Hasta La Gadget!

When it comes to a name like Lamborghini, you can be sure that people will stop for a moment and drink in the beauty of the supercar brand. Well, how about seeing this name appear on a smartphone instead? The Tonino Lamborghini 88 Tauri is an Android-powered device that will boast of hardware specifications that will surely quicken your pulse by some bit, where it is rumored to arrive with a quad-core 2.3GHz Snapdragon 801 processor, accompanied by 3GB RAM, have a 5” 1080p display with an oleophobic coating and an accurate 10-point touch panel.

Not only that, it will boast of a 3,400mAh battery that claims to be able to keep the smartphone running for up to 1,000 hours in standby mode – I would like to see an experiment being done to substantiate that though, while a 20MP camera at the back alongside an 8MP front-facing shooter helps to round off the list of specifications, with Android 4.4.4 KitKat running right out of the box.

Interestingly enough, there are two SIM card slots – and both of them are LTE-enabled, which is a rarity in the industry. Expect the Tonino Lamborghini 88 Tauri to be available in limited quantities from early next year onward, with no word on pricing as at press time.

Tonino Lamborghini 88 Tauri Set To Rock , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

Due to resurfacing rape allegations against Bill Cosby sparked by a joke fellow comedian Hannibal Burress made, the Twitter universe has been erupting with commentary in support of the alleged victims speaking out, as well as others questioning the validity of the accusations.

Cosby chooses not to respond publicly to the claims which have come from over fifteen different women. After the conclusion of an interview with the Associated Press, Cosby attempted to intimidate a reporter into quashing the portion of the interview that mentioned the sexual assault allegations. AP reportedly never agreed to Cosby’s request and released the video below.

On Saturday evening Grammy-award winning music producer group Justice League issued unexpected and, perhaps, uninvited tweets defending Bill Cosby’s innocence. The Justice League has produced music for artists including Rick Ross, Mary J. Blige, Wale, T.I., Drake, and Young Jeezy.

The person in control of their Twitter account posted tweets saying Bill Cosby “gets a pass” in reference to rape accusations. After receiving an influx of responses from Twitter users who were appalled and sickened by the comments, the group posted a tweet saying, “Most of these people replying need to be raped by Cosby.”

Needless to say, Twitter users did not reply favorably to the Justice League’s flippant and revolting comments on rape.

So because Janice isn’t relevant to you earwax-munching ass idiots, her alleged assault is excusable? Delete your page. @JusticeLeague

— It’s Bitsy, Bitch (@KidFury) November 22, 2014

One last thing. Bill Cosby ain’t top 10 in black people history. OF ALL THE BLACK PEOPLE IN HISTORY, NIGGA? Read books!

— It’s Bitsy, Bitch (@KidFury) November 22, 2014

By that logic I guess George Zimmerman has never shot and killed an unarmed black teenager.

— crissle (@crissles) November 22, 2014

Why are you caping so hard for Cosby when he doesn’t respect you, the music you make or your community? You sound stupid. @JusticeLeague

— A$AP Aspie (@ProfessorBLove) November 22, 2014

Someone even went so far as to edit the Justice League’s Wikipedia page to reflect their Bill Cosby rape allegation tweets. The page edit has since been removed by Wikipedia.

Within two hours, the obscene tweets endorsing rape culture were deleted from Justice League’s account and replaced with this apology tweet.

Everyone is certainly entitled to his or her opinion on Bill Cosby’s innocence or lack thereof. Yet, I can only of think of one question: Why bother defending this man when he hardly defends himself?

On Friday in an interview with Florida Today Bill Cosby finally broke his silence saying, “I know people are tired of me not saying anything, but a guy doesn’t have to answer to innuendos. People should fact-check. People shouldn’t have to go through that and shouldn’t answer to innuendos.” Cosby’s statement serves as commentary on why he refuses to address the claims rather than any denial of their validity. His lawyer has issued statements characterizing the women’s claims as “fantastical” stating they lack evidence to substantiate their stories.

Bill Cosby is stubbornly silent in the face of more than a dozen women who have detailed accounts claiming he sexual assaulted them. Since the first accusations in the 1970s, Cosby does not openly deny them and in most cases refuses to address them. Instead he has settled civil suits from his accusers for undisclosed amounts of money and wielded his superstar power to stifle media reports of the rape allegations. Wendy Williams reported Cosby tried to have her fired after addressing the story on her radio show over twenty years ago.

Beyond that, it is especially peculiar that hip-hop music producers would come to the defense of a man who has undoubtedly expressed his contempt for hip hop culture. Many recall Cosby’s black respectability politics-infused statements at the 50th Anniversary Commemoration of Brown v. Board in 2004. Cosby scolded the unique names of black children while demanding black men pull up their pants, saggy pants being a known practice in hip-hop culture.

In July 2004, Cosby even ventured to comment on the treatment of women in poor communities. “You’ve got to stop beating up your women because you can’t find a job, because you didn’t want to get an education and now you’re (earning) minimum wage,” he said. “You should have thought more of yourself when you were in high school, when you had an opportunity.”

And yet here we sit as nearly each day a new woman comes forward confessing the utter mistreatment and manipulation she allegedly she endured from him. At least a dozen women have claimed to be drugged by Cosby before he unleashed sexual violence onto their bodies by forcefully having sex with them.

In Cosby’s 2004 comments, he demanded members of the black community conform to his expectations of proper men and women. He demeaned poor blacks for their “misuse” of the English language and young women for not remaining chaste. When in fact, if even just one of these over fifteen sexual assault accusations rings true then it is he who has been deviant of respectable and decent human behavior for years despite his knit dad sweaters or life lessons on the Cosby Show.

This blog post is partly about politics and partly about economic policies that will expand America’s middle class and make it more prosperous in the modern era. The story of the 2014 election was that Democrats can’t succeed at the former without succeeding at the latter. A Democratic strategy, that is superb and state of the art on voter targeting and turnout, can’t succeed if you haven’t delivered the goods to the generally younger and less prosperous people you are trying to turn out. Carefully refined political positioning and focus group tested ads won’t win swing voters, if those swing voters haven’t felt the benefits of you being in office. And economic policies that deliver better stock prices and profits to businesses, and even create a fair number of new jobs, don’t feel to voters like prosperity when they never get a raise or when those new jobs being created pay low wages.

To be clear, Democrats don’t deserve all or most of the blame for an economy that still punishes the poor and middle class 7 years into the economic crisis that began building in 2007 just because Obama has been president for most of those years- not even close. It was George W. Bush’s policies and regulators who led us into economic collapse while cluelessly ignoring the bright red warning signs flashing everywhere around them. And the Republican House and Republican Senators in the last 4 years who blocked good policies that would have helped create more jobs and raise a lot of workers’ wages (infrastructure spending, minimum wage increase, etc) deserve a great deal of the blame. But the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, was the one who pushed for the most massive deregulation of the financial industry in modern history, and Obama’s made a series of decisions that haven’t helped either- failing to restructure Wall Street excess when he had the chance to in 2009, agreeing to a program of extreme austerity when the economy was still severely damaged in 2011, and keeping his executive actions to raise wages and spur the economy much more modest than they could have been over the last 2 years . And beyond the facts on what Obama has or hasn’t done on the economy, when you are presiding over an economy this bad at raising wages, you are going to get most of the blame from the voters.

So let’s talk about the politics first, starting with the Rising American Electorate (RAE) that Democratic strategists like Stan Greenberg frequently talk about- African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, unmarried women, and voters 30 years old and younger. In the Obama years, and in the Democratic wave election of 2006 that was a precursor to Obama’s decisive 2008 victory, those voters have tended to be Democratic base voters, although there are more swing voters in those demographic categories than many casual observers realize. The problem for us as a party is that if you look at what has happened to these constituencies income, net wealth, job prospects, amount of student debt, and political rights during the Obama presidency, they haven’t done very well. If you want to look at why those constituencies didn’t vote in higher percentages, or gave a lower percent of their vote to Democrats in 2014, you can clearly start with that as an explanation. Yes, it is true- and important to point out- that Republicans’ policy prescriptions are a lot worse for all those constituencies than Democrats, but at some point we also have to deliver some tangible benefits to our voters.

The RAE is central to any Democratic prospects for the foreseeable future. We have to deliver on policies that tangibly improve their lives. We have to cultivate, motivate, register them to vote, and turn them out to vote. But for at least another couple of generations, especially in non-presidential election years but even in presidential election years too, we still have to do relatively well with the white working class voters that used to be the foundation stone of the old New Deal majority. The numbers don’t add up in swing Presidential states like OH, PA, MI, WI, IA, NH, or MN, which tend to be a little too old and a little too white to win 51% of the vote with a political calculus geared mostly around the RAE. The fact is we won these states in 2008 and 2012 not only because we did so well at turning out RAE voters to vote and winning strong percentages of them, but because we did respectably among white working class- mostly because of the herculean efforts of the labor movement. Similarly, a RAE-centric and Obama-centric strategy doesn’t add up to wining a majority of the Senate, where Democrats have an overwhelming majority of seats in states won by Obama, 41-11 but we still have to win some seats in the 24 states carried by Romney: if Landrieu loses, there are only 5 Democrats among those 48 Senate seats. And even if you were to lessen the impact of gerrymandering, which has been a fact of political life since the earliest days of the American republic, there is no way we get to a majority in the House without doing better among white working class voters because so many RAE voters are concentrated in heavily Democratic urban core House districts.

Let me take you down to the county level to show how this worked in the 2014 election. I’m going to use a couple of examples given to me by Paul Booth from AFSCME, one of the best political strategists in the labor movement. I have talked about why and how RAE voters overall were not as motivated to turn out this year. But one thing Democrats proved is that they could be successful mechanically with great GOTV operations in targeted places. First example: the labor movement and other Democratic forces decided that the way to win the Florida Governor race was to do a massive turnout operation in heavily urban and Democratic counties in the state, and they picked 5 as their top targets, the 3 big South Florida counties as well as Pinellas (the St Pete/Tampa area) and Orange (Orlando). They did an incredible job: Crist had almost 123,000 vote higher margin because of the work in those 5 counties than the Democratic candidate (Alex Sink) did in 2010, which was more than double the goal they had set for themselves. The problem was that the Republican margin for Scott in the 60 more Republican counties- mostly more rural and whiter- increased by about 131,000, meaning instead of winning by 56,000 as he had in 2010, he won by 64,000 instead. Here’s a 2nd example: the turnout operation for Democrats in Milwaukee and Madison was incredibly successful- they went so far above projections in Madison that they ran out of ballots by late afternoon and had to print more. But again, Walker’s team won by bigger margins in rural Wisconsin than he had in 2010, and it was enough to carry him to victory. As Paul said after telling me these stories: “we need to go beyond Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy. We need a 3,144 county strategy.” (That’s how many counties there are nationwide).

This is not fashionable talk among some of my fellow progressives. Among some people I talk to, the natural tendency of younger, lower income, black, Hispanic, and unmarried voters in presidential years will solve most of our problems, especially if we do a good job of turning them out to vote. But that’s not what the numbers say: if we only get the 38% of white voters we got this year in 2016 in places like OH, MI, MN, NH, IA, PA, WI, CO, and other swing states, we will not win either the presidency or the Senate back, let alone the House.

So where do we get those extra voters who are white? Union members who are not people of color are part of the answer, but union membership continues to slip every year. Young whites are part of the answer too, but our numbers among that demographic have slipped a lot from the Obama 2008 high, and their economic problems aren’t getting any rosier. We got a lot more white unmarried voters, especially unmarried women, in 2008 and 2012 than we did in 2014, so hopefully we can win more of them, but again, this economy isn’t tending to lift them up much. back Gays, Jewish voters, non-religious voters who are white are part of the answer, but (as with the labor and youth categories) we are already getting most of the votes we are going to get from those modest sized categories.

We can win back a lot of the swing white voters in the categories above with a stronger message and outreach strategy, but with the weak economy continuing to be a drag, I believe it won’t be enough. To solve the problem Booth identified, we have to start a serious re-engagement with working class white voters- in message, outreach and organizing, and policy. We can’t ignore them and hope the surging RAE vote alone carries us to victory.

The way to win more votes in those whiter, older, rural counties is a message of economic populism. The good news is that economic policies and messaging that appeal to white working class folks also appeal to RAE voters. As I wrote yesterday about progressive populist candidates who won important statewide victories in 2014 (Merkley in OR, Franken in MN, Peters in MI, Shaheen in NH, and Malloy in CT):

Let me note one other fact about these races: In a year where white, working-class swing voters mostly deserted the Democratic party, all of these candidates did well with this demographic group. Of the states where we won those victories, only one — Michigan — had a significant people of color population. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and Oregon are four of the whitest states that Obama won in 2008 and 2012, with neither a large African-American or Hispanic population. And in Michigan, while there is a large black population, a Democrat can’t win without competing well in the mostly white working class suburban Detroit counties like Macomb, which Peters did. A populist message and narrative worked for those Democrats.

Democrats need a clearly defined and strongly messaged economic platform that helps low and moderate people. We can’t only bash the Koch brothers and Wall Street, although we certainly should do our fair share of that- it helped the candidates I mentioned above win, and kept others running steeply uphill races in this terrible cycle like Braley, Udall, Hagan, and Begich in the game all the way to the end. But we also need a Democratic economic agenda that provides a compelling roadmap as to where we want to take the country: a $15 per hour minimum wage; an investment in road, bridge, and school construction; putting insulation into every public building that needs it in America, and saving billions of dollars of utility bills in the process; millions of new manufacturing jobs in wind and solar energy; a fair trade and currency policy that will create millions of new manufacturing jobs; an end to a tax and regulatory policy that encourages job out-sourcing and reckless financial speculation; a rigorous anti-trust policy that helps small businesses compete with big corporations; and a welcoming hand to the hard-working immigrants bringing their talents to our nation.

Armed with a real agenda like that, we can create a narrative about who we are, what we believe in, and what our values are. The story that we can tell is about an America that built a prosperous and expanding middle class where everyone who wanted a job was able to find one, where workers actually got raises and decent benefits most of the time, and where there was dignity in work and our families had the chance to pursue our version of the American dream. Over the last few decades, we lost that America, as the level playing field got tilted more and more to wealthy CEOs and big businesses who could get sweetheart deals because of their insider connections. The things we are advocating for are more jobs, better jobs with higher pay, and a level playing field so that workers and small businesses can get a fair shake rather than being rolled by big money.

As progressives, that is what we fight for, that agenda and that hope for the future of America. Based on all the evidence I see, even from the rotten year of 2014 but also from other polling and evidence, that agenda and narrative about America will build an electoral majority.

A witness to the Michael Brown shooting says she heard the teenager say, “I give up,” before being fatally shot by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.

The unnamed witness told her story to law enforcement agents on Aug. 16, one week after the shooting. Her interview was presented as evidence during the grand jury hearing into whether Wilson would be charged with a crime in Brown’s shooting. The interview, along with other grand jury testimony and evidence, was made public Monday night.

In her conversation with an agent who appears to be from the FBI, the witness says she had gone to the store to buy soda and had stopped on Canfield Drive on her way home to visit her cousin. She says she was standing outside smoking a cigarette in a parking lot very close to the spot where Brown had his fatal encounter with Wilson. She claims to have seen the whole exchange.

The witness said she was watching Brown talk to Wilson through the window of the police car when Wilson grabbed Brown. She says a scuffle ensued, Wilson fired two shots, and at least one of them struck Brown.

“I know I seen a spot on him; knew that he was hit; and then the second shot rung off,” she says. At that point, Brown ran away from Wilson and toward where she was standing, she says.

When he reached a nearby telephone pole, Brown stopped running. “And that’s when his arms went up and he turnt around, and he was walkin’ back towards the police,” she says. “But … I heard him say, ‘I give up.’ I know I heard him say that … ‘I give up.'”

Wilson had gotten out of the police car by now, the witness says, and when Brown turned around with his hands in the air, she says, Wilson fired at least four more times until Brown, who was unarmed, collapsed to the ground. Wilson fired 12 shots in total, according to St. Louis County Prosecutor Robert McCulloch.

In his grand jury testimony, Wilson said that Brown punched him twice in the face through the car window and that a third blow could have been “fatal” or at least rendered him unconscious. He said he had warned Brown to get back from the car, or he would shoot. He also said that he felt using his weapon was his “only option.”

Wilson said that after Brown ran away from him, Brown turned back around, making a “grunting” sound and then charging at him. That was when Wilson said he fired the shots that killed Brown.

In announcing the grand jury’s decision not to indict Wilson on Monday, McCulloch talked about the problems inherent in eyewitness accounts. He said that many people who saw the shooting “truly believe” their version of events “even in the face of their testimony being in conflict with the physical evidence.”

The witness who told law enforcement that Brown said, “I give up,” for instance, said there was another police officer in the car with Wilson during the incident, even though accounts from both sides have always maintained Wilson was alone.

Several eyewitnesses offered contradictory accounts of both the timing and order of events of the shooting. Some claimed Brown held his hands up before he was shot, while others claimed he did not. Other witnesses said Brown charged Wilson before being shot, while yet additional witnesses claimed the teenager was on his knees before his death. There is also conflicting testimony on whether Brown made a motion toward his waistline, as Wilson described.

A young woman, who witnessed a portion of the incident from a third-floor apartment window, said she saw Brown on his knees “grabbing his, either this stomach or his side and had it … then he put his hands up and then the man just keep aiming … um … firing and then that was it.” Another witness who saw the shooting from a third-floor window claimed that he saw Brown on his knees with his hands up in the air, telling Wilson, “Please don’t shoot me.”

A man who witnessed the incident while on his porch claimed that Brown was shot in the back while he was running away. According to his testimony, Brown then turned around, put up his hands, and said, “Don’t shoot.”

A man who was working about 100 yards from the shooting, however, claimed that Brown’s hands never went up at all, and that he was not on his knees.

“He turned around and he did some type of movement. I never seen him put his hands up or anything. I’m not sure if he pulled his pants up or whatever he did but I seen some type of movement and he started charging towards the police officer,” said the witness, who was not close enough to hear any words being exchanged.

“I know for sure they weren’t above his head,” he added.

Igor Bobic contributed reporting.

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Like many in this country, Priscilla Hancock Cooper is among those breathing a sigh of relief with President Obama’s recent executive action on immigration. She is the executive director of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. One might ask why the leader of an institution dedicated to preserving and telling the story of the Civil Rights Movement is relieved by the President’s measures.

When I first visited the Institute in June I was amazed to see an exhibition about Méndez vs. Westminster, a 1946 federal case dealing with the unconstitutionality of segregated “Mexican schools” in Orange County, California. The case was adjudicated eight years before the better-known Brown vs. Board of Education. Later that day I was invited to participate in a meeting of the Institute’s Latino New South Advisory Committee, representing the region’s burgeoning Latino population, which in Alabama grew by 154% between 2000 and 2010. In establishing a committee to work on pressing Latino issues and brainstorm program approaches, the Institute demonstrates its commitment to immigrant integration, and to helping make Birmingham and surrounding suburbs active immigrant-receiving communities.

After the advisory committee meeting, I visited Pelham, one these suburbs. My guide was Victor Palafox, the Institute’s Hispanic outreach coordinator. Victor is 22 and a junior at the University of Alabama, where he studies education. He wants to teach. Victor, a Mexican national, remains in this country under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). With Obama’s recent action, Victor’s aspirations are now on extended life support, meaning he can continue his studies and his important work at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, much to the gratification of executive director Hancock Cooper. I, too, am relieved because the Smithsonian Latino Center is modestly involved with a groundbreaking initiative on the Latino New South, led by the Institute in collaboration with the Levine Museum of the New South (Charlotte) and the Atlanta History Center. The success of this initiative, to be made manifest in the upcoming exhibition, NUEVOlution, is dependent on the participation of young immigrants like Victor, especially in the position he will continue to hold.

In announcing his action, President Obama posed the following rhetorical questions: “Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility and give their kids a better future? Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?” He could well have been referring to the Palafox family. Victor’s father, a Mexico City native, was recruited to work construction in the run-up to Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic Games. Victor’s father, who helped create one of this country’s greatest athletic and cultural showcases, continues to live in the shadows, as he is one of the many who will not benefit from Obama’s grace-period dispensation. After the Olympics, the Palafox’s migrated 160 miles west to Pelham and settled, nestling into what has become a vibrant Latino community, composed of hard-working, tax-paying, socially-responsible families. Strong, secure families are foundational to successful community formation, and so while one can applaud the President’s reprieve, the future of the Palafox’s head of household still remains uncertain.

As Congress hurtles towards a radical shift in power and as Republican sabre- rattling over the President’s executive action ramps up, it is important to look at the Palafox’s experience in historical context. The pull-push dynamic associated with the demand for inexpensive Mexican labor has, historically, produced systems and a legacy of dependency and convenience. I recall the Importation Program (1917-21) and the Bracero Program (1942-64), both timed with world wars when this country experienced chronic labor shortages. In both cases, thousands of the Mexican workers were deported when their critical services where no longer needed, abruptly scapegoated by the toxic combination of economic recession and xenophobia. This is part of the underbelly of U.S. labor history that few in power bother or care to recognize or address.

Despite the very best efforts of the Palafox family to prove themselves good Americans, this country seems unable and unwilling to create a reasonable path to full agency in the promise of America, as it has done for previous immigrants. Tomorrow, the Palafox family will awake and, like so many mornings before, head to work or school in a community that is theirs. One wonders when this country will claim them as ours.