toilets routinely overflowed. But it was the only gay bar in the city where dancing was tolerated by bought-off policemen. And so the Stonewall became an institution.

But there’s always a price when you’re doing business with the Mafia. In this case, the No. 1 gripe by customers was that the drinks were atrocious.

“Some of the funniest stories are about the awful liquor supplied by the Mafia,” Hortis tells The Post. “Wiseguys stole shipments of liquor and watered it down heavily.”

One patron recalled: “I never bought a drink at the Stonewall. Never, never, never. Mafia house beer? I mean, does anyone know what that is.”

Chuck Shaheen, the legit face of the Stonewall, admitted, “None of the liquor was brand-name. We would go in the back at the beginning of our shift and take Dewar’s bottles and pour whatever swill we could get into it. The same with vodka. I mean, it wouldn’t be Smirnoff. Nothing would be what it said.”

Regardless of weak drinks, with a near-monopoly on a growing clientele, gay bars became a Mafia cash cow. The cigarette vending machines were filled with bootlegged smokes. Any thoughts of income-tax payments or liquor licenses were a joke. All for a monthly payoff to the 6th Precinct of $1,200.

Police raids persisted, mostly at the insistence of neighbors offended by the presence of the gay bars. But at the Stonewall, Genovese capo Matty “The Horse” Ianniello was always tipped off in advance. Liquor was stashed away. And whatever raids were made for the sake of appearances occurred early enough in the evening that business could resume in full a few hours later.

The ugly breakup of gays and goombahs began, not coincidentally, in the late ’60s, along with the upswell in gay activism.

Calls for honest-run businesses began, led by the Mattachine Society, the city’s first gay-rights organization.

But of more significance was the infamous police raid on the Stonewall Inn in June 1969. The raid sparked a historic riot that’s credited with truly igniting the gay uprising — yet Hortis posits that it was really a crackdown on the Mafia and that the gay patrons bloodied that night by billy clubs were mostly just in the wrong place.

The cop who turned his back on the mob’s payoffs and led the raid, Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, said later, “We weren’t concerned about the gays. We were concerned about the Mafia.”

Whether that was police spin or not, the Stonewall riots famously fueled a rights movement — but also ended the mutually beneficial relationship with the mob.

Somebody even wrote in chalk on the Stonewall’s boarded-up windows: “Gay Prohibition Corupt$ Cop$ and Feed$ Mafia.”

[Saint]

It's all too late to save Vito, that fat fuck

[eCat]

It's all too late to save Vito, that fat fuck

that show took a definite turn when was giving a blowjob in the parking lot of the construction site

[DooKSucks]

It's all too late to save Vito, that fat fuck

that show took a definite turn when was giving a blowjob in the parking lot of the construction site

The only redeeming part of that fat fuck's story line was the kid shitting in the shower and then Phil taking him out for a milkshake.

[Saint]

It's all too late to save Vito, that fat fuck

that show took a definite turn when was giving a blowjob in the parking lot of the construction site

Yeah, that was a definite WHOA!!! moment in my TV watching history

[Professor Tiger]

Tony was fairly libertarian with Vito - especially since Vito kicked a lot of construction money upstairs. But Phil
Leonardo had a different view...

[hedge]

"Two conditions brought these seemingly oppositional groups together. One: It was illegal to be gay"

Based on that condition alone, "oppositional" is the last word I would think of to describe the relationship b/w gays and the mafia...

[Professor Tiger]

"...gays and goombah's...."

Heh

[bluetick]

So the last few days the WH channel has shifted from their "no collusion proof offered" stance. Hannity, Hume. Krauthammer, Jarrett etc now are claiming collusion with russians isn't a crime as far as they can tell. Naturally the assumption is that a shoe is about to drop in the investigation and the "no proof" line will no longer cut it.

So last night the WH puts out a strong warning to Assad about a supposed plan of his to use gas again on his people. Strangely no specifics are given, and the military and intelligence don't seem to know what's up. A feint, maybe? Something to push the bad press about Russia and the health bill aside?

Annnnnnd. That particular shoe dropped.

Wall Street Journal: GOP Operative, Tied to Flynn, Sought Help from Russian Hackers to Uncover Clinton Emails

[Toemeesleather]

I dare any Trumptard to read the NYTs article Trump Lies. At least read enough to get a sense of what kind of travesty has been foisted upon this nation of ours. Maybe try to picture what people who don't have a dog in the fight politically think about this kind of insanity. Just imagine it. It's easy if you try..

Feel free to post the NYT link that details the PAH prevarications tambien.

[eCat]

the New York Times quietly issued a correction about their claims that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians ‘hacked’ the 2016 presidential election.....................

[Toemeesleather]

Another example of consensus as defined by msm.

[eCat]

that's all part of it

NYT, Washington Post owned by Amazon who hates Trump, CNN who is run by Zucker who was friends with Trump until their falling out at NBC

Trump's direct connection to the public via twitter just bypasses the media, who has let their overriding hatred of Trump kill their credibility with the public. Sure, the people who are invested in Trumps failure don't have any problem with the continual berating of Trump with the press, but the people that support Trump, or were even Sanders supporters see this election as exposing something they didn't realize was so out of hand.

Newspapers have had to cut their budgets to the bone meaning no in depth investigations, plus the 24/7 news channels that are in competition with each other to keep viewers entertained, which is priority over informed. This was prior to Trump and then Trump shows up , calls them out for their bias and poor vetting of news sources - and now even if they have good information, its all background noise at this point.

[hedge]

"the New York Times quietly issued a correction"

Well did they or didn't they? And if they did, what constitutes "quietly"?

[bluetick]

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2016/10/07/joi ... r-national

A joint statement from last October, whereby the Dept of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence state that the Russians hacked our election. DHS and DNI oversee all of those sub-agencies - below the FBI, CIA, and NSA - that comprise the bulk of the magic number of 17. There would have been no statement of this kind if any of those sub-agencies disputed the analysis of Russian meddling.

The NYT retraction was an over-reaction, plain and simple. I suppose it's what you do when our authoritarian leader claims the American press is fake and that he and his tweets are the only truth our country needs. Same thing with the 3 CNN journalists that got canned - probably overkill, but such are the times. Too bad Trump can't be held to the "1 strike and your out" standard - otherwise he wouldn't have made it past inauguration day (morning).

[Tree]

Humiliate ISIS by annihilating them right in the capital of their "caliphate" and violently sending them to their 72 virgins in paradise

ISIS capital is in Syria. We are fighting them in Iraq. ISIS is fighting the Syrians and Russians in Syria, as are we...so the enemy of our enemy is kinda our friend, so I doubt you'll see a really large effort to do much of anything to ISIS in Syria except a big show of coalition nonsense. If anything we are bombing Syrian airbases and shooting down Syrian jets in Syria when we're doing anything.

Our State Dept secretly loves ISIS b/c they give us an excuse to set up shop in the Middle East and do what we do best, destabilize key regions to maintain and build our global power structures. Hell Israel is supporting them directly. So are we unless you think they're running around with US weaponry by accident.

[Professor Tiger]

Or maybe we're attacking ISIS because they are subhuman monsters that all need to die.

If we secretly love ISIS, then killing off most of their leaders and taking away their caliphate is an odd way to show our love.