As the NYT article states, several of the terrorists came from second and third generation Moroccan and Algerian descent.  And, from intact, middle class families.

Yes, we have three Starbucks machines that grind and brew coffee one cup at a time.  No one demanded it, but if you want to get young workers you have to cater to what they want, not what the old geezers think they deserve.  I don't drink coffee, but I do appreciate the $.25 sodas.

Not really related, but it's only story that I think makes the point, the old timers, me now, always think the young ones as spoiled brats.  For the record, and not kidding, millennials are all a bunch of spoiled brats.

Not for nothing, but these are learned traits, and IMO their parents are to blame as much as anyone.  Just saying 'yes' seems to be new norm in parenting, which leads to non-sense like this, parents coddling their kids so much that they truly believe they are special.  Not special in that they are their kids, but special in that they world should cater to their every whim and desire, no matter how ridiculous.

These parents are my generation, Generation X.  You see it all the time, "OMG they are making the religious woman do her job, the horror!", or "The government needs to force companies to stop making pretty soap that my kids put into heir mouths, because I can't tell them no and not buy it", and my personal favorite, "My unemployed grown a$$ son living in the basement, who has a college degree, is going through my retirement because he's holding out for a management position."

But the social changes in that time span are mind-boggling.  Even I, at 62, can remember that I didn't see - or at least had no memory of seeing - a black person until I started first grade, in 1959.  I suppose it says something that the school I attended wasn't segregated, but still - it's weird to think life was that different then.

We still have such a long way to go - this election season has really brought that home to me.  It both saddens and disgusts me that maybe we haven't evolved as much as we like to think.

Three sources are confirming that Bharara intends to indict Governor Andrew Cuomo on January 2nd -- along with a half dozen associates and former staffers -- on public corruption, racketeering, conspiracy, and honest services fraud.

The Chronicle is unable to confirm widespread rumors that the former staffers are Howard Glaser, Joe Percoco and Larry Schwartz.

Glaser resigned in June of last year as Director of State Operations and was thought to be Cuomo's top aide. Percoco left a $175,000 salary with the Governor on October 25th of this year, and was known as Cuomo's "political enforcer."
The Chronicle is unable to confirm widespread rumors that the former staffers are Howard Glaser, Joe Percoco and Larry Schwartz.

Vote for "smart and intelligent" people instead.

They have two security personnel and a fenced area for protesters.  They appear to be armed.  But they greet people at the street and escort them the 30 foot walk pass the protestors.

What is really bothersome about the whole thing, down the road about 3 miles is the medical center.  A long time ago I took a close friend their for the same procedure done at PP.  Her parents were loaded and to say that I was surprised to see what kind of treatment people get at the medical center who have means, would be an understatement.  I have never been and probably will never be in a medical area that personal.  No sign in, no waiting for the woman, first class service, literally.

Long, long, story, but I really was not their as the expectant dad, just a good friend.  But that place was nicer than any medical facility I have ever been to.  The contrast between women without money and women with money was literally night and day. For the record, even though I was a bystander in the whole deal, that was a really bad day, top 10, not because of what I was doing, but my friend was in a bad place mentally.  I can't imagine her having to deal the the out of town christians right down the road with their kids and signs and heckling.  She would have lost it even more than she already had.

After that, I used to go the few blocks out of my way after work, honk my horn at the protesters, and just when they got all excited thinking on was on their team, I flip them off.  Jockasses, all they were doing is harassing poor women, when right down the road, the people with cash get treated with dignity, but having the same procedure they find so offensive.  Opportunists, each and every one of the adults.  

Who are these people who have nothing better to do all day that harass vulnerable women.  They were not residents of downtown Houston, and if I had to guess, they were did not live anywhere near Houston.  Just a bunch of unemployed bible thumping carpetbaggers posing their views on everyone else and using their kids as props.

The waiting room at the Medical center was crowded.  Now I don't know if that is something they do one day a week or a month, but if they are doing it every day, they are performing a lot of them, way more than PP, which for the most part seemed fairly slow.

IMO, some of those people posed risks, surely enough risk in Texas to claim self defense.  It would be very interesting to see how an abortion protester getting shot and the shooter using the stand your ground defense, or whatever Texas calls it.  I am guessing guilt would not be determined by the facts at hand other than if the shooter was getting an abortion, and if they succeeded.

Everything takes place in LA in 2002. Roberts plays an investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney whose teenage daughter is the murder victim. Ejiofor is an FBI agent assigned to a terrorism task force based in the district attorney's office. Kidman is an assistant DA, later the District Attorney. So, we get a murder overlaid with our law enforcement response to 9-11.

I was blown away by the performances. Roberts is so much better in drama than her early rom-com career would lead one to believe. Ejiofor is always good, always. Alfred Molina appears in a small but very important part. It is all good.

The story-telling is superb. The ending took me, and everyone else in the theater, completely by surprise, which is always a good thing with this kind of movie.

• 2015 version of the Stanford Experiment.  Jesus, how that professor was not jailed is beyond me.  Good

• The new Vacation, surprisingly funny.  Good if you like dumb comedies, I love them.

• The new Jurassic Park.  Not bad, not sure if the movie is better than the original, the graphics are, but it's pretty cheesy and I think a lot of holes in the story.

• American Ultra.  I like Jesse Eisenberg and he tends to pick good roles, this one, not so much.

• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou was on Encore this weekend.  I could watch Wes Anderson movies all day long, but Steve Zissou is probably my favorite character, followed by Max Fisher.

Rosa Parks was often described as a sweet and reticent elderly woman whose tired feet caused her to defy segregation on Montgomery's city buses, and whose supposedly solitary, spontaneous act sparked the 1955 bus boycott that gave birth to the civil rights movement.

The truth of who Rosa Parks was and what really lay beneath the 1955 boycott is far different from anything previously written.

In this groundbreaking and important book, Danielle McGuire writes about the rape in 1944 of a twenty-four-year-old mother and sharecropper, Recy Taylor, who strolled toward home after an evening of singing and praying at the Rock Hill Holiness Church in Abbeville, Alabama. Seven white men, armed with knives and shotguns, ordered the young woman into their green Chevrolet, raped her, and left her for dead. The president of the local NAACP branch office sent his best investigator and organizer to Abbeville. Her name was Rosa Parks. In taking on this case, Parks launched a movement that ultimately changed the world.

The author gives us the never-before-told history of how the civil rights movement began; how it was in part started in protest against the ritualistic rape of black women by white men who used economic intimidation, sexual violence, and terror to derail the freedom movement; and how those forces persisted unpunished throughout the Jim Crow era when white men assaulted black women to enforce rules of racial and economic hierarchy. Black women's protests against sexual assault and interracial rape fueled civil rights campaigns throughout the South that began during World War II and went through to the Black Power movement. The Montgomery bus boycott was the baptism, not the birth, of that struggle.