Jeopardy also caused a shitstorm the other day with the Palestine answer
Wolf for keks
#435
22 Dec 2017 - 10:44:18 AM
‘Yellow Brick Road'.
F-I speech - history.
Wizards & Warlocks.
Alice & Wonderland.
Solved?
Q
Yellow brick road
Wizard of Oz
"We're not in KANSAS anymore"
Boatfags, weren't there a ton of yachts in the same area of the Bahamas recently? Think Freewinds was one.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article239325343.html
Smugglers ferrying Chinese from Bahamas to South Florida, feds say. They’re using yachts
Dozens of Chinese nationals without proper papers have been smuggled from the Bahamas to South Florida by operators of luxury yachts who are charging them thousands of dollars each for the short Atlantic journey, according to federal criminal cases.
In recent instances, the Coast Guard stopped two vessels approaching the South Florida shore, leading to the arrests of three men accused of transporting a total of 26 Chinese passengers and one Bahamian, court records show. The alien smuggling operations were not related, however.
Rocco Oppedisano, a 51-year-old Italian national, is scheduled for arraignment in Miami federal court Friday on charges of conspiring to transport aliens into the United States and bringing them here for financial gain. Oppedisano told a magistrate judge Wednesday that properties he once owned in the Northeast have been sold along with his Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Fiat vehicles to pay for legal costs over his immigration troubles.
“All gone,” he told Magistrate Judge Alicia Otazo-Reyes, who assigned a private attorney at taxpayer expense to represent him.
Oppedisano was stopped by the Coast Guard on Dec. 2 while he was commandeering a 63-foot Sunseeker yacht named INXS FINALLY with 14 Chinese passengers and one Bahamian, according to an indictment. Among the passengers was a Chinese national, Ying Lian Li, who was deported last April but tried to re-enter the country.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Sattler said in the indictment that authorities seized the vessel as well as $172,000 in Bahamian dollars and $41,000 in U.S. dollars.
(article too long to post in entirety)
https://apnews.com/3cd46ae3f694b21c0cf83af3f0c4f1c7
Pelosi doles out impeachment pens, a signing tradition
WASHINGTON (AP) — One by one, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi picked up pens lined up beside her and used them to sign a bit of her name on the impeachment articles against President Donald Trump. Then she handed each signing pen to the assembled chairmen and House managers who will prosecute the case in the Senate.
Signing pens are swag in Washington, often doled out on more celebratory occasions. They can be seen framed and hung in lobbies across the city as trophies of proximity to power. Trump has engaged in the tradition himself.
But Pelosi handed out the pens on a darker day, as she signed the impeachment articles against only the third president in history.
White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham on Wednesday criticized Pelosi both for the pens and the speaker’s demeanor, which got some blowback on social media for being too cheery for such a grave development.
“Nancy Pelosi’s souvenir pens served up on silver platters to sign the sham articles of impeachment,” Grisham tweeted, reposting a photo. Pelosi, she wrote, “was so somber as she gave them away to people like prizes.”
Pelosi’s signature sent the articles against Trump to the Senate for trial, which is expected to open Thursday. The House-passed documents charge the president with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress for pressuring Ukraine to help him politically. Trump says the whole thing is a “hoax” and claims he is a victim of a political “witch hunt” led by Pelosi. He is the third president in U.S. history to be impeached.
Before the signing, aides set out two small trays containing more than two dozen black pens emblazoned with Pelosi’s signature. She entered the room and sat at a table, the documents and pens before her. Standing around her were the House prosecutors and the committee chairmen who had worked on Trump’s impeachment. Pelosi picked up each pen, signed a bit, and handed each one to a lawmaker.
Sometimes, she was smiling.
Trump is familiar with this tradition. In a much-photographed ceremony in June 2018, he signed an executive order halting family separations at the U.S. border. He then handed the pen to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
On December 22, 2017, in the Oval Office, Trump signed the Republican tax bill into law while Congress was in recess. But Trump’s aides brought some pens, anyway — so he tried to give them out to reporters . Journalists can’t take gifts from the people they cover.
The tradition didn’t start with Trump.
President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave away framed sets of the pens he used to sign his “great society” legislation to fight poverty and racial injustice. Among the recipients were lawmakers and the White House press corps. A complete set still resides in the press work space behind the White House briefing room.
Forgot pic
At some point the streets (for them) will not be safe.
https://apnews.com/b0faded50f3e407ac19d68a9e1adf6e4
German parliament votes against new system for organ donors
BERLIN (AP) — German lawmakers on Thursday rejected a proposal that would have made most people potential organ donors unless they objected, instead backing a less radical plan to tackle a shortage of donor organs.
Doctors in Germany can transplant organs only from people who actively declare their willingness, for example by carrying a donor card or making a living will. More than 1,000 people in the country of 83 million die each year while waiting for transplants, lawmakers say.
Under a new system proposed by Health Minister Jens Spahn and others, most people would automatically have been considered as donors unless they opted out by putting themselves on a register saying they objected — which they could do at any time. Relatives could also tell officials that the deceased made clear they didn’t want to donate.
After a debate that cut across party lines, parliament voted 379-292 against the proposal.
Spahn argued that 22 out of 28 European Union nations have similar systems, helping to ensure that “organ donation is not the exception but the rule.”