SAN FRANCISCO — Instagram, the popular mobile photo-sharing service now owned by Facebook, said Tuesday that it will remove language from its new terms of service suggesting that users’ photos could appear in advertisements.
The language in question had appeared in updated policies announced Monday and scheduled to take effect Jan. 16. After an outcry on social media and privacy rights blogs, the company clarified that it has no plans to put users’ photos in ads.
That said, Instagram maintains that it was created to become a business and would like to experiment with various forms of advertisements to make money. Instagram doesn’t currently run any ads. As of now, the free service has no way to make money and brings in no revenue to Facebook.
“Our main goal is to avoid things likes advertising banners you see in other apps that would hurt the Instagram user experience,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom wrote in a blog post Tuesday.
What had riled users and privacy advocates was Instagram’s new assertion that it may now receive payments from businesses to use its members’ photos, user name and other data”in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation” to them.
It figures, you can’t trust a neoconservative to maintain principles for anything. This is why I despise them so much:
Republicans need to “have a discussion on guns” in the wake of last week’s grade-school massacre in Newtown, Conn., Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told his conference Tuesday.
Speaking to his troops at a closed-door meeting in the Capitol, Boehner was mindful of conservatives’ traditional opposition to new gun restrictions, emphasizing that Republicans wouldn’t do “anything knee-jerk,” according to a lawmaker in the room.
But the Speaker also said he wants to “de-politicize” the issue of gun violence, which has been thrust dreadfully into the national spotlight following the murder of 26 people — 20 of them young school children — at Sandy Hook Elementary School last Friday.
Since the massacre, President Obama and a long list of congressional Democrats have urged tougher gun laws — including a reinstatement of the assault-weapons ban and the elimination of the gun-show loophole — but GOP leaders have remained largely silent about a violence-prevention strategy. The discrepancy has lent partisan undertones to the Sandy Hook response that Boehner clearly wants to eliminate.
Boehner said the GOP’s strategy would be to examine the reasons that the mass shootings of recent years have been carried out, almost exclusively, by young, white males with mental illnesses, according to the lawmaker in the room.
“We need to have a discussion about guns,” the lawmaker said, relaying Boehner’s remarks, “and that doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we abandon the Second Amendment or the NRA [National Rifle Association] or anything like that. But there needs to be a discussion and everybody needs to participate and we need to depoliticize it.”
Boehner also told Republicans that they need to be “circumspect” in their observations, the lawmaker said, warning that “it’s not helpful” for lawmakers to call for arming teachers as a way to prevent mass shootings.
Basically, that means, we’re screwed. They are going to pass a broad ban on all weapons that are not considered for personal protection. Which means that everyone needs to seriously look into buying that gun that you have wanted, before the ban goes into effect, and get your high-capacity magazines and ammo; before they outlaw you from buying it.
In my sidebars, I have two great places, one for ammo and one for guns. Please do check them out. I believe that everyone should be able to own a gun. This idea that guns were responsible for this tragic event is asinine. The only person responsible was the shooter’s mother, who was too stupid to not have her guns, where her mentally ill son could not get to them.
However, this will not stop this Marxist president; He and Hillary Clinton will not rest until there is a British-style gun ban in America. So, you know what means, don’t you?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was set to face a grilling from Congress this week over the terrorist attacks in Benghazi when she started channeling the late poet Shel Silverstein.
“I have the measles and the mumps / A gash, a rash and purple bumps,” said Clinton, in effect, informing the House and Senate (with regrets!) that she was suffering too many maladies to testify as expected about the Sept. 11 attack in Libya.
America’s top diplomat was to provide her first public answers regarding the murder of US Ambassador Chris Stevens.
Now that won’t happen.
Clinton’s story beggars belief: While traveling in Europe, she contracted a stomach virus . . . which made her dehydrated . . . which made her faint at home . . . which caused her to fall and hit her head . . . which gave her a nasty concussion.
So Clinton’s deputies will appear in her stead before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday to explain the State Department’s failures.
So basically the New York Post is accusing Hillary of lying about her injury. As I said in the title. I am no fan of her at all. But this is totally lame, but not out of line with the idiot right. (As opposed to the old honorable right.)
Aren’t there any white people that can do these jobs? Am I even allowed ask such questions?
Quote:
White House officials have approached American Express Co. (AXP) Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Chenault about joining President Barack Obama’s second-term administration, possibly as Treasury secretary, according to two people familiar with the matter.
White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew remains the leading contender for the Treasury job, the people said. Still, consideration of Chenault among Obama’s staff may indicate the president hasn’t made a final decision on a replacement for Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, who has said he plans to leave the post.
Other potential roles for Chenault, a longtime Obama supporter, may be as Commerce secretary or as a senior adviser to the president, according to the people, who asked for anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations. White House officials have also considered Xerox Corp. (XRX) CEO Ursula Burns as a potential nominee for the Commerce Department job, both of the people said.
The National Rifle Association of America is made up of four million moms and dads, sons and daughters – and we were shocked, saddened and heartbroken by the news of the horrific and senseless murders in Newtown.
Out of respect for the families, and as a matter of common decency, we have given time for mourning, prayer and a full investigation of the facts before commenting.
The NRA is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.
The NRA is planning to hold a major news conference in the Washington, DC area on Friday, December 21.
Details will be released to the media at the appropriate time.
Is because of the steaming pile of bullshit below:
Prejudice—like cooking, wine-tasting and other consummations—has an olfactory element. When Chuck Hagel, the former GOP senator from Nebraska who is now a front-runner to be the next secretary of Defense, carries on about how “the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here,” the odor is especially ripe.
Ripe because a “Jewish lobby,” as far as I’m aware, doesn’t exist. No lesser authorities on the subject than John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, authors of “The Israel Lobby,” have insisted the term Jewish lobby is “inaccurate and misleading, both because the [Israel] lobby includes non-Jews like Christian Zionists and because many Jewish Americans do not support the hard-line policies favored by its most powerful elements.”
Ripe because, whatever other political pressures Mr. Hagel might have had to endure during his years representing the Cornhusker state, winning over the state’s Jewish voters—there are an estimated 6,100 Jewish Nebraskans in a state of 1.8 million people—was probably not a major political concern for Mr. Hagel compared to, say, the ethanol lobby.
NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — We were shocked and deeply saddened by the events that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14, 2012. We cannot comprehend the losses suffered by the families and friends of those killed by the unthinkable crimes committed that day. No words or actions can lessen the enormity of this event or make a dent in the pain that was inflicted on so many.
In 2006 affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management, L.P. made a financial investment in Freedom Group. Freedom Group does not sell weapons or ammunition directly to consumers, through gun shows or otherwise. Sales are made only to federally licensed firearms dealers and distributors in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We do not believe that Freedom Group or any single company or individual can prevent senseless violence or the illegal use or procurement of firearms and ammunition.
It is apparent that the Sandy Hook tragedy was a watershed event that has raised the national debate on gun control to an unprecedented level. The debate essentially focuses on the balance between public safety and the scope of the Constitutional rights under the Second Amendment. As a Firm, we are investors, not statesmen or policy makers. Our role is to make investments on behalf of our clients who are comprised of the pension plans of firemen, teachers, policemen and other municipal workers and unions, endowments, and other institutions and individuals. It is not our role to take positions, or attempt to shape or influence the gun control policy debate. That is the job of our federal and state legislators.
There are, however, actions that we as a firm can take. Accordingly, we have determined to immediately engage in a formal process to sell our investment in Freedom Group. We will retain a financial advisor to design and execute a process to sell our interests in Freedom Group, and we will then return that capital to our investors. We believe that this decision allows us to meet our obligations to the investors whose interests we are entrusted to protect without being drawn into the national debate that is more properly pursued by those with the formal charter and public responsibility to do so.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and communities impacted by this tragic and devastating event.
Again, it is an overreaction to a sad situation. We already know why the guy did what he did. This move does nothing and I believe it is wrong-headed. Like I said before, the person to blame for this horrible tragic event is the man’s mother. She is the one who had the guns where this disturbed man could get them — and not every gun owner in America.
NEWTOWN, CONN. – The gunman who slaughtered 20 children and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school may have snapped because his mother was planning to commit him to a psychiatric facility, according to a lifelong resident of the area who was familiar with the killer’s family and several of the victims’ families.
Adam Lanza, 20, targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown after killing his mother early Friday because he believed she loved the school “more than she loved him,” said Joshua Flashman, 25, who grew up not far from where the shooting took place. Flashman, a U.S. Marine, is the son of a pastor at an area church where many of the victims’ families worship.
“From what I’ve been told, Adam was aware of her petitioning the court for conservatorship and (her) plans to have him committed,” Flashman told FoxNews.com. “Adam was apparently very upset about this. He thought she just wanted to send him away. From what I understand, he was really, really angry. I think this could have been it, what set him off.”
A senior law enforcement official involved in the investigation confirmed that Lanza’s anger at his mother over plans for “his future mental health treatment” is being looked at as a possible motive for the deadly shooting
I have always said, when it comes to these sort of shootings; there is always a reason for them. Nobody does these sorts of things for no reason at all. There is always a reason for it. Good on Fox News for bringing this to light.
Even though I despise that lying bastard, this was a good move:
(WXYZ) – A spokesperson for Republican State Senator Mike Green, the sponsor of the controversial gun legislation that passed last week, says they have been told to expect the governor to veto the bill.
An official statement from Senator Green, who represents the 31st district, is expected soon.
The governor’s office is not yet commenting on Senator Green’s release.
The bill drew widespread criticism in the wake of the school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut where 26 people were killed – including 20 children.. Under the proposed law concealed weapons would have been allowed in schools and churches.
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