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It's taken me almost my entire life to come out of the closet as a liberal. In college at the end of the 1970s, I was no revolutionary, but I thought of myself as a radical. Working at "the independent socialist newspaper" In These Times in the 1980s, I tried on actual socialism, with some relief at having a name for what I thought I believed. Later I became a progressive, when that term came to stand for the Paul Wellstone-Howard Dean "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party."
In middle age, I've belatedly found solace and realism in calling myself a liberal. Eric Alterman and Kevin Mattson's The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama explains why. The book also makes clear why it took me so long to come to terms with my sober, modest, occasionally enervating political identity.
Alterman and Mattson remind us how much liberalism has accomplished over the past 75 years: protecting workers; advancing civil and economic rights for black people and other racial minorities as well as women; supporting seniors, the disabled, and (to some degree) the unemployed; saving capitalism from itself, first in the 1930s and again under President Barack Obama. What's exhausting is seeing how much time liberals have spent defending those gains and explaining that they're not what others think they are.
Liberals went from insisting they weren't socialists, communists, or Soviet--symp pacifists in the 1940s and 1950s to separating themselves from violent New Left revolutionaries in the 1960s and 1970s to disowning their "big government" past in the 1980s and 1990s. In the first decade of this century, thanks to Karl Rove's indecent political gamesmanship, some felt a need to prove they were as tough on terrorism as the GOP, leading even genuine liberals like Senator John Kerry and—fatefully—Hillary Clinton to vote to authorize President George W. Bush to use military force against Iraq.
At the time, the gambit seemed like one more effort to shake off the conservative charge that liberals lost Vietnam in the 1970s. But what if, in a way, they were still fighting the allegation that liberals lost China in 1949? The most important contribution of The Cause is to situate the recent predicaments of liberalism in a longer arc of history than we see it framed in in today's political debates. We often talk as though the Democratic Party and the New Deal coalition began to split in the 1960s, amid the bitterness over Vietnam, race, and the Great Society. But 1968 divisions had nothing on the party's 1948 crack-up, when a pro-civil-rights convention plank drove out the Dixiecrats behind segregationist presidential candidate Strom Thurmond, while former FDR Vice President Henry Wallace picked off progressives, pacifists, and remnants of the Communist Party USA behind his Progressive Party bid for the presidency.
Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), founded in 1947 with the declaration "We reject any association with Communists or sympathizers with communism in the United States," fought backers of Wallace and the Progressive Party at every turn. But the ADA further divided over the question of anti-anti-Communism, disagreeing about whether and how ardently to fight for the civil liberties of domestic communists and sympathizers even as it denounced their ideas. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., the scholar and Democratic Party wise man, defended the film director Elia Kazan after Kazan named names, and Schlesinger also ambivalently backed the anti-communist Smith Act. But Schlesinger opposed Hubert Humphrey's Communist Control Act as "hasty and reckless" and denounced the firing of New York City schoolteachers who had joined the Communist Party. You see what I mean about exhausting. As for the 1948 election, imagine Obama having to run in the final stretch of this year's campaign against not only a Republican but also Representative Dennis Kucinich, say, and Blue Dog Senator Ben Nelson. It's amazing Harry Truman won a second term, even narrowly.
In a way, liberalism's troubles with the white working class started with these early skirmishes. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 had rolled back union protections; the subsequent decline, in numbers and power, of labor unions would change the course of liberalism, as its strongest force for economic populism lost political influence both within the movement and in the wider world. The Democratic Party was already beginning to fracture around race in the South. In the North, a segment of so-called white ethnics, particularly Irish Catholics, were easily riled into believing that godless communists (and their snooty Ivy League allies in the State Department) were out to take our freedom. It was thus Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950s, not Richard Nixon in the late 1960s, who started to peel the white working class away from the Democrats.
Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956, was an admirable civil libertarian and a reliable anti-anti-communist, but he wasn't particularly strong on either labor or civil rights, sending confusing signals on whether Taft-Hartley should be repealed and staying neutral on the Supreme Court's anti-segregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Stevenson won his egghead designation thanks to an elongated bald dome, the preternatural anti-intellectualism of the American right, and his own frank elitism. When an admirer shouted, "You have the vote of every thinking person," he answered, "That's not enough, madam, we need a majority!"
Daniel Patrick Moynihan got behind John F. Kennedy in 1960 after noting that Moynihan's people in the Bronx and Brooklyn had abandoned the not terribly populist Stevenson. As Moynihan hoped, Kennedy recaptured liberalism—Joseph Alsop called Kennedy "Stevenson with balls"—and committed the Democratic Party to aggressive anti-communism, out-hawking Nixon over a nonexistent "missile gap" with the Soviets. (Earlier, Kennedy had refused to take a position on the censure of Joe McCarthy, a friend of his father's—he was in the hospital for the Senate censure vote.) By some measures, Kennedy moved slowly on civil rights. But from the shrewd gesture of calling Coretta Scott King when her husband was jailed during the 1960 campaign to his historic June 1963 speech calling civil rights a "moral issue … as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution," Kennedy put his party on the side of fighting racism.
When Lyndon Johnson made good on Kennedy's rhetoric—and the Watts riots erupted five days after the passage of the Voting Rights Act—liberalism began to unravel. But The Cause shows that just as crippling as race was another Achilles' heel: proving your American bona fides by advancing a muscular foreign policy, this time in Vietnam. Again, the debate not only split the country; it split liberalism. Folks like the labor movement's Gus Tyler and the former socialist Bayard Rustin parted company with Martin Luther King and other left-liberals over the campaign that had sprung up to "Dump Johnson," fearing it would destroy the best president labor and civil-rights leaders had ever known. They were right about that, yet the anti-war movement was right about the war.
The factions still might have reconciled if not for the growing nihilism of white anti-war revolutionaries and Black Power extremists and the assassinations of King and Robert F. Kennedy. As muckraker Jack Newfield wrote after those twin tragedies: "We are the first generation that learned from experience, in our innocent twenties, that things were not really getting better, that we shall not overcome. … We had already glimpsed the most compassionate leaders our nation could produce, and they had been assassinated. … The stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone."
Yet Alterman and Mattson suggest that before both King and Kennedy died, there were signs that liberalism couldn't contain the friction. In 1966, New York City Mayor John Lindsay's reform proposal for a Civilian Complaint Review Board to oversee the police department seemed a no-brainer, endorsed by not just The New York Times but by conservative Catholic Cardinal Francis Spellman. Then angry cops organized behind a ballot measure to repeal the law and won. Similarly, the battle in Brooklyn's desolate Ocean Hill/Brownsville neighborhood over black "community control" of the schools pitted the Jewish teachers' union against Manhattan liberals and African Americans. (Amazingly, King and Rustin sided with the union, an often-forgotten measure of how close the early civil-rights movement was to labor.)
The two controversies did what had seemed impossible: They united outer-borough Jews and white Catholic ethnics, once antagonists in working-class precincts of Brooklyn and the Bronx, against official liberalism. The New Deal coalition died in New York, the city that had been its birthplace. The authors quote Schlesinger and democratic socialist Michael Harrington arguing that RFK would have held the two groups together had he lived. But they also quote Kennedy suggesting that minorities and liberals might have to go it alone and "write off the unions"—a conclusion ultimately reached in 1972, by George McGovern strategists Fred Dutton and Gary Hart, after AFL-CIO President George Meany did everything he could to sabotage the emerging Democratic coalition.
No Kennedy could have put that coalition back together. Certainly not Ted Kennedy. The Cause revisits a sad truth: The youngest Kennedy's presidential hopes were dashed not only by his irresponsibility at Chappaquiddick but by his support for Boston's school-busing plan, violently protested by Irish Catholic South Boston voters who loved his brothers. Few seemed to notice at the time, or to care, that most of the measures liberalism proposed to fight racism set the have-nots against the have-a-littles, and Republicans moved in to stoke the fires of resentment. The main place where wealthy liberals suffered was at the ballot box. Relieved that he was re-elected in 1976 "in light of the recent turmoil in Boston," Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980, unwittingly helping to elect Ronald Reagan.
Alterman and Mattson aim to remind Americans of liberalism's concrete achievements: first, the New Deal and postwar policies that protected labor, helped the poor, and most important, built the middle class; then the liberation of African Americans, women, and gay people. But they spend two-thirds of their book moving from the Truman administration through Reagan's victory. The last third covers roughly the same time span. My page counting isn't meant to criticize; it's to observe that liberalism's troubles today have more to do with that tumultuous earlier era than with recent, mostly ineffectual attempts to reckon with what happened in those years.
McGovern begat Carter. Carter's defeat (as well as Walter Mondale's) launched the age of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). It's tempting to compare the DLC to the ADA, since both were intended to purge the Democratic Party—and, to an extent, liberalism—of a politically toxic taint. For the ADA, it was sympathy with communism and pro-Soviet pacifism. For the DLC, it was the legacy of the chaotic 1960s and 1970s, the anti-war movement, and to some degree even the Great Society.
That's where the two groups differ. Where the ADA admirably represented the party's left wing on domestic issues like labor and civil rights, the DLC stood not only for hawkishness in foreign policy but for correcting Democrats' perceived excesses in the realm of the welfare state, even on the issues of civil rights and feminism, and luring a new business donor class. Bill Clinton rebuked rapper Sister Souljah (a stand-in for Jesse Jackson), balanced the budget, ended "welfare as we know it," and presided over the repeal of Depression-era Glass-Steagall banking regulations, helping to usher in the corruption and risk-taking that tanked the economy a decade later.
Clinton also did good things with government (stealthily, through the tax code, expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit and building a new college tax-credit program) and guided America through a remarkable economic boom. After which George W. Bush slashed taxes and started two wars, letting the deficit balloon, al-Qaeda regroup, New Orleans drown, and Wall Street run amok, mistakes that set the stage for Barack Obama, a thrilling newcomer who didn't always use the term "liberal" but who embodied the creed's contradictions.
Our first black president came of age in the shadow of that forlorn era when "the stone was at the bottom of the hill and we were alone" (as did Alterman and I, by the way). Sober, well intentioned, Obama pursued the career of a post-civil-rights, Reagan-era do-gooder: registering voters, a stint with one of Ralph Nader's public interest research groups, community organizing. At law school, a left-wing Harvard professor described the young Obama as having "a very strong sense of the limits that American politics and political culture impose on what can be said and done" and "the style of sociability that is most prized in the American professional and business class."
From the Illinois Senate to the U.S. Senate and even into the White House, Obama couldn't suppress the telling tics of moderation: In reading Obama's book The Audacity of Hope, Time's Joe Klein counted 50 trademark "on the one hand, on the other hand" formulations. Largely due to his opposition to the Iraq War (plus unrivaled charisma), Obama beat Hillary Clinton and then John McCain, only to face a bitter backlash as the intransigent right capitalized on economic anxiety (as well as racism) to thwart the new president.
Some of Obama's White House troubles had their roots in the fractious Democratic primary, amid an economic crisis that should have been a chance for liberal renewal. When white working--class primary voters turned out for Clinton, their affinity was mostly viewed as a racist rejection of the black candidate, rather than approval of the marginally more populist platform of the white Democrat. Once in office, confronting the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Obama mostly deferred to financial-sector advisers and Ivy League mentors, holding fast to dreams of post--partisanship long after it was obvious that Tea Partiers and their mainstream enablers were not interested in extending hands across the aisle unless they could break his wrist.
In fact, Obama performed better with white working-class voters than did Kerry, Al Gore, or Bill Clinton. But when his efforts at stimulus, Wall Street regulation, and health-care reform hit the rocks of Republican obstinacy, his white support declined again—and again, it was largely blamed on white racism, rather than on the fact that Democrats often proved to be as cozy with Wall Street and as inept in dealing with working-class dislocation as Republicans.
Alterman and Mattson correctly put race at the center of liberalism's fracture. "The history of American liberalism through the New Deal and Fair Deal periods was one of steady progress so long as it excluded the demand for full political and social equality," they write. Post–JFK liberalism absolutely did the right thing on civil rights but never found a way to reckon with the resentment and fear of liberalism's onetime core constituency, the white working class. "The callousness with which liberal politicians treated the genuine concerns of so many white working men and women as they sought to address, and when possible, reverse the consequences of racial discrimination was truly politically perverse and morally difficult to justify." I absolutely agree—yet I did not find in The Cause, or in my own anguished reckoning with Democratic Party history, a lot of concrete action liberals could have taken to change the outcome.
With all its respectful accounting of accomplishments, The Cause makes clear that liberalism is more temperament than ideology. As Jacques Barzun said of the great mid-20th-century liberal Lionel Trilling, we're the people who answer every query with "It's complicated." We're the folks who referee between radicalisms of the left and right. Or as Robert Frost put it, "A liberal man is too broad-minded to take his own side in a quarrel." I thought about that quotation a lot watching Obama in the first three years of his presidency.
I came away from The Cause amazed, and a little drained, by the amount of energy liberals have spent fighting lies and defining themselves by what they're not. So is defending ourselves an ongoing necessary evil? Or is it futile, because it never works? I'm not sure all the earnest rhetorical strivings of the ADA, the DLC, the centrist Third Way, or the "post-partisan" Obama White House have managed to convince a single skeptic that liberals are good Americans. What we know works, at least for a while, is something FDR, Truman, and Clinton did—and something Obama is beginning to do. We prevail when we deliver on promises that make life measurably better for most Americans. Obama seems to have learned that lesson, albeit belatedly. Let's hope he holds on to it.


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Perfect Balance Pedal Update
Perfect Balance Pedal Update
Dear valued customer,
At SONOR, we strive to make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers. Not only we want all our products to meet our very own high quality standard, but also meet the customer's expectation of SONOR making the best products out there, at an incredibly high standard.
After the first production run of the new "Perfect Balance Pedal designed by Jojo Mayer" was shipped we received great feedback from all over the world. Unfortunately, we have also received concerns from consumers about few technical dysfunctions, which we have immediately addressed with our R&D department in order to improve the product. Herewith we would like to update you about these topics:
Pedal strap:
The situation is such that the very first shipment of pedals utilized straps that were slightly under‐spec in terms of thickness and rigidity (resulting in a stretch effect), due to what was readily available to be shipped at the time the pedals were manufactured. Proper replacement straps were sent immediately to our distribution partners.
Pedals included in further shipments (production month June / July 2012) have been pre-assembled with that strap but proper replacement straps have been included in the pedal box so that consumers can exchange them with minimum effort.
All pedals produced from August 2012 have been shipped with the right strap. If you should however received pedals with the wrong one and no replacement, please contact your local SONOR dealer to request free of charge replacement straps.
Heel plate joint:
During the development of the Perfect Balance Pedal it was decided to use a metal bolt for the heel plate/footboard connection. The main reason for this decision was to create a lower profile at the heel part in comparison to the profile that could be created using other connection options like bearings etc. The low profile heel plate is a main feature that creates the superior performance and feel of the Pedal.
Connecting the heel plate and footboard by using a bolt is a common method for most pedals on the market. However, this method sometimes results in unwanted "play" or movement of the connection. If the connection between both parts is too tight, the footboard will be too stiff. It is a tightrope walk trying to find the perfect tightness.
Playing the Perfect Balance Pedal with a little 'lateral play' in the heel plate/ footboard connection usually does not create any unwanted sound but we have noticed that some sound was being produced by a few of the pedals that were shipped. We have therefore installed a solution in the production to eliminate this issue, effective immediately.
If you have any further questions regarding the aforementioned topics, please feel free to contact us via Email (email@example.com). We apologize for any inconvenience this may has caused. We appreciate your support and will continue to release great innovative products to the market with uncompromised quality backed by superior customer service!
Yours sincerely

subset: commoncrawl


text: Show Hide image Politics 27 March 2013 The looting of bank deposits, a whiff of regulation and self-hating Mail readers Peter Wilby's "First Thoughts" column. Sign-up The deal to bail out the Cypriot banks by imposing a levy on all bank deposits unravelled almost as soon as it was made. The ultimate nightmare loomed: a run on banks across the whole of southern Europe. Moreover, the Cypriots approached Russia for financial support, raising the possibility that Vladimir Putin will acquire a client state in the Mediterranean. Yet one can see how the levy may have seemed a good, even progressive idea. The poorest people don't have money to deposit in the banks. Imposing what amounts to a wealth tax on depositors is better than what governments usually do in a financial crisis: cut public services and public-sector wages; raise sales taxes, which hit the poor hardest; and reduce state pensions and social security payments. Equally, if Cyprus were compelled to leave the euro, everybody's money would fall steeply in value, regardless of how much money they had in bank deposits. The obvious course – which may still emerge from the crisis – was to exempt deposits of less than €100,000 and to hit higher deposits with a 15.1 per cent levy instead of the 9.9 per cent proposed. That would hurt money-laundering Russian oligarchs without affecting ordinary savers. The Cypriot economy, however, is heavily dependent on Russian and other "inward investment"; the higher the levy on big deposits, the greater the threat to the island's future as an offshore tax haven. Sound familiar? Yes, George Osborne and other Tories, and for that matter New Labourites, use the same argument against more serious measures to limit bankers' bonuses and tax rich foreigners in London. The levy was dry Whatever the outcome of the Cypriot crisis, the genie is out of the bottle. Right-wing propagandists have always warned against electing socialist governments on the grounds that they will "expropriate" savings. Maybe voters will now understand that their "nest eggs", as newspapers cosily call them, are just as likely to be looted by capitalists. The levy is an unusually transparent example. The financial services industry, including pension funds, routinely loots savings through poor rates of return, high charges and misselling of "products" such as insurance. By comparison, governments of both left and right are mere amateurs. Hacking the system If the system of press regulation agreed by the three main political parties survives a threatened boycott by big newspaper groups, its effectiveness will depend on the individuals who do the regulating. How will they be appointed? This is not easy to establish. The new regulatory system appears to have ten separate panels and committees involving at least 56 people, some of whom have no function other than to appoint another panel and, presumably, to choose replacements when vacancies arise. Whether the first panel can sack its appointees for insanity or idleness is unclear. The potential for disputes within and between panels is considerable. The regulator may have difficulty ever lumbering into action. That should be one comfort for the press. Another is that, though serving editors are excluded from most panels, "industry members" will occupy a little short of 50 per cent of the places on nearly all. I'm not sure how an "industry member" will be defined. For example, will my friend and former colleague Brian Cathcart, the professor in journalism at Kingston University and director of Hacked Off (who, according to the Daily Mail's editor, Paul Dacre, has "an agenda"), count, on the grounds that he still occasionally writes for newspapers? Whatever the answer, the "industry members" are likely to carry disproportionate weight because of their superior inside knowledge. The danger, as with all regulators, is of "producer capture" rather than, as the potential press refuseniks claim to fear, too much sympathy for vexatious complainants. Read robins The argument over press regulation led to a rash of round robins, supporting one side or the other, in the letters pages. The day MPs debated the subject, the Times had three. I signed a few such things in the past but resolved, some 20 years ago, to sign no more. What is the point of them? Presumably the signatories expect their names to carry persuasive power. But why should I, or any MP, care that Nick Cohen, Suzanne Moore, Mick Hume, James Delingpole and 20 others believe "the mere whiff" of regulation is already "stifling what people feel they can say and write"? Nearly all these hacks' views were already well known and I hadn't noticed them being stifled. Frankly, I'd be more interested to hear from 24 pensioners in Barnsley. Disgusted of Islington The Mail has a daily lottery that awards prizes if "unique numbers" printed at the bottom of your copy's back page match those printed at the top of page two. The winners, published the next day, almost invariably come from places such as Sutton Coldfield, Ilkley, Bolton, Lowestoft and Tunbridge Wells and hardly ever from Greater London boroughs – particularly the more fashionable ones. The Mail is proud to be the paper of "Middle England" but surely it also has a significant number of metropolitan readers. Are they too ashamed of reading the Mail to claim their prizes? Oliver Bullough, Observations, page 15 Peter Wilby was editor of the Independent on Sunday from 1995 to 1996 and of the New Statesman from 1998 to 2005. He writes the weekly First Thoughts column for the NS. Subscribe £1 per month This article first appeared in the 25 March 2013 issue of the New Statesman, After God SUBSCRIBE More


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Article No :391 | October 13, 2008 | by Alex Schleifer
Harbour in a bathtub — wonderful video by Keith Loutit.
Alex is CEO of Sideshow , an award winning creative agency. You can read his blog here.
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Best Road Team Goes on the Road
After scoring a league-leading 77 runs in their first 10 games, the Phillies offense could muster only one run in losing the last two home games. Did someone lock the batter's box and throw away the key?
Cole was very good yesterday. If he pitches like that over his next 30 or so starts, we'll be in a good shape. His performance was a silver lining.
Road Show
Having won the most games on the road the last two seasons and this season (5-1) in the NL, that's where the Phillies are now headed. Delta charter will leave Philadelphia International Airport this evening. Destination: Atlanta and the start of a three-city, three-time zone journey that ends up in Frisco. Nine games in nine days (seven night games).
Elias Says
Cole and Ryan combined for 0 walks and 10 strikeouts. According to Elias Sports Bureau, it was the second time in less than a year that the Phillies lost a game in which their pitchers had no walks and double-digit strikeouts while throwing at least nine innings. Hamels and Chan Ho Park combined to do that in a 2-1 loss to the Orioles on June 21, 2009. Philadelphia had lost only one game under those circumstances over the previous 25 seasons (1984 through 2008). Terry Mulholland had no walks and 14 strikeouts in a nine-inning complete-game loss to the Rockies on June 4, 1993.
Happy Birthday
John O'Neil, who played 46 games at shortstop for the Phillies in 1946 (his only big league taste), turns 90 today.
As with all Nonagenarian Club (90 years of age and over) members among Phillies Alumni, we're sending a jersey (#27) to O'Neil as a birthday present.
For those fans in the Lakewood, NJ, area, Joe Blanton makes a rehab start Tuesday night . . . Reading RF Domonic Brown left Friday's game with a mild concussion following a collision with 1B Tagg Bozied; Brown, off to a .323 start, didn't play Saturday or Sunday; he's on a day-to-day basis . . . Interesting note from Saturday's Mets-Cardinals, 20-inning marathon: number of pitches: 652; time of game: 6:53.
This Date
110 years ago the Phillies beat the Braves, 19-17, in 10 innings in Boston, the highest scoring opener in NL history. Braves tied the game with a nine-run bottom of the ninth.
This leads to a sales pitch: Phillies: An Extraordinary Tradition, the new commemorative 252-page book that showcases the Phillies historic faces and places, contains a photo of the Phillies taken in spring training in 1900 in Charlotte, NC. Book will be on sale around May 1. Fans can pre-order now.
BIG Thank You
Phillies Insider climbed into 11th place among club blogs on MLB.com during March. Can't thank everyone enough for putting up with this brilliant prose or boring blabber, whatever you may want to call it


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Marlborough in Spring
If you're looking to let loose with the kids then you're going to Love Marlborough in Spring.
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Family life is very much at the heart of our beautiful region which offers a range of activities that will appeal to both the young and young at heart. Spring is the perfect time to visit, our climate is moderate, the nature is booming and the bustle of the tourist season is not yet upon us.
For the more adventurous the Queen Charlotte Track will get you out into the great outdoors and get you close to nature. The track is four day, three night or 71km through some of New Zealand's most stunning native bush overlooking the Marlborough Sounds.
The track can be experienced in pieces as a one day walk using Picton as a base or there is a range of accommodation to suit everyone along the way from a DOC campsite to a five star Lodge.
The track is made more accessible to families as your packs are all transferred ahead of you. The Marlborough Sounds offer an unparalleled outdoor adventure playground, perfect for fishing, boating, kayaking, sailing and the ultimate in natural adventures, swimming with dolphins.
For an experience that is both fun and educational, Marlborough has plenty to offer with EcoWorld Aquarium and Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre offering hours of family friendly entertainment even on the odd rainy day.
Ecoworld Aquarium in Picton Foreshore showcases the natural marine environment of the Marlborough Sounds as well as allowing children to interact with Blue Penquins, Tuataras and Kakariki.
Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre brings World War One aviation history to life thanks to Peter Jackson and his friends at Weta Workshop. This is much more than old planes and enthralls young and old, male and female alike.
The 40 minute Queen Charlotte Drive winds through the Marlborough Sounds between Picton and Havelock and offers spectacular scenery.
Stop at the picturesque Momorangi Bay a favourite camping spot for local families to let the kids stretch their legs or indulge in an icecream.
Havelock, known as the Greenshell Mussel Capital of the World is a picturesque town set at the head of the Pelorus Sound. The cafés and restaurants serve up the local delicacy in an array of styles to please every palate.
A family holiday in Marlborough doesn't just keep the kids happy, Spring is also a great time for parents to take a winery tour where they can sample the latest sauvignon blanc releases from over 40 cellar doors.
The local produce is also on offer at the many winery cafes and restaurants or fresh from the farm at the local Farmers Market held every Sunday from 8am to 12pm at A&P Show grounds.


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NASHVILLE, TENN. – When the Lipscomb University Bisons and East Tennessee State University met on Jan. 17 in Johnson City, Lipscomb had a 15-point halftime lead but committed 27 turnovers before eventually falling in overtime.
Monday evening in Allen Arena the Bisons held a 15-point lead at the half and held on for a 96-91 win against ETSU.
It was a wild affair with two technicals called on each team in the second half.
Lipscomb attempted 34 free throws in the second half, but only connected on 19 allowing ETSU to stay in the game. Lipscomb was 25-of-44 (56.8 percent) from the free throw line for the game. ETSU was 15-of-17 in the second half from the free throw line and 24-of-28 (85.7 percent) for the game.
Jimmy Oden led Lipscomb with 19 points. He was 13-of-18 from the free throw line.
Michael Lusk finished with 16 points, four rebounds, and four assists. He was perfect from the floor and four-of-four from the 3-point line. Lusk fouled out with 7:50 when he was called with a foul along with a technical.
Josh Slater barely missed a triple double with 10 points, 10 assists, and seven rebounds
ETSU never took the lead in the second half, but cut the game to two points (72-70) with 5:33 remaining. Lipscomb used a 7-0 run to make it a 79-70 game with 3:34 left.
ETSU cut it two five with 2:33 remaining before the Bisons used a 5-0 run to stretch their lead back to ten with 1:25 on the clock. Oden connected on four free throws with less than a minute to go extend Lipscomb's lead to 13 with 36 seconds left.
ETSU was down by eight with ten seconds left in the game. Adam Sollazzo had a dunk with four seconds left to cut it six. Then Brian Wright threw the ball out of bounds on the inbound. Tiggs connect on a three with 2.2 seconds left to bring the game to three, 94-91. Jimmy Oden hit two free throws to seal the game.
ETSU outscored Lipscomb 12-4 in the last 36 seconds.
The win was Lipscomb's fourth win in the last eight days. It is Lipscomb's sixth win in the last eight games. Lipscomb snapped a seven-game losing streak to ETSU.
Lipscomb had 25 assists on 29 field goals. Oden had seven assists and Lusk had four to go along with Slater's ten.
Adnan Hodzic finished with 12 points in just 18 minutes of action due to foul trouble. Wright (15) and Thomas Pfaff (10) also scored in double-figures for the Bisons.
Kevin Tiggs finished with 26 points and Mike Smith added 20 to lead ETSU.
Lipscomb shot 29-of-55 (52.7 percent) from the floor. ETSU was 30-of-72 (41.7 percent) from the field.
The Bisons were 13-of-24 (54.2 percent) from the 3-point line. ETSU was 7-of-23 (30.4 percent) from downtown.
Lipscomb improves to 12-13, 8-8 in the A-Sun. ETSU drops to 17-9, 11-5 in the A-Sun.
Lipscomb is back in action Friday evening in Macon, Ga., against Mercer. The game will be televised on CSS and tip at 6 p.m.
Jonathan Seamon and Benjamin Seamon will be on the call for the Lipscomb Sports Network. Free online audio streaming is available at www.LipscombSports.com/sportsnetwork/.
Article by Trevor Garrett of the Lipscomb Athletic Office of Media Relations


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On December 10, progressive radio and TV talk show host Thom Hartmann invited The Nation's editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel to join him for an extended two-part interview on his show's "Conversations With Great Minds" segment.
A day earlier, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) had given an eight-and-a-half-hour speech on the Senate floor arguing against President Obama's tax cut deal with Republicans. Although Sanders did not officially stage a one-man filibuster, vanden Heuvel commends Sanders for standing up for the marginalized voices in the tax debate.
"If politics is about anything, it should be improving the quality of people's lives," says vanden Heuvel. "Sanders…is a man who's bringing to the Senate floor letters from citizens from around the country speaking about their lives." Vanden Heuvel says that part of what progressive journalists and progressive politicians do is "expose injustice and try to bring some justice to those who are marginalized in our country and in our world. That's what gets me up many mornings."
Go here to view the second installment of Hartmann's conversation with vanden Heuvel.
—Joanna Chiu


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Thanks for that link, I've "Liked" it. I'm cautiously optimistic. I've over engineered mine somewhat never had anything to base it on other than pictures. Was worried about mast not being stiff enough at first, I hear thats very critical. But without anything to base it on it's very difficult. My friend got his MHL Lift few months ago and I checked his out and I'm not far off in terms of stiffness. I also went 80mm on the mast not very wide. Figured I'd try something different everyone seems to be making them from 90-100mm wide. Tried to come in at around 12mm thick but it ended up being 15mm at it's thickest point.
Suppose the proof is in the pudding. Should be done in the new week. Hopefully I'll get some wind.


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Style Advice
Style Advice
In soft, cotton jersey, our Bridley boxers are made for the everyday.
Made with elastane in the seams, the cotton blend provides enough stretch to keep them snug and supportive while allowing natural movement – as does the Jack Wills-branded elasticated waist – and the covered front opening makes going about your business easy.
Available in a bold striped design as well as new seasonal prints, it's a difficult choice. After all, great style should start with the first thing you put on… you never know who might end up seeing them.
- Cotton-elastane mix for comfort and fit
- Covered front opening
- New seasonal designs
- Tonal stitching and branded waistband
- Our model wears a size M
Care Advice
- 92% Cotton, 8% Elastane
- Wash dark colours seperately
- Do not tumble dry
- Cool iron
- Do not dry clean


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There has been said and written too much on how software vendors do not protect their products, so let me skip this. Instead, in this article, I would like to concentrate on those relatively easy steps, which software vendors have to take in order to enhance their protection (using packers and protectors is good, but certainly not enough) by not letting the whole code appear in memory in readable form for a single moment.
The code may be compiled for both Linux (using gcc) or Windows (using mingw32). It uses obfuscation code from here.
Target Function
Our target function is quite simple (it only calculates factorial for hardcoded number):
void func()
__asm__ __volatile__("enc_start:");
{ /* Braces are used here as we do not want IDA to track parameters */
int i, f = 10;
for( i = 9; i > 0; i--)
f *= i;
printf("10! = %d\n\n", f);
__asm__ __volatile__("enc_end:");
You noticed the labels in the beginning and in the end of the function body? These labels are only used for getting the start address of the region to be decrypted/encrypted and calculating it's length. Due to the fact that these labels are no processed by the C preprocessor, but are passed to assembler, they are accessible from other functions by default. The rest of the code is enclosed by braces in order to put all the actions related to variables i and f in the encrypted part of the function. This is what it looks like, before being decrypted:
__asm__(".byte 0x0D, 0xF0, 0xAD, 0xDE");
void func()
__asm__(".byte 0xAD, 0xDE, 0xAD, 0xDE");
Encryption Algorithm
Selection of encryption algorithm is totally up to you. In this particular case, the algorithm is quite primitive (it does not even require a key):
b - byte
i - position
for i = 0; i < length; i++
b(i+1) = b(i+1) xor (b(i) rol 1)
b(0) = b(0) xor (b(length) rol 1)
Execution Flow
So, let us assume that the program started with the function already encrypted. As this is just an example, we can get to the business right away:
int main()
unsigned int addr, len;
__asm__ __volatile__("movl $enc_start, %0\n\t"\
"movl $enc_end, %1\n\t"\
: "=r"(addr), "=r"(len));
len -= addr;
decode(addr, len);
encode(addr, len);
return 0;
The code above is self explanatory enough. There are, however, a couple of things needed to be mentioned. decode and encode functions should take care of modifying the access rights of the memory region they are going to operate on. The following code may be used:
#ifdef WIN32
#include <windows.h>
#define SETRWX(addr, len) {\
DWORD attr;\
VirtualProtect((LPVOID)((addr) &~ 0xFFF),\
(len) + ((addr) - ((addr) &~ 0xFFF)),\
#define SETROX(addr, len) {\
DWORD attr;\
VirtualProtect((LPVOID)((addr) &~ 0xFFF),\
(len) + ((addr) - ((addr) &~ 0xFFF)),\
#include <sys/mman.h>
#define SETRWX(addr, len) mprotect((void*)((addr) &~ 0xFFF),\
(len) + ((addr) - ((addr) &~ 0xFFF)),\
#define SETROX(addr, len) mprotect((void*)((addr) &~ 0xFFF),\
(len) + ((addr) - ((addr) &~ 0xFFF)),\
Bottom Line
The example given above is really a simple one. Things would be at least a bit more complicated in real life. While there is only one encrypted function, imagine, that there are several encrypted functions. Some of them are encrypted without keys (like the one above) others require keys of different complexity. Several keys may be hardcoded (for those parts that were encrypted in order to draw attacker's attention away from the "real" thing), others should be computed on the fly.
Function A is encrypted without a key. When decrypted, it performs several operations and decrypts function B, which, in turn encrypts function A back and calculates a key for function C based on the binary content of function A (or A and B to prevent breakpoints) or even based on some other code in unrelated place.
Of course, there is no such thing as unbreakable protection. But the time it takes to break certain protection makes the difference. A company that produces software product which is cracked the next day may hardly benefit from all the hard work. On the other hand, it is totally possible to create protection schemes that would require months to be cracked.
I will try and cover additional possibilities and aspects of software protection in my future posts in a hope to at least try to change the situation.
Hope this post was helpful.
See you at the next!


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I have been using WordPress for the six years; developing using WordPress for five years; and contributing to the WordPress code base for four years. Over the course of this time I have found three things that make WordPress awesome.
1. The Community
One of the greatest things about WordPress is the community. I worked with many different open source and closed source development communities, and this is the best one that I have ever dealt with. There are a number of ways that you can get involved in the WordPress community.
You can participate in WordCamp, an informal, community organized event throughout the world that is open to users and developers to share ideas on WordPress. For more frequent events, look for WordPress Meetups in your area; I am part of a Meetup in San Antonio that is hosted at Geekdom on a monthly basis.
Learn more about the good news of installing WordPress on Cloud Sites with just one click through the Rackspace control panel.
Whether you have been working with WordPress for years, or if you just picked it up yesterday, all are welcome to WordPress events. In fact, some of the best people to get involved in your local community are the newer WordPress users because they bring a fresh perspective. The WordPress community is very welcoming and the dialogue about what people like and don't like leads to some great improvements for everyone.
2. More Than A Blog
A lot of people look at WordPress and think of it as "just a blog." While it was forked from a blogging piece of software, WordPress has evolved to be so much more than that. Many of the sites you go to on a daily basis are probably running on WordPress. WordPress is fully customizable and with such an active community, many people are creating amazing themes and plugins that push it well beyond simply being a blog.
3. It's Free
A lot of people say, "You get what you pay for," but with WordPress you get so much more than that. You get an awesome community, you get a piece of software that can be much more than a blog and you get it all for free. The only thing left now is to find some good hosting, throw up a WordPress site and begin writing content.
This is what I have found to be awesome about WordPress, what do you love about it? Be sure to let me know in the comment section below!
In a previous post, Matt talked about the importance of updating your WordPress site. Check out the WordPress tag for more WordPress articles on the Rackspace blog! Learn more about how Rackspace can help you with hosting your WordPress site.


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The city of Denver and Enterprise Community Partners will receive $2.25 million in funding from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to support affordable rental housing near mass transit.
The money will be invested in the city's soon-to-be-established Denver Transit Oriented Development (TOD) Fund, which aims to preserve and create at least 1,200 units of affordable for-sale and rental housing along mass transit corridors over a 10-year period.
The MacArthur Foundation funding includes a $250,000 grant to the City and County of Denver and $2 million in low-interest loans to Enterprise Community Partners to capitalize the Denver TOD fund.
Enterprise will serve as the fund manager. It's used the MacArthur Foundation funding to leverage additional private investment, with the fund totaling $15 million in pledged investments. Investors include US Banks, Wells Fargo, Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, Rose Community Foundation and the Mile High Community Loan Fund.
In addition to the city and Enterprise, the Urban Land Conservancy is a partner in the fund. For now, Urban Land is expected to be the sole borrower of the fund and is responsible for acquisition and establishing partnerships for site redevelopment.
A primary goal of the TOD fund is to lower the housing and transportation cost burden for Denver families by expanding housing options located within a half-mile of rail service and a quarter-mile of frequent bus routes.


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Enter the mind of comedian Mark Forward as each episode delves into a different topic, ranging from space to superstitions to ghosts. Along with his little guy, Eric Andrews, they discuss their take on each topic in ways you might not have thought of. If you like stupid fun, then this is the podcast for you.
Tuesday, 11 December 2018
Episode 107 Season 2 Finale
Follow the Mark Forward Podcast at
Follow Mark and Eric on Twitter @markforwardd or @mericmandrews
If you love or hate our show, let us know email us at email@example.com
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Is My Pet Suffering?
How do I know if my pet is suffering?
Lili Duda, VMD, MBE, DACVR Veterinary Radiation Oncologist- University of Pennsylvania, responds:
Suffering is a hard thing to define and quantify, whether it is happening in a pet or a person. For our veterinary patients, we assume that if something would hurt or distress a person, it would also hurt or distress a pet. If a pet is not able to do the things that make it happy, such as playing with a ball, going for a walk, enjoying a meal, or comfortably use the litter box, he or she may be suffering. The duration of the distress or discomfort also makes a difference. If a pet has symptoms we think we can make better with supportive care and medication, it may be worth trying treatment. When a pet is at a point where we have exhausted our treatment options and nothing is working, we are at a point where we can't alleviate suffering.
Learn more about quality of life in pets with cancer.
This question and answer was part of the OncoLink Brown Bag Chat Series. View the entire transcript from When a Beloved Pet has Cancer.


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The planning commission voted 6-2 to limit the number of residential units to 12 instead of 22 in the proposed Elk Rest Village multi-use complex on Swede Gulch Road in El Rancho Town Center.
The Sept. 10 vote affirmed the planning commission's original decision on July 30.
The recommendation goes next to the board of county commissioners Sept. 30 for a final decision.
The planning commission was hearing the case for the second time after the county commissioners asked the citizen board to re-examine the allowed density level.
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Search Results
Charles Turner, 37th Superintendent of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, compares life to a navigation in that everyone begins life in a specific spot and situation and the travels toward an unkown destination, using what ever tools we have acquired in life to give direction; from this he adds that it is important to keep your awareness in the present and do the task at hand. This essay also contains an advertisement for a This I Believe LP album.
Phyllis Parker is reminded of a saying she was fond of as a child, "love conquers all" and describes the good and sometimes bad results that have come of love. She also compares love to electricity, a flow of energy, and says that if we could all harness love and direct it wisely the world could be a much better place without prejudice. In addition, this essay contains an advertisement for a This I Believe LP album.