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Wait we thought Obama and the Democrats were supposed to be standing up to the evil corporations and standing up for the every day American?When it comes to official and media opinion on Obama s crowning trade achievements , the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade And Investment Partnership (TTIP), the party line is united. As previously noted, Barack Obama has assured the population that this treaty is going to be wonderful for everyone:In hailing the agreement, Obama said, Congress and the American people will have months to read every word before he signs the deal that he described as a win for all sides. If we can get this agreement to my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America goods and services around the world, and we can help more American workers compete and win, Obama said.The mainstream media s chorus of support for these trade deal is likewise deafening: here are some indicative headlines from this past Monday:Time Magazine: Pacific Trade Deal Is Good for the U.S. and Obama s Legacy The Washington Post: The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a trade deal worth celebrating The far less popular opposing view, one repeatedly presented here, is that like with every other free trade agreement that the U.S. has entered into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually happen: the outcome will be that the US trade deficit (which excluding petroleum is already back to record levels) will get even larger, and we will see even more jobs and even more businesses go overseas, thus explaining the secrecy and the fast-track nature of the TPP and TTIP s passage through Congress.And while the US population, which is far more perturbed by what Caitlyn Jenner will wear tomorrow than D.C. s plans on the future of world trade, has been mute in its response to the passage of the first part of the trade treaty, the TPP after all the MSM isn t there to tell it how to feel about it, aside to assure it that everything will be great even as millions of highly-paid jobs mysteriously become line cooks other countries are standing up against globalist trade interests meant to serve a handful of corporations.Case in point Germany, where today hundreds of thousands of people marched in Berlin in protest against the planned free trade deal between Europe and the United States which they say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labor and environmental standards.TTIP critics fear that it would lead to worse safeguards in Europe, bringing down standards for consumer safety, food and health or labor rights down to those in America. European nations have stricter regulations for things like genetically modified foods or workers benefits than the US does. There is also discontent with the secretive nature of the negotiations, which prompts skeptics to assume the worst about the document they would eventually produce.The organizers an alliance of environmental groups, charities and opposition parties claimed that 250,000 people were taking part in the rally against free trade deals with both the United States and Canada, far more than they had anticipated. This is the biggest protest that this country has seen for many, many years, Christoph Bautz, director of citizens movement Campact told protesters in a speech.According to Reuters, opposition to the so-called Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) has risen over the past year in Germany, with critics fearing the pact will hand too much power to big multinationals at the expense of consumers and workers. Popular anger appears to be focused on the encroachment by corporations into every corner around the globe: What bothers me the most is that I don t want all our consumer laws to be softened, Oliver Zloty told Reuters TV. And I don t want to have a dictatorship by any companies. Via: Zero Hedge
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Le datsan d'Aguinskoïé : plongée au cœur du bouddhisme russe Aguinskoïé est un petit village situé au sud du kraï de Transbaïkalie (près de 5 000 km à l'est de Moscou), bordé par le lac Baïkal à l'ouest et la Mongolie au sud. Quand on demande aux habitants s'ils considèrent que le village se trouve en Sibérie, ils répondent résolument : « Non, c'est le kraï de Transbaïkalie ». En Transbaïkalie, l'originalité régionale et la proximité de l'Orient transparaissent de toutes parts : dans le tintement délicat des clochettes qui enveloppe le datsan d'Aguinskoïé pour s'envoler vers les cimes des pins. Dans le vent poussiéreux qui se promène dans la steppe aux odeurs d'herbe séchée. Dans l'arôme des buuz frais (grands raviolis) de mouton, qui pénètre dans les rues du village à travers les portes des cafés. Pour la plupart des habitants de la Sibérie, Aguinskoïé est un point inconnu sur la carte. En revanche, pour les Bouriates, qui représentent la majorité de la population locale, ainsi que pour les bouddhistes de Transbaïkalie, mais aussi de Bouriatie, de la République de l'Altaï, de Mongolie et du Touva, Aguinskoïé est une maison où les anciens préservent les légendes et rites nationaux. Une maison où il est facile de prier et où l'on revient après de longs voyages. 1 Un endroit sous les pins « On nous laissera rentrer dans le datsan ? C'est tout de même un monastère, un lieu fermé. Les lamas voudront-ils nous rencontrer ? » , demandé-je à mon guide à l'entrée du datsan d'Aguinskoïé. « Certainement. Dans le bouddhisme, le lama est un enseignant, c'est le sens du mot en tibétain. On considère que le lama doit répondre aux questions et apporter conseil à tous ceux qui s'adressent à lui. Peu importe s'il s'agit d'un bouddhiste, d'un chrétien ou d'un représentant d'un autre culte » , répond mon compagnon Daba Dabaïev, lama, photographe et voyageur. Nous entrons dans le datsan d'Aguinskoïé, l'un des plus anciens de Sibérie : il a plus de 200 ans. Le père de Daba Dabaïev l'a amené au datsan d'Aguinskoïé dès qu'il a terminé le collège. Daba a d'abord étudié à l'Académie du datsan, à la faculté de philosophie bouddhiste, puis, en troisième année, il a opté pour la faculté de peinture avant de travailler ensuite comme photographe au datsan. Il a 30 ans. « Je suis arrivé ici à l'âge de 14 ans et je ne comprenais pas bien ce qu'était un datsan, ce qu'était le bouddhisme. La première année, je voulais fuir. J'avais beaucoup de cours, beaucoup de travail, il fallait obéir aux lamas plus âgés et exécuter leurs ordres, c'est la règle. Je rentrais à la maison pour les vacances, je ressentais une liberté que je n'oublierai sans doute jamais et pensais : « Je suis chez moi ! ». Deux ans plus tard, en arrivant en Khakassie, je me surprenais à penser : « Vivement que je rentre au datsan ». C'est ma maison » . Nous sommes installés dans le dougan (temple dans le bouddhisme tibétain, ndlr) le plus ancien et le plus beau du datsan d'Aguinskoïé, le dougan Devajine. Il est entouré de rangées de pins et de tambours sacrés qui contiennent entre cent et quatre cent mille prières. Les bouddhistes laïcs et les lamas du monastère tournent ces tambours dans le sens des aiguilles d'une montre, c'est l'une des formes de prière. À l'intérieur, le dougan est décoré de tableaux de Koless Sansara, de portraits de lamas respectés persécutés dans les années 1930 et d'une statue dorée de Bouddha. On ressent les traditions tibétaines, mais comme les premiers dougans furent bâtis par des maçons et charpentiers russes, des éléments de l'architecture russe sont également présents. Par exemple, les grandes fenêtres grillagées rappellent celles des terems (palais en bois, ndlr) des contes avec la lueur du jour tombant sur le plancher par taches de lumière chaude. Le musée régional d'Aguinskoïé porte le nom du chercheur orientaliste et voyageur Gombojab Tsybikov (1873 – 1930). Cet habitant d'un petit village bouriate aida en 1905 la revue National Geographic à se relever économiquement et à regagner sa notoriété mondiale. En 1899, Tsybikov part en mission de recherche pour la Société russe de géographie au Tibet central, dans sa capitale fermée Lhassa. À l'époque, aucun étranger à l'exception des citoyens chinois et mongols n'a le droit de se rendre au Tibet, ainsi Tsybikov voyage déguisé en pèlerin. La direction de la Société russe de géographie équipe le Bouriate d'une caméra portative Self-Worker, d'objectifs anastigmats Hertz et de plaques anglaises de la marque Empress. La photographie étant passible de la peine de mort dans la capitale tibétaine, Tsybikov utilise une ruse : il cache sa caméra dans le tambour portatif de prière qu'il garde tout le temps sur lui. En 1905, la revue National Geographic publie un reportage sur le Tibet. Gombojab Tsybikov et son collègue Ovche Norzounov, qui photographiait également Lhassa même en avoir averti Tsybikov, offrent les images à la revue. Au début du XXe siècle, parier sur la photographie assortie d'un petit texte est nouveau pour la revue. Cette décision s'avère payante : la revue peut ainsi survivre en temps de crise et trouve son style de présentation. Baigné par cette lumière, Daba est installé sur un banc et égrène le chapelet bouddhiste entre ses mains. Il porte une veste urbaine bordeaux dont la couleur rappelle en tout point la veste des lamas en peau de mouton. Daba voyage beaucoup à travers la Sibérie, mais reste toujours rattaché intérieurement, et même extérieurement, à sa maison, le datsan : en traversant les portes du temple pour sortir dans le grand monde, un lama reste toujours lama. 2 Coucher de soleil sur le bas-côté « Quitter Aguinskoïé ou partir en voyage ne veut pas dire qu'on rompt le lien avec nos racines , estime Daba. Le Dalaï Lama dit que pour atteindre la paix intérieure absolue et le bonheur, on doit se rendre dans un endroit qu'on ne connaît pas au moins une fois par an. Ainsi, le cerveau pourra évoluer ». Nous sommes installés avec Daba et son ami photographe et opérateur Boulat dans un café en bord de route et dégustons de délicieux buuz de beauf haché, plat national des Bouriates. Daba et Boulat parcourent depuis plusieurs années leur région natale et font des reportages et des films pour leur chaîne Travelman. Leur dernière réalisation est le court-métrage de fiction Nuusa ( « secret » en bouriate). « Les amis qui sont partis me demandent parfois : « Pourquoi restes-tu à Aguinskoïé ? Pars au plus vite, tant que tu n'es pas recouvert de racines » , raconte Boulat. Mais on ne peut pas fuir ses problèmes, tout est à l'intérieur de l'homme. Il faut voyager et regarder le monde alentour, mais il faut aussi savoir trouver l'inspiration pour travailler au datsan d'Aguinskoïé. Nous la trouvons ». Auteur : Anna Grouzdeva
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In September 2015, the Sterling Heights, MI City Council representing a city of 130,000 people in southeastern Michigan, denied the proposal for a mega-mosque in a residential neighborhood populated largely by Christian refugees who fled Islamic persecution in Iraq.Sterling Heights already has two mosques, but a third, the American Islamic Community Center, applied for a permit and was rejected after it was determined its proposed use was incompatible with the residential area. Too much traffic, too little parking, the city planning commission decided by a 9-0 vote against the mosque in September 2015.But in December, the mosque sued the city and the Obama Justice Department joined in, claiming the real reason the mosque was denied was because the city was caving to anti-Muslim bigotry in the community. A settlement deal was announced last night during a Sterling Heights City Council meeting.As expected, the attorney for the mosque developers claimed the reasons these mostly Christian refugees from Iraq are in opposition to a mosque being built in their residential neighborhood fake :Sterling Heights, MI residents spoke out against the proposed mega-mosque during a planning commission meeting where the residents were given an opportunity to have their views heard by the city council:Many of the Sterling Heights residents who live in the area of the proposed mosque are Christian-Iraqi refugees who fled persecution of Muslims in their native land. The last thing they want is an Islamic mega-mosque erected in their backyards. Before announcing the decision to go ahead with the proposed plan for building the mega-mosque in a local neighborhood, Sterling Heights City Councilman Doug Skrzyniarz claimed the primary reasons for going ahead with the plans were to avoid costly litigation while allowing officials to have more say in the mosque s layout. We have reduced our financial risk and we ve been able to have input on what the actual development is going to contain, Councilman Doug Skrzyniarz told the large crowd. But it s what he said next, that s NOT being reported by local or national news outlets that was even more telling and it happens near the end of the video:
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Sharon Jones, a powerhouse soul singer with a gritty voice, fast feet and indomitable energy, died Friday of pancreatic cancer. She was 60. Her death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones died at Bassett Medical Center in Cooperstown, N. Y. and was surrounded by members of her band, the and other loved ones when she died. Ms. Jones sang and shouted the kind of soul and funk she had grown up on. Her voice had bite, bluesiness, rhythmic savvy and a lifetime of conviction. She was backed by the the revivalist New York City RB band that supplied her songs as she sparked their career. She was discovered in 1996 by Gabriel Roth, a founder of the Daptone Records and the ’ bassist and main songwriter (under the name Bosco Mann). Ms. Jones had tried decades earlier to get a start in the music business, but was told by record labels that she didn’t have the looks to be a performer. Later, she would recall in the 2016 documentary “Miss Sharon Jones! ,” the refrain became, “too short, too fat, too black and too old. ” But with the — who sometimes introduced her as “110 pounds of soul excitement” — she became an unstoppable frontwoman. As she sang about love troubles, hard times and a woman’s strength, she would race across the stage in high heels — and sooner or later kick them off — while shouting and shimmying in fringed, sequined dresses. Ms. Jones and the worked their way up from clubs to theaters and festivals, and drew growing recognition from fellow musicians. At a 2011 concert in Paris, Prince showed up to play some guitar. In 2014, after chemotherapy sent her cancer into remission, Ms. Jones returned to performing with a show of undiminished energy as long as she could. Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Ga. and spent her first years living across the state line in North Augusta, S. C. (Augusta, Ga. also nurtured one of her lifelong influences, James Brown.) She was the youngest of six children, and she is survived by four of them: Dora Jones, Isiah Jones, Henry Jones and Willian Stringer. In 1960, she moved with her family to Brooklyn, growing up in later, she would write a song for a Christmas album called “Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects. ” She sang gospel music in church and soaked up James Brown, Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin, Stax and Motown from the radio. From the 1970s on, she sang with funk bands and wedding bands, sang backup at recording sessions and led church choirs. To support herself, Ms. Jones worked as a prison guard at Rikers Island in the late 1980s and then as an armed security guard for Wells Fargo. At one recording session directly after work, she was still wearing her Wells Fargo uniform, complete with gun. It led to the title of one of her early singles, “Damn It’s Hot. ” Mr. Roth heard her at a 1996 session backing the soul singer Lee Fields, and quickly began recording her through various labels he was associated with: Pure Records, Desco and then Daptone. The 2002 album “Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the ” was Ms. Jones’s debut album and Daptone’s first album release. Recording on vintage equipment with vintage instruments, Ms. Jones and the were leaders of a New York soul revival. The band’s sound got vastly more exposure when the producer Mark Ronson hired the as the studio band for Amy Winehouse’s 2006 album “Back to Black. ” But Ms. Jones was gaining notice, too. She played a juke joint singer in “The Great Debaters,” a 2007 film by Denzel Washington. When she and the released their 2007 album, “100 Days, 100 Nights,” they performed at the Apollo Theater. Album by album and tour by tour, Ms. Jones’s audience and reputation grew. She toured with Lou Reed and sang with Phish and Michael Bublé. But in 2013, as she prepared to release the album “Give the People What They Want,” she was diagnosed with stage 2 pancreatic cancer. She and the performed on a float in the 2013 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade anyway. The album was postponed for a year while Ms. Jones underwent surgery and chemotherapy — a period documented by the director Barbara Kopple in “Miss Sharon Jones!” When Ms. Jones first returned to performing in 2014, she was bald. Her dancing would have sent any wig flying. “Give The People What They Want” was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best RB Album. By 2015, Ms. Jones and the band were fully back at work. They released a Christmas album, “It’s a Holiday Soul Party. ” They toured with Hall Oates and on their own. And they made a new single that’s heard in “Miss Sharon Jones!” called “I’m Still Here,” a bluesy musical autobiography . “I didn’t know if I would live to see another day,” Ms. Jones sang with a triumphal wail. “But I’m still here. ”
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Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is certainly on the go. He traveled to 38 states last year to help candidates in the midterms and this week alone is in six states. Whether he runs for president or continues to work the trail for others, he certainly sees a lot of America and talks to a whole lot of people. In a real sense, he truly does reflect the views of many social conservatives and conservative populists in the heartland.
With Huckabee, however, who has been going to Israel for 42 years, one is compelled to start with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. “It was a tremendous speech,” he told Right Turn. “It was more than how he said it but what he said. He called attention to the nature of the [Iranian] regime.” He recited two well-known points — Iran is the world’s largest state sponsor of terror and a regime committed to wiping out Israel — and reiterated that Iran has cheated on every agreement it has ever entered into. “If every time I’ve bought a car from a used-car dealer — 10 out of 10 he’s sold me a lemon, do I really want to buy the 11th?” He sounds genuinely aggrieved about the president’s behavior and the conduct of Democrats who refused to go to the speech. “What I lamented is that the once bipartisan agreement on Israel and national security has been abandoned by the Democrats,” he said. “They are more interested in protecting Obama’s petulance than in protecting Israel.” He hastened to note that he was in Israel yet again last week and met with Netanyahu. He makes the keen point that this hardly was a political winner for Netanyahu back home. “It was divisive back home in Israel. What he did was brave. This was a political risk,” he noted, pointing to the controversy and criticism the trip generated among his opponents. And running through the list of other Middle East countries he has been to (Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc.) he observes that this is not just about the Jewish state. “The Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Emiratis, the Saudis are absolutely with Israel on this [the Iranian threat].” He confesses that in watching the president’s conduct and the reported concessions, “I’m stunned. I can’t figure out what the president is thinking, what his advisers are telling him.”
There are few people who know the Clintons like fellow Arkansan Huckabee. He’s not surprised in the least about the recent e-mail and foundation scandals. “Again and again Democrats and especially the press are willing to let the Clintons skate by. It’s pretty bizarre.” Is he going to run for president? He sticks to his previous statements that he will decide “sometime this spring.” He cracks, “Looking at the weather it’s premature [to decide].”
Huckabee is an economic populist, to be sure, and takes pride in being attacked for it. “I talked about [this economic message] eight years ago. I was being pilloried by the Wall Street Journal and other folks in your community [the mainstream media].” He says events have proved him right, and now everyone is talking about wage stagnation. He asserted, “The bottom 90 percent in the past 40 years have had stagnant wages. In the 25 years before that, 90 percent saw an increase.”
He cites the tax code (it is “punishing people who work on their feet. If they take a second job, they are thrown into a new tax bracket); “cheap foreign labor that devalues American labor”; and “cheap products” from China. People, he said, are worried about the college grad with debt and no job and the small-business person bedeviled by taxes and regulations. Huckabee’s diagnosis of what troubles America may be sound, but many conservatives will disagree with his solutions.
Huckabee may be missing some important pieces of the picture. In the 1950s, Europe and Asia were not yet economic powerhouses, labor unions kept wages artificially high and most families had only one working adult (so labor was more scare, and hence wages were high). In a global economy, many would argue that Huckabee’s proposals don’t fit the times. In fact, we need to expand markets for our trade, enhance our technological edge and change our immigration system so that we siphon off the best and brightest to work, build businesses and invest in America. That formula — becoming a 21st-century economic giant that beats the world competition — together with tax, education and regulatory reform, is the building block of the policy agenda of two other potential 2016 contenders, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Those two make for an interesting contrast to economic populists who fear losing what they have and tend not to think about how to get more of the world economic pie.
If Huckabee would get to the White House, he lists two priorities. “At the top of the list would be reestablishing relations with our allies. I’ve challenged my Democratic friends to come up with one country, just one, that we have better relations with. They can’t because there is not one.” Second, “I’d evolve power out of Washington, D.C.,” he said. “It’s so dysfunctional, I don’t think it can be fixed.” He’d rather give the power back to the states, where “people have to balance budgets.”
It is easy to see why he was such a hit on Fox. He’s entertaining and an excellent conservative analyst. Whether he wants to and can translate that into a presidential platform and campaign remains to be seen. But the candidates who are definitely running might pick up some pointers by watching him.
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Trump s supporters have proven time and time again that the reason they re able to stand behind The Donald with a completely clear conscience is because they re exactly like him. The pro-Trump crowd is just as Islamophobic, racist, irrational, angry, vulgar and self-involved as the Republican frontrunner himself. The majority of Trump s supporters also share another trait of Trump s they, too, are misogynists and this couldn t have been more evident than his supporters choice of attire at a recent rally.While at Trump s campaign event in Syracuse on Saturday, Jill Colvin of the Associated Press managed to snap a picture of this disgusting t-shirt, proudly worn and modeled by one of the candidate s young Trump bros.If you need any more convincing that the Trump That B*tch slogan isn t a misogynistic, disrespectful attack on women, just wait until you see what the front says:Misogyny at its finest. Not only was there a completely despicable message on the back of the shirt, but the front makes a disgraceful, tasteless reference to former POTUS Bill Clinton s infamous affair with Monica Lewinsky. There couldn t be a more immature, vile way to disrespect Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton than this.These t-shirts were being sold outside of the event, and it s shameful to think that even one person would buy one. But then again, what else can you expect from someone who believes that Trump is worthy of being the next President of the United States?These people have stood by Trump through every single one of his attacks on women. Not including Trump s extremely long (and forever expanding) history of misogyny, these morons have supported the disgraced candidate through his horrific abortion remarks that stated women should be punished for terminating a pregnancy, his unprovoked attacks on rival Ted Cruz s wife, an incident where Trump s own campaign manager threw a female reporter to the ground (and Trump did NOTHING about it), Trump s one-sided feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, his awkwardly incestuous comments about his own daughters, and so much more.These people have absolutely NO moral compass between right and wrong, and they ll do anything just to get some attention just like Trump himself. Trump s misogynistic messages are becoming more and more terrifying, and his followers are going to stand behind him one hundred percent. The GOP has been terrorizing women forever, but Trump s particular brand of hateful rhetoric is especially dangerous. Featured image via Twitter
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Migrant Crisis Disclaimer
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Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani told black fathers who are worried about the safety of their sons that the real danger isn t police officers. Oh no, of course not. The real danger is other black kids. During an appearance on CBS s Face The Nation, Giuliani said that black fathers need to teach their sons to respect law enforcement and recognize that the real danger comes from within the inherently violent black community.If I were a black father, and I was concerned with the safety of my child, really concerned about it and not in a politically activist sense, I would say, Be very respectful of the police. Most of them are good. Some can be very bad. And just be very careful.I d also say, be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood and don t get involved with them because, son, there s a 99 percent chance they re going to kill you, not the police. And we ve got to hear that from the black community. And what we ve got to hear from the black community is how and what they are doing among themselves about the crime problem in the black community.Giulini has a long history of pushing the myth of black on black crime. He doubled down on his argument this Sunday, completely ignoring the fact that when these other black kids that he speaks of commit a murder, they go to jail. However, when a cop is the one that pulls the trigger all they get is a paid vacation, even when there are witnesses and video evidence.If you want to deal with this on the black side, you ve got to teach your children to be respectful to the police, and you ve got to teach your children that the real danger to them is not the police, the real danger to them 99 out of 100 times are other black kids who are going to kill them. That s the way they re going to die.Watch Giuliani s interview here:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8cUAb3df0M]Featured image via video screen capture
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump, who became a reality television star with a show called “The Apprentice,” will spend a lot of time next week promoting a plan to expand apprenticeships to help companies find more skilled workers to fill jobs, the White House said. It would be the second consecutive week in which the White House will make a push to show Trump is moving ahead on his top domestic priority - jobs - in spite of investigations into whether he had anything to do with possible Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump has refuted those allegations, which have overshadowed his efforts to boost economic growth. Last week was branded “infrastructure week” with a series of events dealing with fixing the nation’s decrepit roads and bridges, another plank in Trump’s jobs platform. But a congressional hearing on the Russia imbroglio featuring James Comey - the FBI director Trump fired - sucked up all the attention in Washington. Next week will be “workforce development week” where the White House highlights plans to combat the skills gap. U.S. job openings surged to a record high in April with government data showing employers struggling to find workers with the right skills. Trump’s plan has been in the works for months, led by his daughter Ivanka Trump, adviser Reed Cordish, and Trump’s secretaries of labor, education and commerce. The White House was mum on the precise details of Trump’s plan to expand apprenticeships ahead of his unveiling it in a speech at the Labor Department on Wednesday. A real estate developer who is familiar with the use of apprenticeship programs in the building trades, Trump has praised Germany’s apprenticeship system as a model. Ivanka Trump discussed the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the White House in March, and toured a Siemens training center in Berlin in April. Trump will travel to Wisconsin on Tuesday to visit a training program at Waukesha County Technical College with Republican Governor Scott Walker, a former rival in the race to become the 2016 Republican presidential candidate. On Wednesday, Ivanka Trump will hold a roundtable on the issue with 15 CEOs at the White House. The president will then meet with eight governors on Thursday to discuss the topic at the White House. The White House declined to say which CEOs and governors would be there. One thing that likely will not be in Trump’s plan: a surge in spending. The White House expects the private sector to take the lead. A senior White House official said the federal government had allocated $16.7 billion to 43 job training programs in 13 agencies in fiscal 2017. “It’s not a money question. There’s a lot of money out there being thrown at this,” the official said. (This version of the story adds a dropped word in second paragraph)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An American citizen fighting for Islamic State in Syria surrendered to U.S-backed fighters earlier this week and has been handed over to U.S. forces, the Pentagon said on Thursday. The American surrendered to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a U.S.-backed alliance of mostly Arab and Kurdish fighters, on or around Sept. 12. The US citizen is being legally detained by Department of Defense personnel as a known enemy combatant, Pentagon spokesman Major Adrian Rankine-Galloway said in a statement. It is not the first time an American citizen fighting for the group has been detained by U.S. allies. In June, a Virginia man who traveled to Syria to become a suicide bomber for Islamic State was convicted of providing material support to the militant group. Mohamad Jamal Khweis, 27, spent about 2-1/2 months in early 2016 traveling with Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq and participating in the group s religious training. He was detained by Kurdish peshmerga forces in northern Iraq in March 2016 and turned over to U.S. authorities.
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IT S INTERESTING THAT A LIGHTHEARTED MOMENT LIKE THE ONE BELOW COULD CAUSE SUCH ANGER AND OUTRAGE FROM THE LEFT!Rob Gronkowksi popped into today s White House press briefing to ask Sean Spicer if he needed any help. Spicer, a Patriots fan, declined the offer. Mild laughs were had. Gronkowski then disappeared, presumably to cause more mischief in other parts of the building.It s not surprising that the tight end performed a bit like this. That he was wearing a shirt while doing it was a bit of a shock.Right after this video was posted Facebook comments were brutal about how unprofessional it was to have this guy pop into the briefing. We had Obama s antics for 8 years and these people can t take one light moment like this?The left went nuts with faux outrage: We can think of many moments during the Obama administration where some unprofessional antics took place. The only problem is that these antics are much more serious Remember Jay Carney? Well, here are 6 big moments he s caught in BIG lies. We consider this to be much more important than what happened today.6 OF THE TOP ANTICS FROM WHITE HOUSE PRESS BRIEFINGS UNDER OBAMA JAY CARNEY S NOT FUNNY BUT SERIOUS GAFFES : 1. When he said he knows 3 people named Hilary Rosen. After Obama adviser Hilary Rosen said Ann Romney hadn t worked a day in her life, it was discovered Rosen had visited the White House numerous times. When questioned on it, Carney claimed he knew 3 separate women named Hilary Rosen. 2. That one time he stumbled when asked why the Obama Administration withheld a crucial Benghazi email.3. That day when he called a reporter s repeated questions on Kathleen Sebelius lame. 4. That time he admitted White House staff knew of the IRS scandal and didn t tell Obama.5. That time he admitted that the Obama Budget wouldn t balance.6. That moment when he finally admitted Obama s Keep Your Plan promise wasn t true.Shouldn t the liberal snowflakes be outraged at what Jay Carney did?
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He threw the reputation of the FBI under the bus Former FBI agents don t seem as surprised as the rest of the world that James Comey was fired by President Trump today.In fact, some of them are quite satisfied.Fox News had several former FBI assistant directors on their broadcast Tuesday night to discuss former FBI Director James Comey s firing, and they all said his recent behavior made this move rather predictable.James Kallstrom, former FBI Assistant Director, said he is glad it happened. Daily CallerWatch here:FOX News Sean Hannity chimed in on the firing of FBI Director James Comey calling him a national embarrassment :
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Tilikum, the captive orca who killed a trainer at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla. in 2010 and later became the subject of the documentary “Blackfish,” died on Friday. The whale had been suffering from a persistent infection from a bacteria found in wild habitats and natural settings, but the exact cause of death will be determined by a necropsy, SeaWorld Parks Entertainment said in a statement. The orca, a male estimated to be about 36 years old, had been kept by the organization for 25 years. “While today is a difficult day for the SeaWorld family, it’s important to remember that Tilikum lived a long and enriching life while at SeaWorld and inspired millions of people to care about this amazing species,” the statement said. “Tilikum had, and will continue to have, a special place in the hearts of the SeaWorld family, as well as the millions of people all over the world that he inspired,” said the president of SeaWorld, Joel Manby. Tilikum’s caretakers had said in March that the whale was afflicted with the infection that was likely to lead to his death. The whale was at the center of an orca breeding program that SeaWorld ended last year. The company also ended its killer whale performances in San Diego, where state lawmakers had brought intense pressure on the company after the documentary’s release. With the death of Tilikum, SeaWorld now holds 22 orcas at its three facilities in Orlando, San Antonio and San Diego. SeaWorld also noted that Tilikum was “inextricably connected” with the death of his trainer, Dawn Brancheau, in 2010. “While we all experienced profound sadness about that loss, we continued to offer Tilikum the best care possible, each and every day, from the country’s leading experts in marine mammals,” the SeaWorld statement said. Tilikum bit down on the ponytail of Ms. Brancheau, his trainer, before dragging her underwater and killing her. After her death, SeaWorld conducted an extensive review that resulted in trainers further isolating themselves from the animals for safety. In 2013, the documentary “Blackfish” examined Ms. Brancheau’s death by looking at the mental state of whales that are taken from their pods in the wild and raised at marine parks. But SeaWorld pushed back against the film’s claims that the whales in captivity suffer physical and mental distress because of confinement. Tilikum has also been connected with the deaths of two other people: Keltie Byrne, a student and trainer who slipped into a pool containing Tilikum and two other orcas in 1991, and Daniel P. Dukes, a man who slipped into SeaWorld after hours in 1999. Mr. Dukes was found dead, draped over Tilikum’s back. Tilikum came to SeaWorld in 1991 from Sealand of the Pacific in Canada, and the organization said it had not collected a whale from the wild in nearly 40 years.
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One millennial is 100% FED Up! with her generation. It all started when millennial Alexis Bloomer watched an elderly man limping into the post office, and watched two young men walk by him and not even offer to help him. Here s part of what Alexis had to say: We re just existing, we re not really contributing anything to society. Our generation doesn t have the basic manners that include no mam and yes mam . We don t respect our elders. We don t even respect our country. We re stepping on our flag instead of stepping up to volunteer. And we idolize people like Kim Kardashian and then we shame people like Tim Tebow. We re lazy, we re really entitled, and we want to make a lot of money and have free education but we re not really willing to put in the work. We re more divided as a country than ever before, and I think our generation has a lot to do with it. Everything that used to be frowned upon is now celebrated. Watch Alexis explain her motivation and reason for filming her apology to elders rant:
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Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has said she "does not recall" ordering emails related to State Department business to be deleted or permanently erased from her personal server after she left her post in 2013, according to sworn testimony made public Thursday.
The testimony, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch, marked the first time Clinton was forced to answer questions under oath about her private email system. A federal judge had ordered the former secretary of state's legal team to turn over written responses to questions about the so-called "homebrew" server, which was kept in her New York home during her tenure as America's top diplomat.
Clinton and her legal team objected to all or part of 18 of the 25 questions put to her by Judicial Watch. She also filed eight separate general objections to the process under which the questions were being asked.
In her responses, Clinton used some variation of "does not recall" at least 21 times.
In the testimony, Clinton says that it was her "expectation" that all her "work-related and potentially work-related e-mails [sic]" had been turned over to the State Department by her lawyers when she determined that she had "no reason to keep her personal e-mails [sic]."
That statement contradicts testimony by FBI Director James Comey this past July. Comey told the House oversight committee that "thousands" of work-related emails were not returned.
Clinton also denied sending a 2011 memo warning State Department employees not to conduct official business from personal email accounts.
Clinton said the memo, like all notices sent from the State Department, concluded with her last name as "a formality ... it did not mean that she sent, authored, or reviewed the cable."
Clinton also said she did not recall receiving a February 2011 memo warning her of increased attempts to hack into private email accounts belonging to senior State Department officials.
Clinton was also asked when she decided to use her private email account to conduct government business and whom she consulted in making that decision.
Clinton said she recalled making the decision in early 2009, but she "does not recall any specific consultations regarding the decision."
Asked whether she was warned that using a private email account conflicted with federal record-keeping rules, Clinton responded that "she does not recall being advised, cautioned, or warned, she does not recall that it was ever suggested to her, and she does not recall participating in any communication, conversation, or meeting in which it was discussed."
Clinton noted in her testimony that her use of a personal email account for official business dated to her time as a Senator from New York, and insisted that she decided to use the server "for the purpose of convenience."
Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said the group's lawyers will closely review Clinton's responses.
"Mrs. Clinton's refusal to answer many of the questions in a clear and straightforward manner further reflects disdain for the rule of law," Fitton said.
Campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said Clinton has answered these same questions in multiple settings for over a year, and her answers Thursday "are entirely consistent with what she has said many times before."
"Judicial Watch is a right-wing organization that has been attacking the Clintons since the 1990s, and this frivolous lawsuit is just its latest failed attempt to hurt her campaign for the presidency," Fallon said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Here s Gigi Hadid s ridiculous apology to Melania, where she basically says she s been mocked before too and Melania should understand and deal with it. Apparently no one ever taught Hadid how to offer an actual heartfelt apology:pic.twitter.com/6NuxjKx68o Gigi Hadid (@GiGiHadid) November 22, 2016
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LONDON (Reuters) - Britain is seeking to build on the recent momentum in the Brexit divorce talks with the European Union before a summit next month, a spokeswoman for Britain s Department for Exiting the European Union said on Tuesday. We are exploring how we can continue to build on recent momentum in the talks so that together we can move the negotiations on to the next phase and discuss our future partnership, the spokeswoman said. She was responding to reports in British newspapers that Britain and the EU had reached agreement on a Brexit divorce bill which is likely to total around 50 billion euros, potentially heralding a breakthrough in the negotiations.
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Will history repeat itself, or is skipping the debate a bad idea? On Tuesday night Donald Trump and the Trump campaign announced that GOP frontrunner Trump will skip the FOX News GOP Primary debate this week in Iowa. Via: Gateway Pundithttps://youtu.be/wjKVlVLgs3MTrump is not the first Republican candidate to skip a debate. Ronald Reagan skipped the Republican debate ahead of the 1980 Iowa caucus and went on to win in a landslide.Watch stunned, leftist media, as they are stunned by reports that Ronald Reagan is winning in a landslide:Here is what the map looked like after Reagan s shocking landslide win: Bloomberg reported:Trump isn t the first top-tier presidential candidate to skip a debate. Ronald Reagan did not attend a Republican debate ahead of the 1980 Iowa caucuses, which he lost to George H.W. Bush. Reagan went on to the win the nomination and the presidency.On her Fox News program Tuesday night, Kelly said she will still co-moderate the debate. The truth is he doesn t get to control the media, Kelly said. I ll be there. The debate will go on with or without Trump. The network said in an e-mailed statement that capitulating to politicians ultimatums about a debate moderator violates all journalistic standards, as do threats. Fox said it had warned Lewandowski not to level any more threats against Kelly, as when he allegedly told the network that Megyn had a rough couple of days after that last debate and he would hate to have her go through that again. We can t give in to terrorizations toward any of our employees, the network said.Trump told reporters the campaign will raise some money for the Wounded Warriors. We ll raise money for the vets, Trump said. I was all set to do the debate. I came here to do the debate. When they sent out the wise-guy press releases a little while ago, done by some PR person, along with Roger Ailes, I said: Bye, bye. Trump s campaign also released a statement saying that Mr. Trump knows a bad deal when he sees one.
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Near the end of a recent campaign speech in northern Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel turned to Europe s refugee crisis of 2015 and offered her audience a comforting dual message. Germans should be proud of the warm welcome they gave hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, many of them fleeing war and persecution in the Middle East, she told an audience of over 1,000 gathered in the fishing village of Steinhude. Then she shifted gears: What happened in 2015 cannot, should not and must not happen again. It is a phrase she has used repeatedly in market squares across Germany as she campaigns for a fourth term in a federal election on Sept. 24 that she is widely expected to win. [nL5N1LQ0H1 Two years since she opened Germany s borders to asylum seekers to avert what she says was a looming humanitarian disaster, and saw her popularity slide as a result, Merkel has climbed her way out of the deepest hole of her political career. There are many factors behind her comeback. But few are as important as her skill at spinning a narrative about the refugee crisis that many Germans can support, whether they cheered or condemned her actions of 2015. Merkel is not running on a policy of open borders and that fits perfectly with the mood in the country, said Robin Alexander, author of a best-selling book on the German government s handling of the refugee crisis. Many people like the image of Germany as a model of humanitarian virtue. At the same time they know the country could not continue to welcome refugees like it did. It is this set of feelings that Merkel is appealing to. By the end of 2015, 890,000 asylum seekers had entered Germany, many without proper identity checks, overwhelming local communities. Merkel s actions divided Europe and led to a surge in anti-immigrant sentiment. The hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seems sure to enter parliament for the first time. A year after her decision, and following a series of small-scale attacks in Germany by Islamist militants, her popularity ratings had plunged 30 points to 45 percent and she faced questions about whether she would run for chancellor again. Yet today, 63 percent of Germans say she is doing a good job and, according to a Bertelsmann Foundation survey this week, 59 percent believe the country is on the right track. It has been a long, difficult road back, said one of her top aides. But we have gotten to a point where the refugee issue is no longer a negative for Merkel in the election campaign. Merkel has been helped by external events such as Britain s vote for Brexit last year and Donald Trump s election victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, both of which reinforced her appeal as a guarantor of stability. A decision by Macedonia in early 2016 to shut its border with Greece stemmed the flow of refugees, easing pressure on Germany. And the country has not suffered a large-scale Islamist attack, an event which might have triggered a voter backlash. But Merkel s knack for understanding how Germans tick has also been crucial. At many of her public appearances, she is confronted by anti-immigration protesters who try to drown out her speeches with whistles and chants of Merkel must go! . In Steinhude, a woman held up a sign showing Merkel s diamond-shaped hand pose over a German flag with a blood-spattered bullet hole in the middle. I offer you terror, death and chaos , the sign read. But the dozen or so protesters were dwarfed by supporters who applauded her message. I m not sure if there was another way to handle the refugee crisis. Those refugees had to go somewhere, said Willi Kordes, 70, who runs a sewage treatment firm in nearby Vlotho. I don t trust anyone to do it better. Working in her favor in the election is the fact that many of Germany s other established parties, including the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), led by her main challenger Martin Schulz, backed her open-door policy. The AfD, running a racially-tinged campaign that has put off some voters, has come off its 2016 highs in the polls. The one mainstream party that has offered a hardline alternative, the Christian Social Union (CSU), is the Bavarian sister party to Merkel s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). A vote for the CSU is akin to a vote for Merkel. A crucial factor behind Merkel s rebound has been the decline in asylum seekers entering Germany. About 280,000 arrived in 2016, with another drop likely this year. Merkel takes credit for this, pointing to a deal she brokered between the European Union and Turkey, under which Ankara has cut the number of migrants crossing into Europe via its territory. But critics say the closing of Balkan borders which Merkel publicly opposed was the real driver. Some see parallels with her behavior in the euro zone financial crisis, when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi s pledge to do whatever it takes to keep the currency bloc together, allowing her to stick to a hard line towards euro states such as Greece without fear of consequences. In the refugee crisis, it has been countries like Macedonia, Turkey and Hungary - which shut down routes the refugees used - that have done Merkel s dirty work , allowing her to maintain the image of a caring leader who helped people fleeing war. The approach has helped Merkel extend her control over the political centre. Some right-wing voters may have fled for the AfD but polls suggest young, urban voters who traditionally lean left could fill the gap. Germany s economy has been strong enough to absorb the influx of refugees without big cracks emerging in society. In reaction to its Nazi past, Germany has emerged as a more open, tolerant country than many assumed when the crisis hit. A survey published this month ranking the top fears of the Germans put terrorism at the top. But a separate poll for the Bild newspaper showed they do not see curbing immigration as a priority. Germans are astonishingly global, liberal and open to the world, said Menno Smid, head of the Infas Institute for Applied Social Sciences, which released a survey last month showing broad acceptance of refugees in Germany. We are the winners from globalization. The economic factors that led to Trump simply don t exist.
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JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has taken a lead in party nominations for the next leader of the ruling African National Congress (ANC), securing the support of 65 percent of branches tallied so far, a poll showed. Hundreds of ANC branches across South Africa are nominating their choice for party president and other senior positions ahead of a December conference where about 5,000 delegates sent by the branches will cast their votes. The ANC s next leader will probably become president of the country at a national election in 2019 given the party s electoral dominance. Early indications are that party members are split between Ramaphosa, a former union leader and one of the country s richest people, and Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, a former minister and ex-wife of President Jacob Zuma, for the party s top job. The poll by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) found that Dlamini-Zuma had secured 30 percent of nominations and that ANC Treasurer General Zweli Mkhize received most of the remaining 5 percent of nominations. The IRR said its data suggested 74 percent of ANC branches had made nominations and cautioned that it had not been able to corroborate its findings. The ANC does not make the nomination tallies public. A Ramaphosa win in December has tended to be viewed as the more positive outcome by investors, some of whom have been spooked by Dlamini-Zuma s campaign message of radical wealth redistribution. Nominations do not necessarily translate into votes at the ANC s elective conference because delegates could vote for a different candidate than the one nominated by their branch. Dlamini-Zuma s campaign says that many branches sympathetic to her are yet to submit their nominations, which could reduce Ramaphosa s lead or swing the outcome in December in her favor. Dlamini-Zuma is backed by the ANC s women s and youth leagues, which also vote in December.
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MADRID/BARCELONA (Reuters) - Sacked Catalonian president Carles Puigdemont on Saturday called for peaceful democratic opposition to the central government s takeover of the region following its unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. Puigdemont, whose regional government was dismissed by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Friday, accused Madrid of premeditated aggression against the will of the Catalans. Rajoy removed Puigdemont, took over the administration of the autonomous region and called a new election after Catalonia s parliament declared itself an independent nation on Friday. The bold if to all appearances futile action marked a potentially dangerous escalation of Spain s worst political crisis in the four decades since its return to democracy. It s very clear that the best form of defending the gains made up until now is democratic opposition to Article 155, Puigdemont said in a brief statement he read out in the Catalan city of Girona, referring to the legal trigger for the takeover. But he was vague on precisely what steps the secessionists would take as the national authorities are already moving into Barcelona and other parts of Catalonia to enforce control. Spanish government spokesman Inigo Mendez de Vigo said it would welcome Puigdemont s participation in the regional elections it has called for Dec. 21. I m quite sure that if Puigdemont takes part in these elections, he can exercise this democratic opposition, Mendez de Vigo told Reuters TV in an interview. European countries, the United States and Mexico have rejected the Catalan declaration and expressed support for Spain s unity. Puigdemont signed the statement as President of Catalonia, demonstrating he did not accept his ousting. We continue persevering in the only attitude that can make us winners. Without violence, without insults... and also respecting the protests of the Catalans who do not agree with what the parliamentary majority has decided, he said. The secessionists say a referendum on Oct. 1 gave them a mandate for independence. However, less than half of eligible voters turned out for the ballot, which Madrid declared illegal and tried to stop. Opinion polls show that more than half of the 5.3 million people eligible to vote in the wealthy northeastern region, which is already autonomous, do not want to break from Spain. But emotions are running high and the next few days will be tricky for Madrid as it embarks on enforcing direct rule. Calling a new regional election is something of a gamble by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as it could increase the numbers of pro-independence supporters in a new parliament. But Mendez de Vigo said it would give Catalans the final say about how they felt. Asked what would happen if Puigdemont had to face prosecution, Mendez de Vigo said judicial and political powers were separate in Spain and that no one is above the law. He did not comment further. Catalonia s police force told its officers to stay neutral, a step towards averting possible conflict following doubts over how the Mossos d Esquadra, as they are called, would respond if ordered to evict Puigdemont and his government. The force is riven by distrust between those for and against independence and also estranged from Spain s national police forces, Mossos and national officers have told Reuters. Some Catalan officers stood between national police and those trying to vote during the referendum. Given that there is it is likely to be an increase in gatherings and rallies of citizens... and that there are people of different thoughts, we must remember that it is our responsibility to guarantee the security of all and help these to take place without incident, an internal memo said. Government buildings, the headquarters of national political parties, ports, airports, courts, and the Bank of Spain were being guarded, the Interior Ministry said. Units of the regional force could be replaced if events made that necessary, it said. The Madrid government also sacked the Mossos chief, Josep Lluis Trapero, who became a hero to the secessionists after his force took a much softer stance than national police in enforcing the referendum ban. Spain s High Court barred Trapero from leaving the country and seized his passport as part of an investigation for alleged sedition, although it has not ordered his arrest. In Barcelona, thousands of independence supporters packed the Sant Jaume Square in front of the regional headquarters on Friday night, waving Catalan flags and singing traditional songs in the Catalan language as bands played. But there was no trouble overnight and the streets were quiet on Saturday. The main secessionist group, the Catalan National Assembly, has urged civil servants not to follow orders from the Spanish government and to mount peaceful resistance while a pro-independence trade union, the CSC, called a strike. The government said it would ensure a minimum service. About 1,000 people took part in a pro-unity rally in Madrid on Saturday and others turned out in the northern city of Valladolid an indication of the resentment the independence drive has caused in the rest of Spain. Aitor Sanchez, a 30-year-old worker, said he was saddened the government had taken control of Catalonia but it had no choice. These are delicate moments in our country. But I believe we must respect the law. The chaos has prompted an exodus of businesses from Catalonia, which contributes about a fifth of Spain s economy, the fourth-largest in the euro zone. Tourism in hugely popular Barcelona has been hit, and markets have shown signs of concern. European leaders have also denounced the push, fearing it could fan separatist sentiment around the continent.
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Written by Adam Dick Friday November 11, 2016 Ron Paul, known for his promotion of the United States following a noninterventionist foreign policy, presented Thursday his take on the prospects of Donald Trump’s foreign policy as president. Paul set out his analysis in an extensive interview with host Peter Lavelle at RT. Paul started off the interview saying that he is keeping his “fingers crossed” regarding Trump’s potential foreign policy actions. Paul says he views favorably Trump’s comments in the presidential election about “being less confrontational with Russia” and criticizing some of the US wars in the Middle East. Paul, though, notes that Trump has presented “vague” foreign policy positions overall. Paul also comments that a good indication of how Trump will act on foreign policy issues will be provided by looking at who Trump appoints to positions in the executive branch and from whom Trump receives advice. Regarding Trump’s foreign policy advisors and potential appointees, Paul expresses in the interview reason for concern. Paul states: “Unfortunately, there have been several neoconservatives that are getting closer to Trump, and, if he gets his advice from them, then I don’t think that is a good sign.” Even if Trump wants to pursue a significantly more noninterventionist course than his recent predecessors in the presidency, Paul warns that the entrenched “deep state” that favors foreign intervention and war, special interests that have “sinister motivation for these wars,” and media propaganda that “builds up the war fever” can provide significant headwinds against Trump pursuing such an objective. Watch Paul’s interview here: Related
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DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian investment firm Kingdom Holding 4280.SE reported it swung to a third-quarter profit on Sunday, hours after its billionaire chairman Prince Alwaleed bin Talal was detained as part of a corruption crackdown. Kingdom Holding, whose investments include stakes in major international firms such as Citigroup (C.N) and Twitter (TWTR.N), said it made 247.5 million riyals ($66 million) in the three months to Sept. 30, compared with a restated loss of 355 million riyals in the same period a year ago. It reported a 179.9 million riyal profit for the third quarter last year but the company said on Sunday it had restated that figure to be consistent with current figures . It did not elaborate. Saudi companies moved to internationally accepted IFRS accounting standards this year from a local system. Profit for the third quarter of this year was boosted by an increase in hotel and operating revenues, larger dividend income, and income and gains on investments, the company said. Revenue increased 76 percent to 550 million riyals. Prince Alwaleed has been detained by Saudi security authorities, a senior Saudi official told Reuters on Sunday. Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television reported he was detained along with 10 other princes, four current ministers and tens of former ministers in a probe by a new anti-corruption body headed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Kingdom did not release a statement early on Sunday about the detention, and did not respond to requests for comment.
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The Donald Trump of France MARINE LE PEN is in the last stages of campaigning and it s getting uglier and uglier You know it s ugly when our hypocrite globalist former president INTERFERES WITH THE FRENCH ELECTION!Yes, Obama is endorsing Macron in the French election and just released a folksy video claiming he s for Macron.What would the Democrats say if Putin made a video like this for Trump?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_Y6iMUh2mU MARINE LE PEN IS ONE BRAVE WOMAN! WE CHOOSE HER! VIVE LE PEN!Protesters hurled eggs at French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen on Thursday during a campaign stop three days ahead of the election.They were screaming, No fascism! BUT WHO IS THE REAL FASCIST HERE?HERE S A GREAT LOOK AT A DIVIDED FRANCE: Iman Amrani visits France s second biggest city to meet the inhabitants of two housing estates with opposing cultural and political identities. Disillusioned voters have turned to the far left and the far right for answers in the most divisive election in a generation. Rising resentment towards the political class has resulted in non-traditional candidates dominating the election. With the fault lines in French society revealed, how should such a divided country be represented?Remember on May Day that France was literally on fire: Here s a photo from America s May Day The world is on fire
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By anonews
“Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance” – Albert Einstein
Newly obtained video that was reluctantly released by NIST after a lawsuit by the International Center for 9/11 Studies shows two firefighters on 9/11 discussing how secondary explosions occurred immediately before the collapse of the twin towers, providing damning new evidence that explosive devices were used to bring down the buildings.
Firemen discuss how bombs were going off in the lobby of WTC1 as they were staging to move up the building.
They explain how the building had already been hit by the plane and fires were already burning. After two explosions in the lobby, a third went off and the whole lobby collapsed.
Listen To 9/11 Firefighters Tell How Bombs Were Going Off In The Lobby Of World Trade Center 1:
Even though it’s an old video, it’s useful to share given the fact that people are still waking up to the possibility that the official story presented to the public was false.
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It s no secret that world-renowned political theorist Noam Chomsky does NOT want Donald Trump in the White House, and thinks it s an absolute tragedy that the presumptive Republican nominee has even managed to get as far as he has.In an interview with Art Is Power, the author and MIT professor criticized The Donald for using generalized anger and his racist white supporters fear of becoming a minority to his advantage, knowing full well that it was a strategy that would work in the polls. Chomsky also likened Trump s hateful rhetoric to Adolf Hitler as he explained Trump s formula for success: So every time Trump makes a nasty comment about whoever, his popularity goes up. Because it s based on hate, you know, hate and fear. And it s unfortunately kind of reminiscent of something unpleasant: Germany, not many years ago. Chomsky pointed out how interesting this year s presidential primaries had been not in a good way and used the business mogul as a prime example. He s a clown literally, he could be in the circus. He s getting huge support from people who are angry at everything. Mostly white males. Working-class, middle-class, poor white males. And their wives and traditional families. They are furious about everything. In his analysis of Trump s campaign, Chomsky explained that all the disgraced candidate had done was tap into America s nativism. In the past, Americans had been worried about being replaced by Germans or Irish immigrants. All Trump did was change the words to make his racist supporters scared of Muslims and Mexican immigrants and he did a great job fear mongering and relentlessly attacking those specific minorities to achieve his goals.You can watch Chomsky rip Trump below:Chomsky has expressed his disgust over the presidential candidate before, when he called the GOP the most dangerous organization in human history , criticizing it for creating the kind of hostile, extremist political environment that would allow a joker like Trump to rise.Featured image via William B. Plowman and Spencer Platt / Getty Images
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In response to the establishment media s contrived fake news crisis designed to marginalise independent and alternative media sources of news and analysis, 21WIRE is running its own #FakeNewsWeek campaign, where each day our editorial team at 21st Century Wire will feature media critiques and analysis of mainstream corporate media coverage of current events exposing the government and the mainstream media as the real purveyors of fake news throughout modern history The Centre for Research on GlobalizationNever before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are as a society inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them. The main sources of information, for both public and official consumption, include the mainstream media, alternative media, academia and think tanks.The mainstream media is the most obvious in its inherent bias and manipulation. The mainstream media is owned directly by large multinational corporations, and through their boards of directors are connected with a plethora of other major global corporations and elite interests. An example of these connections can be seen through the board of Time Warner.Time Warner owns Time Magazine, HBO, Warner Bros., and CNN, among many others. The board of directors includes individuals past or presently affiliated with: the Council on Foreign Relations, the IMF, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Warburg Pincus, Phillip Morris, and AMR Corporation, among many others.Two of the most esteemed sources of news in the U.S. are the New York Times (referred to as the paper of record ) and the Washington Post. The New York Times has on its board people who are past or presently affiliated with: Schering-Plough International (pharmaceuticals), the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Chevron Corporation, Wesco Financial Corporation, Kohlberg & Company, The Charles Schwab Corporation, eBay Inc., Xerox, IBM, Ford Motor Company, Eli Lilly & Company, among others. Hardly a bastion of impartiality.And the same could be said for The Washington Post, which has on its board: Lee Bollinger, the President of Columbia University and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and individuals associated with (past or presently): the Coca-Cola Company, New York University, Conservation International, the Council on Foreign Relations, Xerox, Catalyst, Johnson & Johnson, Target Corporation, RAND Corporation, General Motors, and the Business Council, among others.It is also important to address how the mainstream media is intertwined, often covertly and secretly, with the government. Carl Bernstein, one of the two Washington Post reporters who covered the Watergate scandal, revealed that there were over 400 American journalists who had secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency. Interestingly, the use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA. Among organizations which cooperated with the CIA were the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune. By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc. The CIA even ran a training program to teach its agents to be journalists, who were then placed in major news organizations with help from management. These types of relationships have continued in the decades since, although perhaps more covertly and quietly than before. For example, it was revealed in 2000 that during the NATO bombing of Kosovo, several officers from the US Army s 4th Psychological Operations (PSYOPS) Group at Ft. Bragg worked in the news division at CNN s Atlanta headquarters. This same Army Psyop outfit had planted stories in the U.S. media supporting the Reagan Administration s Central America policies, which was described by the Miami Herald as a vast psychological warfare operation of the kind the military conducts to influence a population in enemy territory. These Army PSYOP officers also worked at National Public Radio (NPR) at the same time. The US military has, in fact, had a strong relationship with CNN.In 2008, it was reported that the Pentagon ran a major propaganda campaign by using retired Generals and former Pentagon officials to present a good picture of the administration s war-time policies. The program started in the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2003 and continued into 2009. These officials, presented as military analysts , regurgitate government talking points and often sit on the boards of military contractors, thus having a vested interest in the subjects they are brought on to analyze. In 2013, Public Accountability reported:During the public debate around the question of whether to attack Syria, Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser to George W. Bush, made a series of high-profile media appearances. Hadley argued strenuously for military intervention in appearances on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and Bloomberg TV, and authored a Washington Post op-ed headlined To stop Iran, Obama must enforce red lines with Assad. In each case, Hadley s audience was not informed that he serves as a director of Raytheon, the weapons manufacturer that makes the Tomahawk cruise missiles that were widely cited as a weapon of choice in a potential strike against Syria. Hadley earns $128,500 in annual cash compensation from the company and chairs its public affairs committee. He also owns 11,477 shares of Raytheon stock, which traded at all-time highs during the Syria debate ($77.65 on August 23, making Hadley s share s worth $891,189). Despite this financial stake, Hadley was presented to his audience as an experienced, independent national security expert.The major philanthropic foundations in the United States have often used their enormous wealth to co-opt voices of dissent and movements of resistance into channels that are safe for the powers that be. As McGeorge Bundy, former President of the Ford Foundation once said, Everything the Foundation does is to make the world safe for Capitalism. Examples of this include philanthropies like the Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation providing immense financial and organizational support to Non-Governmental Organizations. Furthermore, the alternative media are often funded by these same foundations, which has the effect of influencing the direction of coverage as well as the stifling of critical analysis Learn more about the Centre for Research on Globalization and the work of its founder and editor, Professor Michel Chossudovsky, as well how to donate to them at Global Research.ca. The original version of this article was published at Global Research in March 2011. READ MORE ABOUT MSM FAKE NEWS AT: FAKE NEWS WEEKSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV
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I can t possibly accept this award, she said during her acceptance speech. The Lemonade album was just so monumental, Beyonc . It was so monumental and well thought-out and beautiful and soul-bearing we appreciate that. All of us artists here adore you. You are our light. She later added backstage: I thought it was her year. What the f*ck does she have to do to win Album of the Year? -IndependentThe Beyonce Lemonade album Adele refers in her embarrassing speech was slammed as an attack on white women by 25 year old white rapper Iggy Azalea, who went off on Twitter user gia after she referred to Azalea as Becky . The Lemonade song was hailed as a brave reference by her adoring fans to Beyonce s unfaithful husband who had an affair with a white, or half-white woman named Becky :@iggys_bitch dont ever call me a becky. IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) April 25, 2016@phagmob @iggys_bitch it was used as a play on brain and brian. you would not be down if i started calling all black men "deshawns" IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) April 25, 2016@phagmob generalizing ANY race by calling them one sterotypical name for said race. i personally dont think is very cool, the end. IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) April 25, 2016And in her final tweet on the subject, Azalea explains degrading, racist meaning behind Beyonce s reference to Becky in her Lemonade song: @rNicaRo the whole becky thing "give me that becky" comes from white womens supposed love for blow jobs. so excuse me but, i dont want IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) April 26, 2016
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Theme: 9/11 &‘War on Terrorism’ , Crimes against Humanity , US NATO War Agenda Two years ago, “Majd” wrote these words on a Facebook posting: “ I am Syrian… living in Syria in the middle of everything. We have seen horrors. It was never a revolution nor a civil war. The terrorists are sent by your goverment. They are al Qaeda Jabhat al Nusra Wahhabi Salafists Talibans etc and the extremist jihadists sent by the West, the Saudis, Qatar and Turkey. Your Obama and whoever is behind him or above him are supporting al Qaeda and leading a proxy war on my country. We thought you are against al Qaeda and now you support them. The majority here loves Assad. He has never committed a crime against his own people… The chemical attack was staged by the terrorists helped by the USA and the UK, etc. Everyone knows that here. American soldiers and people should not be supporting barbarian al Qaeda terrorists who are killing Christians, Muslims in my country and everyone. Every massacre is committed by them. We were all happy in Syria: we had free school and university education available for everyone, free healthcare, no GMO, no fluoride, no chemtrails, no Rothschild IMF- controlled bank, state owned central bank which gives 11% interest, we are self-sufficient and have no foreign debt to any country or bank. Life before the crisis was so beautiful here. Now it is hard and horrific in some regions. I do not understand how the good and brave American people can accept to bomb my country which has never harmed them and therefore help the barbarian al Qaeda. These animals slit throats and behead for pleasure… they behead babies and rape young kids. They are satanic. Our military helped by the millions of civilian militias are winning the battle against al Qaeda. But now the USA wants to bomb the shit out of us so that al Qaeda can get the upper hand. Please help us American people. They are destroying the cradle of civilization. Stop your government. Impeach that bankster puppet you have as president… support Ron Paul or Rand or anyone the like who are true American patriots. but be sure of one.thing..if they attack and I think they will….it will be hell. Be sure that if it were to be a world war, many many will die. Syria can and will defend itself and will sink many US ships. Iran will go to war..Russia and China eventually if it escalates… and all this for what ? For the elites who created al Qaeda through the US government and use it to conduct proxy wars and destabilize countries which do not go along with their new world order agenda !!? American people…you gotta regain control of your once admirable country. Now everyone hates you for.the.death you bring almost everywhere. Ask the Iraqis…the Afghans…the Pakistanis…the Palestinians…the Syrians…the Macedonians and Serbs…the Libyans…the Somalis…the Yemenis ….all the ones you kill with drones everyday. Stop your wars, Enough wars. Use diplomacy..dialogue…help..not force.” Consistent testimonies from Syrians, as well as well-documented, open-source Western sources, and historical memory, all serve to reinforce the accuracy of the aforementioned testimony. Syrians are living the horror brought to them by the criminal West. They can not afford the complacency of shrugging their shoulders in indecision, not when their lives and their ancient civilization is being threatened by Western-paid terrorist mercenaries of the worst kind. “Our” proxies, slit throats, chop heads, and take no prisoners as we waffle in indecision, ignore empirical evidence, and take the comfortable easy road of believing the labyrinth of lies promulgated by Western media messaging. The veil of comfortable confusion, nested in an unconscious belief that our government knows best or that it is patriotic to believe the lies and fabrications implicit in the hollow words of politicians (who no longer represent us) and the false pronouncements of Imperial messengers, is concealing an overseas holocaust . Western societies are rotting from the inside out because of these lies and this barbarity. We are protecting a criminal cabal of corporate globalists who do not serve our interests and never will. Our democracies, which we should be protecting, have long disappeared – except in the hollow words of newspaper stenographers. Instead we are supporting transnational corporate elites and their delusional projects. Poverty and unemployment are all soaring beneath the fakery of government pronouncements, as the public domain evaporates beneath words like “efficiency” or the “economy” — all false covers that serve to enrich elites and destroy us. Internal imperialism at home is a faded replica of the foreign imperialism abroad. As countries are destroyed, and its peoples are slaughtered — think Syria, Libya, Ukraine, and others — by abhorrent Western proxies — public institutions are contaminated, and ultimately replaced by parasitical “privatized” facsimiles. Public banking is looted and destroyed in favour of transnational banksterism, World Bank funding, and IMF usury. Food security is destroyed and replaced by biotech tentacles and engineered dependencies on cash crops and unhealthy food. Currencies are destroyed, sanctions are imposed, and the unknown, unseen hand of totalitarian control imposes itself, amidst the cloud of diversions and confusions, aided by comprador regimes, oligarch interests, and shrugging domestic populations. Syria refuses to submit. That is why the West is taught to hate her, and the rest of the world learns to love and respect her. Yet, Syria’s struggles are our struggles. Syria represents international law, stability, and integrity: the same values that western peoples overtly cherish but stubbornly reject, as our countries wilt beneath suffocating veils of lies and delusions . I support Syria, because I respect what remains of international law. I support Syria because I reject Wahhabism, Sharia law, and terrorism. I support Syria because I reject the undemocratic, transnational oligarchies that are subverting our once flourishing, now dead, democracies. I reject the lies of our propagandizing media , the hollow words of our politicians, and the fake “humanitarian” messaging that demonizes non-belligerent countries and their populations. In the name of justice, humanity, and the rule of law, I support the elected government of Syria led by its President, Bashar al-Assad. Syria, an ancient cradle of civilization, is leading the way towards a better future for all of us. All we have to do is open our eyes. The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Mark Taliano , Global Research, 2016 NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS
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… from Sputnik News , Moscow We are led to believe that this blast photo has something to do with the photo below, which is a very poor hoax [ Editor’s Note : My, my… are rogue elements in the Pentagon running these strikes to keep wind in the sails of the US’ phony anti-terrorism campaign in Syria, or are Obama and Kerry in on it? The lead classroom photo used in mass media for this “bombing attack” was an obvious fake. From the size of the blast column, there would have been nothing left to photograph but a hole in the ground, since the blast column photo looks like a 2000-lb bomb. Our make-believe newswires are supposed to have talent to catch obvious hoax stories, and this is certainly one of those. Maybe they would want to put us under contract to help them out. There is no excuse for the UN doing its jump-on-the-bandwagon routine. It has access to a lot of talent, including photo analysts, for situations like this. And the UN must be aware of the history of faked attacks by the Jihadi media during the Syrian war. ISIS has been piecing together stock footage for several years now, whenever they need a headline grabber. Mass media is even worse. With their big budgets, they are supposed to have expert people to send images to for some reality smell-testing. Even an amateur could spot this hoax. Somebody is desperate to create a climate calling for attacks on the Syrian and Russian Air Forces. Gosh, who could possibly want that? … Jim W. Dean ] This was an instant fake. A bomb coming through that wall would have blown the desks to smithereens, plus would have penetrated the roof, not the side. – First published … October 27, 2016 –
Russian reconnaissance means have registered a US attack drone in the area where a school in Syrua’s Idlib had been bombed, the Russian Defense Ministry said Thursday.
A US’ MQ-1B Predator drone has been seen in the area, the ministry’s spokesman Igor Konashenkov said. No Russian aircraft entered the area over the Syrian Idlib, where the alleged strike took place, he added. Moreover, Russian UAVs have not registered any signs of the destruction of the school’s roof or shell craters, Maj. Gen. Konashenkov said. A Russian drone has been sent to the area Thursday morning. “According to a photo made by a Russian UAV, the school’s roof is not damaged and there are no bomb craters in the area near the school. Similar information may be requested from our American colleagues. Russian reconnaissance means registered a US’ MQ-1B Predator attack drone.” Video footage published in media showing the alleged strike on the Idlib school have been fabricated, the ministry added. “Video footage published by a number of foreign media outlets of an alleged strike on the residential area of Hass [in Idlib] consists of more than 10 pieces pasted together, being shot at different times of the day.” Moreover, Konashenkov added that the school’s fence has not been damaged at all, while if an aerial bomb exploded, “the fence and all the walls of the buildings would have been destroyed and damaged by shrapnel, while the furniture would have been swept away by the shock wave.”
According to the spokesman, the photo published by the AFP agency showed that the nature and the extent of the damage sustained by the school were not similar to the destruction caused by airstrikes.
Earlier in the day, the executive director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Anthony Lake said that as many as 22 children and six teachers were killed in an attack on a school in Idlib. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova condemned the attack on a school in Syria’s Idlib and called for an investigation into the bombing. She also said that international media “launched an attack” on Russia by claiming that Moscow and Damascus are behind the bombing without presenting evidence.
The UNICEF has fallen victim to another hoax by the White Helmets NGO, the Russian Defense Ministry spokesman added. “Before making statements, UNISEF officials should check the sources of its information,” he said, adding that such a respected organization should not undermine its reputation.
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A 19-year old kid is upset about the debate over the U.K. s tampon tax, because he considers tampons to be luxury items. Why are tampons luxury items in his world? Incredibly enough, it s not because men don t need them. It s because, in this kid s eyes, women should just not bleed until they re able to get to a toilet. Because, you know, periods totally work that way.It might seem like this is satire, but it s not. This kid actually does think this way, despite having a girlfriend. He said: People are saying tampons shouldn t be taxed because they are a necessity but why can t those women just learn to control their bladders?If they are going to bleed then they should wait until they get to the toilet. It s all about self-control.If you can t control your bladder then that s not the taxpayers problem. I don t urinate everywhere and expect free nappies. For this nonsense, he earned an awful lot of what he calls hate, and that s not surprising at all. He needs a biology lesson and everyone who s said so is right. Despite his obvious deficiencies, Ryan fancies himself a politician and politics expert, and says on his Instagram account, Making the #meninist movement mainstream once again. The meninist movement is basically the men s rights movement, which is full of poor, put-upon guys who think women are oppressing them and are the devil.The comments on the picture below, via his Instagram account, explain it all:Bumped into @brooklynbeckham #brooklynbeckhamA photo posted by @ryanwilliams97 on Sep 20, 2016 at 2:43pm PDTEven that doesn t stop him, though. In response to what he no doubt sees as the preposterous idea that he doesn t know anything about biology here, he said: People have told me that I must have skipped biology lessons but I don t understand how that is relevant. I have even had death threats.People are saying it isn t dirty, it s natural but urine and faeces are natural and still dirty. It s utter hypocrisy. He s thrilled that men agree with him on the issue of tampon taxes, because of course they do, and that may have swelled his head because he s as egotistical as he clueless. He actually said on his Facebook page: For TV requests, contact me directly. He s also been dumb enough to start what can only be termed a sarcastic GoFundMe campaign for biology lessons, which he proved he needs because he still can t understand why women can t just hold their bladders. He believes we re all lazy because we don t, and has the most bizarre example of why it s just a matter of self control: My gorgeous Toy Poodle, castrated when she was a puppy to stop the periods and to prevent any aggression PMT would give her.If your bladder is too weak which clearly it is for most of you, then see a doctor and have the same procedure. What does that even mean? You can t castrate a female he s suggesting that women get hysterectomies to stop their periods. This guy thinks we actually like bleeding for a week every single month for most of our lives. Or, at the very least, that we don t mind it. Then again, he also says his girlfriend never bleeds. Too bad his GoFundMe isn t serious. He s in dire need of those biology lessons.Featured image via screen capture from embedded photo
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The Congressional Black Caucus, like most Democrats and reasonable people everywhere, have never had very warm feelings toward Donald Trump to put it mildly. After all, this is a section of the House of Representatives dedicated to protecting the interests and rights of Black Americans, and Trump is a lifelong open and avowed racist. However, they have, for the most part, seemed to stop short of calling for Trump s removal with the exception of Rep. Maxine Waters, who is, of course, in a league all her own.This level of restraint being exercised by the majority of this powerful group of lawmakers has definitely changed as of late, though. Ever since Trump s disgraceful response to the horrific events in Charlottesville at a rally of neo-Nazis that resulted in countless injuries and the death of a brave young woman, it seems that the Black Caucus is done playing. They want Trump out of office, posthaste. During a conference call held with the press on Monday, Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) said of Trump: You can make an argument based on pure competency and fitness to serve, and that s the conversation the caucus will have. Am I concerned about high crimes and misdemeanors? Absolutely. Am I concerned about this president s fitness to serve? Absolutely. Richmond also indicated that Charlottesville was the last straw when it came to giving Trump the benefit of the doubt when it comes to whether or not he really has the concerns of Black America at heart. Granted, all of this is a pipe dream for now. The GOP will criticize Trump until the cows come home, but they sure as hell won t do anything about him. They won t even formally censure him, much less move to remove him from office.All of that could change, however, if the House is returned to Democratic control in 2018. Folks, if we want to save our republic, we ll give the Congressional power to the Democrats next year while we still have a country to save.Featured image via Law Officer
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Your head feels like it’s inside a bass drum, your mouth is cottony and the contents of your stomach might not stay put. Maybe you partied hard and had a little too much to drink — or maybe a lot too much — so you turn to the internet to search for cures to a hangover. To spare you the bleary research, here’s what you should know before you drink. If you have to ask, count yourself lucky not to have experienced one. Not surprisingly, the more alcohol you consume, the better your chances of getting a hangover. Binge drinking of four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men during any one episode increases the likelihood of a hangover, Laura J. Veach, an associate professor of general surgery at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in N. C. said in an email. Dr. Veach said a hangover occurs when the concentration of alcohol in one’s system is decreasing. It is at its worst when all the alcohol has been eliminated. “Addiction specialists have often noted that a hangover is technically a form of alcohol withdrawal at its most benign,” she said. The scientific community does not completely understand what causes hangovers, Dr. Preston R. Miller, a surgeon at Wake Forest, said in an email. Alcohol is a diuretic that causes dehydration and irritation of the gastrointestinal tract, leading to nausea and dilation of blood vessels, which can cause the headaches associated with hangovers. Unless you are going to abstain or drink in moderation, the answer is no, experts said. Some commercial products promote themselves as surefire remedies but Dr. Robert Glatter, an emergency physician at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan, said in an interview: “The bottom line: When you get the hangover, there is nothing clinically proven to make it go away. There is no magic pill. ” A detailed survey of medical literature and research in 2005 concluded, “No compelling evidence exists to suggest that any conventional or complementary intervention is effective for preventing or treating alcohol hangover. ” Among the commercial products promoted as cures: IV drips with a blend of saline solution and electrolyte replacement fluid, patches that are said to replenish the vitamins and acids lost when consuming alcohol, and a “natural dietary supplement,” only one dose of which is required to “prevent” a hangover, its manufacturer says. Dr. Miller said most cures treat the symptoms, such as a headache or dehydration, “but the only way to truly get over a hangover is time. ” Dr. Marc I. Leavey, a primary care physician in Lutherville, Md. who writes a blog, “String of Medical Pearls,” said in an email that the products were “gimmicks” that either relied on a placebo effect or were no more effective than slowly sipping ice chips or an electrolyte sports drink. “Alcohol consumption is a market,” he wrote. “It would seem logical that attempts to cash in on the inevitable aftermath would spawn any number of products claiming to help, despite the lack of any foundation for those claims. ” Dr. Glatter recommended staying away from liquors such as bourbon and whiskey. They contain more congeners, complex organic molecules that give the liquors their color and taste but also generate more intense hangovers. Better to drink clearer liquors, such as vodka and gin, which have fewer congeners, he said. Once the damage is done, Dr. Reed Caldwell, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center, recommended hydrating with water, electrolyte drinks or coconut water, getting proper nutrition and exercise and taking a cool shower. He added that caffeine may help relieve symptoms from poor sleep but it will not reverse the effects of alcohol or a hangover. Before you start drinking, eat some food (it slows the absorption of alcohol) and have something nonalcoholic between drinks. Before bed, take a nonsteroidal pain reliever and drink water, Dr. Glatter said. Hangover cures remain a hotbed of research, he said, adding: “I think we’re going to get there. We’re not there yet. ”
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Reports are surfacing that CNBC s Larry Kudlow is on the short list of candidates for chairman the Council of Economic Advisers, which is the government s top economic policy group. Kudlow isn t just an advocate of the failed trickle-down theory of economics, he also claimed, back in 2007, that no recession was coming. As we all know, 2008 proved him dead wrong, and now Trump wants him in a top economic position.According to Craig Harrington, Director of the Economic Policy Program at Media Matters for America, this is how bad Kudlow is: According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), an award-winning nonprofit research organization that is perhaps best-known for determining a chronology of American business cycles and recessions, the Great Recession began in December 2007. Yet Kudlow published blogs on December 5, 6, and 7 of that year titled The Recession Debate Is Over, There Ain t No Recession, and Bush Boom Continues, in the conservative National Review. By July 2008, as the unemployment rate continued to balloon in the seventh month of recession, Kudlow was still arguing in National Review that there was no recession or housing crisis. In The Recession Debate Is Over, Kudlow claimed that the jobs numbers and business profits added up to no recession at all. In There Ain t No Recession, he doubled down on all of that, and in Bush Boom Continues, he actually said:That last one was published on Dec. 7, 2007. Eight months earlier, we began to see serious signs of an economic crahs with New Century Financial Corp., a major subprime lender, filing for bankruptcy. Unemployment began rising in Dec. 2007, and the Fed lowered short-term interest rates for the fifth time in four months.Kudlow didn t see any of that. He was focused entirely on the November jobs reports and business profits. He totally ignored other economic indicators. He s almost as bad as those who look only at the stock market for an idea of how our economy is doing.Moving on from Kudlow s absurdly incorrect predictions, in Feb. 2008, President Bush signed the first economic stimulus package into law, and then in March, the financial industry began crashing with the collapse of Bear Stearns. In April 2008, the Fed reduced interest rates yet again, and then in September, Lehmann Brothers collapsed.We all remember the chaos of the rest of 2008.This is more than simply putting someone who will work hard to make the rich richer and the poor poorer into an economic advisory position. This is someone whose economic experience and ideas are so far off that he couldn t, or wouldn t, see a recession coming despite the housing bubble collapse beginning in late 2006.Most economists worth their salt could see that foreshadowed the Great Recession, and knew that the Great Recession began at the end of 2007 (although Trump was excited for the housing crash because it meant more money for him).However, what can we expect from a president-elect who seems to see the presidency as just another reality show? Kudlow has published no scholarly papers on economics, and has no degree in economics at all, so he s not exactly qualified for the top economic position in our government.He plays an economist on television, though, and that s enough for Trump. Many of his cabinet picks seem to say that he has to know people from television in order to consider them for his cabinet. Kudlow is just another possibility that shows Trump has no idea what he s doing and thinks this is just another reality show.Featured image by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr
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When I think of freedom of the press, what comes to mind is the Pentagon Papers, Watergate, Abu Ghraib, NSA surveillance—the tough terrain of investigative reporting.
Not the handiwork of people trying to get a few laughs.
Yet satire, it seems, has suddenly become the new battleground for free expression. And that requires some rethinking for all of us.
I love a good comedic skewering as much as the next person. But satire, fairly or not, has always seemed less “serious” than other forms of journalism, more of an indulgence.
Yet as the massacre at Charlie Hebdo reminds us, cartoonists, satirists and funnymen are often on the front lines of very risky battles. Perhaps because their barbs sting in a personal way that news stories and commentary do not. Perhaps because the comedic overlay gives them license to tackle incendiary subjects from which others shy away.
And here’s the rub: Sometimes what they peddle is truly offensive—maybe to me, maybe to you. And that makes it harder to defend.
Who wants to go to bat for the Piss Christ photo, or the Virgin Mary covered in cow dung, or depictions of Mohammad that obviously make Muslims angry? But we must defend the right to publish, if not the content. Free speech is meaningless if it doesn’t apply to unpopular, even repulsive speech.
If you think about the North Korean-backed hacking of Sony Pictures, it was triggered by a movie whose idea of comedy was a plot to assassinate Kim Jung Un that ends with his head exploding. That, as I said at the time, was an incredibly stupid and needlessly provocative project. Yet I also ripped Sony for caving to threats and deep-sixing the film before bowing to public and Hollywood pressure and making “The Interview” available. In America, you have the right to make a moronic movie.
Nor would I defend the content of such Charlie Hebdo cartoons as one in which rolls of toilet paper were marked “Bible,” “Torah” and “Quran,” with the caption: “In the toilet, all religions.” But the satirical French newspaper has the right to publish outrageously offensive material without being attacked by terrorists.
The issue has surfaced before because of Charlie Hebdo’s poke-in-the-eye editorial approach. The paper’s offices were firebombed in 2011 after it published a cartoon mocking Muhammad. The following year, both the White House spokesman and the French foreign minister criticized the newspaper—but not its right to publish—for another Muhammad cartoon following the Benghazi attack that the administration initially blamed on an anti-Islam film.
Stephane Charbonnier, the paper’s courageous editor and one of the 12 killed in Wednesday’s attack, told ABC in 2012: “We can’t live in a country without freedom of speech. I prefer to die than to live like a rat.”
Chuck Lane made the broader point in his Washington Post column: “It turns out that such political jokesters take big risks, bigger than perhaps even they realize or anticipate — and the repercussions affect us all.
“Yet it is vitally important that the United States and all other Western democracies rally to their unequivocal defense.”
Lane faulted the officials who criticized Charlie Hebdo in 2012 for “mixed messages” that ran the risk of conveying “how dangerous it is to give violent extremists a veto over what your citizens can and cannot say.”
The Washington Post ran of one of Charlie Hebdo’s Muhammad cartoons in a gesture of solidarity yesterday. Other news organizations, including Fox News, CNN, the AP and the New York Times, have since made an editorial decision against running the images. Some critics say that’s cowardly; I think it’s a tough call.
I would prefer that they continue aggressive reporting, commentary and, yes, satire if warranted against Islamic terrorists and those who would extinguish free speech at the point of a gun.
In one encouraging sign, Google, Guardian Media and several French publishers have donated money to ensure that Charlie Hebdo will publish next week. That is a message that even terrorists can understand.
Click for more from Media Buzz
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.
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Chuck Grassley, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted at the possibility of laying obstruction of justice charges down against Donald Trump in a conversation with CNN s Manu Raju yesterday.Raju relayed a message to Grassley from Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat out of California, in the Senate s hallways. According to Raju, Feinstein says that she wants the Judiciary Committee to investigate potential obstruction of justice. Raju was referring to a letter Feinstein wrote to Grassley on Friday in which she begged the committee to investigate all issues that raise a question of obstruction of justice. These issues should be developed by our legal staff, presented to us, and be subject to full Committee hearings. Grassley s response was one that we all wanted to hear. Let me give you a process answer because this is where we are, Grassley replied to Raju. Sen. Feinstein wanted to talk to me by phone today. I sent word back that I d like to have her and I sit down face-to-face and we ll work out all of the subpoenas and all the stuff we have to do in the future and work out a whole program. Raju pressed for more details, asking, Are you okay, though, looking into the potential of obstruction of justice? Is that something for your committee? We re going to leave that to a conversation with Feinstein, was Grassley s answer.Dianne Feinstein s letter to Grassley mainly focussed on fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who, on January 26 and 27, warned White House counsel that then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied about his contact with the Russian Ambassador, leading to Flynn s forced resignation. She also mentioned that, if necessary, the committee could subpoena Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Administrator Mike Rogers following their unforthcoming responses when questioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee.These could be the subpoenas that Chuck Grassley was referring to, but you can make up your own mind by reading Feinstein s letter and watching Raju and Grassley s exchange, here.GRASSLEY says he's meeting soon with Feinstein to discuss subpoeanas on Russia, FBI, Comey probes. https://t.co/wgNDVuy29D Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 13, 2017Featured image via Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
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As Donald Trump was being sworn in as Grand Wizard of the United States, Pope Francis was throwing shade at our new President-With-An-Asterisk in an interview with a Spanish newspaper.He didn t address Trump directly in his interview with El Pais after all, where s the fun in that? but instead talked about someone of whom many Trump supporters are fond, Adolf Hitler: Germany was looking for a leader, someone who would give her back her identity and there was a little man named Adolf Hitler who said I can do it . Hitler did not steal power. He was elected by his people and then he destroyed his people. The Germans at that time also wanted to protect themselves with walls and barbed wire so that others cannot take away their identity. It doesn t take much imagination at all to see the similarities. Immediately after Trump assumed office, any mention of civil rights disappeared from the White House website and he immediately signed an executive order aimed at taking healthcare away from millions of Americans. The case of Germany is classic, he said, adding that Hitler gave his citizens a deformed identity and we know what it produced. In other words, Germany first, America first, it s all the same. But Pope Francis says to give Trump a chance to prove him right: Let s see. Let s see what he does and then we will evaluate. Naturally, conservatives are furious. Responding reports on Trump s statements, the Right lashed out at Pope Francis for insulting their god:@RT_com @RobertNTaupier Is it sacrilegious to tell a Godless Commie Pope to go **** himself? Thomas Pine (@ameripundit) January 23, 2017@RT_com stuff it The worst Pope ever who totally politicizes everything for his socialists cronies E Publius Unum (@CesquireCowen) January 23, 2017@RT_com This pope is hurdling Christianity towards extinction. Lowest numbers in recent history. 1 9 1 6 (@PepeWillsItV3) January 23, 2017@RT_com the Pope is a Jesuit Marxist Lisa M B (@LisamLouisiana) January 23, 2017@RT_com just another old guy and his old opinions. Hopefully the church starts to be taxed so they can act responsible raisemmmk (@raisemmmk) January 23, 2017@RT_com a leftist, papal imposter. He is probably only a layman since they changed the rites of ordination after vatican 2. Not Catholic! Procinctu (@TheProcinctu) January 23, 2017@RT_com You look into your business Mr poop sorry , Mr pope. silako silmi (@gilmaparty) January 23, 2017@RT_com I've looked at history, Hitler,wasn't a bad person,just trying to protect Germany from SATAN,if he had completed his work,better PL (((Andros))) (@MrRealAndros) January 23, 2017@FoxNews Passing judgement isn't his place.Has he read the bible.? Time 4 a new pope this one is defective Sharon (@SharonM67714628) January 22, 2017@FoxNews Passing judgement isn't his place.Has he read the bible.? Time 4 a new pope this one is defective Sharon (@SharonM67714628) January 22, 2017@sexxxylisa @FoxNews I Agree with you 100% ! Yes NOT a nice old pope. He's an evil old Jesuit GLOBALIST NWO pope. Liziz Fine (@LizizFine) January 22, 2017This isn t the first time the Pontiff has attacked President Cheeto. In February, shortly after The Donald warned Trump about lying about his religion: A person who thinks only about building walls wherever they may be and not building bridges, is not Christian I d just say that this man is not Christian if he said it this way. If Donald Trump s presidency feels like the rise of Hitler to you, you re not alone and it is your duty as an American to stand up to the threat every day of your life until it is no longer present. It s going to be a long and terrible four years, but we must stand together against this unpresidented threat to our country, minimize the damage, and rebuild when he is gone in four years.Featured image via Getty Images (Franco Origlia)/screengrab
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Defending Donald Trump is no easy task, but even his most prominent campaign members are struggling to make sense of his behavior and comments.When MSNBC s Morning Joe had campaign manager Kellyanne Conway on board to talk ahead of the Monday night debate between Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Trump s righthand woman couldn t have been any more defensive and avoidant. In all honesty, she failed miserably to make her candidate look good, and choked under the pressure.Bloomberg Politics host Mark Halperin, who was also a guest on Morning Joe with Conway, asked the Trump campaign manager about Trump falsely accusing the debate moderator, NBC s Lester Holt, of being a Democrat. He asked: He said Lester Holt was a Democrat. Lester Holt is a Republican. How could he say such a thing that just black-and white factually incorrect? It was a fair question, and Conway wasn t ready for it. Her response was basically that Trump was not a liar; he just spoke without knowing the truth. Conway responded: I don t know that he knew what Lester Holt s voter registration is. Halperin wasn t letting it go. He pressed Conway, repeating back to her what she d just said: Without knowing then, he asserted he was a Democrat? Conway then tried to use one of her boss favorite interview tactics dancing around questions. She fired back: First of all, if you tell me the media are not overly populated with Democrats, that s false. At this point, Halperin is getting frustrated and tries to keep Conway focused. He points out just exactly what was wrong in Trump s comments about Holt: I m asking about a very specific thing. He made a factual claim about the moderator who deserves the right to be treated fairly and it was just wrong. And it s a metaphor for his frequently in public stating things with no basis, that are wrong. Again, instead of responding, Conway began talking about the backlash NBC s Matt Lauer received after being too nice to Trump. It then becomes obvious that Morning Joe s Mika Bzrezinki is also losing her patience, when she says, This is a filibuster while Conway rants on. Halperin once again tries to bring the conversation back: You re not answering what I asked you. I m asking you how someone running for president can assert on the eve of the debate that the moderator is a Democrat, which is factually incorrect? How can he do that? He shouldn t have asserted he didn t say, I don t know what he is, but I think he s biased, he said he s a Democrat. Conway left this topic again to attack Hillary Clinton and the media, and Brzezinski had to refocus her by saying, I don t understand what that has to do with Mark s question. We were asking why he lied about Lester Holt. Conway finally says, I don t think he lied and Brzezinski corrected her, Um, I think he did. Conway then gave this moronic reply: Mika, a lie would mean he knew the man s party registration. Co-host Joe Scarborough had to cut the conversation short, but not before an exasperated Halperin could ask, So as president, would he say things that are false without knowing the truth? You can watch the interview below:.@KellyannePolls: Trump didn t lie about Lester Holt, a lie would mean that he knew the man s party registration https://t.co/dZWTCwpoim Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) September 26, 2016Featured image is a screenshot
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KCCI reporter Emmy Victor was covering an officer-involved shooting, which took place in Boone, Iowa, when she was verbally assaulted by a racist white woman. The woman s entire vicious tirade was caught on camera.As KCCI reports here, Victor and another reporter were covering the officer-involved shooting of 28-year-old Michael Disbrowe at the Greenwood Mobile Home park in Boone, when the incident took place.As Victor attempted to cover the story, a white woman dressed in a tee-shirt and sweatpants suddenly flew at her. Victor can be seen backing away, as the woman shoves her finger in the reporter s face, screeching Get out of here you stupid fucking nigger. The reporter keeps her cool as the woman continues to verbally assault and threaten her. Get the fuck outta here, she shouts. One You re gonna start going down, she says storming back towards her a second time.When Victor tells the woman she needs to leave before the police are called, she rages, You gonna shoot me too? The woman storms away, knocking the cameraman s tripod over as she goes.According to the station, the racist hate-spewing woman is the mother of the man shot by police that night.Witnesses report that Michael Disbrowe was threatening residents of the trailer park with a gun on June 27, when police were called to the scene.A neighbor, Patty Webb, told the Des Moines Register that she heard a man and woman screaming and cussing at each other. Webb called 911 after hearing gunshots.After police arrived on the scene, Webb says she and other residents were ordered to stay inside their own homes.Webb told reporters: (The police) begged him for 20 minutes, Please put the gun down, and he wouldn t. It wasn t until Disbrowe raised his arm and pointed the gun directly at police that the officers opened fire.While Disbrowe s mother was understandably distraught over the shooting, that in no way should excuse the vicious, racist assault she directed at the reporter.In a statement following the incident, KCCI General Manager Brian Sather said: The safety of our crews is critically important as they cover stories affecting our communities. This morning Emmy and Zach demonstrated the utmost professionalism in the face of a very difficult, emotionally-charged situation. Here s the video courtesy of KCCI via YouTube. Image credit: video screen capture KCCI
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I fell in love with him [Trump] because he really talks about helping African-American black people, and that s why I m here. Gotta give the man his due. Donald Trump may be the only person alive equally capable of charming Kanye West, Jim Brown, and Mitt Romney. However you may feel about his shtick on the stump, the guy must have a genius-level quotient of personal charisma in private conversation when he feels like summoning it. I wonder how it ll translate in diplomatic meetings, with leaders from other cultures. It s hard to imagine Trump and Merkel hitting it off in the same way it s hard to imagine Merkel hitting it off with, say, Don King, but nothing would surprise me anymore. Brown sounds like he s ready to sign up for the reelection campaign here. HA When he goes through what he went through to become the President, he s got my admiration. Because no one game him a chance. You know they called him names. Ahh people that called him names when he won, he reached back and brought them along with him. He held no grudges.
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A former evangelical Christian is ripping conservatives for repealing the Affordable Care Act.Bruce Horst knows what it is like to have pre-existing conditions while trying to purchase health insurance. Prior to Obamacare, insurance companies refused to cover him, leaving him and his family vulnerable if a health crisis ever arose. But because of Obamacare, people with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied health insurance.Obamacare literally saved Horst and his family from the threat of bankruptcy over a medical issue.But last week during a late night vote, Republicans in the Senate and House voted to repeal the healthcare law that covers over 30 million Americans.And conservatives cheered.Well, that didn t sit well with Horst, who despite being an atheist, probably knows the Bible better than most of these so-called evangelical Christians do.So Horst took these fake Christians to the woodshed on Facebook for applauding the death sentence Republicans just handed to millions of human beings. I have the simple conviction that it is immoral to give a person medical help according to how much they can pay, Horst wrote. Or maybe it s because of what I ve read in the Bible. In 2010 I had been a Conservative Evangelical Christian for all of my adult life. I began to realize that others around me despised the thought of allowing people like me the benefit of affordable health insurance. For some reason, all of the Christians that I knew thought that offering health insurance to people like me would put them at some kind of a disadvantage that they were not willing to accept. Frankly, they had been lied to so they believed those others were going to get healthcare and make their own healthcare inadequate.As a Christian, I believed that I would be judged on the Final Judgment Day on how I took care of the least of these as described in the Bible book of Matthew, chapter 25. I came to the sober realization that Christians around me had no such convictions. If they didn t believe Jesus words as recorded in the Bible, why should I? Then one day I discovered I could no longer believe any of it.While conservatives complain that not as many people are attending church anymore, it turns out their hypocrisy and heartlessness is one of the reasons why people such as Horst have stopped believing. Stripping millions of Americans of the healthcare they need just further proved that Horst was right to leave the church when he did.Horst went on to call out Republicans in Congress and blasted how the hypocritical conservatives are when they claim to be pro-life. I understand that Congress is about to take away the healthcare coverage of about 18 million of our fellow Americans. And they are doing this at the insistence of Conservative Evangelical Christians. I have friends who are alive today because of Obamacare. Probably all of us do. To me, this proves my Christian friends are not pro-life, but instead they ve been told they are as a matter of manipulation, probably to keep them putting money in the offering plate, or voting for the right candidate. One thing is clear to me, they are not really pro-life.I don t know what Congress is going to do with healthcare in the next few days. I would love to be surprised to find that President Trump has convinced Congress to extend healthcare coverage to all, and I would be among the first to be grateful for this. While even if this does occur, if my Christian friends insist that healthcare only be given to people based on their ability to pay for such care, I would have to believe that the Jesus of the Bible would say to them, depart from me, I never knew you. Just like He did in Matthew 25.In other words, conservatives are going to hell for condemning millions of Americans to suffer. It s not what Jesus would do and any conservative who says otherwise is only pretending to be a Christian.Featured Image: i.ytimg.com
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KAMPALA (Reuters) - Uganda on Monday charged eight managers and editors of a daily newspaper with several offences including libel and computer misuse and a court ordered them detained until Dec. 5. The journalists have been in detention for nearly a week after police raided the premises of Red Pepper accusing them of publishing a false story. Police had said on Nov. 23 that they had preferred several charges including treason against the journalists. Their lawyer, Maxma Mutabingwa, said that when they appeared in court for the first time on Monday, treason was not among the offences read out to them. Instead they were charged with several counts of libel, offensive communication and publication of information prejudicial to security. I think police backed off the treason charge because it was ridiculous, it was not sustainable at all, he told Reuters. The journalists applied for bail but the state prosecutor said he needed time to respond and court adjourned the proceedings to Dec. 5. The raid on the paper followed publication of a story that, citing unnamed sources, said that Rwanda believed Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni was plotting to oust its leader, Paul Kagame. The paper has a wide readership and often regales its audience with a surfeit of salacious content about private lives of political and business officials and celebrities. In recent years it has moved to include more political coverage and has some times irked authorities with audacious headlines on security, diplomacy and power maneuvers in the government of President Yoweri Museveni. Police has kept the media outlet s premises cordoned off. It has not published the daily since the raid. Computers, phones and other equipment confiscated during the search have also not been returned, Mutabingwa said. Rights groups and journalists have complained of escalating harassment and intimidation of independent media by security personnel in the East African country especially as Museveni faces growing opposition pressure to end his rule. Local media, including Red Pepper, have reported this month on tensions between Uganda and neighboring Rwanda over a range of economic and security disputes but Uganda s foreign affairs ministry has dismissed the reports as rumors.
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ROME (Reuters) - Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni will fly to Washington and Ottawa meet U.S. President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in April, ahead of a Group of Seven summit in Italy the following month. Gentiloni will meet Trump at the White House on April 20, and Trudeau the next day, a statement from the prime minister’s office said. The trip will allow Gentiloni to discuss the agenda of the annual Group of Seven meeting of major economies in Sicily on May 26-27, which will mark Trump’s first visit to Europe since taking office.
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If seven years ago, someone told Americans that the UN would be allowed to place a Regional Hub in our nations Capitol, they would have been dismissed as a tin foil conspiracy theorist. But then, who would ve imagined that it was possible we d have an anti-American community organizer as the President of our United States of America?EXCLUSIVE: The chief United Nations human rights agency, with the Obama administration s apparent blessing, is creating a new regional hub for itself in Washington, to use as a center for organizing against the death penalty, among other things, and for affecting the legal frameworks, policies, and strategies of American counterterrorism.In a management plan covering its activities through 2017, the agency, known as the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, or OHCHR, puts the U.S. in the same category for that counterterrorism alignment effort as countries like Iraq and Uganda.The fast-tracked human rights hub also has a number of more nebulous thematic objectives for the U.S., which include, according to an OHCHR information document, the establishment of national participatory bodies for reporting and implementing recommendations of human rights mechanisms and the aim of widening the democratic space with the aid of undefined National Human Rights Institutions. It may also involve, as OHCHR notes in its management plan, increasing advocacy for ratification of human rights treaties and withdrawal of treaty reservations meaning exceptional carve-outs that nations including those like the U.S., with a federal division of power can make to limit their acceptance of international agreements.In the case of the death penalty, for example, U.S. refusal to join in a U.N- sponsored global moratorium is based on the fact that such criminal justice measures also are the responsibilities of individual states.Nonetheless, as OHCHR s management plan notes, in addition to global efforts to abolish the death penalty by 2017, OHCHR expects to have contributed to a moratorium on the application of the death penalty or pending a moratorium, increased compliance with relevant international human rights obligations in countries such as Iraq, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Somalia, South Sudan, the United States of America and other countries in Asia and the Americas. The OHCHR puts the U.S. in the same category for its counterterrorism alignment effort as countries like Iraq and Uganda.All of those themes, along with OHCHR s view of itself as the principal advocate for human rights within the U.N. system, seem likely to bring the U.S. into closer proximity to the U.N. s tangled, proliferating and often sweepingly contradictory notions of international human rights law and also, perhaps, to the notoriously dictatorship-riddled, 47-member U.N. Human Rights Council.Among other things, the Council, which has been far more enthusiastic about condemning alleged human rights transgressions in Israel than in any other nation, creates mandates for OHCHR, which also serves as the Council s bureaucratic support.The Obama administration reversed the policies of George W. Bush to join the Council in 2009, and served consecutive three-year terms that ended last month, claiming victories during that time in focusing the Council on gay rights and criticism of human rights practices in North Korea and Iran.While no longer on the Council, the administration now seems comfortable with bringing the U.N. s human rights approach into closer contact with U.S. legislators, lobbyists, human rights activists and, perhaps most importantly, financial appropriators, before it leaves office at the end of next year.Indeed, the OHCHR hub which will cover not just the U.S. but North America and the English-speaking Caribbean already has a warm advance welcome from the administration that also seems aimed at letting the new U.N. outpost arrive smoothly under Washington s political radar.Last month U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Pamela Hamamoto, wrote to tell the aggressively expanding human rights body that it didn t need any additional legal agreement to establish the Washington hub, complete with full legal privileges and immunities, since it already is covered by legal agreements for the U.N. headquarters in New York, where OHCHR maintains a strong presence.If OHCHR felt otherwise, Hamamoto said on behalf of the administration, we would be happy to discuss alternative ways in which we might accommodate OHCHR s specific requests. On the surface, the hub is part of a sweeping Change Initiative being promoted by the U.N. High Commissioner, Zeid Ra ad Al Hussein, which aims at decentralizing the Geneva-based organization, extending its outreach and human rights monitoring capability, and ostensibly improving its efficiency through, among other things, concentration on eight global hubs as focuses of activity.As it happens, the initiative is not that much of a change: six of the hubs already exist, including one in Panama City for Latin America. The only new ones are intended for Washington and Istanbul.According to Zeid, the initiative would mostly involve the reshuffling of existing personnel shipping them away from Geneva headquarters, where more than half of the agency s roughly 1,100 staff is located. Zeid says that exercise, including the establishment of the new Washington venue, would be revenue neutral. That assumption, however, was received skeptically by the U.N. s chief financial oversight committee, which called the calculation preliminary, and recommended against approving the restructuring until Zeid came back with a clear and detailed proposal with a lot more detail.Recommendations of the committee are usually adopted uncritically by the U.N. General Assembly s Fifth Committee, which approves financial measures.But Zeid has been lobbying the Fifth Committee energetically to break that tradition in his case in part because, as OHCHR s fact sheet observes, the 2016-2017 budget that the advisory committee was assessing will cover the majority of the remainder of the High Commissioner s [four-year] term of appointment. (Zeid was appointed in 2014.)The issue came up in so-called informal meaning closed discussions of the Fifth Committee earlier this week. Questions from Fox News to Zeid s spokesman about the discussions went unanswered.Questions to the State Department from Fox News about the issue were referred to the U.S. Mission to the U.N., headed by Ambassador Samantha Power.Questions from Fox News to the Mission about the discussion, and the overall U.S. government view of the hub, were not answered.Beyond the fact that his career clock is ticking, another reason for Zeid s gung-ho approach to the hub could be the possibility that no future U.S. President will be as enthusiastically multilateral as Barack Obama, giving a now-or-never urgency to the chance to bring the U.S. further under the U.N. human rights umbrella.And yet another reason might be that the reorganization could coincidentally help to bring down the curtain on a sensitive political problem for Zeid.As part of the Change Initiative, he has announced that one of OHCHR s important units, the Field Operations and Technical Cooperation Division, which deals with human rights issues at the country level and also incorporates human rights observation of U.N. peacekeeping operations, will be disbanded in Geneva and pieced off to the hubs.That division is headed by Anders Kompass, the senior human rights officer who kicked up a firestorm when he passed on an unredacted human rights report about alleged sexual abuse of children by non-U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic to French authorities.For entire story: FOX News
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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Four Russian reporters were injured by an explosion in Syria s Deir al-Zor area, RIA news agency reported on Monday, citing Russian defense ministry. RIA said that two of the men injured worked for the NTV TV station and another two for the Zvezda TV station. All four are alive, RIA said.
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ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkey wants to open a new border gate with Iraq in cooperation with the central government in Baghdad after it shuts down the existing gate in response to last week s Kurdish independence referendum, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said. We have proposed opening the new Ovakoy gate, west of currently used Habur gate, to Baghdad and we are expecting their support. We will be happy to discuss this with (Iraqi Prime Minister Haider) al-Abadi, Yildirim told reporters, saying the timing of his visit to Baghdad was a work in progress. Yildirim also said he wanted to boost cooperation with central Iraqi government on economy, defense, security and political issues.
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ALERT – New Bill Clinton Mistress Confirmed, Hillary Camp Panics… Oct 28, 2016 Previous post The identity of one of Bill Clinton’s long-time mistresses was just revealed. The former president’s Secret Service detail nicknamed the mistress “Energizer” because of the way Bill always “perked up” and seemed revitalized after her visits. Julie McMahon has been outed by the press as Bill Clinton’s “Energizer,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Energizer Bunny. This mother of three and socialite has publicly denied being one of Clinton’s lovers, but a plethora of purported evidence is now unfolding online in an effort to refute McMahon’s claims of innocence, as per Bizpac Review . McMahon reportedly lives just a few minutes away from Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in New York, which is called Whitehaven. If the Clintons were Republicans, the liberal mainstream media would be calling them racists over the chosen name of their luxurious estate. Always, Julia McMahon would arrive at Whitehaven via SUV. She would only stay a few hours sometimes, but other times she would spend an entire week at the Clinton residence. Julia McMahon reportedly met both Bill and Hillary in 1998 when he was president. Although the Clinton campaign has tried to label McMahon a friend to both of the Clintons, she only visited or spent the night at the house when Hillary wasn’t home, the Daily Mail reports. Sometimes, McMahon allegedly arrived just mere minutes after the departure of the former first lady. The Secret Service agents on the Clinton Whitehaven detail were reportedly not ever privy to the woman’s name, but they were allegedly under strict orders not to approach or stop her when she arrived. Every member of a president’s family is protected by a Secret Service detail. The Secret Service reportedly uses the same letter to assign a codename to protectees. Bill Clinton’s Secret Service name is reportedly “Eagle” and Hillary’s is “Evergreen.” The Secret Service may have run out of “E” codenames over the years thanks to all of Bill’s lady friends. Author Ron Kessler revealed the name of the Energizer mistress in his new book, The First Family Detail: Secret
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Email
According to the JASTA law which allows government and leaders of foreign governments’ harassment by families of victims of the terrorist attacks, it is so likely that Saudi king be tried. According to experts, the passing of JASTA may cause international chaos. Especially after some governments threat they will pass similar legislation to prosecute US officials if US do so.
Is it possible that Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz being tried for potential liability in events of September 11? The trial is possible by the legislation of Jasta. By Jasta law the families of the victims could sue governments and this will lead to chaos in international relations.
In late September, United States Congress ignored President Obama’s advice and his veto and passed JASTA law, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act. This law made US-Saudi relation more chaotic.
US confederate states expressed concern to JASTA legislation
Not just Saudi Arabia expressed concerns to JASTA, US confederate states also expressed concern about breaking the US quasi-sacred treaty with Saudi Arabia and asked for appealing. France and the Netherlands have threatened to pass similar laws which lead to a series of judicial complaints against USA and its military and diplomacy allies.
John Kerry, United States Secretary of State, showed his displeasure and called it a huge risk. A few days ago Kerry and Adel al-Jubeir discussed about the ramifications of JASTA and pointed out the negative impact on the diplomatic immunity of US interests. He said: “there are ways to fix the problem.” While experts agreed that it is only possible to reduce the strength of America in complaining by circumvent the law.
Even Saudi minister warned the danger of chaos in the international system.
According to Hussein ibish, an expert on the Persian Gulf littoral states, JASTA will cause chaos at the international level.
Last September, European Union warned: “Other countries may also want to pass similar legislation and discuss impunity. This threat was an addition written letters to US government.
Also France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom representatives discussed about the feedback of this law. The Gulf littoral states, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Pakistan and Japan Protested against JASTA.
The Saudi-US Relations in danger of Jasta
Bernard Haykel, Princeton University Professor, said: “If Saudi king does not appear in New York court to be interrogated, warrant will be issued against Saudi Arabia.” Riyadh and Washington relations declined over the past three years especially with Obama's policies on Syria.” JASTA shows Saudi ruling that Obama turned his back to its allies in the Middle East,” he added.
Riyadh strictly denies his involvement in 9/11, While 15 of the 19 were from Saudi Arabia. Turki al-Faisal, the former head of Saudi intelligence, also comments:” America wants to invade his most loyal friend over the past 70 years.”
Jasta law does not refer to Saudi Arabia. It would allow families of the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks to sue the perpetrators of the attack.
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. environmental group the Sierra Club has asked the Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general to investigate whether the agency’s head, Scott Pruitt, violated internal policies when he said he did not believe carbon dioxide was a major contributor to climate change, according to a letter seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Lawyers for the Sierra Club wrote to the EPA’s Office of Inspector General on Tuesday asking the independent watchdog to check whether Pruitt violated the EPA’s 2012 Scientific Integrity Policy when he told a CNBC interviewer on March 9, “I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.” The request ramps up tension between the U.S. environmental movement and the administration of President Donald Trump, who has called global warming a hoax meant to weaken the U.S. economy and has packed his Cabinet with people who question the science of climate change. An overwhelming majority of scientists think that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels is a major contributor to global climate change, triggering sea level rise, droughts and more frequent violent storms. “It’s pretty unprecedented to have the head of the EPA contradicting basic scientific facts,” Sierra Club Senior Attorney Elena Saxonhouse told Reuters on Wednesday. In the letter, the Sierra Club’s lawyers said Pruitt’s comments contradicted a “comprehensive review” of scientific research on climate change and appeared to be politically motivated. The EPA website says its policy is meant to maintain “a culture of scientific integrity for all its employees,” and requires EPA officials and staff to ensure the agency’s work respects the findings of the broader scientific community. “Administrator Pruitt’s comments are perfectly in keeping with the scientific integrity policy,” EPA spokesman John Konkus said in an email. “There is an ongoing scientific debate on climate change, its causes and its effect. That debate should be encouraged as the Administrator has done, not discouraged as Sierra Club is attempting to do.” A spokeswoman for the EPA’s inspector general said in an email the IG’s office could neither confirm nor deny investigation requests. As Oklahoma’s attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times while accepting campaign donations from the energy industry. Emails released on Feb. 22 by an Oklahoma Court showed Pruitt also used language provided by an energy company in one of his challenges of the EPA over methane emissions regulations. Sierra Club’s Saxonhouse said the group believed that the EPA’s scientific integrity policy applied to political appointees as well as career EPA staff, but said it was unclear how the agency could enforce it. “It shouldn’t just be a piece of paper or some words on a website. It’s intended to protect the public from bad decision-making that’s not based on real facts,” she said.
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Director Michael Bay is perhaps best known for his over-the-top, CGI-crazy Transformers movies. He regularly deals in the kind of popcorn action flicks that allows an audience to turn their brains off and just go along for a ride. Or, if your Eric Trump, son of Donald, Michael Bay can change your life.Over Memorial Day weekend, Eric came across Michael Bay s Republican-friendly take on the Benghazi scandal called 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi . It blew his mind.Eric Trump and his wife, Lara, apparently spent part of the Memorial Day weekend watching the Benghazi flick, which Trump s son said made him literally livid. I think in order to vote in this next election, you should have to watch that movie. I was livid, Trump said. She left these guys on a rooftop in the middle of Benghazi getting shot at, having mortars drop on their head because she wouldn t pick up a phone call in the middle of the night. Like father, like son. Donald Trump has routinely slammed Hillary Clinton s response to Benghazi by pushing the conspiracy theory that claimed she ignored her phone when the frantic embassy staff tried to get help. This is an idea that Michael Bay whose own political views oscillate between ultra-conservative and slow-motion shots of American flags waving in the wind reinforced in his movie by adding a feckless bureaucrat character whose sole purpose in the story was to get in the way of the light beer drinking patriots driving to save the embassy. In a scathing review of the film, critic Jason Bailey at Flavorwire aptly summed up the cartoon bullshit Bay tried to pass for political messaging. It s like catnip for conservatives.In fact, the film s real villains aren t the faceless, nameless Libyans attacking these outposts; it s the pencil-pushing, weaselly base chief (David Constabile), who insults and obstructs our heroes at every turn. We have the best and brightest minds from Harvard and Yale, he tells newbie Jack (John Krasinski), of the agents on their base, so the best thing for you is to stay out of their way. Fuckin smart people, am I right? He also, of course, insists there s no danger to be found, and orders the team to stand down and wait after they get word of the attack on Ambassador Stevens a detail refuted by a GOP-controlled congressional committee, as reported by Fox News, but there I go getting political.Of course, basing your political views on Michael Bay s portrayal of a contentious event means you are inevitably going to miss some stuff: Like many of the facts. Here s how Factcheck.org ruled on the accusation that Clinton was AWOL in the immediate aftermath of the attacks:Trump is entitled to his opinion about Clinton s response to the Benghazi attack, but the evidence shows Clinton was fully engaged in the immediate response. And subsequent congressional investigations concluded the government response to the attack including Clinton s was appropriate. Clinton testified that even after she went home that night, she remained awake all night, engaged and focused on the situation. Since there is no way to independently verify that, we ll let readers decide for themselves, but we would note Trump has not provided any evidence to contradict Clinton s account.Both Donald and Eric are wrong. And wrong in ways that only people who routinely get their news from tabloids and right-wing chain emails can be. Even a cursory look into the actual details of what went on during the Benghazi attacks would show a situation that was far more nuanced and tragic than the black-and-white nonsense they are describing. Ironically, it s this very ham-fisted attempt to lash out at Hillary Clinton that truly does a disservice to the three Americans that died at the embassy. Their deaths are being used by the Trump family to service Donald s agenda. There is nothing more despicable than that.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe must make clear to the United States that quitting the Paris climate agreement is not a straightforward process, and that fully leaving the deal will take years, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said on Wednesday. “Europe’s duty is to say: it’s not like that,” Juncker told a student conference on the future of Europe organized by the German employers’ association BDA. “The Americans can’t just leave the climate protection agreement. Mr. Trump believes that because he doesn’t know the details.” In reality, it would take several years for the U.S. to extricate itself from the obligations that flow from having signed the agreement, the head of the European Union’s executive arm added.
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YANGON (Reuters) - When the former U.N. chief Kofi Annan wrapped up his year-long probe into Myanmar s troubled northwest on Aug. 24, he publicly warned that an excessive army response to violence would only make a simmering conflict between Rohingya insurgents and Myanmar security forces worse. Just three hours later, shortly after 8 p.m., Rohingya insurgent leader Ata Ullah sent a message to his supporters urging them to head to the foot of the remote Mayu mountain range with metal objects to use as weapons. A little after midnight, 600 km northwest of the country s largest city Yangon, a rag-tag army of Rohingya militants, wielding knives, sticks, small weapons and crude bombs, attacked 30 police posts and an army base. If 200 or 300 people come out, 50 will die. God willing, the remaining 150 can kill them with knives, said Ata Ullah in a separate voice message to his supporters. It was circulated around the time of the offensive on mobile messaging apps and a recording was subsequently reviewed by Reuters. The assault by Ata Ullah s group, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), was its biggest yet. Last October, when the group first surfaced, it attacked just three police border posts using about 400 fighters, according to Myanmar government estimates. The Myanmar army is now estimating up to 6,500 people took part in the August offensive. Its ability to mount a much more ambitious assault indicates that many young Rohingya men have been galvanized into supporting ARSA following the army crackdown after the October attacks, according to interviews with more than a dozen Rohingya and Rakhine villagers, members of the security forces and local administrators. The brutal October response led to allegations that troops burned down villages and killed and raped civilians. The crisis in ethnically-riven Rakhine state is the biggest to face Myanmar s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and her handling of it has been a source of disillusionment among the democracy champion s former supporters in the West. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Myanmar authorities on Tuesday to end violence against Rohingya Muslims, warning of the risk of ethnic cleansing, a possible humanitarian catastrophe, and regional destabilisation. Rohingya leaders and some policy analysts say Suu Kyi s failure to tackle the grievances of the Muslim minority, who have lived under apartheid-like conditions for generations, has bolstered support for the militants. The fledgling militia has been transformed into a network of cells in dozens of villages, capable of staging a widespread offensive. Myanmar s government has declared ARSA a terrorist organisation. It has also accused it of killing Muslim civilians to prevent them from cooperating with the authorities, and of torching Rohingya villages, allegations the group denies. The latest assault has provoked a major counteroffensive in which the military says it killed almost 400 insurgents and in which 13 members of the security forces have died. Rohingya villagers and human rights groups say the military has also attacked villages indiscriminately and torched homes. Myanmar government says it is carrying out a lawful counter-terrorism operation and that the troops have been instructed not to harm civilians. Nearly 150,000 Rohingya have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, leading to fears of a humanitarian crisis. Some 26,750 non-Muslim villagers have also been displaced inside Myanmar. Suu Kyi has said she would adopt recommendations of Kofi Annan s panel that encouraged more integration. She has also previously appealed for understanding of her nation s ethnic complexities. In a statement on Wednesday, she blamed terrorists for a huge iceberg of misinformation on the strife in Rakhine. She made no mention of the Rohingya who have fled. Suu Kyi s spokesman, Zaw Htay, could not be immediately reached for comment. On Monday, however, he told Reuters Myanmar was carrying out a counterterrorism operation and taking care of the safety of civilians, including Muslims and non-Muslims. In an interview with Reuters in March, Ata Ullah linked the creation of the group to communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine in 2012, when nearly 200 people were killed and 140,000, mostly Rohingya, displaced. We can t turn the lights on at night. We can t move from one place to another during the day, he told Reuters in previously unpublished remarks, referring to restrictions placed on the Rohingya population s behaviour and movements. Everywhere checkpoints: every entry and every exit. That s not how humans live. A Rohingya community leader who has stayed in northern Rakhine said that, while the rest of Myanmar enjoyed new freedoms under Suu Kyi after decades of military rule, the Muslim minority have been increasingly marginalized. Support for the insurgents grew after the military operation last year, he said. When the security forces came to our village, all of the villagers apologised and asked them not to set the houses on fire - but they shot the people who made that request, he said. People suffered because their sons got killed in front of them even though they begged for mercy, their daughters, sisters were raped - how could they live without constantly thinking about it, that they want to fight against it, whether they die or not. Reuters couldn t independently confirm the villagers accounts. Last month, a Myanmar government probe - led by former head of military intelligence and now Vice President, Myint Swe - rejected allegations of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing during the crackdown last year. Villagers and police officers in the area say that ARSA had since last October established cells in dozens of villages, where local activists then recruited others. People shared their feelings with others from the community, they talked to each other, they told their friends or acquaintances from different regions and then they exploded, said the Rohingya community leader. Rohi Mullarah, a village elder from the Kyee Hnoke Thee village in northern Buthidaung, said the leaders sent their followers regular and frequent messages via apps like WhatsApp and WeChat, encouraging them to fight for freedom and human rights and enabling them to mobilize many people without the risk of being caught going into the heavily militarised areas to recruit. They mainly sent phone messages to the villagers, they didn t ... move people from place to place, he said. He said his village was not involved in the insurgency and even posted a signboard in front of it that said any militants would be attacked by the villagers if they attempt to recruit people. Many Rohingya elders have for decades rejected violence and sought dialogue with the government. While ARSA has now gained some influence, especially among young, disaffected men, many Rohingya elders have condemned the group s violent tactics. In recent months there had been reports of killings of local administrators, government informers and village chiefs in the Rakhine region, leading to speculation the insurgents were adopting brutal tactics to stop information on their activities from leaking to the security forces. They cut out the government communication by instigating a campaign of fear and took charge in the region, said Sein Lwin, police chief in Rakhine. . An army source directly involved in operations in northern Rakhine also said it was now much more difficult to get information on ARSA s plans. The strategy resulted in the shut down of government mechanisms in some places because no government servants dared to stay there , the army source said. A village head from northern Buthidaung township, who asked not to be named, said the insurgents called him several times pressing him to allow some young villagers to take part in their training - an offer he refused. I tried to stay safe and sometimes I had to sleep at the police station and local administrator s house, he said. Despite the largely successful clamp down on information by the insurgents, it was a tip off by an informer that stopped the Aug. 25 attacks from being much worse for the Myanmar security services, the army source said. About an hour after Ata Ullah s men headed for the jungle in the evening of Aug. 24, the army received a signal from the Rohingya informer saying the attack was coming. The 9 p.m. message mentioned imminent multiple attacks, but it did not say where they would occur. The warning was enough for the security forces to withdraw some troops to larger stations and to reinforce strategic locations, saving many lives on the government side, the military source said. The raids by the insurgents came in waves from around 1 a.m. until sunrise, and took place mostly in Maungdaw township where Ata Ullah staged his three attacks in October. This time, though, the distance between the northern- and southern-most points was as long as 100 km (60 miles). The Rohingya also struck in the north of the neighbouring Buthidaung township, including an audacious bid to storm an army base. We were surprised they attacked across such a wide geographical area - it shook the whole region, said the army source. (This version of the story corrects date in paragraph 39 to Aug. 24)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Donald Trump, his face red with emotion, lashed out at rivals Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz on Saturday at the most acrimonious debate to date between Republican presidential candidates, shouting insults and casting aside a pledge to be more measured. The New York billionaire went into the CBS debate with a head of steam, having won New Hampshire last Tuesday and holding a big lead in polls in South Carolina a week before Republicans vote on Feb. 20. Rather than play it safe, Trump responded to every comment leveled his way, interrupted his opponents at will and called them liars repeatedly in an emotional outburst that could raise more questions about whether he has the temperament to serve in the White House. He made his most blistering attacks against Bush and his brother, former President George W. Bush, who has many admirers in the Republican establishment. It was hard to declare a winner in the debate amid the constant volley of insults, not all of them from Trump. Cruz and fellow Senator Marco Rubio also took pointed jabs at each other over illegal immigration. But Trump dominated the debate conservation on Twitter with 40 percent of the mentions, according to data from the micro-blogging platform. Trump’s combative style has set the tone for much of the campaign but in recent days he had pledged to pursue a more measured, positive approach. At the debate, that strategy lasted only through his comments about Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who was found dead on Saturday. Trump was quickly goaded when Bush criticized Trump’s past statements that Russia has a role to play in Syria. Russia, Bush said, is not attacking Islamic State militants but instead helping Syrian President Bashir Assad, who Washington wants to leave power. Trump blasted Bush’s brother for launching the Iraq war in 2003 over claims, later proven false, that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. “A big, fat mistake,” said Trump, noting that the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had also occurred on Bush’s watch. “George Bush made a mistake,” Trump thundered. “We all make mistakes. But that one was a beauty ... They lied! They said there were weapons of mass destruction. And there were none.” Many in the crowd booed Trump and the Republican front-runner dismissed them as “lobbyists and special interests” supporting the former Florida governor. Bush, who has wilted in the past under assault from Trump, stood firm this time. He will campaign with his brother George on Monday in North Charleston, South Carolina. “I’m sick and tired of him going after my family,” Bush said. “My dad is the greatest man alive in my mind. While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show, my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I’m proud of what he did. “He had the gall to go after my mother,” Bush said, reminding the audience that Trump had criticized his 90-year-old mother, Barbara Bush, wife of former President George H.W. Bush. “My mother is the strongest woman I know.” “She should be running,” Trump responded. Bush provoked another outburst from Trump by saying the Republican nominee should be someone “who doesn’t brag, for example, that he has been bankrupt four times.” “That’s another lie,” Trump said. “I never went bankrupt.” Trump also was drawn into a fight with Cruz over whether the real estate developer is sufficiently conservative. Trump called himself a “common-sense conservative,” which Cruz dismissed. “If Donald Trump is president he will appoint liberals to the Supreme Court,” Cruz said. “You are the biggest liar,” Trump said sharply. As they tried to talk over each other, Cruz chided Trump by saying, “Donald, adults do not interrupt each other.” Ohio Governor John Kasich, who finished second in the New Hampshire primary last Tuesday and who pushes an optimistic message, called for calm. “These attacks, some of them are personal. I think we’re fixing to lose the election to (Democratic front-runner) Hillary Clinton,” he said. Cruz and Rubio renewed their battle over who is the toughest on illegal immigration with Cruz insisting that the Florida senator, as part of a Gang of Eight senators who sought a compromise on legislation in 2013, was for “amnesty” but now is against it for political purposes. He insisted that Rubio had said in Spanish on Univision that he would not rescind an executive order signed by President Barack Obama in support of the children of illegal immigrants. Rubio shot back: “I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speaking Spanish.” As the crowd roared, Rubio said Cruz is “telling lies... He’s lying about all sorts of things and now he makes things up.” Before the clashes broke out, the Republican candidates urged Obama not to nominate a successor to Scalia, saying it should be up to the next president to decide. (Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Bill Trott and Mary Milliken) SAP is the sponsor of this content. It was independently created by Reuters’ editorial staff and funded in part by SAP, which otherwise has no role in this coverage.
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.@SenatorCollins says Senate ”starting from scratch” on health care bill: ”We will come up with a whole new, fresh approach.” #ThisWeek pic. twitter. Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Susan Collins ( ) said the Senate is going to start over with health care. Collins said, “The House bill is not going to come before us. The Senate is starting from scratch. We’re going to draft our own bill and I’m convinced that we’re going to take the time to do it right. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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MADRID (Reuters) - Pro-independence Catalan parties Junts Pel Si and CUP have asked parliament to meet to discuss and possibly declare the region s independence from Spain on Monday, Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia reported on Wednesday. The regional parliament s governing body is meeting today to decide when to call a parliamentary session to discuss the results of a banned referendum on splitting from Spain. During this session, the parliament could declare independence. Given the referendum was declared unconstitutional, this declaration would not bear any legal consequence and it is highly unlikely to be recognized internationally.
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A post on the Black Power Political Organization Facebook page shows the group taking credit for snipers who killed Dallas law enforcement officers yesterday. Since this posting the Facebook page has been shut down. We managed to capture [screen shot] their comments below:Here are a few posts we found on their Facebook page. We thought we d share them in the off chance Facebook shuts them down: From their Facebook page:Black Power Political Organization BPPO # BlackPower ! # BlackKnights ! Our Mission Is To Free Africa And All Black Based Countries From Non Black Control! And Give Black People The Opportunity They Need To Develop Themselves And Reach Their Full Potential! We Are A Powerful Political Group Of Patriotic, Pro Black, Pan African Leaders! Who s Job Is To Rule And Control Africa, And All Black Based Countries! So To Avoid Corruption, Bribery, Exploitation, Non Black Control And Every Form Of Ailments Preventing Black People And Africa From Reaching It s Full Potential! To Accomplish Our Goal! We Will Be Working With (Black People Protection Agency AKA BLACK KNIGHTS )! A Powerful Group Of Well Trained Professional Sniper Assassins, With Tens Of Thousands Of Assassins Located All Over The World, In Every Country! Who s Job Is To Hold Government Leaders And Other Powerful People All Over The World Responsible When They Fail To Give Black People Equal Rights And Justice In Their Countries. By Relentlessly Target And Assassinate Government Leaders And Other Powerful Influential People And Their Families, When They Refuse To Do Right By Us Black People! Our Organization Will Be Finance Through Taxation And Other Means! (Like I always say! To free yourself from the white man. You will have to become like the white man. White people use violence and economic sanctions to control other countries, and exploit them! When the leaders of those countries refuse to do what they want. They destroy their economy or use terrorist to assassinate them! So the only way you can free yourself from them, is to use their own controlling methods against them. So! When western Governments refuse to stop exploit and oppress your country! You have for example: An independent sniper assassin group that will relentlessly target them and their families until they give you what you want, out of fear of dying or losing their love ones! Or You Can Force Someone Close To Them Eg: Friends, Co-workers, Family Doctor etc. To Assassinate Them Through Poisoning etc.) (So as long as they are playing dirty! You have no other choice but to play dirty as well, to free yourself!) SO BECOME A SNIPER ASSASSIN AND HELP FREE AFRICA FROM WESTERN AND NON BLACK PEOPLE CONTROL!Thank you to the amazing Nick Short for the h/t
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NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta snubbed a crisis meeting called by the top election official for Thursday, saying he would instead spend the time campaigning for next week s presidential vote re-run. The first presidential vote in August, which Kenyatta won by 1.4 million votes, was annulled by the Supreme Court over procedural irregularities. The re-run is set for Oct. 26 but opposition leader Raila Odinga has pulled out, alleging a failure to improve oversight of the election, casting doubt on how the vote will proceed. Election board chairman Wafula Chebukati, in a stark message to political leaders on Wednesday, said he could not guarantee a credible vote under present conditions, and demanded Kenyatta and Odinga meet him for talks. The board, known as the IEBC, set the meeting for 1130 GMT in Nairobi but then said it had been postponed to an unspecified date and time. Chebukati later tweeted that he had met Odinga and was looking forward to meeting Kenyatta, though it was not clear if the president intended to respond to his call. Opposition demonstrations, which have led to confrontations between police and protesters, and divisive rhetoric by politicians have stoked uncertainty in Kenya, East Africa s largest economy and a stable Western ally in a chaotic region. Speaking at a campaign rally in the western town of Saboti late on Wednesday, Kenyatta said the priority was for Kenyans to go to the polls on the set date. We are not interested in telling the IEBC what to do. We want them to prepare so Kenyans can vote on the 26th, he said. However, Odinga, whose call for mass protests on election day has sparked fears that the crisis could turn violent, called for serious talks on the impasse after meeting Chebukati. Odinga said his withdrawal should force the commission to start a fresh 90-day electoral cycle, including fresh candidate nominations. The election board says the vote will go ahead. Chebukati s call for a meeting with the candidates followed the flight of one IEBC commissioner to New York. Roselyn Akombe said she had fled due to threats and said the planned election would amount to a mockery of democracy. The ruling Jubilee party filed a petition in the Supreme Court on Thursday alleging opposition politicians were in contempt of court for obstructing a re-run by withdrawing from the race and by ordering supporters to continue protests including during trainings of election staff in western Kenya. The current political climate indeed strikingly resembles the period prior to 2007-2008 post-election violence, said Francis Ole Kaparo, chair of the National Cohesion and Integration Commission, a government body in charge of preventing hate speech. Following the disputed 2007 poll, more than 1,200 Kenyans were killed.
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GENEVA (Reuters) - A break-in at the U.N. human rights office in Burundi s capital may have been an attempt to smear the government, a presidential aide told reporters on Friday in Geneva. U.N. staff in Burundi filed a complaint with police after a group of armed men broke into the office in Bujumbura at around 2.30 a.m. on Wednesday, a U.N. spokeswoman said. Nobody was hurt and there was no damage in the attack, which came a week after a U.N. human rights inquiry said Burundian officials at the highest level should be held accountable for crimes against humanity. Willy Nyamitwe, senior communications officer in the office of the president, said the two guards at the office had been arrested and it was probably not a simple burglary. What the police have already said is apparently there was no attack coming from the outside, which certainly means the guards would seem to be complicit. But ... we should wait for the final conclusions of this investigation. Nyamitwe is expected to respond to the allegations at the U.N. Human Rights Council next week. Burundi has rejected the findings of the U.N. inquiry, which Nyamitwe said was a puppet of the European Union. U.N. human rights spokeswoman Elizabeth Throssell called for an investigation of the break-in that complied with international legal procedures.
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Trump refuses to disavow the Dark Lords support, stirring controversy
MORDOR Sauron, the fallen Maia best known for engulfing Middle-Earth in two apocalyptic wars, has endorsed real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump for president of the United States. This comes as to shock to those who thought that Sauron was destroyed at the end of the Third Age.
Though Saurons power greatly diminished after the destruction of The One Ring, a fragment of his broken spirit has endured for millennia, and still lurks beneath the ruins of Barad-dr (present-day Gadsden, Alabama). The Dark Lord is currently not powerful enough to assume a physical form, but still has the presence of mind to follow the Republican presidential primaries.
Donald Trump is the only candidate who can fulfill my vision for the future, Sauron said Saturday night in an omnipresent, ethereal whisper. Just as I spread darkness and suffering across Middle-Earth, so shall Trump bring darkness to Middle America.
In many ways, Trump is a natural choice for Sauron. During his tenure as the Dark Lord of Mordor, Sauron enacted or supported numerous controversial policies, including the expansion of torture, the murder of Rohirrim families, and the deportation of 12 million dwarves.
When asked about Sauron on NBCs Meet the Press, Trump seemed hesitant to distance himself from the evil necromancer. I dont think the American people want me to dismiss every Dark Lord before I have a chance to learn more about them, said Trump. I just dont know anything about Sauron or his dark legion of orcs, trolls, and Nazgl; I need to do more research.
Trumps refusal to disavow Saurons support has sparked huge backlash from pundits and fellow presidential candidates, who claim that Trump is himself a lieutenant of the Dark Lord. The Republican frontrunner took to Twitter to refute this claim: Definitely not a follower of Sauron. The palantr in Trump Tower lobby is for decoration only not for communicating with dark lords!
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Puerto Rico, the U.S. commonwealth that recently declared a historic default, could be shut out of debt markets for two more years as it battles with fiscal challenges, the island’s governor said on Tuesday. Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said emergency fiscal measures in response to a $70 billion debt were not sustainable and that “Puerto Rico will not endure any more austerity.” He said a new law enacted by Washington allowing the federal government to appoint a control board would undercut self-government, but added it would help the island confront its fiscal problems. “Our challenges are not over and prosperity will not return overnight,” the governor said during a discussion at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. “It will take maybe two years until the market opens back to Puerto Rico if we do the right thing,” Garcia Padilla said, adding the government had been producing fiscally sound budgets that would help win back creditors. The island has been shut out of debt markets for about a year. Citing falling debt levels, he said it was a “moment of opportunity” in Puerto Rico, which has struggled with high debt loads and a weak economy for years. Puerto Rico defaulted on $779 million of constitutionally backed debt on July 1, among its most senior bonds, opting to pay for essential services for its citizens over obligations to creditors. Garcia Padilla said the Puerto Rican government would take steps on its own to get its fiscal affairs in order, therefore minimizing meddling by the oversight board. For example, he said that if the island’s government passed responsible budgets on its own, the control board would not need to impose its own fiscal plans. Garcia Padilla said, however, that while the government must become more efficient to improve its fiscal situation, that should be done through attrition rather than laying off workers. Asked by a reporter about steps that could be taken to shore up the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA, and the Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority, or PRASA, Garcia Padilla said: “PREPA is pretty advanced. We’ll be able to reduce a lot the debt related to PREPA. We want to do the same with PRASA. I think we’ll be able to do it.”
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Trump s team is taking historical revisionism to a whole new level.During an appearance on CNN with Victor Blackwell, Donald Trump s mouthpiece Katrina Pierson claimed that President Obama is responsible for creating ISIS because he invaded Afghanistan. If you want to go way back, we can look at the troop surge, Pierson said. And after 2007, al Qaeda was essentially in ashes. It was Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton who then destroyed the entire rollout by wanting to pull out early, announcing their plans, ignoring intelligence and that s the reason why ISIS is a global issue and not a A confused Blackwell interrupted. Barack Obama in 2004, is that what you said? he asked.And Pierson s rant just got even more confusing. No, Pierson responded. I said afterwards. After the surge when al Qaeda was in ashes. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton remember we weren t even in Afghanistan by this time. Barack Obama went into Afghanistan creating another problem. It was Hillary Clinton and her incidents in Libya. They armed the rebels and funded them. Blackwell gave Pierson another chance to get her facts straight but she only continued trying to rewrite American history.BLACKWELL: You re saying Barack Obama took the country into Afghanistan post-2009. Is that what you re saying? PIERSON: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that was Obama s war, yes. Here s the video via YouTube:Of course, Pierson is absolutely wrong.The United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001 during George W. Bush s first year as president. President Obama took office in 2009 and inherited the War in Afghanistan.So if we go by Pierson s logic, that means George W. Bush and Republicans are responsible for the rise of ISIS because they were the ones who took America into Afghanistan.This isn t the first time Pierson has blamed President Obama for a war started by Bush.Earlier this month, Pierson falsely claimed that President Obama is responsible for the death of Captain Humayun Khan, who sacrificed his life in Iraq to save his fellow American soldiers in 2004. It was under Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that changed the rules of engagement that probably cost (Khan s) life, she said.But again, George W. Bush was president when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Obama was a senator at the time and he voted AGAINST the invasion. The Iraq War created a power vacuum that strengthened Iran s power in the region and allowed ISIS to rise.And Blackwell thoroughly fact-checked Pierson after the commercial break by giving her a history lesson. The origin of ISIS began in Iraq in 2004 and morphed into the organization we know today in 2006.Here s the video via Twitter.@bigcmurr Here is the follow up where Victor Blackwell fact checks Katrina Pierson and her ISIS history.. pic.twitter.com/4FhelNe7ah Richard W. (@IceManNYR) August 13, 2016And it should be noted that President Bush signed the status of forces agreement that led to the withdrawal of all American troops from Iraq, thus giving ISIS the opportunity to take over large swaths of the country.Nevertheless, the tradition of Republicans blaming President Obama for everything that happened under George W. Bush s watch continues.Featured Image: Screenshot
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - A top aide to President Bashar al-Assad said on Friday the Syrian government would fight any force, including U.S.-backed forces also battling Islamic State militants, in its drive to recapture the whole of the country. Assad has previously vowed to recapture the whole of Syria. The government controls the main urban centres in the west of the country and has taken back much of the eastern desert from Islamic State in recent months. Whether it s the Syrian Democratic Forces, or Daesh (Islamic State) or any illegitimate foreign force in the country ... we will fight and work against them so our land is freed completely from any aggressor, Bouthaina Shaaban said in an interview with Hezbollah s Al Manar TV. Shaaban said the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had captured areas from Islamic State without any fighting , apparently accusing them of collusion with the jihadists. The SDF are trying to get areas (where there is) oil ... but they will not get what they want, she said. Shaaban also said plans to divide Syria had failed, without elaborating. The Kurdish YPG militia, which dominates the SDF, has for years controlled large parts of northeastern Syria. Advances against Islamic State in its Raqqa stronghold and a new offensive in Deir al-Zor are bringing more territory under the control of the SDF.
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(Reuters) - United Auto Workers President Dennis Williams said on Tuesday that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has assured him she would renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement if she is elected president. Williams’ comments come as Clinton is under pressure on international trade deals from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and supporters of her former Democratic rival Bernie Sanders. Clinton has previously said she wanted to rework NAFTA. Her campaign on Tuesday declined to comment on the meeting with Williams. Williams said he met with Clinton one-on-one prior to the union’s endorsement of her in May, when Sanders was still in the race to be the Democratic party’s nominee. The UAW has more than 400,000 members. “She’s committed to me that not only would (she) dig into NAFTA but she made every indication that she would sit down and try to redo NAFTA,” Williams told reporters during a telephone press conference from Philadelphia, where he is attending the Democratic National Convention. Williams said Clinton “recognizes that NAFTA was not the success that it was supposed to be,” when her husband, Bill Clinton, pushed for it as president two decades ago. Stephen Miller, senior policy adviser to the Trump campaign, said Hillary Clinton “will never renegotiate Bill Clinton’s NAFTA.” The Trump campaign adviser said, “You can be certain when she was personally getting paid millions and millions by Wall Street and big banks to deliver secret speeches she wasn’t breathing a word against globalist trade pacts.” NAFTA, which eliminated most tariffs on trade between the United States, Mexico and Canada, was promoted as a way to support economic growth by eliminating barriers to trade. Opponents say it has robbed Americans of jobs because it makes it easy for U.S. companies to move operations to Mexico where wages are much lower. Williams said he hopes that an updated treaty would help foster stronger worker unions in Mexico, where many auto manufacturers have factories. “She told us all that,” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in an interview, referring to Clinton’s assurances to labor unions that she would rework NAFTA. The AFL-CIO, a federation of unions which includes the UAW, stayed neutral during the Democratic primary but endorsed Clinton in June once it was clear she would become the party’s nominee. The UAW endorsed Clinton in May. Williams said that support among UAW members for a Trump presidency has fallen to about 19 percent from 28 percent last year, before Trump said that new automotive industry jobs could be placed in states without strong union support at lower wages than those earned by UAW members.
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(Reuters) - The United States is in an economic war with China, U.S President Donald Trump’s chief political strategist has said, warning Washington is losing the fight but is about to hit China hard over unfair trade practices. “We’re at economic war with China,” Steve Bannon told U.S. news site prospect.org in an interview published in Wednesday. “It’s in all their literature. They’re not shy about saying what they’re doing. One of us is going to be a hegemon in 25 or 30 years and it’s gonna be them if we go down this path,” he was quoted as saying. “If we continue to lose it, we’re five years away, I think, 10 years at the most, of hitting an inflection point from which we’ll never be able to recover.” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said she had seen the report, and reiterated the essence of the China-U.S. trade relationship is mutually beneficial. “In reality, China and the United States’ long term cooperation has brought about real benefits for both countries’ peoples, any unbiased person will clearly see this fact,” she told a daily news briefing in Beijing. “We have also said before, a trade war has no future. A trade war does not serve the interests of any party, as fighting a trade war will not produce a winner. We hope that relevant parties can stop viewing issues of the 21st century with a 19th- or 20th-century mentality.” Bannon said the United States would use Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act against Chinese coercion of technology transfers from U.S. corporations doing business in China and follow up with complaints against steel and aluminum dumping, according to prospect.org. On Monday, Trump authorized an inquiry into China’s alleged theft of intellectual property in the first direct trade measure by his administration against Beijing. “We’re going to run the tables on these guys. We’ve come to the conclusion that they’re in an economic war and they’re crushing us,” said Bannon, who acknowledged he was battling trade doves within the U.S. administration. He said there was no reason to go soft on China in order to get Beijing’s support over North Korea because he believed China would do little more to rein in Pyongyang. Bannon said he might consider a deal in which China got North Korea to freeze its nuclear build-up with verifiable inspections and the United States removed its troops from the Korean peninsula, but such a deal seemed remote, prospect.org reported. In contrast to Trump’s threat of “fire and fury” against North Korea, Bannon said: “There’s no military solution, forget it.” “Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about ...” Asked about any connection between his economic nationalism and white nationalism in the United States, and in particular the racist violence in Charlottesville, Bannon said: “Ethno-nationalism — it’s losers. It’s a fringe element.” “I think the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more. These guys are a collection of clowns.” However, Bannon, who formerly led the right-wing website Breitbart, said focusing on race would help the Republicans politically. “The Democrats, the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ‘em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”
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By Israel Shamir on November 5, 2016 Israel Shamir — The Unz Review Nov 3, 2016 I envy you, American citizens. I do not care about your military might, nor for your supreme currency, the US dollar. I envy your chance to deal on 11/8 a decisive blow to the rule of the Masters of Discourse. Though the Masters control the entirety of world media, and they decide what people may think and say from Canada to Hong Kong, only you, American citizens, can defeat them. This is a great chance, a unique opportunity not to be missed. The Masters of Discourse can be defeated. They are not stronger than any ruler of past. Trump has a great quality making him fit for the task: he is impervious to labels and libels. He had been called everything in the book: anti-Semite, racist, women hater, you name it. And he still survived that flak. Such people are very rare. We know he is against the Masters because every newspaper is against him. I never saw a similar onslaught but once, in Russia in 1996. Then President Yeltsin, an old drunkard who had brought Russia to collapse, had to run for his second term. His popularity was next to zero. Two per cent of Russians intended to vote for him. And then the oligarchs turned on their propaganda machine. Yeltsin’s competitor Gennady Zyuganov, a mild church-going post-communist, had been presented like a Hitler of his days. All the Russian media of the day belonged to oligarchs, and all of it participated in the onslaught. Zyuganov surrendered. Perhaps he won the election, but he congratulated Yeltsin with his victory. It was said that he was threatened with assassination unless… Others say he was bribed. I do not exclude both explanations, but for sure the might of united media can crush a timid man. In the days of the Jewish Temple, there was a Magrepha, a wind instrument able to produce diverse and frightening sounds. There is no agreement among the scholars about what sort of thing it was. Whenever it sounded, people were scared. The media of our days is a new Magrepha. If all of its outputs are united, they produce a terrible roar. Yes, the onslaught of the media upon Trump had been exceedingly unfair, but he survived it. What is even more important, you survived it. It does not matter what the polls say: they say what the newspapers tell them to say. Even people answer the polls according to the media prognoses: they are shy of saying they would vote for a man who … But at the moment of actual vote, they do what they know is right for them. Not for transgenders, not for Muslim brokers, not even for single mothers, but for themselves. You have a very good chance to win, and to defeat the witch and her supporters. We learned that the British people voted for Brexit, though all the media said that proposal had no chance. But we also learned from Brexit, that nothing is over until it is over. The Masters of Discourse will try every trick to steal the elections, and only their fear of armed rising may finally force them to acknowledge their inevitable defeat. We know that in 2015, when Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, was afraid of losing the elections, he revealed that the American intelligence has some superior software which allows them to falsify the elections. Perhaps, but he won despite this magical software, despite Obama’s wrath. Even in Israel, that favorite son of the Masters, the Masters are hated. The New York Times is always speaking good about Israel, but still Israelis do not like the newspaper. Nobody likes them, nobody likes an old aunt who tries to tell us what we can say and what we can’t. If Netanyahu could win, Trump can win twice. After the first debate of Trump and Clinton, people said: She won! But we shall vote for him. This was a very encouraging sign. Indeed every woman worth its salt would win an argument with her husband or son-in-law, let alone a pretender. That is the way we are made. The story of sirens enforces the belief that if you listen to a woman, she will bewitch you. Sirens actually ate the bewitched sailors; our womenfolk do not go to such extremes, but they can cause us a lot of trouble. Trump seems to be almost pure of heart and deed, as even extremely prejudiced media could not find anything really incriminating about him but bragging about having his way with women. I shall not recount so many proven accusations against Hillary. All of that can be found in the emails revealed by Julian Assange and his great Wikileaks team. The media kept mum about it, but the secrets can’t be kept forever. There are many practical things Donald Trump will be able to fix. He can return industries home, he can return American GIs home from four ends of the world, he can improve lot of working men. But he surely will set all of us free from the annoying bondage of the Masters. Just for that reason, go and vote, for yourself and for millions of us who aren’t entitled to.
Israel Shamir can be reached at
This article was first published at The Unz Review .
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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese President Michel Aoun said on Thursday that Saad al-Hariri will arrive in Paris on Saturday with his family, where he will remain for a few days before coming to Beirut, a Lebanese politician said in a statement after meeting Aoun. Hariri announced his resignation as Lebanese prime minister in a televised broadcast from Saudi Arabia on Nov. 4 and has not returned to Beirut since. Aoun has said Hariri must return and submit his resignation in person. (This version of the story corrects source in headline)
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BRASILIA/SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazil s new top federal prosecutor on Tuesday reshuffled the team of investigators in charge of pursuing the biggest corruption probe yet conducted in Latin America s largest nation. Prosecutor General Raquel Dodge, who took over the post on Monday after the end of her predecessor Rodrigo Janot s term, had previously invited all the members of Janot s team of prosecutors working on the Car Wash corruption probe to stay. However, few expressed interest in continuing, and Dodge, 56, who holds a master s degree from Harvard and has spent three decades working as a federal prosecutor, decided to replace the entire team with her own choices. Just a few of the previous prosecutors will stay on for a month to help with the transition. The Car Wash investigation, which began in early 2014, has led to an unprecedented fight against entrenched political corruption in Brazil. It has uncovered billions of dollars in bribes paid by major construction firms to politicians and executives at state-run enterprises such Petroleo Brasileiro in return for lucrative contracts. It is one of several major investigations taking place in Brazil, probes that have led to the conviction of former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and charges being leveled against President Michel Temer, his predecessor Dilma Rousseff, and two more former presidents. Charges have been lodged or investigations opened against dozens of federal lawmakers, while over 100 powerful businessmen and politicians have been convicted. While there was a clear personal rift between Janot and Dodge, whose appointment by Temer was ratified by the Senate in August, that does not necessarily mean federal prosecutors will be any less aggressive in pursuing corruption. Obviously there will be a change in style, but there will be no change in the course of investigations, said Carlos Pereira, a professor of public policy at the Getulio Vargas Foundation and one of Brazil s top experts on corruption. But the team chosen by (Dodge) is extremely professional and has already shown skills in fighting corruption. Among the prosecutors who will be part of Dodge s Car Wash investigation team are veterans from Brazil s first major probe into political corruption, the 2005 Mensalao scandal. It ended with top members of Lula s government being found guilty of paying off lawmakers in return for their support of Lula s legislation.
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Posted on October 28, 2016 by # 1 NWO Hatr Published on Oct 27, 2016 by Truthstream Media The oligarchy runs our society with Problem – Reaction – Solution. If anything, these leaks have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the two-party system is an illusion and the whole construct is one huge pay-for-play corporate sham. Obamacare was always meant to destroy the private health care system and usher in single-payer, government run socialist medicine. It was designed that way… and it’s “working”. Share this:
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Ken Thompson, the Brooklyn district attorney, said on Tuesday that he had recently learned he has cancer and would take a sick leave. Mr. Thompson said in a statement that his chief assistant, Eric Gonzalez, would take over as interim district attorney during “the absences occasioned” his “treatment and recovery. ” “As a man of intense faith, I intend to fight and win the battle against this disease,” Mr. Thompson said. “I humbly seek your sincere prayers as I confront this challenge and respectfully ask that you honor my family’s need and wish for privacy during this time. ” Mr. Thompson has been absent from his office for about two months, and had received the cancer diagnosis around August, according to colleagues who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Neither his spokesmen nor several of his friends would disclose what type of cancer Mr. Thompson has. The news of his illness comes three years after he was elected, becoming Brooklyn’s first black district attorney. He defeated Charles J. Hynes, an incumbent of more than 20 years who had been weakened by accusations of favoritism toward political supporters in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community, and of allegations of improprieties. Mr. Thompson, 50, a Democrat, had previously had a successful private law practice he represented Nafissatou Diallo, a Manhattan hotel housekeeper who, in 2011, accused the French politician Dominique of sexually assaulting her in a case that was eventually dropped by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Mr. Thompson had also worked as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn and delivered a memorable opening argument at the trial of Justin Volpe, a police officer who pleaded guilty in 1999 to torturing a Haitian immigrant, Abner Louima, with a broken broomstick in a Brooklyn station house. Having run on an agenda of reform and racial justice, Mr. Thompson, once in office, earned a reputation as both an advocate for minority communities in a section of the city known for its divisions between black and white residents and, simultaneously, as a tough officer who concentrated on cracking down on gun crimes and violent street gangs. Brushing aside the resistance of the New York Police Department, he announced in July 2014 that his office would stop prosecuting most marijuana arrests. He also put in place an amnesty program for people with outstanding warrants. Among his efforts was the creation of one of the country’s most robust internal units dedicated to reviewing wrongful convictions, which in the past two years has exonerated 20 defendants. Perhaps the biggest case of his tenure was the prosecution of Peter Liang, a former police officer who was found guilty in February of manslaughter in the shooting of an unarmed black man, Akai Gurley, in the stairwell of a Brooklyn housing project. The shooting, which took place just days before a Staten Island grand jury elected not to indict an officer involved in the choking death of Eric Garner, placed enormous pressure on Mr. Thompson, who had to balance his campaign promises to Brooklyn’s black neighborhoods with his close working relationship with the Police Department. Though he did not shy away from mounting an aggressive case against Mr. Liang, after the trial was over Mr. Thompson decided, in Solomonic fashion, to seek no prison time for the former officer, a move that enraged Mr. Gurley’s family and led to bitter protests by reform activists. One took place early in the morning outside Mr. Thompson’s home in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. For weeks, Mr. Thompson’s illness had been a closely guarded secret, known only to a small circle of friends and associates. On Tuesday, public officials such as Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued statements wishing him well. In an email on Tuesday, Douglas H. Wigdor, the of Mr. Thompson’s private practice, said, “As Ken’s former partner for over 15 years, I have no doubt that he will tackle his illness with the same determination that he has shared with his clients, the people of Brooklyn and, most importantly, his family. ” Another close friend, Arnold N. Kriss, a lawyer who has served as an adviser to Mr. Thompson over the years, said: “Ken is doing a remarkable job rebuilding the Brooklyn D. A.’s office. There is no doubt he will successfully continue to fight his illness and, at the same time, fight for the people of Brooklyn. ”
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A transcript from the Friday, July 31, 2015 Rush Limbaugh show. Rush is truly one of the most brilliant political analysts of our time. He proves it with this commentary on Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz:RUSH: Mitt Romney is out there ripping into Ted Cruz, and I made the observation that I can t recall a presidential candidate losing presidential candidate ripping presidential candidates in his own party in the next election cycle. I was trying to think, in the modern era, if there was an example of it. I couldn t think of one. It wasn t so much trying to think of Reagan s 11th commandment as I was thinking more about establishment Republican versus upstart Tea Party conservative.By the way, here s another thing: I ve been doing In the course of show prep, I ve been doing just a voluminous amount of reading about the divide here between the establishment in Washington, both parties, and the Republican Party, what s happening with Trump and so forth. Now, I knew! I knew that the Democrats had elevated the Tea Party into being something horrible and giant and bad, negative. I had no idea Eh, that s not quite true. I didn t fully appreciate the extent to which the Republican Party has enmity for the Tea Party. The Washington establishment treats the Tea Party They re genuinely afraid of it. Let me put it this way: They re genuinely afraid of it because of its size and its power, and the amazing thing about that is the Tea Party is not something about which is organized around an individual. I think this is why they fear it. It is genuinely bottom-up.It s an effervescent movement of average, ordinary people fed up with Washington, just totally fed up with government, totally fed up with what government is doing. Peggy Noonan has a piece today, and she says that the Tea Party and others, it s not hatred for government they have, it s contempt for government. But the Tea Party is genuinely feared, and it s genuinely feared because it is thought to be huge, and it s put the whole Republican establishment on defense.So, anyway, Ted Cruz isn t backing off the tough rhetoric he s used to describe the Iran nuclear deal, despite criticism leveled by Mitt Romney yesterday. Cruz fired back at Romney in a Thursday radio interview So Mitt Romney s tweet today said, Gosh, this rhetoric is not helpful, Cruz said. John Adams famously said, Facts are stubborn things. Describing the actual facts is not using rhetoric; it is called speaking the truth.' Cruz then fired another fact. Part of the reason that Mitt Romney got clobbered by Barack Obama is because we all remember that third debate where Barack Obama turned to Mitt and said, I said the Benghazi attack was terrorism and no one is more upset by Benghazi than I am! And Mitt, I guess listening to his own advice, said, Well gosh, I don t want to use any rhetoric. So OK, never mind. I ll just kind of rearrange the pencil on the podium here, Cruz said. And he s right! We do remember that debate.I mean, Romney must have had three, different, slow-pitch curveballs, softballs, just tailor made for grand-slam home runs, and he just didn t even take a swing at them. Remember that? After the first debate, when Romney just cleaned Obama s clock, do you remember that? The Democrats and the media were all asking, What happened to Obama? Oh my God, does he even want to be reelected? They were scared to death because Romney just made mincemeat.After that one, it was like it never happened, almost like Romney felt guilty for doing it. Because he went into a defensive mode and did not do anything else that might offend or upset or irritate anybody. And it was clear that the consultants had gotten hold of him. Maybe they didn t have to. Maybe he believed it himself. But the consultants had gotten a hold of him and said, Look, you can t keep criticizing the president. The independents don t like that! We re never going to win. We have to show we can cooperate. We have to show we can work with the Democrats! So Romney shut up. But what Cruz s point is very simple (summarized): What are you beating up on me for? I m not the enemy. I m not the Democrat Party. Why don t you start talking about them this way? They re the ones actually doing a deal that s going to put this country at risk. Why don t you say that? Effectively what Cruz is saying is, I m not the problem here, Mitt! And this isn t rhetoric. I m simply citing facts. So now people are starting to ask: Is Cruz following in the Trump mold? Is Trump serving to show the way for other Republicans how to respond? Well, maybe Trump is, but Cruz doesn t need to be shown. This is standard operating procedure for Cruz. I mean, it was just two weeks ago that he went to the floor of the Senate and accused the majority leader of lying to him face to face. Now he s firing back at Romney. But try this headline. Well, it s not a headline. It s a paragraph subhead. Both Obama and Romney have called Cruz s remarks inappropriate. What has Cruz done? He s maintained that [Obama] would become a leading state-sponsor of terror if the agreement it struck with Iran makes it past Congress. He and others have argued that Iran would use a windfall from sanctions relief to finance terror abroad. He has said on that basis alone this deal ought not get done! And then Romney piped up and said in a tweet (paraphrased): Gosh, this rhetoric isn t helpful. Gosh, this rhetoric isn t helpful! Cruz fired back: You re telling me what s not helpful? You got clobbered by Obama for a reason! You got clobbered because you backed off. You got clobbered because you didn t have the guts to keep going. So this is I like this, folks. Whatever Trump s responsible for it or not.END TRANSCRIPTVia: RushLimbaugh.com
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he would make his choice to lead the Federal Reserve soon and was still weighing at least three people: Federal Reserve Governor Jerome Powell, Stanford University economist John Taylor and current Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen. “I will make my decision very shortly, pretty shortly,” he told Fox Business Network in an interview that aired on Monday.
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Earlier in the week, there were leaked draft executive orders circulating that would strike President Obama s executive order protections for LGBTQ federal workers. There were also rumors that Donald Trump would sign a sweeping, broadly worded religious freedom bill into law that would effectively legalize discrimination nationwide. However, Trump and his famously homophobic vice president, Mike Pence, ran into a road block: Trump s kids. Specifically, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka Trump.Jared and Ivanka have long been seen to be the reasonable, moderating influences that are needed to calm Trump s impulsive, erratic temperament. It appears that this is what happened here. Ivanka and Jared see all of the fear and the protests in the streets against Trump, and they feared that there would be even more national and international backlash against Trump s bigotry via executive order. Therefore, there was a complete reversal on these orders.Of course, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer outright lied when asked about it. He insisted that these orders were just a couple out of hundreds that were being considered. Then, of course, a statement was hastily rushed out, saying that the Trump administration is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community. Considering all of the virulently anti-LGBTQ people Trump has around him namely Mike Pence I don t believe that for so much as a second. If Ivanka and Jared can keep Trump s hands away from the LGBTQ community for the time being, though, all the better. Hopefully it will hold until 2018, and we manage to take Congress back, thus crippling the amount of damage Trump and Pence can do until they are out of office.While their reasons were political rather than noble, at this point, it s better than nothing.Featured image via Aaron P. Bernstein / Stringer/Getty Images
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BOGOR, Indonesia (Reuters) - Qatar is open to dialogue in resolving a dispute that has seen the Gulf state isolated from its Arab neighbors, its emir said during a visit to Indonesia on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain cut diplomatic and trade ties with Qatar on June 5, accusing it of financing terrorism and maintaining too close of ties to their arch-rival Iran. Doha denies the charges. Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani said he discussed the issue with President Joko Widodo of Indonesia, which has the world s largest population of Muslims and has close ties to the Arab world. We conveyed...that Qatar is ready to conduct a dialogue to solve the problem as we already know that no one will win, Thani told reporters after meeting with Widodo at the state palace in Bogor, outside the capital of Jakarta. We are all brothers and suffering because of this crisis, he added. President Widodo did not publicly address the dispute. The leader of the world s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas also visited Malaysia - another Muslim-majority nation - and Singapore this week. Saudi and other Arab nations have made a list of 13 wide-ranging demands of Qatar, including closing down the Al Jazeera television network and curbing ties with Iran. Kuwait and top United States officials have attempted to mediate between the parties, but there is little sign that the crisis will be resolved soon.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Thursday he had spoken with Myanmar s Aung San Suu Kyi and that she said she was working to get aid to the Rohingya Muslim areas in the Southeast Asian nation that were affected by violence. Suu Kyi agreed with the need for immediate and improved access of humanitarian assistance to the region, particularly by the International Red Cross, and she conveyed that she is working toward that end, McConnell said on the Senate floor. McConnell, whose Republicans control majorities in both houses of Congress, repeated earlier criticism of a resolution introduced in the U.S. Senate urging Suu Kyi to do more for Myanmar s ethnic minority Rohingya population, and lessening the chance that any such measure could pass. McConnell has had close ties to Suu Kyi for years. He said Suu Kyi, a Nobel prize laureate and de facto head of the government in Myanmar, also known as Burma, told him when they spoke on Wednesday that violations of human rights would need to be addressed. Attacks by Rohingya militants on security posts last month triggered an army operation that has killed more than 400 people, destroyed over 6,800 houses and sent nearly 400,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing to Bangladesh. Suu Kyi has been a target of criticism from fellow Nobel laureates and religious leaders across the world for failing to condemn human rights abuses against the Rohingya during the military s fierce response to Rohingya militant attacks. The United Nations appealed Thursday for massive help for the nearly 400,000 who fled to Bangladesh, amid concern the number could keep rising unless Myanmar ends what critics denounce as ethnic cleansing. McConnell said Suu Kyi s position in the government was exceedingly difficult and that as a civilian, she had virtually no authority over the military. He warned that weakening her could interfere with the country s transition from decades of military rule. McConnell said he expected a briefing soon from Suu Kyi s office and that she was trying very hard to improve conditions for the Rohingya. Burma s path to representative government is not at all certain and is certainly not over. And attacking the single political leader who has worked to further democracy within Burma is likely to hinder the objective over the long run, McConnell concluded.
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This is YUGE for Trump and his supporters In a must-win state for any GOP candidate, this is the best news Trump could receive leading into Ohio s primary election A three-way race for the 66 delegates up for grabs in the Ohio Republican Presidential Primary is developing, and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is on the outside of that race looking in.An Ohio Primary poll published Tuesday by Quinnipiac shows Donald Trump leading the way with 31 percent support, followed by home state Gov. John Kasich, with 26 percent. Kasich is trailed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), holding 21 percent of supporters.Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) is a distant fourth in Ohio. He sits at 13 percent. Dr. Ben Carson trails Rubio with only 5 percent of likely Ohio voters.Some 38 percent of respondents said they would consider changing their mind before the March 15 Primary, while 5 percent are currently undecided.Though Trump leads the way, he also leads on the negative side. A third of likely voters said they will definitely not support the businessman. The Donald Trump train begins the three-week campaign for Ohio s crucial delegates on the right track and holds a small lead over the Buckeye State s own governor, John Kasich, said Peter A. Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, in a statement released with the survey. A Kasich Ohio win is crucial to the Republicans trying to stop the New York businessman s nomination. If Trump can defeat Kasich in his home state, that would be an impressive demonstration of his strength in a state that is just now getting attention. But Trump s lead is just 5 points, certainly not large enough for him to breathe easy, he added.The Quinnipiac poll surveyed 759 Ohio likely Republican primary voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percent, and 518 Ohio likely Democratic primary voters with a margin of error of +/- 4.3 percent. Via: Breitbart News
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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Pro-trade Republicans in the U.S. Congress are growing worried that U.S. President Donald Trump may try to quit the NAFTA free trade deal entirely rather than negotiate a compromise that preserves its core benefits. As a fifth round of talks to modernize the North American Free Trade Agreement kicked off in Mexico on Friday, several Republicans interviewed by Reuters expressed concerns that tough U.S. demands, including a five-year sunset clause and a U.S.-specific content rule, will sink the talks and lead to the deal’s collapse. Business groups have warned of dire economic consequences, including millions of jobs lost as Mexican and Canadian tariffs snap back to their early 1990s levels. “I think the administration is playing a pretty dangerous game with this sunset provision,” said Representative Charlie Dent, a moderate Republican from eastern Pennsylvania. He said putting NAFTA under threat of extinction every five years would make it difficult for companies in his district, ranging from chocolate giant Hershey Co to small family owned manufacturing firms, to invest in supply chains and manage global operations. Hershey operates candy plants in Monterrey and Guadalajara, Mexico. Some 74 House of Representatives members signed a letter this week opposing U.S. proposals on automotive rules of origin, which would require 50 percent U.S. content in NAFTA-built vehicles and 85 percent regional content. They warned that this would “eliminate the competitive advantages” that NAFTA brings to U.S. automakers or lead to a collapse of the trade pact. Representative Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who has long been a supporter of free trade deals, said he disagreed with the Trump approach of “trying to beat someone” in the NAFTA talks. Texas is the largest U.S. exporting state with nearly half of its $231 billion in exports last year headed to Mexico and Canada, according to Commerce Department data. “We need to offer Mexico a fair deal. If we want them to take our cattle, we need to take their avocados,” Sessions said. Still, congressional apprehension about Trump’s stance is far from unanimous. The signers were largely Republicans, with no Democrats from auto-intensive states such as Michigan and Ohio signing. Some pro-labor Democrats have actually expressed support for U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s tough approach. “Some of those demands are in tune,” said Representative Bill Pascrell of New Jersey, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee. “We don’t want to blow it up, Republicans don’t want to blow it up. But we want substantial changes in the labor, the environmental, the currency, on how you come to an agreement when there’s a dispute, and on problems of origin.” Farm state Republicans are especially concerned that a collapse of NAFTA would lead to the loss of crucial export markets in Mexico and Canada for corn, beef and other products. Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Lighthizer in a recent meeting agreed that a withdrawal from NAFTA would be hard on U.S. agriculture, which has largely benefited from the trade pact. U.S. agricultural exports to Canada and Mexico quintupled to about $41 billion in 2016 from about $9 billion in 1993, the year before NAFTA went into effect, according to U.S. Commerce Department data. Grassley said, however, that Lighthizer’s approach was “taking everybody to the brink on these talks.” Other Republicans are taking a wait and see approach to the talks. Representative Frank Lucas of Oklahoma said he was willing to give Trump “the benefit of the doubt” on NAFTA talks, adding that farmers and ranchers in his rural district were strong Trump supporters in the 2016 election. “The president’s a practical fellow. When push comes to shove, he understands the base,” Lucas said.
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The Department of Homeland Security announced its plans to build a 15-mile prototype of the border wall in San Diego.The department issued a waiver from numerous environmental laws and regulations to build the wall with robust physical characteristics to prevent illegal immigration crossings in an area of high illegal entry. The Department is implementing President Trump s Executive Order 13767, Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements, and continues to take steps to immediately plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border, using appropriate materials and technology to most effectively achieve complete operational control of the southern border, the department said in a statement Tuesday announcing plans to issue the waiver.In one of his last moves as DHS secretary, Gen. John Kelly signed the notice on July 26, before he was tapped to serve as White House chief of staff.The waiver was published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.The notice outlines the plans for projects along a 15-mile stretch along the Southwestern border in the San Diego sector. The department said the area is in need of further border protection immediately, as it is the site of over 31,000 illegal alien apprehensions, the seizure of 9,167 pounds of marijuana, and approximately 1,317 pounds of cocaine last year alone. The construction of border wall prototypes in the Project Area and the robust physical characteristics that are to be incorporated into the border wall prototypes are intended to deter illegal crossings, the notice states.The department will waive several environmental regulations to build the prototype wall, including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and a host of others.DHS said it is still committed to safeguarding the environment but is eliminating onerous rules that would delay construction.For entire story: Washington Free Beacon
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A new email dump from the FBI via a FOIA request by the ACLJ reveals what appears to be collusion between the media and the DOJ to squash the story about the 2016 meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Phoenix, AZ.Also Comey reportedly said the FBI had no documents related to this meeting to fill a prior FOIA request. That apparently isn t true, given this new email dump. The Right ScoopWatch:From the ACLJ: We have just obtained hundreds of pages in our ongoing investigation and federal lawsuit on former Attorney General Loretta Lynch s tarmac meeting with former President Bill Clinton while the Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI had an ongoing criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton s emails. The results are shocking.Watch Lynch s explanation of her meeting with Bill Clinton on the tarmac:First, the Comey FBI lied to us. Last July, we sent FOIA requests to both the Comey FBI and the Lynch DOJ asking for any documents related to the Clinton Lynch plane meeting. The FBI, under the then directorship of James Comey, replied that No records responsive to your request were located. The documents we received today from the Department of Justice include several emails from the FBI to DOJ officials concerning the meeting. One with the subject line FLAG was correspondence between FBI officials (Richard Quinn, FBI Media/Investigative Publicity, and Michael Kortan) and DOJ officials concerning flag[ing] a story . . . about a casual, unscheduled meeting between former president Bill Clinton and the AG. The DOJ official instructs the FBI to let me know if you get any questions about this and provides [o]ur talkers [DOJ talking points] on this . The talking points, however are redacted.Another email to the FBI contains the subject line security details coordinate between Loretta Lynch/Bill Clinton? On July 1, 2016 just days before our FOIA request a DOJ email chain under the subject line, FBI just called, indicates that the FBI . . . is looking for guidance in responding to media inquiries about news reports that the FBI had prevented the press from taking pictures of the Clinton Lynch meeting. The discussion then went off email to several phone calls (of which we are not able to obtain records). An hour later, Carolyn Pokomy of the Office of the Attorney General stated, I will let Rybicki know. Jim Rybicki was the Chief of Staff and Senior Counselor to FBI Director Jim Comey. The information that was to be provided to Rybicki is redacted.Also of note several of the documents contain redactions that are requested per FBI. It is clear that there were multiple records within the FBI responsive to our request and that discussions regarding the surreptitious meeting between then AG Lynch and the husband of the subject of an ongoing FBI criminal investigation reached the highest levels of the FBI.However, on October 21, 2016, the Comey FBI replied to our legal demands that No records responsive to your request were located. This is in direct contravention to the law, and we are preparing further legal action to force the FBI to come clean and turn over ALL documents related to this matter to us in a timely manner.Second, the hundreds of pages of (heavily redacted more on that below) documents paint a clear picture of a DOJ in crisis mode as the news broke of Attorney General Lynch s meeting with former President Clinton. In fact, the records appear to indicate that the Attorney General s spin team immediately began preparing talking points for the Attorney General regarding the meeting BEFORE ever speaking with the AG about the matter.Third, there is clear evidence that the main stream media was colluding with the DOJ to bury the story. A Washington Post reporter, speaking of the Clinton Lynch meeting story, said, I m hoping I can put it to rest . The same Washington Post reporter, interacting with the DOJ spin team, implemented specific DOJ requests to change his story to make the Attorney General appear in a more favorable light. A New York Times reporter apologetically told the Obama DOJ that he was being pressed into service to have to cover the story. As the story was breaking, DOJ press officials stated, I also talked to the ABC producer, who noted that they aren t interested, even if Fox runs with it. Two days after the meeting, DOJ officials in a chain of emails that includes emails to Attorney General Lynch herself stated that the media coverage of the meeting looks like all or most are FOX and that CBS . . . just says a few lines about the meeting. Fourth, DOJ bureaucrats have redacted all the talking points, discussions of talking points, a statement on the meeting that was apparently never delivered because there was not enough media coverage on the meeting, and its substantive discussions with the FBI on the matter. They absurdly claim the deliberative process exemption to FOIA, which is only supposed to apply to agency rulemaking processes.The ACLJ won t stop until justice is served on this matter:Discussions about Attorney General Lynch s ethically questionable meeting with former President Clinton during her investigation into Hillary Clinton clearly has nothing to do with any rule making process. We will be taking these redactions back to federal court. The law is on our side. We will keep pressing on with our investigation of former Attorney General Lynch until we get to the bottom of this.To donate to the ACLJ and help to fund the important work they re doing, click HERE.Here s James Comey discussing the Lynch and Clinton meeting on the tarmac:Here is Loretta Lynch s testimony before Congress regarding her meeting with Bill Clinton:
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Because there wouldn t be any outrage over a white kids only field trip to a local college would there?Parents criticized Indiana school officials Thursday for a trip planned to local colleges that was only offered to black third-graders, ABC 57 reported.School officials defended the trip, saying the outing sends a positive message to black students who may believe the prospect of college is out of reach. We take them to a college campus, have them meet African-American students, modeling the idea that as a black person, college is a great place, Dr. G. David Moss, the head of the African-American services at the South Bend Community Schools Corporation, told the station.The initiative has been criticized by parents in the community, not because of its ambitions, but because it excludes students with other backgrounds.One parent whose son is going on the trip told the station that she believes all kids should be going. Moss told the station that he did not mean to offend anyone with the trips, but said he was hired to look at the issues facing African-American kids in the community.Via: FOX News
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Proving once again that Republicans don t care about women, a Georgia Republican has blocked a BIPARTISAN bill that would have required the testing of untested rape kits.A rape kit is performed to gather evidence so that police can find and arrest rapists. But if they are never tested to find DNA matches, victims never get justice for the heinous crime done to them.And that s why Georgia Democratic state Rep. Scott Holcomb sponsored House Bill 827 to finally test the outrageous backlog of rape kits that have remained in storage, some of them for decades, and get justice to the victims.The bill enjoyed bipartisan support across party lines, which is rare these days. But Georgia GOP state Senator Renee Unterman ruthlessly blocked the bill in committee because she claims the bill has been overly politicized and demanded to be shown evidence of the backlog because she apparently doesn t believe one exists. If there was a problem, I would be Johnny on the spot and I would have written the legislation. I think he really overly politicized it in an election year and I ve got a problem with that. There s no reason to write a law just because it makes you feel good. I ve been asking that representative to show me where the back log is, show me where this rape kits are? Here s the video via CBS46.WTVM.com-Columbus, GA News Weather & Sports But Unterman is wrong. According to an investigation by CBS46 in 2015, thousands of rape kits have been discovered waiting to be tested.CBS46 found that both Athens-Clarke County and Cobb County police departments recently uncovered hundreds of rape kits that hadn t been sent to a crime lab for processing. ACCPD found 159 untested kits dating back to 1993, while Cobb police identified 365 untested kits dating back to the 1970 s.CBS46 also reports that Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta reported it has 1490 untested kits in its rape crisis center. And Georgia isn t the only state where such a massive backlog exists. CBS46 also reported that thousands of rape kits have gone untested in Michigan and Texas as well, but it s disturbingly common across the nation.Senator Unterman ought to be ashamed of herself. She had a chance to help rape victims get justice and she refused to take it. And women should be outraged enough to vote her out of office, because as Madeleine Albright once said, there s a special place in hell for women who won t help other women, and it looks like Unterman has already booked a room. Featured image via EndTheBacklog.org
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Two Republican former Environmental Protection Agency chiefs are warning that a Trump presidency would not only set the world back decades, but could also be a direct threat to the environmental legacies of presidents Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and George H.W. Bush. As a result, they have decided to back Hillary Clinton rather than the Republican nominee.William D. Ruckelshaus and William K. Reilly issued a statement on Tuesday announcing their endorsement of Clinton.Republicans have a long history of support for the environment dating back to Theodore Roosevelt. Donald Trump threatens to destroy that legacy of respect for the environment and protection of public health, the statement read.Ruckelshaus was EPA administrator under both Reagan and Nixon. Reilly served under Bush. They both praised the environmental policies of the administrations they had worked under but said Trump doesn t have the slightest clue. Donald Trump has shown a profound ignorance of science and of the public health issues embodied in our environmental laws, they said. He hasn t a clue about Republicans historic contributions to science-driven environmental policy. The former EPA heads also slammed Trump for his claim that climate change, which they called the singular health and environmental threat to the world today, is nothing more that a hoax. It flies in the face of overwhelming international science and the public conviction and commitment of almost 200 national governments that adopted the Paris Agreement on climate change in December 2015, they said, pointing out that their leadership was essential to that agreement. To back away now, as Trump wants to do, would set the world back decades years we could never recover. The young people in this country deserve far better than that as our legacy, they addedThey wrote that Clinton, on the other hand, acknowledges climate change as the threat that it is and is concerned about protecting the environment. She is committed to reasonable, science-based policy to meet those challenges, the men wrote. For us, there is simply no choice in this election, they concluded. We Republicans should be shocked, outraged even, at the prospect that all this progress, this legacy will be repudiated and rolled back by Donald Trump. This is a hugely consequential election; the stakes are that high. That is why as Republicans, we support Hillary Clinton for President. Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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The man who served as White House Counsel to former President Richard Nixon during Watergate (and ended up facing charges for helping to it cover up) is weighing in on Donald Trump s ongoing scandal with Russia. His opinion? Trump s administration is in cover-up mode. John Dean sat down for an interview with MSNBC s Chris Hayes on Monday night and his summation of Trump s current situation was clear when Hayes asked about Trump s shady ties to Russia and his bogus wiretapping claims. In fact [the White House] is in cover-up mode, Dean replied.On Monday, FBI Director James Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee and he confirmed that the bureau is indeed investigating Russia s interference in the 2016 election. He also said that the FBI is investigating the possibility that Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia.In addition, Comey said during the hearing that the Justice Department has absolutely no evidence to support Trump s claim that former President Obama had the phones at Trump Tower tapped.According to Dean, Trump s desperate attempts to distance himself from Comey s testimony is highly suggestive of a cover- up. There s just never been any question in my mind about that. I ve been inside a cover-up. I know how they look and feel. And every signal they re sending is: We re covering this thing up,' Dean said. Experienced investigators know this. They know how people react when they re being pursued, and this White House is not showing their innocence, they re showing how damn guilty they are, is what we re seeing. During the Watergate scandal, Dean ended up charged with obstruction of justice. Trump, he said, is well on his way to committing the same crime. There s also the question of whether this White House will obstruct, essentially, an investigation. You now have the head of the FBI with a target painted on its back, the front-line investigators with targets painted on their backs; you have a U.S. attorney the president said he was going to retain who has been summarily fired in Preet Bharara, and it strikes me that there is in some ways a kind of obstruction land mine that the entirety of the White House now has to tip-toe through, Dean said.Trump had personally promised Bharara that he would be keeping his job, then last week he changed his mind and fired him without warning. Bharara just happened to be investigating Trump s Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price (among other things), but of course, this had absolutely nothing to do with Trump suddenly deciding to give him the boot. (Insert sarcasm here.)Trump s Russia problem isn t going away anytime soon. Like with Watergate, it is just a matter of time until the truth comes out and Trump s dirty deeds blow up in his face.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images
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Career criminals professional grifters the ultimate Democrat politicians Voters in Illinois and Michigan witnessed the nastiest moments thus far of the Democratic presidential campaign Sunday night when former California Gov. Jerry Brown accused Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, of unethical behavior and funneling state business to her Little Rock law firm.With former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas standing by during a one-hour TV debate in Chicago, Brown launched a harsh, personal attack on the Democratic front-runner, citing a Washington Post story published Sunday that raised questions about the relationship between the state of Arkansas and the law firm of which Hillary Clinton is a partner.Watch the exchange between Governor Jerry Brown and Bill Clinton here:Clinton ardently defended his wife`s integrity, and he charged that Brown`s attack was driven by electoral desperation and poll results.The confrontation came as the three Democrats met for the last time before Tuesday`s presidential primaries in Illinois and Michigan.Against that backdrop, Brown unleashed his barrage after he and Tsongas were asked by a debate panelist about Clinton`s electability in a possible fall campaign against President Bush. I think he`s got a big electability problem, Brown said, citing the Post story as well as other newspaper articles that addressed the governor`s environmental record in Arkansas.Calling it a scandal of major proportions, Brown said, He is funneling money to his wife`s law firm for state business. . . . It`s the kind of conflict of interest that`s incompatible with the kind of public servant we expect. The Post story did not say that either Clinton or his wife had channeled money or state business to the law firm. It did note that the Rose law firm has several state agencies and large corporations on its client list.Stabbing a finger at his rival, Clinton said: Let me tell you something, Jerry. I don`t care what you say about me, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself for jumping on my wife. You`re not worthy to be on the same platform with (her). Clinton mocked Brown`s populist campaign approach and his bulldog tactics. I don`t think you can take much of what he says seriously, Clinton said. Jerry comes here with his family wealth and his $1,500 suit, making lying accusations about my wife. I never funneled any money to my wife`s law firm. Never. Never. Clinton insisted that his wife had turned down her partnership share in any income the firm receives from state business.The candidates then began shouting over one another, Clinton alluding to Brown aide Patrick Caddell, a longtime Washington political consultant, and suggesting the former California governor was somebody else`s mouthpiece. I feel sorry for Jerry Brown, Clinton barked. He reinvents himself every year or two. Clinton, whose campaign has thus far survived supermarket tabloid allegations of infidelity and questions about his draft history, has been forced to respond to suggestions from all of his Democratic rivals that he cannot defeat Bush.Last week, Clinton had to address a New York Times report that documented the Clintons` investment in a real estate deal with a man who later became head of a savings and loan that eventually failed.Brown`s attack was the most pointed of the campaign, and may have marked a transition point in American politics, a point at which the career and conduct of a male politician`s spouse becomes fair game for attack.From her role on CBS` 60 Minutes defending her husband against charges of philandering to a less celebrated role as a campaign adviser, Hillary Clinton has played an exceedingly public role in the campaign.Via: Chicago Tribune
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s senior counselor for economic initiatives, Dina Powell, will be named deputy national security adviser for strategy, a senior Trump administration official said on Wednesday. Powell, who worked in the administration of President George W. Bush, will also continue to work with Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner on economic initiatives, Politico reported earlier.
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Karma just kicked Donald Trump s door down.As you ll recall, Donald Trump repeatedly praised Wikileaks for leaking Hillary Clinton s campaign emails. Those leaks helped Trump win the election, but now Trump s love of Wikileaks has come back to bite him on the ass.Trump CIA Director Mike Pompeo and his Attorney General Jeff Sessions have both criticized Wikileaks since Trump took office and both have promised to arrest Wikileaks leader Julian Assange.Pompeo even admitted that Wikileaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. Indeed, Trump colluded with Russia to win the election.Sessions told reporters this week that he intends to put people like Assange in jail for leaks. We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks, Sessions said. This is a matter that s gone beyond anything I m aware of. Here s the video via Twitter.U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on bringing charges against Julian Assange pic.twitter.com/BudIEN2uK0https://t.co/LN04EvJ8FK WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 21, 2017And Trump himself recently declared that he supports the Justice Department effort to arrest and charge Assange, telling reporters that s it s okay with me. So Wikileaks decided to hit back by posting video of Trump telling his rally crowd how much he loves Wikileaks.Donald Trump, October 10, 2016: This just came out. WikiLeaks! I love WikiLeaks! pic.twitter.com/KWP7X2aLiN WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) April 21, 2017Oops. Trump apparently forgot that he was in bed with Wikileaks during the election. He loved them for attacking Hillary Clinton for his own benefit. Now Wikileaks is probably regretting helping Trump because their leader is now being targeted by his administration. And Trump has to be concerned about Wikileaks digging up information on him and releasing it to the public.This is what karma looks like. Trump had no problem with Wikileaks when the organization was attacking Hillary. Now we get to see how Trump likes being attacked by them. This ought to be damn entertaining.Featured Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
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KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia has identified all 23 people who died in a horrific fire at an Islamic boarding school, an official said on Friday, as calls mounted for tougher regulation after the worst such tragedy in two decades. The fire killed 21 teenage boys and two teachers after it broke out early on Thursday at a tahfiz school, where students learned to memorize the Koran. We hope and pray this will be the last such incident and preventive actions must be in place and be the order of the day, said Noor Hisham Abdullah, Malaysia s director general of health, adding that DNA tests were used to identify the bodies. There have been 31 similar fire incidents in the past, Malaysian officials said, but media put the figure higher. Among 1,034 fires in religious schools during the two years to August 2017, 211 schools burned to the ground, the Star daily said, quoting fire department figures. Family members of Mohamad Haikal Abdullah, a 12-year-old who died in the blaze, were furious over reports that the only door to the school s dormitory had caught fire while metal bars on the windows trapped the boys, leaving them unable to escape. From what we understand, there was only one way out, but they couldn t get through because it was on fire, said his brother, Faizal Abdullah, as he waited outside a hospital morgue for his sibling s remains to be identified. How could they have escaped? How could something like this have happened? We want to know. Fire officials said they found no damage to the electrical wiring of the dormitory, ruling out their earlier suggestion that a short circuit probably caused the blaze. The incident is being investigated as negligence, the fire chief, Wan Mohd Nor Ibrahim, told state news agency Bernama. The school denied a statement by authorities that it had made structural changes without approval from fire officials. Muslim-majority Malaysia offers a secular education system, but growing conservatism has led to a boom in the number of Islamic religious schools, most privately-run and not overseen by education authorities. Some offer a curriculum similar to secular schools, but with a greater emphasis on Islamic knowledge, while others provide more specialized education. Inadequate regulation and training has led to a slew of safety issues at such schools, including reports of fires, abuse, and student deaths, religious leader Mohamad Asri Zainul Abidin said on social media site Facebook. Some owners had set up schools simply as money-making enterprises or to satisfy their own interests, said Mohamad Asri, the mufti of the northern state of Perlis. Some low quality schools, in order to save costs, also take in anyone ready to teach, even when they have nothing to do with the subjects they re teaching, he added. Some religious schools were reluctant to follow government regulations for fear of interference in their administration, said Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, whose tenure lasted 22 years, said no lessons had been learned in nearly three decades, citing a 1989 tragedy that killed 27 girls at a religious school. I m sad that this kind of incident happened again, news portal the Malaysian Insight quoted him as saying after visiting victims families. Safety measures are very important. I hope after this, all schools will review (safety measures).
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This is a good reminder of how important it is to prevent Obama from anointing another radical on the Supreme Court. It might also be a good time for every American to call their representatives in Washington. Keeping another radical Obama appointee off our Supreme Court could literally be the only thing standing between a free America and one that looks more like Venezuela. This is also a reminder for anyone in the Republican party who considers themselves part of the never Trump movement. The Democrat party has never been more serious about, or closer to, fundamentally changing America forever The Obama administration is looking into whether it can challenge the Supreme Court s decision to block President Barack Obama s plan to spare millions of illegal immigrants from deportation, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Tuesday. We will be reviewing the case and seeing what, if anything else, we need to do in court, Lynch told Reuters in an interview.Lynch did not say what legal options the Obama administration may pursue following a split decision by the Supreme Court justices last week that left in place a block on the executive action by a lower court.She said any future executive actions Obama may take on immigration would be left to the White House.In a wideranging interview on topics from gun control to the effect of the planned exit of Britain from the European Union, Lynch identified espionage from foreign nationals on U.S. companies as a tremendous problem. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported a 53 percent increase in cases of economic espionage between 2014 and 2015 and the majority of cases involve Chinese nationals as culprits.Most recently, Xu Jiaqiang, 30, was charged with economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, for stealing software source code from his U.S. employer with the intent of benefiting the Chinese government. It is a matter of priority for us, Lynch said. When companies or industries are preyed upon by others, be they individuals, be they state actors who literally steal the fruit of their intellectual labors, essentially they are stealing from future generations also. Via: Yahoo News
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Hillary Clinton wearing a grill cover? What is that? That IS Cher in the foreground but I have no clue what Hillary is wearing Is Michelle Obama also wearing a tablecloth she got from Nantucket?
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11. July 10, 2012: Remarks With Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh After Their Meeting “So we’re working on expanding it through a far-reaching, new regional trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would lower trade barriers while raising standards on everything from labor conditions to environmental protection to intellectual property. Both of our countries will benefit. And in fact, economists expect that Vietnam would be among the countries under the Trans-Pacific Partnership to benefit the most. And we hope to finalize this agreement by the end of the year.” 12. July 10, 2012: Remarks at American Chamber of Commerce Reception and Commercial Signings “Domestic and international businesses alike continue to face rules that restrict their activities, and that, in turn, deters investment and slows growth. So we are encouraging the Government of Vietnam to keep on the path of economic and administrative reform to open its markets to greater private investment. And through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, we’re working with Vietnam and seven other nations to lower trade barriers throughout the region, as we ensure the highest standards for labor, environmental, and intellectual property protections. Vietnam was an early entrant to the TPP, and we’re hoping we can finalize the agreement this year. And the economic analysis is that of all the countries that will be participating — Australia, Canada, Mexico, others — of all the countries participating in the TPP, Vietnam stands to benefit the most. So we’re hoping to really see this agreement finalized and then watch it take off.” 13. July 8, 2012: Remarks With Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba “We also discussed the opportunity to strengthen our economic relationship, and the United States welcomes Japan’s interest in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which we think will connect economies throughout the region, making trade and investment easier, spurring exports, creating jobs. The TPP is just one element of our increased focus on the Asia Pacific, but it is important that we recognize that the Japanese-American relationship is really at the cornerstone of everything we are doing in the Asia Pacific. We are not only treaty allies; we are friends and partners with common interests and shared values.” 14. April 30, 2012: Remarks With Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, and Philippines Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin After Their Meeting “Finally, we discussed the maturing economic relationship between our countries as well as our shared commitment to enhanced development, trade, and investment. We would like to see the Philippines join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade community. The foreign secretary raised the Philippines’ interest in seeking passage of the Save our Industries Act, and we have conveyed that message to the United States Congress.” 15. April 12, 2012: Remarks at the White House Conference on Connecting the Americas “Now President Obama and I have said many times that this will be America’s Pacific century, and we are focused on the broader Pacific. But remember, the Pacific runs from the Indian Ocean to the western shores of Latin America. We see this as one large area for our strategic focus. That’s why we’re working with APEC; that’s why we’re creating the Trans-Pacific Partnership. We recognize the mutual benefits of engagement between the Americas and the rest of the Pacific.” 16. April 10, 2012: Forrestal Lecture at the Naval Academy “As part of that same trip last November, the President built momentum for a new far-reaching trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership that we are negotiating with eight other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. This agreement is not just about eliminating barriers to trade, although that is crucial for boosting U.S. exports and creating jobs here at home. It’s also about agreeing on the rules of the road for an integrated Pacific economy that is open, free, transparent, and fair. It will put in place strong protections for workers, the environment, intellectual property, and innovation — all key American values. And it will cover emerging issues such as the connectivity of regional supply chains, the competitive impact of state-owned enterprises, and create trade opportunities for more small-and-medium-sized businesses.” 17. April 21, 2012: Keynote Address At Global Business Conference “Big or small, we’re standing up for an economic system that benefits everyone, like when our Embassy in Manila worked with Filipino authorities on new intellectual property protections or when our negotiators ensure that the new Trans-Pacific Partnership requires that state-owned enterprises compete under the same rules as private companies.” 18. February 1, 2012: Remarks With Singaporean Foreign Minister and Minister for Law K. Shanmugam “This is a very consequential relationship. The multidimensional growth of our relationship with Singapore is an example of the importance that the United States sets on strengthening our engagement in the Asia Pacific. We are working together on a full range of issues, including moving forward on a high-quality trade agreement through the Trans-Pacific Partnership process.” 19. December 19, 2011: Remarks With Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba After Their Meeting “The minister and I also discussed a number of bilateral and regional issues and reviewed the close and ongoing collaboration between Japan and the United States in the aftermath of last March’s earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis. We discussed Japan’s recent move to pursue consultations on joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations to resolve longstanding trade concerns in order to deepen the economic ties to the benefit of both our countries. I also urged that Japan take decisive steps so that it accedes to The Hague Convention on International Parental Child Abduction and address outstanding cases.” 20. November 18, 2011: Remarks at ASEAN Business and Investment Summit “Now let me describe briefly four ways that we want to work with you: first, by lowering trade barriers; second, by strengthening the investment climate; third, by pursuing commercial diplomacy; and fourth, by supporting entrepreneurs. We’re excited about the innovative trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. That would bring economies from across the Pacific, developed and developing alike, into a single trading community, not only to create more growth, but better growth.” 21. November 16, 2011: Presentation of the Order of Lakandula, Signing of the Partnership for Growth And Joint Press Availability With Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert Del Rosario “Together we hope to deliver an array of benefits to the people, including more foreign investment to create new jobs, a more streamlined court system that can deliver justice and protect local businesses, better services, and more resources to fight poverty. Over time, these steps will better position the Philippines to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which we hope will dramatically increase trade and investment among the peoples of the Pacific.” 22. November 10, 2011: America’s Pacific Century “There is new momentum in our trade agenda with the recent passage of the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement and our ongoing work on a binding, high-quality Trans-Pacific Partnership, the so-called TPP. The TPP will bring together economies from across the Pacific, developed and developing alike, into a single 21st century trading community. A rules-based order will also be critical to meeting APEC’s goal of eventually creating a free trade area of the Asia Pacific.” 23. October 14, 2011: Economic Statecraft One of America’s great successes of the past century was to build a strong network of relationships and institutions across the Atlantic — an investment that continues to pay off today. One of our great projects in this century will be to do the same across the Pacific. Our Free Trade Agreement with South Korea, our commitment to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, are clear demonstrations that we are not only a resident military and diplomatic power in Asia, we are a resident economic power and we are there to stay.” 24. September 15, 2011: Celebrating 60 years of the U.S.-Australia Alliance “We are working to encourage trade through the Trans-Pacific Partnership and through APEC, whose leaders the President will be hosting this fall in Hawaii. Together, we are strengthening regional institutions like the East Asia Summit and ASEAN. And as Secretary Panetta will explain, our military relationship is deepening and becoming even more consequential.” 25. July 25, 2011: Remarks on Principles for Prosperity in the Asia-Pacific “That is the spirit behind the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the so-called TPP, which we hope to outline by the time of APEC in November, because this agreement will bring together economies from across the Pacific—developed and developing alike—into a single trading community.” 26. July 20, 2011: Remarks on India and the United States: A Vision for the 21st Century “The United States is pushing forward on comprehensive trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and our free trade agreement with South Korea. We are also stepping up our commercial diplomacy and pursuing a robust economic agenda at APEC. India, for its part, has concluded or will soon conclude new bilateral economic partnerships with Singapore, Malaysia, Japan, South Korea, and others. The more our countries trade and invest with each other and with other partners, the more central the Asia Pacific region becomes to global commerce and prosperity, and the more interest we both have in maintaining stability and security. As the stakes grow higher, we should use our shared commitment to make sure that we have maritime security and freedom of navigation. We need to combat piracy together. We have immediate tasks that we must get about determining.” 27. May 17, 2011: Secretary Clinton’s Remarks With New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully “We looked ahead to the East Asia summit where President Obama will participate for the first time, and the United States will send our largest, most senior delegation ever to the Pacific Island Forum in New Zealand later this year. We talked about developments in Fiji, and both New Zealand and the United States agree that the military junta must take steps to return Fiji to democracy. And we agree on the importance of pursuing negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will provide a free trade agreement for nine countries across the region, including both of ours. We’re making steady progress on this. We hope to be able to have the negotiations complete by the time we all meet in Hawaii for APEC toward the end of this year.” 28. May 2, 2011: Remarks With Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd After Their Meeting “And both of us understand the benefits of deeper economic integration and fair trade. Minister Rudd was very influential in helping us to work toward a greater, more relevant involvement in the Pacific-Asian institutions, such as joining the East Asian Summit. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is exploring ways to expand opportunity, is critical, and APEC and ASEAN are two other organizations where we work together.” 29. April 17, 2011: Remarks at the American Chamber of Commerce Breakfast “We will be hosting the 2011 APEC summit in Hawaii later this year. We are pushing to advance economic integration, remove trade barriers, and make sure that our national regulations line up in a way that encourages trade. We are also working hard on the trans-Pacific partnership, a cutting edge regional free trade agreement that would eventually cover an area responsible for over 40 percent of global trade.” 30. March 18, 2011: Remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) on Latin America “As countries step up on the global stage, they will make essential contributions to helping all of us meet some of those most important challenges. Mexico, for example, made a crucial contribution to the fight against climate change through its remarkable leadership in Cancun last year. Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina in the G-20; Chile and Mexico in the OECD; Chile and Peru in the Trans-Pacific Partnership; and along with Mexico in APEC, these are all helping to build a foundation for balanced global growth, a transparent global economy, and broad-based opportunity. “ 31. March 9, 2011: Remarks at the First Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Forum “The United States is also making important progress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will bring together nine APEC economies in a cutting-edge, next generation trade deal, one that aims to eliminate all trade tariffs by 2015 while improving supply change, saving energy, enhancing business practices both through information technology and green technologies. To date, the TPP includes Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Peru, Vietnam and the United States.” 32. January 14, 2011: Inaugural Richard C. Holbrooke Lecture on a Broad Vision of U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century “We are taking steps to ensure that our defense posture reflects the complex and evolving strategic environment in the region and we are working to ratify a free trade agreement with South Korea and pursuing a regional agreement through the Trans-Pacific Partnership to help create new opportunities for American companies and support new jobs here at home. Those goals will be front and center when we host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum in Hawaii later this year.” 33: November 7, 2010: Remarks at U.S. Trade Promotion Event “Now, we’ve seen how bilateral trade benefits both sides. Our challenge now is to broaden those benefits. That means we have to look for even more opportunities to increase trade and investment between us. And it means that we work harder to broaden the benefits of trade even beyond our two countries. Australia is an important partner in negotiating the ambitious new multilateral trade deal called the Trans Pacific Partnership. Over time, we hope to deliver a groundbreaking agreement that connects countries as diverse as Peru and Vietnam with America and Australia to create a new free trade zone that can galvanize commerce, competition, and growth across the entire Pacific region.” 34. November 7, 2010: Speech and Townterview with Australian Broadcasting Company “To continue this progress, we are both pressing ahead on something called the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It’s an ambitious multilateral free trade agreement that would bring together many more nations of the Pacific Rim. Australia and the United States are helping to lead those negotiations and we’re also working through APEC, which the United States will host in Hawaii in 2011. We see that as a pivotal year to drive progress on internal economic changes that will open more markets and make sure that any growth is more sustainable and inclusive. And finally, we believe that the United States and Australia have been at the forefront of organize the entire region for the future.” 35. November 5, 2010: Christchurch Trade Reception Hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce “We are looking for ways to broaden and deepen our economic ties and build on the strong foundation we already have. And we think that the Trans-Pacific Partnership is a very exciting opportunity. This multilateral free trade agreement would bring together nine countries located in the Asia Pacific region — New Zealand and the United States, Australia, Chile, Singapore, Brunei, Peru, Vietnam, and Malaysia. By eliminating most tariffs and other trade barriers, and embracing productive policies on competition, intellectual property, and government procurement, we can spur greater trade and integration not only among the participating countries, but as a spur to the entire region.” 36. November 4, 2010: Remarks With New Zealand Prime Minister John Phillip Key and New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray Stuart McCully ” Well, let me say that we discussed at some length, both the foreign minister and I and then the prime minister and I, the way forward on trade. We are very committed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and New Zealand, again, is playing a leading role. And we want to expedite the negotiations as much as possible. So we are exploring ways that we can try to drive this agenda. I am absolutely convinced that opening up markets in Asia amongst all of us and doing so in a way that creates win-win situations so that people feel that trade is in their interests.” 37. November 3, 2010: Remarks at the Pratt & Whitney Trade Event “That is why the United States is very pleased by Malaysia’s decision to join the negotiations for the Trans Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership. This regional trade agreement will promote shared success by expanding markets and building a level playing field for workers in every country that participates.” 38. November 2, 2010: Remarks with Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman “Finally, we are pleased that Malaysia joined last month’s negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership. That is a pact that would expand markets and create a level playing field for people in every country that does participate. I know there are tough issues to work out, as there always are with these agreements, but Malaysia’s leadership in this region for greater economic growth is absolutely essential.” 39. November 2, 2010: Secretary Clinton’s Meeting with Kuala Lumpur Embassy Staff and Their Families “And I think we have tremendous opportunities here. But I know when I leave tomorrow, the work to make those opportunities into realities falls to all of you. So I know a lot is expected of you, but we’re going to be doing even more in Malaysia. We have a lot of plans for educational exchanges. We have some very exciting work on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, enhancing trade and investment (inaudible) that will promote closer cooperation.” 40. November 2, 2010: Townterview Hosted by Media Prima in Malaysia “So in our meetings with your government officials and even in my conversation with the prime minister earlier today, we of course talked about our bilateral relationship but we also talked about the role that Malaysia is playing in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a new free trade agreement that will enhance market access, but also working to support Afghanistan and the people there with training and medical services.” 41. October 30, 2010:Remarks With Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem “I n trade, our two countries have already made great progress. Fifteen years ago, our bilateral trade was about $450 million. Last year it was more than $15 billion. And the foreign minister and the prime minister and I talked about how to expand this trade relationship, including through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The United States, Vietnam, and seven other countries finished a third round of negotiations on the TPP this month and we hope that Vietnam can conclude it in internal process and announce its status as a full member of the partnership soon.” 42. October 28, 2010: America’s Engagement in the Asia-Pacific “We are also pressing ahead with negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an innovative, ambitious multilateral free trade agreement that would bring together nine Pacific Rim countries, including four new free trade partners for the United States, and potentially others in the future. 2011 will be a pivotal year for this agenda. Starting with the Korea Free Trade Agreement, continuing with the negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, working together for financial rebalancing at the G-20, and culminating at the APEC Leaders Summit in Hawaii, we have a historic chance to create broad, sustained, and balanced growth across the Asia Pacific and we intend to seize that.” 43. September 8, 2010: Remarks on United States Foreign Policy “On the economic front, we’ve expanded our relationship with APEC, which includes four of America’s top trading partners and receives 60 percent of our exports. We want to realize the benefits from greater economic integration. In order to do that, we have to be willing to play. To this end, we are working to ratify a free trade agreement with South Korea, we’re pursuing a regional agreement with the nations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and we know that that will help create new jobs and opportunities here at home.” 44. July 22, 2010: Remarks With Vietnam Deputy Prime Minister And Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem “And I am very much supportive of Vietnam’s participation as a full member in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. As Vietnam embarks on labor and other reforms, the American businesses that are investing in Vietnam can provide expertise that will aid Vietnam’s economic and infrastructure development.” 45. January 12, 2010: Remarks on Regional Architecture in Asia: Principles and Priorities “In addition, the United States is engaging in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations as a mechanism for improving linkages among many of the major Asia-Pacific economies. And to build on political progress, we must support efforts to protect human rights and promote open societies.”
For once in our lifetime, we the people have an opportunity to elect a President who was NOT chosen by Multinational Corporations, Big Banks, DC Elites, and the Globalist Lapdog Mainstream Media.
Please like and share if you are a TRUMP VOTER!
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Boom!Courtesy of: comicallyincorrect.com
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2016 presidential campaign by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Barack Obama tried to woo Republicans into a “Grand Bargain” that would have gutted Social Security. Bill Clinton let loose the banks. But Donald Trump’s destruction of the Republican Party will allow Hillary Clinton to “gather the whole of the ruling class under the same party banner, in one Big Tent, where the grandest of bargains can be conceived and achieved without crossing an aisle.” The rich are about to get their best deal yet. Hillary’s “Big Tent” is Obama’s “Grand Bargain” on Steroids by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
“ The exodus from the GOP has suddenly transformed the Democratic Party into the primary political instrument of the ruling class.”
When Donald Trump took a wrecking ball to the Republican Party he provided the unexpected catalyst for completion of the corporate project begun by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and other white Democrats in the 1980s, with the founding of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). To counter relentless attrition of whites to the GOP in their home states, these beleaguered, mostly southern Democrats sought national corporate funding to turn their party decisively to the right. They reckoned, correctly, that a steady stream of corporate capital would allow them to control the new wave of Black voters and politicians that had been mobilized by Rev. Jesse Jackson’s two presidential campaigns, while strengthening the hand of the South in national Democratic Party calculations.
Bill Clinton became the first DLC president in 1992, and moved swiftly and methodically to narrow the ideological differences between the duopoly parties. He completed much of Ronald Reagan’s agenda, claiming it as his own; destroyed welfare “as we knew it”; vastly expanded the mass Black Incarceration regime; pushed NAFTA through Congress over the objections of majorities in his own party; engineered the corporate monopolization of broadcast media; and removed the last safety straps from Wall Street banks.
“Clinton arranged the deployment of thousands of foreign jihadists to Bosnia and Kosovo.”
In foreign affairs, Clinton initiated what was to become the doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention, dismantling and partially occupying the socialist nation of Yugoslavia. In the process, Clinton arranged the deployment of thousands of foreign jihadists to Bosnia and Kosovo, thus keeping operational the network created by the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan during the previous decade in Afghanistan. In Africa, Clinton conspired with Uganda and exiled Tutsi rebels to overthrow the Hutu majority government in Rwanda, setting off a bloodbath in 1994, followed two years later by an invasion of Congo that has killed more than six million people -- and still counting.
Barack Obama was the second DLC president (although he lies about his membership). He, too, moved with unseemly haste to reach a “Grand Bargain” with the GOP -- not of necessity, since he had won a huge electoral mandate with the overwhelming financial backing of Wall Street, but as a matter of ideological principle. In January of 2009, before even taking the oath of office, Obama told the editorial boards of the New York Times and the Washington Post that all “entitlements,” including Medicare and Social Security, would be “ on the table ” for cutting in his administration. Obama’s first project, now considered the centerpiece of his legacy, was to resurrect the rightwing Heritage Foundation’s corporate health insurance scheme, adopted by Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole in 1996, and made into state law by Republican Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, in 2006. Obama’s Affordable Care Act was, literally, written by lobbyists for the insurance and drug industries, and is now collapsing like a poorly constructed house at the end of its mortgage.
“For the better part of two years Obama debased himself, all but begging the Republicans to consummate his ‘Grand Bargain.’”
With the Democratic majority in Congress in no mood to tamper with Social Security and Medicare, Obama tried to maneuver the targeted entitlements into a financial crisis trap. He named two dependable reactionaries, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, as co-chairmen of his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, also called the Commission on Deficit Reduction. They dutifully recommended $4 trillion in budget cuts, mostly to social programs, including cuts to Social Security. Although the full commission did not endorse the chairs’ recommendations, and the Congress failed to pass bills modeled on the document, Obama used the Simpson-Bowles formula as a basis for negotiating what he hoped would be a “bipartisan” (GOP plus Obama and a minority of Democrats) massacre of entitlements. For the better part of two years Obama debased himself, all but begging the Republicans to consummate his “Grand Bargain.” Congressional Black Caucus chairman Emanuel Cleaver, of Kansas City, called the deal a “ Satan’s Sandwich ,” but Obama continued to pursue a political marriage made in hell until the 2012 reelection campaign clock called a halt to the spectacle.
“A de facto super-party of the bourgeoisie.”
The quest for a Grand Bargain was Barack Obama’s failed attempt to best Bill Clinton in erasing the distinctions between the two major parties – to create a de facto super-party of the bourgeoisie. It was the Republicans who ran away from the altar. And the Democrats did eat much of the Satan’s Sandwich, through sequestration and austerity that ravaged social programs by other means.
Why did the Republicans reject the deal? Although both halves of the duopoly ultimately answer to Wall Street, the Republicans, like any other party, have an institutional interest in winning office. It is true that Obama had crafted a deal that any Republican would love, but it was still his deal, and he planned to run for reelection as an historical dealmaker. Probably just as importantly, the Republican Party is the White Man’s party, meaning, white supremacy is its organizing principle, central to its identity among much of the masses. To embrace Obama, no matter how advantageous to their big business patrons, was a hug too far for the GOP. Racism doomed the Grand Bargain – Hallelujah!
A New, Bigger Bargain
Recently released Wikileaks emails reveal Hillary Clinton speaking to bankers at Morgan Stanley in 2013, a year after the debacle. “The Simpson-Bowles framework and the big elements of it were right,” she said.
Thanks to Donald Trump’s demolition of the Republican Party, the conditions have been created for Hillary Clinton, as DLC President #3, to achieve what #1 and #2 could not: gather the whole of the ruling class under the same party banner, in one Big Tent, where the grandest of bargains can be conceived and achieved without crossing an aisle. With most of the ruling class and its attendants having vacated the building, the Republican Party has been reduced to Donald Trump and his “deplorables,” as Hillary calls them. Trump’s opposition to corporate trade deals violated the Holy Grail against prohibiting capitalists from moving money and jobs around the world as they see fit, and his reluctance to support regime change as an inherent right of American exceptionalism has frightened and outraged the military industrial complex, the national security establishment, and all sectors dependent on the maintenance of empire.
“An inherently unstable arrangement.”
Clinton’s Big Tent is not a temporary, election season dwelling. It is how she plans to govern. The exodus from the GOP has suddenly transformed the Democratic Party into the primary political instrument of the ruling class, while at the same time the party nominally represents most of the folks who are abused and misused by that ruling class. It is an inherently unstable arrangement, and will soon be wracked by splits, as a post-Trump GOP attempts to lure its fat cats back and the darker and poorer constituencies consigned to the latrine area of Hillary’s high class tent break to the Left for air.
But in the interim, Clinton will have a unique opportunity to cut grand austerity deals with all the “big elements” of Simpson-Bowles, to renege on her corporate trade promises, and to wage war with great gusto in the name of a “united” country. Ever since the Democratic National Convention it has been clear that the Clintonites are encouraged to consider everyone outside of their grand circle to be suspect, subversive, or depraved. Their inclusive rhetoric is really an invocation of a ruling class consensus, now that Trump has supposedly brought the ruling class together under one banner. In Hillary’s tent, the boardrooms are always in session. BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected] .
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You can t blame the guy who had the whole election wrapped up and then, embarrassingly gave it back to Barack for trying right?Sorry Mitt Romney On FOX News Sunday this morning Rush Limbaugh pointed out that even with a brokered convention the Republican nominees must have won a majority of delegates in at least 8 states.So far only one candidate qualifies with 12 state victories Donald Trump.Rush said the GOP would have to change the convention rules in order to steal the election from the Republican base.So even if the GOP establishment wants to nominate a Paul Ryan or Mitt Romney they couldn t because they have not won majority of delegates in any state let alone 8 states.This convention rule Number 40 was adopted at the 2012 convention. Via: Gateway Pundit
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You can blame the escalating debt on Obamacare and taxes We can thank Obama for this The federal government will be flirting with $30 trillion in debt within a decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday, blaming an aging population, new spending and tax cuts approved on Capitol Hill, and the growing burden from Obamacare for erasing the progress Washington had made over the past few years.Analysts said Obamacare will chase more workers out of the labor force over the next five years, adding pressure to an economy still struggling to spring to life more than seven years into the Obama recovery.The Affordable Care Act itself is still struggling to attract a customer base, the CBO said, lowering its estimate for the number of people who will sign up for the exchanges from 21 million to 13 million a drop of nearly 40 percent in projections. Customers collecting taxpayer subsidies this year will be 11 million, down from the 15 million the CBO projected a year ago.The grim news comes with less than a year left for President Obama to put the law on firmer footing as he seeks to head off what is likely to be a last effort at repealing the act after November s elections.The economic front is somewhat brighter for Mr. Obama, who seven years into the recovery will finally see significant sustained growth of 2.5 percent this year and 2.6 percent next year, the CBO said.That will be followed by a cooling off, with growth dropping below 2 percent in 2019 and 2020. The economic gains will continue to go disproportionately to the wealthy, helping boost income tax revenue but limiting payroll taxes, which will put even more pressure on the entitlement programs that are driving up deficits.The biggest fiscal dent, however, was made late last year when Mr. Obama and the Republican-run Congress struck a deal. The president won significant spending hikes, and Republicans insisted on a new round of special tax breaks that, combined, reversed years of progress and added nearly $750 billion to projected deficits over the next decade. After six consecutive years in which the deficit has declined relative to the size of the economy, this year s deficit at 2.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) is anticipated to increase for the first time since it peaked at 9.8 percent in 2009, the CBO said.Deficits will continue to rise over the next 10 years, topping $1 trillion again in 2022 and reaching $1.4 trillion in 2026, the analysts said.The accumulation of those deficits will deepen the gross public debt from $18.1 trillion at the end of 2015 to $29.3 trillion in 2026. By contrast, the debt stood at $10.6 trillion when Mr. Obama took office in 2009.Looking decades into the future, the picture only gets worse, the CBO said.READ MORE: WT
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(Reuters) - U.N. human rights experts warned that asylum seekers could face torture if not given safe harbor and the Vatican called for openness to other cultures on Wednesday, adding to a drumbeat of international criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump’s travel curbs. Trump’s executive order last Friday put a 120-day halt on the U.S. refugee program, barred Syrian refugees indefinitely and imposed a 90-day suspension on people from seven predominantly Muslim countries - Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The move, which his administration says is aimed at protecting the United States from terrorist attacks, has been condemned by many countries and has sparked protests and court challenges in the United States. A panel of U.N. human rights experts urged the Trump administration on Wednesday to protect people fleeing war and persecution, and said the measure contravened international humanitarian and human rights laws. It “risks people being returned, without proper individual assessments and asylum procedures, to places in which they risk being subjected to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” the experts said in a statement. The experts, including the U.N. special rapporteurs on migrants, racism, human rights and counter-terrorism, torture, and freedom of religion, also said the measure could lead to “increased stigmatization of Muslim communities.” The Vatican, in its first comment on the order, said it was concerned. “Certainly there is worry because we are messengers of another culture, that of openness,” the Vatican’s deputy secretary of state, Archbishop Angelo Becciu, told an Italian Catholic television station. “Pope Francis, in fact, insists on the ability to integrate those who arrive in our societies and cultures,” he said, also commenting on Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. In Iran, President Hassan Rouhani stepped up his criticism of Trump’s immigration policies, including the travel ban, dismissing the U.S. businessman-turned-president as a political novice. Tehran has already vowed to respond with legal, political and reciprocal measures. “It will take him a long time and will cost the United States a lot, until he learns what is happening in the world,” Rouhani said in an address on state television. Libya’s U.N.-backed government also criticized Trump’s ban on its nationals. The order has put in question participation of Libyans invited to a conference on Libya planned in Washington this month. The measure was one of a flurry of executive orders signed by Trump, a Republican, since he took office on Jan. 20. “Everybody is arguing whether or not it is a BAN. Call it what you want, it is about keeping bad people (with bad intentions) out of country!” Trump said on Twitter early Wednesday. Reaction to the travel curbs from some Muslim majority countries not on the list of seven designated countries has been more muted. The United Arab Emirates’ foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed, said on Wednesday the ban was an internal affair not directed at any faith, and noted that most Muslims and Muslim countries were not included. The UAE, a major oil exporter, is a close ally of the United States and a member of the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamist militants in Syria. In the United States, four U.S. states - Massachusetts, New York, Virginia and Washington - have sued to overturn the order on the grounds it flouts constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.
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Putin may be the one person Obama has absolutely no influence over. With Obama unable to use his Chicago thug-like political tactics on Putin, could this finally be the end of Hillary Clinton s career in politics? Hillary Clinton sits at the center of a raging firestorm concerning her arrangement of a private email account and server set up in her home from which top secret information may have been deleted. But despite Bernie Sanders apparent annoyance with the damn emails, the scandal just exponentially intensified, when Judge Andrew Napolitano revealed on Monday that Russia has possession of around 20,000 of Clinton s emails leaving open the possibility her deletions might not have been permanent after all. There s a debate going on in the Kremlin between the Foreign Ministry and the Intelligence Services about whether they should release the 20,000 of Mrs. Clinton s emails that they have hacked into, Napolitano told Fox News Megyn Kelly in an interview for The Kelly File.https://youtu.be/oounggTI-jkWith Clinton s repeated claims she employed the personal email server only for mundane communications and non-sensitive State matters having been proven outright lies, the deletions of 31,830 emails in the new context of Napolitano s statement have suddenly become remarkably relevant.As the FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton s questionable email practices deepens, the question of who had access to what information previously located on the former secretary of state s server is now more critical than ever.One such individual, Romanian hacker Guccifer, who was abruptly extradited to the United States, revealed he had easily and repeatedly accessed Clinton s personal server and he wasn t the only one. For me, it was easy, the hacker, whose given name is Marcel Lehel Lazar, exclusively told Fox News; easy for me, for everybody. If Guccifer and Napolitano are right, Russia may, indeed, have possession of highly-sensitive information courtesy of Clinton s arrogant failure to adhere to the obligation to use a government email account during her tenure as secretary a situation worsened by the now-mendacious claim no sensitive information had been sent through the personal account.In fact, if Guccifer is to be believed as his extradition by the U.S. indicates news of the Kremlin having obtained potentially top-secret material may be the tip of a gargantuan iceberg. Using a readily available program, the Romanian hacker also claimed he observed up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world during sessions on Clinton s personal server. If just one of those unknown parties was connected to Russia, who the other nine might be could be central to the FBI s decision whether or not to charge Clinton for mishandling classified information.Adding yet another nail in the coffin case against Hillary on Thursday, the Hill reported conservative watchdog Judicial Watch revealed, pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act request, frustration with technical difficulties in obtaining a secure phone line led the secretary to direct a top aide to abandon the effort and call her without the necessary security in place. I give up. Call me on my home [number], Clinton wrote in a February 2009 email from the newly-released batch on the also notoriously unsecured server to then-chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.Via: Zero Hedge
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The strength of anti-establishment fervor in the 2016 president campaign faces a twin test Saturday, with Donald Trump favored to win the Republican primary in the crucial state of South Carolina and Sen. Bernie Sanders battling Hillary Clinton for supremacy in the Democratic caucuses in Nevada.
Establishment Republicans have yet to fully coalesce around an alternative to Trump, though Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who stumbled in New Hampshire, hopes to rebound in Saturday’s balloting in South Carolina and cement himself in that role.
Clinton still enjoys strong support from the Democratic establishment, and her goal in Nevada is to blunt the momentum Sanders acquired from a victory in New Hampshire and then move on next week to South Carolina, where she enjoys broad support from African Americans.
A big Trump victory in the Palmetto State would stamp him clearly as the Republican front-runner, while a Sanders win in Nevada would raise more questions about Clinton’s appeal and add to the pressure on her to score a big victory in South Carolina.
All polls in South Carolina show Trump leading, though they differ over the size of his margin ahead of the next two candidates, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rubio. In Nevada, where polls are scarcer, Sanders and Clinton appear to be in a dead heat. The Vermont senator has appealed to younger Hispanics to support his candidacy in an effort to counter claims that he cannot attract minority votes.
South Carolina’s Republican primary has a history of identifying the eventual nominee and often embracing the establishment’s choice of candidates. That pattern was broken four years ago when former House speaker Newt Gingrich handily defeated Mitt Romney. Trump threatens to do the same with a victory Saturday, which would further unsettle party regulars.
This weekend marks one of the few times when the Democratic and Republican calendars diverge. Republicans will hold caucuses in Nevada on Tuesday, and Democrats will have their primary in South Carolina on Feb. 27.
[In S.C., the GOP contest looks more and more like a three-man race]
As the leading outsiders in the presidential race, Trump and Sanders continue to underscore the frustrations with politics as usual on both the left and right. Trump has tapped anti-immigration sentiment in particular and has drawn energy from working-class white voters. Sanders has energized younger voters as part of a grass-roots constituency that has given his candidacy surprising strength.
“There is a shift in the establishment and thinking of Republicans in South Carolina from mainstream, center-right Republicans to angry, hard-right Republicans,” said Katon Dawson, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman who is not aligned with any candidate. “It’s a monumental shift against the pillars of our society: our government and our elected officials.”
That reality has put establishment candidates on the defensive in South Carolina, and none more so than former Florida governor Jeb Bush. Once the nominal front-runner for the GOP nomination, Bush could find his candidacy in serious jeopardy if he finishes poorly Saturday, as some polls suggest. The other establishment candidate, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is hoping for a finish just strong enough to justify his focus on the March 8 Michigan primary as his best hope for a victory.
The tone of the South Carolina campaign has been overwhelmingly negative, and not only because of the millions of dollars in attack ads that flooded television stations in the final week. The candidates themselves have carried on an acrid dialogue in which the words “liar” and “lying” have been injected into campaign rhetoric at a volume rarely seen even in a state known for brutal intraparty contests.
[Liar, liar: A charged word is now common in the GOP race]
In the last hours before the primary, Trump sought to brush off two recent controversies — one involving former president George W. Bush, whom Trump accused of lying about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War in 2003, and the other with Pope Francis, who branded the New York billionaire as un-Christian for his views on immigration.
During a town hall meeting hosted by CNN on Thursday night, Trump softened his tone toward the pontiff and equivocated when pressed by a voter about whether he truly believed that Bush had lied before launching the invasion.
But Trump opened up a new line of attack Friday, calling on supporters to boycott Apple, which has refused requests from the federal government to help unlock an iPhone that was carried by one of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists.
Rubio spent Friday flying around the state, accompanied by a trio of leading South Carolina Republicans who have endorsed him: Gov. Nikki Haley, Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Trey Gowdy. He pressed his argument that he alone among the candidates can unify the party.
But Rubio stressed that would not be enough to win a general election. “We can’t just unite,” he said. “We also have to grow.” In an effort to amplify the message that Rubio represents the future of a more diverse party, Haley described the tableau of a Cuban American senator, African American senator, Indian American governor and white member of Congress as “what the new conservative movement looks like, because it looks like a Benetton commercial.”
Cruz, meanwhile, appeared at a boisterous midday rally in Charleston, where he was interviewed by Fox News anchor Sean Hannity and joined by three conservative endorsers of his own: Rep. Mark Sanford, a former governor here who had not previously declared his support; Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty” fame; and David Limbaugh, brother of radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
Cruz told the crowd that the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia leaves the high court — and with it many conservative principles — “hanging in the balance.”
He said that before they cast votes they should ask, “Who do we know beyond a shadow of a doubt will nominate and fight to confirm principled constitutionalists who will protect the Bill of Rights?”
Meanwhile, Bush brought in family reinforcements for a final-hours appeal to South Carolinians, campaigning alongside his mother, Barbara Bush. Sixteen years ago, South Carolina resurrected the campaign of George W. Bush after a loss in New Hampshire, and brother Jeb Bush hopes voters will give him a better-than-expected result Saturday.
Trump is favored to win here, but critics say that a disappointing finish could suggest weakness ahead of a round of Southern primaries on March 1. The impact of his recent feud with the pope and his attacks on George W. Bush will be measured against trend lines of late-deciding voters.
Trump faces persistent doubts about whether he has enough supporters to withstand a one-on-one contest in which mainstream conservatives are consolidated behind another candidate.
Katie Packer, who runs an anti-Trump super PAC and was deputy campaign manager for Romney’s 2012 campaign, said she believes South Carolina has the potential to reframe the race as a three-person contest between Trump, Cruz and Rubio.
“There’s still some iterations to be had,” she said. “Everybody wants to rush for this race to be over. . . . We have to be patient and let the voters decide.”
That is a view held by many in the party who fear the impact in November on Republican candidates in other races if Trump is the nominee.
For Clinton, Nevada was supposed to be where months of painstaking grass-roots organizing, plus goodwill in minority communities, would put a stop to Sanders’s momentum after the contests in Iowa and New Hampshire, far less diverse states.
Instead, in an effort to help stanch the bleeding of minority votes, especially from Latinos, Clinton’s surrogates have turned sharply to Sanders’s record on immigration issues, which they said has been checkered by votes in favor of anti-immigration bills and a vote against comprehensive immigration reform in 2007.
Clinton’s campaign has been playing down the importance of the Nevada vote in calls and other discussions with donors and key political supporters. The caucus format plays to Sanders’s grass-roots strengths, and the likely electorate is far less diverse than the state population as a whole, Clinton aides have told donors since her 22-point defeat in New Hampshire.
To emphasize her focus on South Carolina, Clinton received a boost Friday when the influential Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) offered his support. “I believe that the future of the Democratic Party and the United States of America will be best served with the experience and know-how of Hillary Clinton as our 45th president,” Clyburn said.
At a late-morning stop in Elko, Nev., Sanders urged a crowd of 575 people packed into a high school gym to participate in Saturday’s caucuses.
“I hope we have a huge — no, yuuuugge — turnout,” Sanders said, playfully stretching out the word in an acknowledgment of how his Brooklyn accent is parodied on “Saturday Night Live” and elsewhere now that he is a national figure.
Sanders’s advisers argue that his message is resonating here in no small part because Nevada was hit hard during the financial crisis and is still feeling the hangover.
“No state more than Nevada understands the impact of Wall Street’s greed and illegal behavior,” Sanders told reporters Thursday en route from Washington to Las Vegas.
Phillip reported from Las Vegas and DelReal from Greenville, S.C. Anne Gearan in Washington; Jenna Johnson in North Charleston, S.C.; Sean Sullivan and Ed O’Keefe in Greenville; John Wagner in Elko, Nev.; Robert Costa in Charleston; and Philip Rucker in Columbia, S.C., contributed to this report.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Friday warned other countries and groups against using Lebanon as vehicle for a larger proxy fight in the Middle East, saying the United States strongly backed Lebanon s independence. Tillerson said he recognized Saad al-Hariri as Lebanon s prime minister and called him a strong partner of the United States. Hariri unexpectedly resigned his post at the weekend from the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh and accused Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah of sowing strife in the Arab world. His resignation thrust Lebanon into the front line of a regional competition between Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran that has also buffeted Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Bahrain. Tillerson s backing of Hariri and the Lebanese government contrasted sharply with the approach taken by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia which has lumped Lebanon with Hezbollah as parties hostile to it. There is no legitimate place or role in Lebanon for any foreign forces, militias or armed elements other than the legitimate security forces of the Lebanese state, Tillerson said in a statement. Lebanese authorities have said Hariri is being held against his will in Saudi Arabia, a charge that Riyadh has denied. Tillerson earlier said there was no indication Hariri was being held in Saudi Arabia against his will but that Washington was monitoring the situation. Tillerson s statement said there was no legitimate role in Lebanon for any foreign forces, militias or armed elements - an apparent reference to Hezbollah and its regional backer, Iran. But Tillerson also cautioned against any party, within or outside Lebanon, using Lebanon as a venue for proxy conflicts or in any manner contributing to instability in that country.
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There’s a moment in the rapper A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie’s single “Friend Zone” that encapsulates the conundrum — and also opportunity — facing New York . In the song, after meeting a girl, he tries talking her up. “I’m from New York,” he tells her. “She like my accent. ” That the tongue of New York — the birthplace of — would be anything but the genre’s normative voice is a reality that local rappers have been ignoring for years now, even as rap’s center abandoned this city for ones far away: Atlanta, Miami, Toronto and beyond. New York is rap’s ancestral home, and also, it turns out, home to its greatest stylistic conservatives, stubbornly standing their ground while the crowds disperse. And yet New York retains a sort of mystique: To become the sound of the city still feels like a goal. But for more than a decade, such consensus has been tough to come by — every attempt at a new New York style was greeted with skepticism and reluctance. A Boogie may have cracked the code. “I think about it a lot every day,” he said one evening last week. “I’m responsible for things right now in my city. It’s a lot of pressure. ” The rapper was in the back seat of a black S. U. V. slowly making its way around Highbridge, a geographically isolated corner of the southwest Bronx where he was born and largely raised. Every now and again, he would open up the window to call out to an old friend or point to a personal landmark and tell a story. Over there, an apartment building where he used to record in a closet. A couple of blocks away, a stoop on which he wrote the lyrics for “Bando,” one of his hits. When the driver tried to turn onto one busy block, A Boogie stopped him: “This is the bad block right here,” he said. At the beginning of this year, A Boogie — born Artist Dubose — was still a fixture in this neighborhood. But on Valentine’s Day, he released his debut mixtape, “Artist,” full of songs that merged sensitivity and bluster delivered in strident, melodies. By this summer, a handful of his tracks — “Friend Zone,” the tough “Bando,” the breezy “My ______” — had become fixtures on New York radio and made A Boogie the most promising young rapper the city has produced in some time. He has found a way to make a New York rap sound that’s modern, not preoccupied with the formalist bullies of the 1990s (the L. O. X. DMX) that still define the city to so many. A few times in recent years, new New York sounds arrived and threatened upheaval: ASAP Rocky’s polyregionalism, French Montana’s morbid celebrations, the occasional “Chicken Noodle Soup” novelty. But A Boogie’s sound acknowledges the youthful power of the internet and the inclusion of melody in while still being rooted in New York roughneck business. “There’s so few New York movements — we’ve got to be a part of this one,” said Craig Kallman, the chairman and chief executive of Atlantic Records, who signed Highbridge the Label, A Boogie’s label, to a joint venture. Several of the songs on “Artist” were inspired by a rocky situation with a girlfriend, including a pregnancy scare. While writing about that experience, A Boogie began experimenting with how to best manipulate his voice, landing on a creaky, sweet, melodic style delivered with a bruiser’s cadence. “I was always scared to use that around people,” he said. “Even to this day, I’m still developing my voice. I used it again in a different type of mood song, like a hood song, and it sounded crazy again and I was like, ‘Damn, this is the voice right here.’ It made me want to do mad music in different moods. ” That’s meant flexibility in approach: sometimes his most rugged subject matter — on “Artist,” and also “Highbridge the Label: The Takeover Vol. 1,” the mixtape he released in May with his labelmate Don Q — comes in the softest voice, and vice versa. If there is a New York legacy A Boogie belongs to, it is perhaps the long tail of the era of gangsters, from Biggie Smalls and the Bad Boy label to the days of 50 Cent and Ja Rule. Still, Mr. Kallman noted, “I don’t think necessarily the focus on the history is essential. ” Besides, it is a promising moment for young New York rappers, from A Boogie and Don Q to sly ruffians like Young M. A. to sharp lyricists like Dave East. Indeed, A Boogie’s rise has been almost completely — reminiscent of Bobby Shmurda’s rapid ascent in 2014, but without a dance to encourage virality. He began by posting songs on Soundcloud, and also Facebook, where he would ask fans who liked samples of his songs if he could tag them when the full version was released. That became a sort of street marketing team. Soon after he released “Artist,” he first heard one of his songs on Hot 97, the venerated New York radio station, while he happened to be streaming on Facebook Live. By April, he performed a show at B. B. King Blues Club Grill. Around that time, he began a string of club performances alongside the Hot 97 D. J. and longtime New York rap agitator Funkmaster Flex, who first learned about A Boogie from the bloggers on his website, and from requests in Bronx nightclubs. “For the first time in a while, that New York sound, people are looking to put in their clubs up and down the East Coast,” Funkmaster Flex said, before adding, “I don’t want to rush anything and say we’re back. I don’t want to jinx it. ” When A Boogie was young, he said, he sold marijuana “to get the money to get to the studio. ” After getting in trouble as a teenager, he and his family relocated to Florida, where he was arrested at least five times, on charges including burglary and drug possession. (“I didn’t hurt nobody,” he said.) His last year there, he was on house arrest, though he would sneak out to work with a local producer. He returned to Highbridge last summer, but a few months ago moved to a house in Westchester, and more recently, to one in New Jersey, which he shares with Don Q and the label’s owners, QP and Bubba. “There’s a lot of hate,” he said. “Not in the neighborhood, but outside the neighborhood, and people bring that over here. I don’t never know who’s out here no more. ” A few weeks ago, one of his friends was shot and killed in the neighborhood. “I felt like it could have been me,” he said. Around the same time, he performed onstage with Drake during three consecutive shows at Madison Square Garden. After the visit to Highbridge, A Boogie’s S. U. V. made its way to Blast Off Productions near Times Square, a tiny hotbox of a studio with Drake platinum plaques on the lobby wall and speakers strong enough to shake the doors. Even though he was feeling under the weather, he bought a box of Raw rolling papers in the smoke shop downstairs, then headed upstairs for a recording session. After a quick meal from Steak ’n Shake, A Boogie began rolling up some weed in the lobby while in the background, a surly beat throbbed. Soon he began singing in that appealingly cracked voice: He mumbled a few musical phrases to himself, then tried a couplet: “Right when you thought that I was so ’s when you turned me into a savage,” lingering over the vowel sounds and pushing his voice even further into scratched territory. “I ain’t wanna make that type of song just now,” he said. “I’m happy today. ” But the beat was putting him in a different head space, and squeezing out a different voice. “I’m gonna get back in that bag, talk about my feelings,” he said, then closed his eyes and found the melody.
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