The system is rigged for endless war. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. I still can't find the words to describe how insane it is that all the experts who spent 20 years being wrong about Afghanistan remain esteemed and wealthy, while those who spent that time being right about Afghanistan remain marginalized and regarded as fringe kooks. Nobody gets credit for ending the Afghanistan occupation. Everyone involved in keeping it going for 20 years gets blame. That's it. You don't get a trophy for not murdering more people. But it's not surprising that the Afghanistan war took 20 years to end. If anything, the way the deck is stacked in favor of perpetual war, it's surprising it happened that fast. Military members who support imperialism get promoted. Those who get to the top go on to work for war profiteers. The war profiteers fund think tanks which promote more wars. The mass media report news stories citing those think tanks. Those stories manufacture consent for more wars. The war industry reinforces itself. Those who get to the top of the war machine move on to the private sector and spend their time lobbying for more wars, which create more eventual Pentagon officials who go on to lobby for more wars. Peace should be easy. This is why it's not. It's horrifying when you realize how much of the behavior of the most powerful military in history is driven by the simple fact that weapons manufacturers don't make money if those weapons aren't being used. The most powerful government on earth is stuck in a self-exacerbating feedback loop where the behaviors of the war machine are dictated by the war industry and people wonder why it's so hard to end wars. With a cycle this vicious, you can only end the wars by ending the empire. This is what you get when mass-scale human behavior is driven by profit. As long as war is profitable, you guarantee that more wars will happen. As long as ecocide is profitable, more ecocide will happen. As long as corruption is profitable, more corruption will happen. Meanwhile, peace is not profitable. Demilitarization is not profitable. Nuclear disarmament is not profitable. Getting plastic out of the ocean is not profitable. Leaving trees standing is not profitable. Leaving oil in the ground is not profitable. Freedom is not profitable. The religion of profit drives all human behavior, and it's a death cult that will end us all if we don't end it first. People seem to think it's only justifiable to end a military occupation if you can continue to control everything that happens in that nation after your military occupation ends. This is the same as believing it's never okay to end a military occupation under any circumstances. The mass media always cheerly to US president's foreign policy when it involves mass murder on an unthinkable scale and always criticize a US president when he tries to stop doing this. That's all you really need to know about the trustworthiness of the mass media. Corporate media is mind control at mass scale. People who identify as smart independent thinkers have their minds altered by it every day, and they believe they came to those opinions on their own. Until this problem is addressed, none of our other major problems are going away. How are we supposed to get everyone vaccinated if we don't make it mandatory? Uh, you don't? You don't begin with the assumption that the existence of a nasty respiratory virus justifies forcing or coercing everyone to inject themselves with a brand new drug they don't trust? I mean, compelling people to take an injection that they are actually afraid of is a huge deal. Can we not at least agree on that? Can we agree that forcing someone to receive an injection they fear would be so serious that you'd better have an amazingly bulletproof argument for doing it? I think so. And I don't think such an argument exists at this time. It's important to follow and be followed by people you disagree with. You'll see a lot of crap, but you'll also keep yourself from falling into a self-validating echo chamber and eventually finding yourself saying something like unvaccinated people should be denied medical care.  Saying communism doesn't work because nations who try to espouse it don't look like thriving utopias while they're being relentlessly assaulted is like saying a new invention doesn't work because a band of armed thugs kept stomping on it during the demonstration. Poverty is the result of an abusive system and telling the poor to get a job or get a better job has always enabled that abuse. Now that small businesses are being killed by that same abusive system, many who used to enable its abuses by doing so are becoming its victims. Blaming poverty on the poor in a system that's literally built on the premise of a permanent underclass has always been insane, but if you're making good money and lacking empathy it's easy to think they're just lazy.


This is the Big Picture, an official television report of the United States Army, produced for the armed forces and the American people. Now to show you part of the Big Picture, here is Master Sergeant Stuart Quain. At 10.48 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, on January 31st, 1958, the attention of the American people was focused on Cape Canaveral, Florida, as a giant rocket was catapulted toward outer space. Few events in American history have been so awaited, prayed for, worked for, as the Army's successful launching of Explorer 1. Today's Big Picture will reveal the dramatic, suspenseful story of how the Army, when the prestige of the United States throughout the world had been shaken by events beyond its control, stirred the hearts and emotions of the American people with an epic display of scientific and technical teamwork. Our story starts 84 days before the launching of Explorer 1. The date? The morning of November 8th, 1957, at Huntsville, Alabama. A sudden meeting has been called by General John B. Madaris, commanding general of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. Good morning gentlemen, be seated please. I have a very important announcement for you. We've been assigned the mission of launching a scientific Earth satellite. And we will use the Jupiter-C configuration as a carrier that we developed along with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. I promised the Secretary of the Army that we would be ready in 90 days or less. Let's go, Werner. This is what they've been waiting for. The deadline is 90 days. 90 days to put a satellite into orbit, a crash program, an emergency, and the American people had become aware of that emergency long before when a Soviet Sputnik beeped its way across the skies. The reaction was one of astonishment and concern, for it was now known that a potential enemy was at least temporarily ahead in developing means for space travel. Reaction? Counter-reaction. All at once Americans were interested in the oncoming age of space, and with the curiosity came a mounting, swelling demand to get a satellite into the air on the double. But there were disappointments. It was an immensely difficult job, and the first American attempt with a Vanguard rocket was a failure. For the assignment to the Army Ballistic Missile Agency on November 8, 1957, put a satellite into orbit within 90 days. There was no sense of panic as the capability for doing the job had been ABMAs since 1954. ABMA was a crack team headed by old pros of the missile field. Dr. Werner von Braun, Director of the Development Operations Division, supervised over 3,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians with more years of practical experience than any similar group elsewhere. Long before a countdown starts at a launching pad, precise miniature replicas of the individual sections are made and subjected to numerous tests. And even the model work comes after a countless number of hours at the drafting table. Each new experiment, each test means more knowledge, which may mean a change of design. There are often no precedents. It is creative work by creative men and women, absorbed in the fascinating problems of space flight. And it would be difficult to find a science which does not have something to contribute. Even as the research and design work along with the incessant testing goes on, the missiles take shape in the vast construction shops. In the development phase, no two missiles are alike. Each one contains changes and improvements on what has come before. All efforts are made to perfect the missiles quickly, but every day presents an obstacle course of unique problems. Even the welding, for example, involves special techniques needed to satisfy the very specific requirements of a missile. Now, added to the already numerous complications, the ABMA development team had the job of modifying an existing missile system for the purpose of achieving orbital capacity. The decision was passed down, modify the Redstone ballistic missile, the Army's most powerful weapons carrier over a 200-mile range. Why the Redstone? It improved itself again and again on the ABMA launching pads at Cape Canaveral, Florida. At Huntsville, Alabama, the steady success of the Redstone fireings confirmed the feeling they were going to be the ones to put up a satellite. Work on modifications was accelerated around the clock. The tests of components, assemblies, everything that goes into the missile. Question. Will a small piece of metal alloy withstand the hottest part of the rocket's exhaust? No guesswork. ABMA people have to know. The rocket's exhaust will be too much for the alloy. It melts. So they will develop a better one. The final test at ABMA, the big one where the results of thousands of tests are checked out, is the static firing. Held firmly in place, its rocket engines filled with fuel, the assembled missile is studied during full force firing. In the blockhouse sheathed in concrete where the operating controls and personnel are located, the countdown has started. A few seconds before firing, the water is turned on. 4,000 gallons a minute are required to cool the flame deflector of the test stand in this simulated flight where the missile will stay right where she is. The countdown moves along to the fateful moment. The static test is over. The rocket is taken down and dried out. A closer examination of the rocket by observer teams will determine how various parts withstood the static test firing. The static firing was successful and the modified Redstone which would serve as the first stage of the satellite bearing rocket was loaded aboard a plane. Next up, Cape Canaveral. But meanwhile far across the country at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a sprawling 80-acre research and development complex in Pasadena, California, scientists and engineers were racing toward the same deadline, 90 days to put a satellite into orbit. Their job, furnish the high speed upper stages to take over after the first stage powered the satellite to the prescribed distance from the Earth. JPL also assembled the satellite and provided instrumentation to transmit the scientific data. When completed, the cylinder contained two transmitters, their battery power supplies and instrumentation for transmitting data on cosmic rays, meteorite erosion and temperature measurements. The data would be dispatched continuously by the two transmitters. And the satellite appears small, but if all went well, seven and a half minutes from the time the giant missile bearing it would leave the Earth, the cylinder would be hurtling independently through space at a little over 18,000 miles per hour, if all went well. The checkout on the JPL test stand went smoothly, but only the launching pad at Cape Canaveral Florida would tell the story. The date, Wednesday, 29 January 1958, eight days before the deadline set down by General Madaris. On the morning of the 29th, the weather was not good, the prediction was for thunderstorms and unsatisfactory jet stream conditions aloft. A 24 hour postponement was decided upon. The hours passed with the rocket crews working swiftly, intensively, where there is a whole set of operations to be completed at least 24 hours before the countdown starts. It was not until Friday, January 31st, that the weather cleared sufficiently for General Madaris to order launch at 10.30 p.m. Men worked on the lines, pipes and servicing units on the pad, others clambered about the various gantry levels, as is so often said in the Army, but rarely with more accuracy. This was it. Before the countdown was to start, the satellite and last stage rocket, shrouded to prevent even the slightest abrasion, was at the launching pad. By the giant missile and the protective scaffold of the gantry, the payload, weighing 30.8 pounds, 80 inches in length, is raised toward the top, where it will be carefully fitted into place, like a glittering jewel in a luminous setting. X minus two hours, high dean, an exotic liquid oxygen oxidizer for the fuel begins to flow into the tanks. Frosty white vapor hisses from the vents. Minutes click past relentlessly. The beams of powerful searchlights light up the missile, truly the star of one of the greatest suspense dramas of our time. The drama approaches the final act. The Army's first attempt to fire a man-made moon into orbit. Time, late evening, Friday, January 31st, 1958, in a blockhouse at Canaveral, the countdown to explore the one. OK, we'll start now. Finish fuel loading. Take a weight reading. OK, check the utility room fuel vapors and notify the blockhouse when we're clear to start generators. Control voltage on. Gyros on. Gyro erection on. Check the lock loading has been completed. Connect assembly two igniters. OK, tie down the leads. Reading after last scaffold is removed. FMTC telemeter calibration tape on. Start vibration and RPM recorders. Check all operating lights and meters for proper operation. Fire panel check. Control panel check. Magic panel check. Roger. Fluster control panel check. Gyro erection off. Rudder drive on. Transfer test on. Observe and record all voltages. Transfer test on. Jet vane two is deflected. What do you want to do? Forget it. OK, resume count. The missile is in flight, but the success of its mission is still in doubt. It will take another hour and a half to know whether the satellite is in orbit, the most tense and harrowing weight of all. Minitrack stations, located throughout the world by the Army Air Force and Navy, followed the movements of the Army Earth satellite. At each of the stations, a Minitrack radio system received signals from a transmitter in the satellite. Rudder is finally called his assistant, Colonel Leonard Orman. Hello, Len. You can send this off to the secretary. That our satellite is definitely on orbit. Now get that off and then I'll give you the figures in a few minutes. OK, boy. In Washington at the National Academy of Science, a packed auditorium of reporters, radio and TV interviewers heard the announcement of Dr. Richard Porter, chairman of the I.G.Y. Committee. The National Academy of Sciences and the National Science Foundation announced that as part of the U.S. International Geophysical Year Program, a scientific Earth satellite was placed in orbit at five seconds after 10.55 p.m. by means of a Jupiter-C rocket vehicle launched by the Army at Cape Canaveral, Florida. A similar statement is being issued by the president. And I should like to add my personal congratulations to the Army Ballistics Missiles Agency and to Dr. von Braun and Dr. Pickering and their colleagues for a job well done. Before the news conference, the big-picture camera and Sergeant Stuart Queen drew Dr. von Braun aside for a special interview. Dr. von Braun, I wonder if you could tell our big-picture viewers just what did transpire during those 84 days? Well, those were rather hectic 84 days, I can assure you of that. A project like firing a satellite into orbit is only possible if there's splendid teamwork all the way through. In this particular case, this teamwork involved at first close cooperation between our own Army Ballistics Missile Agency in Huntsville, Alabama and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Between the two of us, the vehicle was developed that carried the satellite into orbit. There was also very close cooperation between us and Iowa State University, which pioneered the payload. Jet Propulsion Laboratory also had a big hand in repackaging this payload for our vehicle because this payload was originally designed with a Vanguard vehicle in mind as a potential carrier. Other groups that deserve much credit in our successful satellite try are the military and civilian personnel of Patrick Air Force Base down in Florida from where the missile was fired. The range operation down there and everybody from the command of the crew and ground down to the last cameraman gave us splendid support. The tracking of the missile as it circles around the globe is in the hands of both IGI personnel and personnel of the Naval Research Laboratory. So you have an example here of splendid teamwork involving all three services. And I hope this example will show that you need not believe everything you hear and read about inter-service rivalry and its detrimental effects. There's actually a lot of fine teamwork between the services when it comes to getting things done. 20 minutes later, Dr. Porter opened the question and answer session by introducing three of the key men in the success story of Explorer 1. Credit for the technical part of this achievement than any others in this country. First, Dr. Werner von Braun, director for development operations of the Army Ballistic Missiles Agency. Dr. von Braun, would you rise, please? Dr. James A. Van Allen, head of the physics department of the State University of Iowa, who is chairman of the working group on internal instrumentation of the panel for the Earth Second Life Program, Dr. Van Allen. And Dr. William H. Pickering, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, chairman of our working group on tracking and computation. These three gentlemen have all had a direct and important part in this achievement. Now, if you would like to address your questions, I will try to repeat the question. And we'll ask the one of these gentlemen best qualified to answer it for you. Dr. von Braun, how many stages in the device? We have a total of four stages. The first stage is an elongated redstone missile, you kindly show it Bill, an elongated redstone missile with extra long tanks and a special fuel combination, which burns for approximately 140 seconds, 145 seconds. After cut off, immediately after cut off, we separate the front portion of this missile, the so-called instrument compartment, from the tank section. This instrument compartment is equipped with a special attitude control system, as we call it, that aligns this portion, including this spinning launcher in the nose, into an exactly horizontal position. Once this nose section with the spinning cluster configuration in the nose goes through the apex of the trajectory, the top stages are fired. And there are three solid rocket stages in the top. So it's a four-stage vehicle. How does this altitude compare with the Sputniks? This is somewhat greater than the altitude of either Sputnik one or Sputnik two. The question is, has any form of life been placed in the satellite? I think I could answer that one almost myself, not intentionally. Maybe we have a Florida cockroach inside, we don't know. Everybody welcomed the touches of humor, for it was, after all, an hour of jubilation. Just one more came the inevitable plea from the photographers. And exhausted as they were, the trio obliged, with what was to be the page one spread in newspapers all over the world. In plain language, the United States was in the space business along with the Russians, and Explorer One was the beginning. Just under two months after Explorer One was put into orbit and close on the heels of a successful firing of the Navy's vanguard, a launching pad at Canaveral awaited another Army satellite, Explorer Three. The Army's first success had not washed away the rocket men's humility. For there are a countless number of things that can go wrong in the operation. And indeed, Explorer Two, fired successfully, had failed to go into orbit because of one tiny component in the last stage. Maybe that was why along the Florida beaches, many fingers were crossed as eyes stared toward Explorer Three. Shortly before launch, the upper stages are set rotating. If the spin were not provided, the payload would be hopelessly deflected. Explorer Three was reported in orbit. Again, news flashed instantaneously throughout the world in every language to every country. And wherever the news went, it had an effect of transcendent importance. The scientific and technical prestige of the United States was enhanced. People everywhere knew the free world would not be left behind in the all-important race toward outer space. Now, Americans could once again look up toward their future with faith and with confidence. And so, two explorers were in orbit, momentous achievements made possible by the close cooperation of the Army with some of the best technical and scientific minds in the land. As these satellites raced through the uncharted upper atmospheres, there would come a steady stream of information to enrich our knowledge of the worlds about us, the infinity that lies far, far beyond the wild blue yonder. Now, this is Sergeant Stuart Queen, your host for The Big Picture. The Big Picture is an official television report for the armed forces and the American people, produced by the Army Pictorial Center, presented by the United States Army in cooperation with this station.


It's December the 8th, 2021. It's Wednesday, it's 11 o'clock. It's time for What Now, America? I'm Tim Apichell, your host. Today's title is DOJ says Texas Redistricting is an illegal scheme. In the last 10 years, Texas population has grown by 4 million new residents. And of that 4 million, 95% are minorities. And Texas as a result of the 10 year census in this population increase, Texas has gained two extra seats from 36 to 38. The two new seats though are in a white voting district. And that's the point of this show. Merrick Garland, the United States Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Texas for violating section 208 of the Civil Rights 1964 Act. And basically to challenge the redistricting that has taken place in Texas. Last month, the Attorney General's office filed suit against Texas regarding the Senate bill that they passed, the new voting's right bill they passed, restricting the ability to aid people with disabilities or clarify any questions that may be on the voting ballot. So we have two federal lawsuits against Texas over these new voting right bill, the new voting bill that Texas enacted. So with me today to discuss that is Jay Fidel and Cynthia Lee Sinclair. Good morning. Morning. Morning, Tim. Jay, before I ask you a question, I wanna go over a couple of quotes. One from Merrick Garland, the United States Attorney General. He said, the Justice Department will continue to use all the authorities at its disposal to protect this fundamental pillar of our society. And assistant attorney general, Christian Clark said, Silver Rights Division is committed to protecting the fundamental right to vote for all Americans. Given those quotes and given the lawsuits, will the voters of Texas get a fair shake from these new efforts to gerrymander the district's severely gerrymander them? Will they get a fair shake and will that fair shake take place in your opinion before the midterm election of 2022? No. And then the second one, no. Remember that the, first of all, a couple of reactions there. What's up, Merrick Garland? So, well, Texas and a dozen other states have been doing this since the Biden came into office and before. The Republicans have got a national plan going. Some say a conspiracy where all Republican governors legislators are aiming to deprive minorities of their votes. And it's systematic and it doesn't stop at gerrymandering. It's all into suppression as well. So they're not about to stop and they're gonna fight this. That's the one thing. And I guess the question is whether Merrick Garland has the will, the resources, the determination, the support of Biden to fight back because there's a lot of states involved. And don't forget that Texas, I believe, is in the Fifth Circuit. My sister in law, Linda Greenhouse, wrote a piece for the New York Times 10 days ago, maybe two weeks ago, about the Fifth Circuit. It's really special. The Fifth Circuit is all stacked with Trump judges. So even assuming that this succeeds at the federal district court level, it's gonna go to the Fifth Circuit for sure. The Court of Appeals covering Texas. And they're not gonna give it a good time. They're not gonna give Merrick Garland a good time. And finally, it has to go to the Supreme Court because whatever happens, it'll be taken to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court ruled not to want to go that gerrymandering was the business of the states and the federal government shouldn't get involved. You know, it was a perverse federalism thing they got going. So if you ask me, A, whether Merrick Garland really means it, I'm not sure. He's been slow, tentative. I'll muller back a couple of few years ago. And I do not have, personally, do not have confidence in him or the people he supervises. And D, it's gonna go a torturous route through the courts. Not at all clear what will happen, even though it's obvious that this is a racial maneuver, a racist maneuver to deprive people of vote. And of course, ultimately in the Supreme Court, I have no confidence in the Supreme Court. And my sister-in-law also wrote an article and a book about the Supreme Court. And her article was something about gaslighting. And the book is likewise, the Supreme Court lost its way. So we can't count on them, especially a view of that earlier precedent. And then finally, your question was, is this gonna happen in time for the 2022 elections? No, it's not, that's, what is that? 10 months away, that's all it is. And 11, maybe. It's not gonna get concluded. And even if we would be very optimistic and say, oh, they're gonna stop Texas, what about all those other states? Not clear the Supreme Court's gonna have all the other states in front of them when they address this, and they may not address it in time. And finally, a point you didn't ask about is this really confuses people, doesn't it? It confuses people, the suppression and the gerrymandering. It confuses voters as to, can I vote? How do I vote? How do I make sure? How do I register? Am I gonna be in the wrong district? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do to exercise my franchise? And that kind of confusion enhanced by all this litigation that is now to follow in various states, not only Texas, or should follow in various states. It's gonna confuse the public. So we won't have public confidence in the courts. And for that matter, we won't have public confidence, public clarity on what people have to do. So I am, again, sorry, guys, pessimistic. Okay, well, to make a hit on the point you made about, it was 2019, the Supreme Court did say, hey, this gerrymandering is in the state preview and the Supreme Court doesn't wanna really get involved in this. At the same time though, they also said that the Department of Justice no longer has oversight or sign off authority on gerrymandering maps of all states. So they took off a huge component of what is fair and just and who's overseeing this whole process of gerrymandering redistricting. Let me ask you this. If the Supreme Court said that they're not interested in getting involved in this, why would they take up this particular case? Would they take it up as a result of the civil rights violation? Or does it pertain back to gerrymandering? No, if you have no confidence in them, they'll do the wrong thing. And they'll say, we told you before, we're not interested. And they'll say, that's the threshold issue here. So you don't think they'll take the case? Well, that's a possibility. They won't even grant it, sir. But no, I think they will grant it, sir. And then they will say what they said before or some modified version of what they said before. And there will be no real comfort to the people who wanna vote in Texas or the other states that follow suit. Okay, thank you. Cynthia, good morning. Jay mentioned the fifth district of Texas. And he said it's heavily laden with Trump appointee judges. If the DOJ prevails in this particular lawsuit, will that give other states who are planning extreme redistricting maps? Will that give them pause and will they back down or will they just forge ahead regardless of what the DOJ prevails or doesn't prevail? I think they're going to forge ahead. I think that we need to be ready for that. And I think unless Congress passes a law to go back in time, because what was it 2013 when the Supreme Court just sort of neutered the whole Voting Rights Act when they didn't have to get permission to do their redistricting, now we have to prove that it isn't fair as opposed to them having to prove that it is fair before it can go into effect. So all of these things could go into effect first and then we'd have to go back and challenge them. So it's an uphill battle either way. And I'm sure that all of the Republicans already know this. But for me, the most important part of all of this and nobody seems to talk about it much. They talk about the people that are disabled and how it's going to affect them. And we talk about how people of color are going to be disenfranchised. But we don't talk a lot about the fact that just about every single one of these states that's going through all these crazy new voting laws are making it so that the legislature gets control over the final say, which means it doesn't matter who votes, it doesn't matter what vote, it doesn't matter what votes come in, they can change them to whatever it is that they want. And until we start to really focus on that factor alone, none of the rest of it's gonna make any difference anyway. So this DOJ lawsuit doesn't address that remedy at all. So if you listen to Merrick Garland's speech about the filing of this recent lawsuit, he basically implied that it's up to the Congress to remedy this problem and institute or approve and implement the voting rights federal laws that are proposed, that are going nowhere. Do you agree with that position that this is not gonna be remedied by the Department of Justice whatsoever? I don't think it will be. I think Congress needs to do something.  And I got a quote from Ken Paxton, the Texas state's attorney general, right? He called the redistricting suit absurd and a ploy by the administration. He said, I am confident that our legislatures, I can't say it either now, redistricting decisions will be proven lawful and this preposterous attempt to sway democracy will fail. Peace. All right, yeah, well, that says it all because that's what they're trying to do. Make it fail. They don't have the demographics anymore and that's why they're doing these things. Jay, what is your number one concern of all the things that the states have passed in these new voting right or these new voting bills? What's your number one concern or what is consistent among all those bills that give you pause? Well, let's break it down. We had some of the points already. Number one is suppression, making it hard for people to vote. They've done that in a number of states. They did that a long time ago, actually, last year. That's one thing. The second thing, of course, is this reapportionment and they have done that and they're doing that. And I agree with Cynthia that this suit isn't gonna stop them for one second. And the third is they're switching out the secretaries of state and the voting officials. I guess, and you can add one more on that, which is too hard to actually connect this in terms of a civilized legal approach. But they're intimidating people.  So they're hollowing out the election structure, the infrastructure of elections in the country. Those four things that I can think of, maybe there's more. So you asked me, which is the one I'm most concerned about? I'm most concerned about the underlying conspiracy that brings all those four things together. But it's called the Republican Party. It's just like we learned about the Willard Hotel and the fact that these guys were meeting and planning and hatching all these violent plans. There was a photograph of a shirt that was a t-shirt that was taken before the insurrection. And it said something about civil war coming January 6th. So they knew they could print t-shirts in advance. There was a national conspiracy of conspirators about January 6th. And it was not limited to the moaks who went, to the the ruffians who went to the Capitol, wasn't limited to them. A lot of them really didn't know what they were there for. But it was those who created the plan. Okay, well, we also have a plan, not too far distant about voting. And whatever the motivation is, and I agree with Cynthia there, worried about the demographics, they're worried that in a fair election, they would lose. But the reality is these got the four things and I'll add one and that is the litigation itself. As I said before, the litigation itself and the rhetoric is going to, is already confusing people as to what their rights are, confusing people as to whether voting is still voting. I think a lot of people deep down are saying voting. We gave that up and we don't have voting anymore. You can't rely on voting, you can't rely on the courts, you can't rely on Congress. The country is coming apart. But this conspiracy, which includes both ends of it, the insurrection end and also the voting things is what concerns me. I think we're in a country where already we are past a tipping point, we are past. May I say that again? We're past a tipping point and there is no recovery. And I totally agree with the point you just made a minute ago. Why isn't Merrick Garland handling the other points of this conspiracy? Just dealing with the Texas statute is just one element of many and he's not dealing with the others. So even if the Republicans lose, which is very unlikely in my opinion, even if the Republicans lose on this gerrymandering issue, they have all the other issues and they're gonna keep on doing it. And Merrick Garland is light years behind them. Well, I guess of all the things you mentioned, and Cynthia, you definitely mentioned it too, is the ability for the legislature of all these states to appoint either their secretaries of state or those that are charged to oversee the aftermath of the election to make sure it was a fair and honest election. That's, I'd like to get your read on that one, Jay. To what degree does that concern you? Well, that's the, I mentioned that in my list. If you switch out the voting officials or secretaries of state and then you adopt statutes that allow the legislature or the specially appointed, and breakaway secretary of state, then you switch the public vote to something else. You switch the certification across the Washington, you switch it, just switch it. You dump on whatever the public did. And that is also in their inventory that is also in the conspiracy that is also gonna happen. And so if some of these other things fail, as I said, and they may in the courts, who knows what, there's always that. You ignore the public vote, just ignore it. Or you have these phony baloney election officials who are loyal only to Trump and what he wants from them. And it'll get me 11,780 votes and bang, there you go. 11,780 votes, that's gonna happen again, ignoring the public vote, fabricating votes. So that's maybe one of the bottom line strategies here, but it's definitely in the lineup. It's definitely in the kit bag, and we will see that. So I would be concerned with that connected with all the other things we talked about. And Merrick Garland's not doing anything about that far as I know. All right, last question on this topic, Cynthia, to what degree does the federal voting proposed bills have a chance of seeing daylight and passing? What's your opinion on the current status of that? Unless they get rid of the filibuster, it's not gonna go anywhere because you can sure bet the Republicans are not gonna vote for it. Well, let me interrupt and say elimination of the filibuster or a modification of it. I would like to see a modification of it because I think its general purpose is sound to enhance bipartisan work. And I get that part, but it doesn't seem to ever be used that way. It's been misused over the years when it didn't even come into existence until the Jim Crow days, right? So, I mean, its inception was not based in a good thing. And so I think I would like to see it changed, not completely gone away with, but I would like to see it change for sure. I'd like to weigh in on that if I may. Sure, go ahead, Jay. You know, change, then you're not saying what, you're not saying exactly what the change would be or wouldn't be. And there has been really no public conversation of what it would be or not be. And that means, you know what that means, guys? That means negotiations and compromise. Well, we have seen, let's take BBB for example, Build Back Better, let's take that one and how we have been involved in an infinite duration of compromise and negotiation and more negotiation, more compromise, and then breach of any agreements. You know, negotiation and compromise does not work in this Congress.  So my view of it, not to disagree with you, but my view of it is we gotta throw the whole thing out because that's the only way to get past this kind of slugfest, which never ends. Compromise and negotiation, although Biden, I guess still believes in it, has gotten him nowhere. Well, on the table of that right now is what just happened with the debt ceiling, right? The Republicans let the Democrats vote for it by themselves. What is, I heard that this morning and I went, they did what? McConnell said, okay, he made a deal with Schumer that the Democrats could vote for it all by itself and let it go. I'm like, hold on a minute. So they want no part of that even. They don't even wanna fund the country. They want everything to just be obstruction and that's where it's always gonna be. So I agree with you there. Jay, I'm just hoping that we could do some sort of modification that would bring cinema and mansion along too, because otherwise we can't get rid of it all the way unless we get rid of them in 2022. So I don't know. All right, well, let's put this topic to bed. I agree with both of you is that things will be rather bleak if a federal law does not get passed by Congress and that takes Joe Manchin and minimally the revision of some of the filibuster, but we'll see. Let's go to Joe Biden, President Biden and his, we'll call it a Zoom meeting. It wasn't a Zoom meeting, but it was a telecom meeting with Vladimir Putin. And Cynthia, I don't know if you saw any reports on it. I know you watched some late night TV and the mockery they made of that, but what was your impression of Biden's meeting with Putin? Well, he's talking a really tough story afterwards and I hope that he will stick to it. And I think he will. He's pretty much a guy of his word, but he can't do it all by himself. He needs the rest of NATO to come in too, you know? And so for Putin to give that statement about how he's not really doing this, you know, they're just trying to make a big mountain out of a molehill. He's not, you know, there's nothing aggressive with what he's doing. Oh, right. We all know how many troops he's put on the border. So we know that's a lie. Plus we know he lies. And it's just putting out all this misinformation and I'm really worried at how Biden can fight against that. You know, how can he keep that misinformation or first address it and then get rid of it here in America? And I don't know if that's possible, but the four night time guys last night, they all picked on the whole meeting and they would just, they're making so much fun of two old guys on Zoom.  And then... Well, two old guys that have the ability to push a nuclear button. So, you know... It's not that funny. And that's why sort of where I was going with that too is that... Did you have any reaction to Biden saying that US troops would not be dedicated to any invasion of Russia into Ukraine? Was that something that he should have or should have not have said or stated? Well, I think what's happening now is both Russia and China see America as weak. So they are going to try to take advantage of the fact. And I think anything that happens on that score that isn't just tough talk, tough, this is what I say, this is what I'm gonna do. You know, and not going diplomatically to China Olympics is not what I mean. I mean more aggressive stances that need to be made. And they need to show the rest of the autocrats around the world that, you know... Yeah, America is not as weak as you think. And that's the thing that I'm the most worried about. Alrighty. Jay, you know, they mentioned... We haven't gotten all the details of this meeting between the two leaders. But one thing that did kind of come out of it was something called the Normandy Process, which is a result of the 2015 Minsk Agreement that hasn't been fully implemented. And the Normandy Process basically says that Germany and France will oversee the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. It sounded like that was an olive branch that was waved that can reduce the temperature of this pending incursion. What's your thought about where we are with this and whether or not this Normandy Process has any merit or not? We're nowhere with it. You know, as you guys mentioned before, where is NATO? He shouldn't be there alone. But Ukraine is not a NATO country. No, but where is NATO? NATO should be concerned about this. The leaders of NATO should be standing there with him. They should be on the Zoom call. Where are they? You know, he's alone. And that means his power, his influence is diminished, his authority in the meeting is diminished. I also want to mention one thing that I think is coming down the pike. You have Russia standing on the border with what is it, 200,000 troops. And they've softened up Ukraine. You know, they've done hacking on Ukraine's institutions. They've made it clear that, you know, they feel that Ukraine is ethnically part of Russia and they're gonna do what they did in the South. They did the same thing in the South, didn't they, a few years ago? And they took territory in the South the same way. They're gonna do it again. This is part of the expansion back to the USSR. That's what he wants to do, that is doing it so obvious. And talking nice to him, trying to negotiate with a pathological guy. You know, we saw what happens when you try that. Okay, what I'm getting to though is to the extent we get into a hubbub with China over anything where it directs the attention of the media and the world west to China. That's when Biden is gonna have a headache with Putin. That's when Putin is gonna move into Ukraine, okay? And it goes the same way in reverse to the extent that Putin goes ahead and takes territory in Ukraine. That's when she makes more rattling sounds and maybe even takes Taiwan. The two of them are playing a game with us. It's the whipsaw game, watch out. That's where we live. Those guys, you know, collaborate. And we are, may I say, mostly alone. Alrighty. You know, we've come to the end of our show and there's a lot of more questions I'd like to ask but unfortunately we just ran out of time. So Cynthia, I'm gonna go to you with closing comments about these topics that we've discussed today or anything else that's been on the horizon for you as far as what you're thinking about. Well, I'd like to see the January 6th Commission both faster. And I think I pretty much said how I feel about that.   Go ahead. We're running out of time, but please do. Famous Republican, staunch Republican. You know, there was an article in the Washington Post called Democracy Dies in Darkness. And I'm pretty sure that was the title of his speech and the whole article. I recommend everyone to look it up, but I just wanna say a couple of things from it that I thought were so important. He's talking about how he, when he first came into the White House and came to the Capitol and started working as the Kansas Senator. And he's looking out at the, you know, the monuments and stuff. And then on January 6th, he says that inspiring view came back to me as I watched the January 6th riots at the Capitol. I imagined the view of those monuments and headstones obscured by clouds of tear gas. I thought about the symbol of our democracy consumed by anger, hatred and violence. There's been a lot of talk about what it will take to heal our country. We have heard many of our leaders profess bipartisanship, but we must remember that bipartisanship is the minimum we should expect from ourselves. America has never achieved greatness when Republicans and Democrats simply managed to work together or tolerate each other. We have overcome our biggest challenges only when we focused on our shared values and experiences. These common ties form much stronger bonds than political parties. All righty, to the great late Bob Dole. Jay, you get the last word today. I only just say there are so many things happening that are undermining our country on the rule of law, on democracy and the process of it and socially. These are really existential threats to the country. They're happening now. And to my observation, there is very little happening to countervail what they are doing. And so I am very worried. I don't see the leadership that I would like to see in dealing with them, either domestically or internationally. And therefore, I think what happens is that the international crowd that is Putin and Xi Jinping take advantage of our weakness. Unless we solve our weakness and we're a long way from that, we're gonna be weak internationally.  All righty. Well, I wanna thank you, Jay Fidel, Cynthia Lisa and Claire. Thank you for your observations and your comments. Please join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock for What Now America. I'm Tim Apachella and we'll see you then. Aloha.


So should you use Azure Resource Manager templates or something like Terraform for your environment? This is a very environment-specific question, and it's going to depend on what you're currently using. If you're already using ARM templates or Azure Resource Manager templates, then you can go ahead and continue using them. But the big difference is, ARM templates are built for Azure. They deploy resources inside of Azure. Terraform uses the HashiCorp configuration language, and it can deploy across multiple Clouds. It's cloud agnostic. It uses a provider and resource model, whereas ARM templates only deploy Azure resources. So if you're trying to deploy across a portfolio of Clouds or a portfolio of environments, even on-prem environments, Terraform would be a really good choice. Now, if you're already using ARM templates and you want to look at something like Terraform, that's totally cool and that's great. You can actually deploy ARM templates using Terraform. Terraform has a resource to deploy an ARM template. So say you've already got one and you're using it now, you can still use it and you can start transitioning into Terraform if need be.


Welcome. I'm Diane Meyerhoff, host for Town Meeting TV's presentation of the Burlington Ballad Items, part of our ongoing Town Meeting 2021 coverage.  We welcome your comments and questions. If you're watching this program live, please join the conversation at 862-3966. I'm joined by the Burlington City Attorney Eileen Blackwood. Thank you so much for joining us, Eileen. We appreciate it. And we are going to talk about the four Burlington Ballad Items and tell us what our voters need to know. Sure. Let me start by, I'm going to share my screen with you, and I'll show you where folks can find these online if they want to educate themselves ahead of time. That's fantastic. Please do. It can be a little tricky navigating the website we were talking about, so I appreciate it. Eileen can get us right there. So this is the City of Burlington website, and you'll notice up here, if you can see my cursor, it's Burlington.gov, and then it says slash CT, which stands for Clerk Treasurer, which is the office that handles elections. And then you would get to the City of Burlington Clerk Treasurer's page, and then I have clicked on Under Elections. I have clicked on Sample Ballads, and it's brought us to this page. Great. Okay. Warnings and notices. Yep. Sample Ballads, Warnings and Notices. You will see for each of the different wards, there's a sample ballot. That's because there are different candidates in each ward. So each ward has a different ballot. I'm going to skip you down here to the one that says Official Copy of Charter Changes, because that's going to give us the actual language of the ballot. And I'm actually going to switch over to a PDF because it's a little bit easier to read. Great. And then I will just go through the four, there are four questions, and I'll go through the four questions for you. Fantastic. Please do. So the first one is whether the Charter of Burlington should be amended to adopt Ranked Choice Voting for the Election of City Councilors, beginning with the March 2022 election. What you'll see here is the regular upright print is the existing Charter Language, where we have crossed off and put in brackets that's being deleted. And as we come down farther, it is underlined as what's being added. So subparagraph A here is the current system for election of the mayor, all city councilors and school commissioners. That's the current system. We've taken city councilors out of that, and instead they're going to be in a new section B here that will describe the Ranked Choice Voting. I'm scrolling down and this is so this is all the language that is going into this section. All elections will be by a ballot using a system of Ranked Choice Voting. And this Charter Change gives four guidelines for how the city will set up that Ranked Choice Voting. And the overall ideas that voters will have the option of ranking candidates in order of preference so that if there are four candidates for city council in their ward, they will be able to rank those one, two, three, four. If any candidate receives a majority over 50% of first preferences, that is their rank number one by at least 50% of the voters, then that candidate is automatically elected, and it's just as it would be in any other in the current system. Then if, however, if no candidate receives a majority of first preferences, then there is a retabulation by the election officer. The election officer is a city employee who works in the clerk-treasurer's office, and that is conducted in rounds. The candidate with the fewest votes at the end of the round is eliminated so that if they're in the example I gave you, there were four candidates, the round two would drop off the lowest level candidate of those four and would re-rank the three remaining candidates. If no one got 50% at that point, then there would be another round after that. But if someone got 50%, that person would be elected. Okay, got it. And this is only for city councilors, though, not for mayor. Correct. So that's a change from last time we did this. It is. Okay. Thank you. That was helpful. I didn't realize that. And the last part of this allows the city council to adopt additional regulations to implement these standards. So the idea is this is general charter language that is talking about the system, and there are a number of different tweaks that can be done to the system, to a ranked choice voting system. And the idea of this was not necessarily to try to answer all of those questions, but to allow there to be some regulations later to address some of the things you might want to tweak. Okay. Great. Thank you. That was a very clear description. I appreciate that. Because it always sounds so complicated to me. But that really worked. Thank you. And it's not terribly complicated. You're right. All right. So then this is question number two, is whether or not the charter should increase the size of the board of airport commissioners to seven members, which includes adding a representative from Winooski as well as one from Burlington. So we're looking at two. So right now, I'll just run through it. Right now there are five legal, sorry, right now there are four legal voters from the city of Burlington and one from the city of South Burlington for a total of five. This is going to increase the size of it to seven by adding one more. So there are five Burlington now, one South Burlington and one Winooski. Got it. There are changes to two parts of the charter because this issue is laid out in two different sections. And the second section, there is a sentence ended that says there's one legal voter to be appointed by the governing body of Winooski, which means by the Winooski City Council, the serve for three years. Gotcha. The third question on the ballot is, shall the charter be amended to give the council the power to adopt an ordinance? That's what it means by to provide by ordinance protections for residential tenants from evictions without just cause. So the topic here is just cause evictions. And what, and this one is probably the more complicated of the questions on the on the ballot. We had to have at least one. Exactly. And what people will see on the ballot is a short form question of this. So all of this language isn't going to be laid out on the ballot. They're going to see a short form of it. There are short forms. Sorry, there are short forms of the others as well. So you won't necessarily see all of this printed language. The only one that doesn't have a short form is the last one. So this number three. So this is going to say that the city council can adopt an ordinance. So this is adding, there's a section in the charter called powers of the city council. It's section 48 of the charter. And this will be the 66 sub part of that section. So the city council has a whole lot of powers in the charter and this so that in this case they can adopt an ordinance that will say that residential tenants may not be evicted without just cause. This goes on to say where just cause shall include but is not limited to. So just cause will meet these definitions, attendance material breach of a written rental agreement is just cause, attendance violation of state statutes regulating the tenants obligations in their lease, nonpayment of rent and failure to accept written reasonable good faith, nonrenewal terms. So any of those things would be just cause. The ordinance could make other things just cause as well. That's what the but is not limited to says. So then subsection B says the ordinance will shall exclude from just cause. In other words, this is not just cause the expiration of a rental agreement as the sole grounds for termination of a tendency. So coming to the end of the lease doesn't mean that someone can get evicted in. There are some exemptions already in state law to the landlord tenant provisions but in addition, the ordinance will exempt from this provision about the termination of a tendency, the expiration of a rental agreement, sorry, the expiration of a rental agreement being not being grounds for termination. The ordinance shall exempt from that provision subject to mitigation provisions things like sublets in unit rentals owner occupied duplexes and triplexes properties being withdrawn from the rental market, including properties to be occupied by the owner immediate family member and those in need of substantial renovations. So those are the reasons these those properties, among others, the ordinance can say others will not be required to when the lease comes to an end to have it have the tendency continue. See, and you can see why I'm saying this is a little more complicated, right? Yeah, well, this is this is there's a lot going on here.  Does it does it address a month to month leases as well or no? How is that how all of this would there is no specific mention of month to month leases. They would they are included in here just like other kinds of leases. Subsection C says the ordinance shall include provisions that mitigate potential negative impacts on tenants, including adequate notice reasonable relocation expenses, provides for a probationary period after initial occupancy and three limits unreasonable rent increases to prevent de facto evictions or non removal renewals, which means to prevent using a rent increase to force somebody out of out of their apartment. Although this shall not be construed to limit rents beyond the purpose of preventing individual evictions. So the key is that that you unreasonable rent increases does not mean you can't that a landlord can't increase the rent means you can't do it for the purpose of trying to make somebody leave. If you're if the costs go up things like that it's leaving it. Okay. And then D says the ordinance shall define what is reasonable and adequate notice when it defines just cause. And in addition it shall require that landlords provide notice of just cause and other legal requirements as part of the rental agreement or lease. So it is providing a number of protections for tenants that requires just cause and sets some notice requirement and allows shouldn't say it sets them it allows the city council to pass an ordinance that sets notice requirements. Okay so there's still another process. There's still a step. Okay if this passes there is still another step of adopting an ordinance this charter change in and of itself doesn't automatically make any of these things happen. Okay and I want to I want to talk about a little bit about what happens with charter changes but let's do that at the end. All right and the last one is shall the charter be amended to permit the city council to regulate thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings things like heating systems. And this is again is an added to the powers of the city council that that that the council will have the the power to regulate thermal energy systems including assessing carbon impact or alternative compliance purposes. However they cannot do a carbon impact or or require an alternative compliance payment unless there is another vote of by a majority of the legal voters of the vote of the city at another annual or special meeting to say yes we want to impose those kind of payments otherwise there will just be general regulation of thermal energy systems. Okay and that is the four charter changers that will be before the Burlington voters. All right fantastic now talk to me about voters vote on these whichever ones move forward or are passed by the city voters what happens next? Four so the voters will vote I'm going to stop sharing so we get there you are hello the the when the voters vote if the voters vote in favor of one or more of these charter changes then the charter changes we the city puts together a packet they get delivered to the to the Vermont legislature the Vermont legislature then starts them in its process and they these charter changes generally get their primary hearings before the house government operations committee and then eventually get voted on by first the house and then the senate and if adopted by the the legislature goes to the they go to the governor for for signature and the effective date of them depends on the content of the of this when the governor gets them what the legislature decides makes sense for when it should start. And is there a period of time that the legislature is required to act once these are sent to them is that the right expression? They are sent to them and uh no there is not a time frame and and unlike other kinds of bills in the legislature that expire if they don't get passed within a certain time charter changes don't expire so once the voters vote on them they could could sit around um technically I guess they can sit around for an extended many many years. And do they? Does that happen? Well for example the city a number of years ago 2016 maybe um um voted in favor of some gun charter changes that the legislature has not acted on and that are still sort of sitting there in the legislature. So somebody could decide a legislator could decide to bring it up at some point in the future? That's my understanding. It's very interesting I wonder if other states do that too I mean I'm getting off topic I suppose but I'm just curious it's a curious kind of thing and I I think often voters don't completely understand the process because you feel like when you read them you think okay we're gonna we're gonna do this if I'm for it or against it whatever and I think that that next step and sort of the amount of time it must take even if even if it sails through there's still going to be quite a period of time before it comes back to the city council to actually write the ordinance right? So it it could be passed in within the legislative session it could be patched and passed in March or April or May after it gets to the legislature depending on the complexity of it how controversial it is and how busy the legislature is with other matters. For the most part I think many of our charter changes go into effect July one following the legislative session so they aren't always seen as urgent to pass early in the session but again it depends on the timing of it. Right right one of the thing I would say is just that I think it's important for voters to know that the charter the reason the charter is particularly important in Vermont is Vermont is among a minority of states in which municipalities only have the authority the state gives them and they don't have authority to do things like this just by having our voters the the town the town or city voters vote but it has to go to the state in many other states the municipalities have what's known as home rule and they can they could pass these things all on their own. Interesting and this is just historical just historical yeah because home rule sounds like something Vermonters would like okay so we've got we've got four valid items let's just run through them again number one is number one is rank choice voting okay and number two number two is the size of the board of airport commissioners to add a Wenuski representative and in in addition add a Burlington representative okay and number three number three is is the just cause evictions giving the the authority to to adopt an ordinance about just cause evictions and number four is giving the authority to adopt an order to adopt regulations or other procedures so there doesn't have to be a single ordinance it's generally giving the council the ability to regulate thermal energy systems okay regulation okay good it could be added to say a building permit requirement or something like okay okay so many ways to do that yes sounds like yeah okay good all right um okay so these are all on the city's website so folks can go and read through them and they can also look at their own ward ballot which is part of that as well um so whichever way works for folks and let's talk a little bit about how folks are going to vote this year in Burlington so let me share my screen one more time good and on this same page um where when you get to the clerk treasurer's office you can go down to a in this blue box how to vote and it brings up this notice so all active registered voters so anybody who is registered to vote as of the time that these ballots go out will will be getting mailed an absentee ballot and they the clerk treasurer's office believes they're going to get them all out by next Wednesday February 10th okay if you haven't received your ballot by Friday the 19th you should be sure to contact the clerk treasurer's office and there are multiple ways to return your ballot you can mail it back in notice that the clerk treasurer's office is recommending that you do that by February 22nd a week before the the election to make sure that the ballot gets there in time yeah there are drop boxes that are available 24-7 until 4 30 p.m the day before the election now remember that those drop boxes will close so that the ballots can be collected and brought to the polling places to be counted gotcha and and there are four of those drop boxes one at city hall one at the department of public works down on pine street one at fire station number two on north street and one at the miller center in the new north end um there's an indoor drop box on the ground floor of city hall and folks can go there and there is during um hours 8 a.m to 4 30 there is a security person who can check them in and point them to that folks must wear a mask and and then the polls will be open as usual uh at the same your usual polling places 7 a.m to 7 p.m on election day there are many ways to vote that's that's awesome and it looks like if you have any issues if not sure if you're registered or uh you're not sure which ward you're in etc you can always just call the clerk's off town the treasure clerk treasurer's office as well and get the information directly from them fine so uh yeah so many ways which is great which is what we encourage right um do you want to get out and vote on on march second tell meeting day you can do it in person or you can do it through these other methods as well so this is just a totally off the wall question do you think um that some of these same protocols will stay in place for a while even past covid because of the convenience of it well the we had to get um um specific authorization from the legislature to be able to mail absentee ballots to all active registered voters and that is only a covid related authorization at this point interesting i think that's probably yet to be seen interesting okay i hadn't i hadn't realized that that it only applied for these times shall we say yeah yeah um so far yeah well and we've always you know we've had the early voting for quite a while too which is which is somewhat similar i mean it's not as as convenient as having put it in your mailbox admittedly but i'm sure there's a cost associated with that as well so there is a there it's a pretty large cost too i don't know the number specifically but yeah yeah yeah good all right well um anything else we need to tell the voters before we wrap up i don't think so except to remember to vote and be sure to ask questions there will be lots of public uh fora and the various candidates who are running for office also are available for for questions and comments um as well and um talking about you said that there would also be more presentations on these uh i on these items i know town meeting tv has done um a number of programs on each of the different ones individually in addition to the summary that you and i have done i'm so i but there's also another one that you will always do on town meeting right right before the city always does an informational meeting and unfortunately i don't have the date off the top of my head but you can find it by going uh to board docs which is where the city puts up in uh in the meetings of the city council and uh or check the burlington weekly the weekly calendar that is available on this website that right up here you can see it says calendar you can go click on that and on the weekly calendar you can look and see when that informational session is great okay so many opportunities to get more information about the ballot items as well as obviously candidates um and uh tell everybody that they should be sure to vote on uh on town meeting date if not before exactly all right wonderful eileen thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate it thank you very much diane all right take care bye bye


How are you today? I'm pretty good today. Are you, did physical therapy work with you this morning? Yes, they did. Are you having any pain right now, Jane? No. Good. Do you feel like your pain is pretty well managed here? Yeah, pretty much. I was just going to check your vital signs, is that okay? Before you go to bed? Just the most fulfilling thing is to know that at the end of the day you've helped somebody. They just love having the nurses come right to their home. They become like family members to you. You get to see the impact that you have in people's lives. Been more than I could have imagined it would be from my past experience in the nursing world. This is the greatest generation. I like taking care of the greatest generation. It's important to me that they know that they're in secure hands, that they're here knowing I'm going to be taking care of everything's going to be okay. So another day of physical therapy, one more day closer to home. That's right. They come to work and see them smiling and happy knowing that you're there. Do you get a chance to go outside today? They are outstanding. I've admired the nurses, how friendly they are, and how they get along with each other. We need these homes. We need the care we're getting. The elderly people, they are a valuable part of our society. And in their past life, they have worked so hard. They have sacrificed their lives for us to get what we are getting today. They become your friends and they'll say to me, I always feel so much better after I come here and talk to you or they'll give me a hug and they'll cry and they'll say thank you for listening to me. You'll often times get thank you cards after a resident has passed from their families just letting you know that they've really appreciated everything that you did for their loved ones. Through the hugs and thank yous, I think that we're doing a wonderful job here in our community making people feel that I can count on my local medical facility. They're there for me. Especially in the end times of life, you need to have your self-esteem built up and to know that your life is important and it was important and that there's always going to be someone who will remember you. And so, you know, that's an important gift to be able to give to them and it's an important gift that they, when they allow to share that with you. Can you take a deep breath for me? Great. Still ticking, huh? Still ticking. I'm a long-term care nurse in North Dakota and I make a difference in people's lives. I'm a geriatric nurse in the state of North Dakota and these patients make a difference in my life. I'm a gerontological nursing North Dakota and I make a difference in people's lives. I am a nurse in North Dakota working in a long-term care facility and I know that I can make a difference in my resident's lives. I'm a nurse in North Dakota that takes care of older patients and it's been one of the best parts of my nursing career.


So you made an awesome menu, but when your friend opened it on his computer, everything was in the wrong place. Not a problem. If you want your menu to look correct across all resolutions, you have to make sure that your canvas is set to scale with screen size and set match to 0.5. From here you might have noticed the little triangle things that appear next to every button or text object. Those are your anchors, and they control how things look when the screen resolution is changed. Now there are two different ways to use them. They can focus on position or proportion. Let me demonstrate position first. If we create three different buttons up here, how do you determine where to set the anchor? Well the easiest way I know is to go into each button, click here, and click the one that is closest to the general position of the button. So this one is closest to the top left of the screen, this one is closest to the top, and this button is closest to the top right. And now if you test changes in the resolution, you will find that the content automatically adjusts to fit whatever new dimensions you give it. So that is position based anchoring. Now let's talk about proportion based anchors instead. Let's duplicate the three buttons down here. But instead of using the quick menu to set the anchors, let's manually drag the anchors around the corners of each button. Alright now you're technically done, but I want you to see the differences. If we adjust the resolution now, you can see both the top and the bottom are going to try and adjust, but they do it in different ways. The position anchors always keep their proportion. They may shrink or grow, but the shape generally doesn't change. However, the proportion anchors change shape, and because of that, they never overlap each other and always take up the same amount of screen space. So you can decide which you prefer. Generally, if you need something to stay the same shape like a picture or a number, probably use position. Otherwise, if you're okay with the adjustment shape, I would use proportion. The last thing that I wanted to show you was where you can place the anchor depends on the size of the parent. So if I create a new empty object and I want to use it to hold three buttons, you'll notice when I try and adjust the button anchors, it won't let me go beyond here. And that is because the size of the parent. If I increase the size of the parent and place the parent anchors around that size, the button anchors will be free to move anywhere in that new area. This is really useful when you have groups of UI elements and you want to make sure that they stay in their respective area. So anyway, that is how you take care of different screen size stuff. Hope that helps. And as always, hope you have a fantastic day. And I'll see you around.


The UNGAS, the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs, in 2016 came out with an outcome document and on the basis of that political process, UN agencies were asked to sit together and come up with a UN joint common position related to drugs. This was done in 2018, it was published at the high level meeting last year at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the importance of this document is that 32 UN agencies formed a task team and looked into the key issues outlined in the UNGAS outcome document and looked at what we have learned over the last decades with regard to how we have addressed the drug problem. The common position talks about the importance of moving forward towards decriminalization of people who use drugs and also greater consistency and support for a human rights approach to people who use drugs and public health approaches in the context especially of HIV prevention treatment care and support for people who use drugs. This is the only way we're going to change this epidemic, the epidemic of HIV amongst people who use drugs. While global HIV incidence is going down amongst most populations and the number of total new HIV infections in the world is reducing every year, we don't see that in the case of people who use drugs. In fact we see the opposite, we're going in the wrong direction and this is an urgent public health emergency that really needs a new approach and the UN common position is one of the key tools we have to move this forward. Data and experiences clearly demonstrate that so-called action or punitive action or war on drugs has failed and is not the solution to drug problem. The harmful consequences of such approach are deep and far-reaching. More violence, more human rights violation, abuses and public health failure. The common position provided several direction of action including developing and implementing policies centered on people, health and human rights, shifting drug policies and intervention towards public health approach, ensuring respect for human dignity and human rights for those who use drugs in all aspect of drug and social policies and ensuring equal access to public services including housing, healthcare, education for individuals who use drugs. A lot of the recommendations that WHO has made over the years with regard to health, with regard to harm reduction, with regard to access to medicine for palliative care and medical care. A lot of these issues are now mentioned in this UN joint common position. So this is an important document that can be used to advocate with countries to implement the position and the recommendations made with regard to health. The idea that the UN system as a whole and from the side of the agencies and the entities can come together under one sort of common position on drug policy and the best practices and principles on drug policy is really important. And as civil society we very much welcome it. It's been something we've been calling for for a long time. We know that criminalising people who use drugs has been very detrimental to their health and has created barriers to them accessing healthcare services and drives stigma and discrimination against them, which is very harmful. Some countries that perhaps do not agree with the decriminalisation of drug use are pushing back against the common position. And I think that that is problematic really because the UN is there to provide normative guidance to member states and has a mandate to do so. Now the main argument that has been used by a number of countries in objection to the common position is that they think it sort of undermines the primary role of the CND as the UN policymaking body and that the task team creates a parallel mechanism that infringes on the leading roles of the INCB and UNODC. And in our view, instead of creating a parallel mechanism or undermining Vienna mandates, the common position and task team represent a necessary and long overdue correction to bring the Vienna-based entities back into the UN family. So we call also with the briefing paper on member states to actively support the work of the task team, to defend references to it in resolutions here at CND, but also to keep promoting that drug-related issues appear on the agenda of other UN forums, including General Assembly, EcoSOC, World Health Assembly, Human Rights Council, etc. And to assure that all relevant UN entities, including UNODC, actively promote the UN common position.


Hey everyone welcome back to another exos heroes video so today's video It's a matter of a discussion whether you guys should be worried or not or that includes me Should we be worried about exos heroes? So to answer that I'd like to give you guys a bit more of a background just a bit of a comparison around a year ago before I Transferred to exos heroes. I was actually playing rain shadow legends. I Played raid nearly two years before I left but again more or less during their first year they weren't They weren't that great of a game in terms of content as well. We had problems or they had problems in terms of having Having to put out content. They just kept on, you know, same same as exos keep kept on putting out heroes kept on putting out fate course in which Where are we going to use these heroes? But eventually they came up with I think it was I forgot the game mode it's Based on faction wars. Sorry came up with faction wars and more or less That was the start of More content for them. Okay, but Aside from that I actually am the reason for me leaving raid because again when I saw this game The first time I saw this game. I was really impressed because Number one to discuss one of the pros because of the artwork So as you can see on your screen the artwork is over the top It's a 10 out of 10 character design Fate core design animations It's actually spot on or even exceeding everybody's expectations so this drew me to the game and by by the artwork only I transferred from raid to exos heroes, so But more or less moving forward Exos has been a game where number one it will never run out of a niche market because number one This game is actually very considerate on your time. I Usually play this every day. I play this for an hour or even less then I'm done for the day I just go back for more PVP when when when it's it's already refilled But more or less the game is very considerate considerate with your time. That's a second one in terms of their pros the next one is Third is generous compensation. Of course, you've you've experienced it. I've experienced it the generous compensation that they give not only if they do Have a misstep in terms of their own You know, let's say for example in summoning missteps in summoning problems or rate problems They give out a big compensation, but they actually give you big rewards as well for zest So nothing to complain about there. That is actually what I like also about exos and Last is more on the story the story takes you into a different world Where in there are a lot of things involved a lot of factions involved a lot of nations involved the story actually is Very simple in the start then quickly escalates into this, you know Congregation of nations and now As you can see in my screen will be get getting season 4 ready. So we're in season 4 After a year so more or less a lot of things to look forward to but Before we celebrate on those pros. I'd like to point out a couple of things before You know before We close this this discussion. So number one is Cons is lack of content. They've been, you know, they've been Promising this already in the past few directors note again I'll just say this again because it hasn't reached us and there are a lot of speculation On on the preseason launch of arc burst that you know, I hope that it launches into a full season So more or less again, it's the lack of content. Number two is game balance. Nations are a bit are a bit lopsided Three nations are very good or even two Then the rest are just on the sidelines looking at them fighting each other and The last is leveling up of heroes is what I don't really like I've been playing the game for nearly a year, but most of my heroes are still At level T and sorry at level 90 something. Yeah, I haven't reached a hundred for even for one of my heroes So that is actually my frustration Also fixes they need to fix infinity core Probably just take out preseason and probably launch the game season or season one Number two is Colosseum. It's actually It's actually garbage. So that game game mode is actually garbage that needs a fix Quantum raid as well. I hope they discontinue quantum raid Not any more a different version, but discontinue it and Dedicate more resources to other better things and to close this more or less In five days, we will be getting in the middle picture season four Party Eve, which is the first global anniversary of XO's hero So the XO's has been quiet for the last few days. No no peak They they're preparing for a big party. Hopefully, but more or less This better be a big party This better be something that the community is looking, you know is is needing and the community is you know It's actually anxious About what they're going to reveal. There isn't even a chorus today. So for Sunday There's no chorus for Monday and I'm expecting that will go directly to the first year anniversary probably they're they're going to announce it on Hopefully on Tuesday Wednesday, then put it out on Thursday, but more or less Any my my best guess is actually Could be anywhere next week. So more or less something to look forward to XO's actually is just for me is just scratching the surface of their potential of their Capabilities of where they want to go but more or less They should act now because a lot of games are on their heels and ready to pounce on them So that is my take on XOZ heroes more or less. I still see a bright future for them for the game I'm sticking around because I love the game. I love it so much and content. I will do Very much for you guys. I love I still love the game I still love what what they're putting out and Hopefully they can actually turn the corner and more or less, you know, make the players happy keep them entertained and More content guys more content for the future Okay, so if you have any comments about the first year anniversary for global, please Put them down in the comment section below. Okay guys. Take care. Stay safe. This is the warden and I'm out of here