Datasets:

---

OsBaran

/

en_news_dataset

like 0

Elections only work if the population consents to the legitimacy of the other side’s victory, and that’s why Donald Trump’s sour grapes rhetoric about voter fraud is so dangerous. Trump, of course, isn’t alone in his degenerate thinking, but honestly, he’s got the biggest stage to preach it from. And he’s only ramped that rhetoric up as the polls have shown his campaign going downhill. It’s not enough to make me comfortable — I hope that American liberals get out and vote against him — but it’s enough to make Trump feel the burn. His claims of voter fraud are little more than whining, but that doesn’t stop people from believing claims like the one he made at a Colorado rally on Saturday, where he said election officials would throw away mail-in ballots if they don’t “like” them. “Real Problem” However, it’s worth analyzing his previous claims all the same. Trump claimed that an International Cabal of Bankers is conspiring with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim to “rig” the American election and bring a permanent end to the United States . If this sounds completely insane to you, that’s because it is. However, it’s worth noting the things that the average American is going to miss in that statement. For instance, “international cabal of bankers” is pretty transparent talk for “Jews.” One of the major conspiracy theories of these Antisemitic loons is the International Jewish banker conspiracy — it’s so important that it has its own fiction novel devoted to it (it was one of Henry Ford’s favorite books): Protocols of the Elders of Zion . In fact, when I typed “cabal of international bankers” in Google, it helpfully suggested “elders of zion” as a related search. Given his voter base consists of white nationalists, the KKK, neo-Nazis, and racists in general, it shouldn’t surprise you to learn he might as well be quoting from the seminal work of Antisemitism. And if you think I’m reading too much into this, let me remind you that his foreign policy advisor allegedly said that the Nazi ovens were “too small” to kill six million Jewish people . His alt-right supporters have savaged Jewish reporter simply for being Jewish . Antisemitism swirls around the man. Trump’s latest made up accusations aren’t couched in the same extremely transparent and Antisemitic rhetoric that his usual accusations are. Instead, they’re the sort of straightforward nonsense that we’ve come to expect from Agent Orange when he attempts to speak a mind he doesn’t have. While speaking before a Colorado rally on Saturday, Trump told the audience that election officials are going to “throw out” mail-in ballots they disagree with, saying: “I have real problems with ballots being sent. People say, oh, here’s a ballot, bing. Here’s another ballot, throw it away. Oh, here’s one I like, we’ll keep that one.” Trump talks voter fraud in Colorado; says he has a "real problem" with mail in ballots. (h/t @ergold ) pic.twitter.com/FS0LUOhIVc — Ali Vitali (@alivitali) October 29, 2016 Trump seems to think that there are going to be a “lot of people watching” to make sure that the ballots are correct, which is utterly delusional at best and disastrous at worst. These walking poster children for Dunning-Kruger have no idea what they’re doing; they’re armed, emotionally charged, racist, clueless, and out to protect “their country”— which doesn’t include people like me. Perhaps they should all wear brown shirts, too. That way, police know who to remove once they’ve cast their vote. “We’re trying to have some pretty good supervision out there,” he warned. Sure you are. If by “supervision” you mean people carrying out voter intimidation. Because that’s exactly what’ll happen. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images Share this Article!

Donald Trump has now taken his threats to North Korea off Twitter and is making them to the public. Quite frankly, the situation is getting more terrifying as the days go on.After tweeting this morning that U.S. military solutions were locked and loaded, Trump made some very disturbing comments when speaking to reporters this afternoon at his New Jersey golf course, where he is enjoying a 17-day vacation.When a reporter asked Trump about his ominous tweet, Trump stated that he meant exactly what he said and that his words are very, very easy to understand. Trump also said that the Trump administration would be very, very successful in acting swiftly on North Korea, right before directly attacking North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Trump said: And if he utters one threat in the form of an overt threat, which, by the way, he has been uttering for years, and his family has been uttering for years, or if he does anything with respect to Guam or any place else that s an American territory or an American ally, he will truly regret it, and he will regret it fast. This all began when Trump threatened North Korea with fire and fury on Tuesday, and now we re here. Trump is leading America down a dangerous road, and he barely understands the consequences that will follow. He carelessly speaks through his insecurities and fragile ego and shows no concern for how irresponsible his comments actually are. Trump is more concerned with looking like a tough leader (and like a dictator) than he is with improving the country and keeping peaceful working relations with the rest of the world. If this is the kind of disaster we are looking at just a few months into Trump s presidency, the world will be in shambles if he lasts four years.You can watch this disturbing Trump footage below:Featured image via Drew Angerer /Getty Images

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Congress is divided over whether to privatize the nation’s air traffic control system as both chambers advance bills to expand airline passenger protections. On Thursday, the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee adopted legislation that includes Federal Aviation Administration reforms, but unlike a House panel, does not spin off air traffic control and leaves it with the FAA. “The support is not there,” said Senator Bill Nelson, the top Democrat on the panel. The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee approved the privatization plan on Tuesday, putting air traffic control under the oversight of a nonprofit corporation. President Donald Trump has said the move would modernize air traffic control and lower flying costs. The proposal has drawn fire from private plane owners and rural airports. Critics say it would hand control of a key asset to special interests and big airlines. American Airlines Group Inc, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines Co and JetBlue Airways Corp all back the proposal. Congress has until Sept. 30 to reauthorize the FAA, but Republican Senator John Thune, chairman of the committee, said the Senate may not take up the proposal until after the August recess, potentially leaving little time to come up with a compromise measure. The Senate bill would require new rules prohibiting cancellation, baggage, seat selection and same day change fees that are not “reasonable and proportional.” Airlines for America, an airline trade group, said it would result in “government-mandated price controls” and should be rejected. In 2016, U.S. airlines collected $7.1 billion in baggage and reservation change fees. Both measures would make it illegal for an airline to bump an already boarded passenger from a flight. In April, a United passenger was forcibly removed from his seat, prompting public outrage. The airline has since banned the practice. The Senate bill also requires new rules that would mandate airlines promptly refund passengers for baggage fees or other fees if they do not receive services. The House bill would require the FAA to set minimum seat sizes on U.S. airlines and a minimum distance between rows to “protect the safety and health of airline passengers.” The average distance between rows of seats has dropped from 35 inches in the 1970s to about 31 inches today, supporters say, and the average width of airline seats has shrunk from 18 inches to about 16-1/2 inches. One contentious issue is training requirements for pilots, and whether certain simulated training hours can be counted. Thune said that two-thirds of U.S. airports are only served by regional carriers and that there is a “crisis” in trying to attract pilots, while Democrats said the revised rules could lead to unqualified pilots. Both bills would seek to speed approval of some commercial drone use and testing, while studying privacy implications. The measures also require medium- and large-sized airports to provide clean private rooms in all terminals for nursing mothers and would enshrine a ban on making in-flight mobile phone calls in law. The Senate bill would direct a study of airplane air quality and require a study of whether airlines are shrinking airplane bathrooms to add more seats.

Remember Joni Ernst? Conservatives were so excited to see her win a Senate seat in Iowa. You may be surprised to see who this patriot supported with her vote(below).Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities and Accountability Act of 2015Senate Vote 218 Advances Trade Promotion AuthorityResult: Cloture Motion Agreed to by a margin of 0 votes Date of Vote: June 23, 2015 Time of Vote: 11:04 a.m. Roll Call Number: 218 Yes Votes (60) Lamar Alexander R TN Kelly Ayotte R NH John Barrasso R WY Michael Bennet D CO Roy Blunt R MO John Boozman R AR Richard M. Burr R NC Maria Cantwell D WA Shelley Moore Capito R WV Thomas R. Carper D DE Bill Cassidy R LA Daniel Coats R IN Thad Cochran R MS Christopher A. Coons D DE John Cornyn R TX Tom Cotton R AR Michael D. Crapo R ID Steve Daines R MT Michael B. Enzi R WY Joni Ernst R IA Dianne Feinstein D CA Deb Fischer R NE Jeff Flake R AZ Cory Gardner R CO Lindsey Graham R SC Charles E. Grassley R IA Orrin G. Hatch R UT Heidi Heitkamp D ND Dean Heller R NV John Hoeven R ND James M. Inhofe R OK Johnny Isakson R GA Ron Johnson R WI Tim Kaine D VA Mark Steven Kirk R IL James Lankford R OK John McCain R AZ Claire McCaskill D MO Mitch McConnell R KY Jerry Moran R KS Lisa Murkowski R AK Patty Murray D WA Bill Nelson D FL David Perdue R GA Rob Portman R OH Jim Risch R ID Pat Roberts R KS Mike Rounds R SD Marco Rubio R FL Ben Sasse R NE Tim Scott R SC Jeanne Shaheen D NH Dan Sullivan R AK John Thune R SD Thom Tillis R NC Patrick J. Toomey R PA David Vitter R LA Mark Warner D VA Roger Wicker R MS Ron Wyden D ORNo Votes (37) Tammy Baldwin D WI Richard Blumenthal D CT Cory Booker D NJ Barbara Boxer D CA Sherrod Brown D OH Benjamin L. Cardin D MD Bob Casey D PA Susan Collins R ME Ted Cruz R TX Joe Donnelly D IN Richard J. Durbin D IL Al Franken D MN Kirsten E. Gillibrand D NY Martin Heinrich D NM Mazie K. Hirono D HI Angus King I ME Amy Klobuchar D MN Patrick J. Leahy D VT Joe Manchin III D WV Edward J. Markey D MA Jeff Merkley D OR Barbara A. Mikulski D MD Christopher S. Murphy D CT Rand Paul R KY Gary Peters D MI Jack Reed D RI Harry Reid D NV Bernard Sanders I VT Brian Schatz D HI Charles E. Schumer D NY Jeff Sessions R AL Richard C. Shelby R AL Debbie Stabenow D MI Jon Tester D MT Tom Udall D NM Elizabeth Warren D MA Sheldon Whitehouse D RIDid Not Vote (3) Bob Corker R TN Mike Lee R UT Robert Menendez D NJVia: NYT s

AMMAN (Reuters) - Russian and Syrian jets killed at least 150 civilians and injured dozens in over a week of heavy bombing that shattered a six-month halt in intensive aerial raids in opposition-held northwestern parts of Syria, opposition rescue workers said on Wednesday. The renewed bombing campaign came after an array of jihadist rebels led by the former Qaeda offshoot in Syria last week waged a wide-scale offensive against government-controlled areas in northern Hama. We have pulled 152 bodies and we have rescued 279 civilians since the Russian and regime bombing campaign, said Salem Abu al Azem, a senior rescue worker from the opposition-run Civil Defence in Idlib, adding bodies were still being pulled out of the wreckage of buildings flattened by air raids. Russia s defense ministry says it is attacking hard-line Islamist militants. It denies accusations it has targeted infrastructure and medical centers to force rebels into local truces that effectively restore President Bashar al Assad s grip on the country. Civil defense officials and other humanitarian aid workers have documented the destruction of six hospitals, five defense centers, and power stations in the first few days of the bombing campaign alongside hitting camps where displaced civilians have been sheltering. Rebels and witnesses differentiate easily Russian jets from Syrian planes with the former flying in sorties at high altitudes making drops with devastating impact. The strikes began with intensive bombing of towns and cities in southern Idlib where the jihadists have a large presence but in recent days have spread to most towns across the province that borders Turkey. Thousands of families have fled from towns such as Jisr al Shqour and Jabal al Zawya to rural areas less exposed to daily bombing and shelling, aid workers said. The bombing campaign however comes shortly after a tripartite deal struck by Moscow, Ankara and Tehran to deploy an observer force in Idlib, a province where the former al Qaeda Syrian offshoot has cemented its control after it crushed opponents. The Kremlin said earlier this week Russia s president Vladimir Putin was expected to meet his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan on a visit to Ankara on Thursday. Syrian rebel officials says Turkey wants to get the approval of Moscow, the power with the dominant role in Syria, to press ahead with its widely anticipated plan to deploy troops in Idlib.

PARIS (Reuters) - France announced a one-billion-euro plan for universities on Monday, promising to offer more places on popular courses, cut drop-out rates and build more accommodation, in a bid to assuage the concerns of politically powerful students. President Emmanuel Macron s government has already faced down street protests over labour reform and risks more industrial action over plans to reform the pension and unemployment insurance systems. It wants to avoid confrontation with students who have forced past governments into policy u-turns with protracted rallies. The government said the 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) will be spent over the five years of Macron s term in office. Students in France who pass high school exams have the right to go to university in their home area. But this has led to popular subjects such as law and psychology being heavily oversubscribed and prompted the introduction of an unpopular lottery system where demand is highest. That lottery system will now be scrapped and the most pressed universities will be allowed to select students on merit. The proposal stops short of a blanket UK-style selection system that student unions had opposed. France s biggest student union, the moderate Fage, welcomed the plan. Two other unions, including the left-wing Unef, the second largest, were critical. Unef has said it will join CGT-led protests against government reforms on Nov.16 and urged students to make their voice heard against the education reform. Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, has also urged students to mobilise after his early attempts to get workers onto the streets against the easing of unemployment laws failed. Macron has got the advantage for now, let s not hide it, Melenchon told franceinfo radio. If youths got moving, things would be different, but it s not the case for now. The reforms also include 60,000 new student housing units over the next five years and promise to scrap student s social security contributions and increase tutoring. Only 40 percent of students complete the first year of university, the government said. Our aim is to ensure equal opportunities, said University Minister Frederique Vidal. We want to make university more accessible by accompanying students, in all their diversity.

Who won the debate tonight? Donald J. Trump or the Lester Holt-Clinton team?NBC News Lester Holt had his Candy Crowley moment at the first debate of the 2016 presidential election on Monday night, bowing to pressure from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the liberal media by fact-checking Republican nominee Donald Trump on the question of his support for the Iraq War.Holt lived up to the expectations of his peers. But he lived down to the worst expectations of conservatives, who routinely see Republican candidates treated unfairly by debate moderators.Hillary also went over the 2 minute mark several times, while there were several times when Lester Holt would cut Donald Trump off after only having a little over a minute to answer a question. Again and again, Holt asked Trump tough questions that were straight from the Clinton campaign s talking points, and which were obvious set-ups for Clinton to attack (and for fact-checkers to pounce on whatever Trump asserted in his own defense).Here are the five worst examples.Tax returns. Holt never asked Clinton about her e-mail scandal, about Benghazi, or about the Clinton Foundation and its dubious dealings. But he did ask Trump about his tax returns, arguing not asking that there might be questionable information in them that the American public deserved to hear.Birther conspiracy theory. Holt never asked Clinton about her past record of racist statements, including her super-predator remarks as First Lady, or her explicit appeal to white Americans in her 2008 primary campaign against Obama. Yet he asked Trump about the Birther conspiracy theory and cast it as racist.Stop-and-frisk. After an exchange between the candidates over the policy of stop-and-frisk, Holt interjected to bolster Clinton s point by stating, erroneously, that stop-and-frisk had ended in New York because it had been declared unconstitutional by a court. Trump countered, correctly, that the new mayor had canceled the policy before the litigation was over. A presidential look. Towards the end of the debate, Holt asked Trump about what he meant by saying Hillary Clinton did not have a presidential look. He did so after noting that Clinton had become the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party, thus setting Trump up as a sexist. As Trump answered, Holt interrupted him, then gave Clinton a chance to respond with her talking points about Trump s past comments on women.Iraq War. The question of whether Trump supported the Iraq War or not has been widely debated. What is beyond doubt is that Hillary Clinton voted for it. Holt only represented one side of the debate about Trump, and never asked Clinton about her own vote. Via: Breitbart

TRIPOLI (Reuters) - The bodies of 21 Egyptian Christians killed by Islamic State in its former Libyan stronghold of Sirte have been recovered, the attorney general s office said on Friday. The bodies were found in the same orange jumpsuits the victims were wearing when they were filmed being killed in the coastal city in February 2015, according to a statement provided to Libya s Al-Ahrar TV channel. Sadiq al-Sour, the head of investigations for the attorney general s office, said last week that the area where the bodies were buried had been identified after a captured commander gave details of its whereabouts. Islamic State took control of Sirte in 2015 and lost the city late last year to local forces backed by U.S. air strikes.

GENEVA (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Tuesday it had accepted a proposal from Iraq to pay 0.5 percent of its 2018 oil proceeds toward compensation for $4.6 billion owed to Kuwait for destruction of its oil facilities during the 1990-91 Gulf War occupation. Payments from the fund, which were suspended since October 2014 due to security and budgetary challenges faced by Iraq, will escalate annually until the end of 2021, the U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC) said in a statement, adding that Kuwait had accepted the proposal. Based on oil price and export projections, this would result in payment in full of the outstanding claim award, it said, referring to the claim by the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, the largest approved by the Geneva-based UNCC.

Now that she s finally beaten the old cranky socialist in one state .Hillary s on fire! Hillary tells crowd, We don t need to make America great again, it s already great. The big question is, can Hillary do everything she promised from a jail cell?The best part of her speech is when she reminds the crowd that her campaign is being funded by the Clinton Slush Fund, Hollywood vagina voters and Wall Street grassroots donors. Hillary says, Tomorrow this campaign goes national . Maybe I m missing something but hasn t it been national for a long time? Hasn t everyone known she s been running for president for the last 25 years? Grass roots donors are powering this campaign. That s rich, given her big donor backing is the bulwark her campaign. She then begs for people to go to her website and donate money. This victory is for the parents and teachers in rural South Carolina , she says with affected accent.She s clearly positioning herself as the unifier . We re going to start by working together, with more love and kindness in our hearts and more respect for each other, even when we disagree. And she s already telegraphing how she would attack Trump, if he were the nominee. Despite what you hear, we don t need to make America great again, America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers. She then went on to lie about the facts in several high profile deaths of black young people.Hillary finds her manufactured southern drawl at about the 1:55 mark. https://youtu.be/W7gWvv6WfawVia: Weasel Zippers

21st Century Wire says Our weekly documentary film curated by our editorial team at 21WIRE.Aside from the collapse of WTC Building 7, a major achilles heel in the official 9/11 version of events is tale of a passenger airliner hitting the Pentagon. The following independent investigative documentary may offer some key insight into this incident, and depending on whether you believe its findings are credible may even prove beyond a doubt that no Boeing passenger airliner struck the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.To date, it remains one of the most compelling presentations illustrating what happened, or more precisely what did not happen on 9/11. Watch: SEE MORE SUNDAY SCREENINGS HERE

(Reuters) - In a stinging rebuke to President Donald Trump, a U.S. appeals court refused on Thursday to reinstate his travel ban on people from six Muslim-majority nations, calling it discriminatory and setting the stage for a showdown in the Supreme Court. The decision, written by Chief Judge Roger Gregory, described Trump’s executive order in forceful terms, saying it uses “vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus, and discrimination.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement that the government, which says the temporary travel ban is needed to guard against terrorist attacks, would seek a review of the case at the Supreme Court. “These clearly are very dangerous times and we need every available tool at our disposal to prevent terrorists from entering the United States and committing acts of bloodshed and violence,” said Michael Short, a White House spokesman. MORE FROM REUTERS  * Kushner under FBI scrutiny in Russia probe: media reports * Ireland looks set to elect gay premier in social, generational shift * EXCLUSIVE: Kim Jong Un's 'rocket stars' He added that the White House was confident the order would ultimately be upheld by the judiciary. In its 10-3 ruling, the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals said those challenging the ban, including refugee groups and individuals, were likely to succeed on their claim that the order violates the U.S. Constitution’s bar against favoring one religion over another. Gregory cited statements by Trump during the 2016 presidential election calling for a Muslim ban. During the race, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslim’s entering the United States” in a statement on his website. The judge wrote that a reasonable observer would likely conclude the order’s “primary purpose is to exclude persons from the United States on the basis of their religious beliefs.” The government had argued that the court should not take into account Trump’s comments on the campaign trail since they occurred before he took office on Jan. 20. But the appeals court rejected that view, saying they provide a window into the motivations for Trump’s action in government. The appeals court questioned a government argument that the president has wide authority to halt the entry of people to the United States. “Congress granted the President broad power to deny entry to aliens, but that power is not absolute. It cannot go unchecked when, as here, the President wields it through an executive edict that stands to cause irreparable harm to individuals across this nation,” the majority opinion said. The Virginia-based appeals court was reviewing a March ruling by Maryland-based federal judge Theodore Chuang that blocked part of Trump’s March 6 executive order barring people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen for 90 days while the government put in place stricter visa screening. A similar ruling against Trump’s policy from a Hawaii-based federal judge is still in place. That ruling went farther than Chuang’s order, blocking a section of the travel ban that also suspended refugee admissions for four months. The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is still reviewing that decision. Trump has lashed out at the judges and courts that have ruled against him, saying the 9th Circuit has a “terrible” record and calling its rulings on his policies “ridiculous.” The March ban was Trump’s second effort to implement travel restrictions through an executive order. The first, issued on Jan. 27, led to chaos and protests at airports before it was blocked by courts. The second order was intended to overcome the legal issues posed by the original ban, but it was blocked by judges before it could go into effect on March 16. In an opinion that concurred with the majority on Thursday, Judge Stephanie Thacker wrote that the administration did nothing to distance itself from the first order, describing the revised ban as “the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing.” Chief Judge Gregory, who wrote the majority opinion, was first installed in a recess appointment by Democratic President Bill Clinton and then nominated to the same post by Republican former president George W. Bush. Nine other judges appointed by Democrats agreed to block the travel ban, while three Republican-appointed judges dissented. “This to us is a complete win and overwhelming in terms of the votes,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the case in the 4th Circuit. The dissenting judges said the executive order was constitutional and a valid exercise of presidential authority, and that Trump’s campaign statements should not have come into play. The order itself “contains no reference to religion whatsoever,” Judge Paul Niemeyer wrote. The White House also pointed to a dissent by Judge Dennis Shedd that said “the real losers in this case are the millions of individual Americans whose security is threatened on a daily basis by those who seek to do us harm.” Two other 4th Circuit judges, both appointed by Republicans, were recused from the case.

VIENNA (Reuters) - Founded by former Nazis six decades ago, Austria s far-right Freedom Party (FPO) long ago left the political fringes to establish itself as a mainstream party that could now return to power following a strong showing in Sunday s election. The anti-immigration and anti-Islam party is often associated abroad with its former firebrand leader Joerg Haider, who praised Hitler s employment policies. But the FPO under Heinz-Christian Strache - its leader since the ousting of Haider in 2005 - has broad support in Austria. It led opinion polls for months before Sebastian Kurz seized control of the conservative People s Party in May and rode it to victory in Sunday s parliamentary election. Kurz has not yet named his preferred coalition partner, but the FPO could well emerge as kingmaker. The FPO, which helps govern in two provincial and several local governments, says Kurz hijacked its hardline stance on immigration and curtailing social benefits for foreigners. One thing is clear: nearly 60 percent of the Austrian population voted for the FPO program, Strache said after winning more than a quarter of the vote to the conservatives nearly 32 percent, according to projections. The FPO s performance has worried leftist and liberal Austrians, some of the country s European Union partners - including German Chancellor Angela Merkel - and the World Jewish Congress, though the party today denies being anti-Semitic or anti-EU. The FPO today is much more radical than it was when it last entered government with the (People s Party) OVP in 2000, but as society as a whole has shifted to the right it is not that obvious, said Andreas Peham, analyst at the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance that researches the far-right. In 2000, the EU imposed sanctions on Austria over the FPO s joining the government. Such a step seems unlikely today, given populist movements in Europe that drove Britain from the EU and put a far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), into the German parliament. On Monday AfD leader Joerg Meuthen hailed the FPO s result, saying: Among European parties the FPO is certainly the one closest to us. ANTI-IMMIGRANT Like the AfD in Germany s Sept 24 election, the FPO benefited from public unease about a large influx of mostly Muslim migrants and asylum seekers into Europe. Austria took in about 1 percent of its population in asylum seekers in 2015, boosting support for the FPO even among long-time immigrants. The FPO is focusing on asylum policy, not on foreigners, said Margarethe Schramek, a 51-year-old nurse who said many of her friends from Poland and ex-Yugoslavia also voted for the far right in Sunday s election. You cannot ignore the people. You are not a Nazi just because you vote for the FPO, said Schramek. Strache has worked for years to sharpen the party s focus from broadly anti-foreigner to fiercely anti-Islam. Not every Muslim is a terrorist, but nearly every terrorist in Europe in years past was a radical Islamist, he has said. Strache insists that anti-Semites have no place in today s FPO, which routinely has to expel members who step over the line. He has visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and has called anti-Semitism a crime. The FPO portrays itself as the only alternative to Austria s entrenched duopoly of the Social Democrats and conservatives, denouncing them as elitists unwilling to impose reforms. The FPO, savvy with social media, nearly got its candidate elected as Austria s president last year, but has lost some of its appeal since 31-year-old Kurz took control of the OVP. FPO supporters, until 1986 largely rural, have changed significantly, polls suggest. Like other populist parties in Europe, it has managed to mobilize less well-educated younger voters who feel left behind by globalization. The FPO s position towards the European Union has changed often. Its lawmakers voted against joining the EU in a 1994 referendum and suggested holding a referendum on Austria s continued membership after Britain s vote to leave last year. But it has since curbed its anti-EU rhetoric and now professes to be pro-Europe but wants Brussels to hand back more power to member states. It (the FPO) has no interest in an anti-EU policy in the medium term, said political analyst Peter Filzmaier. They know they wouldn t get any support for it in Austria, and they have no interest in being demonised internationally.

Monica Crowley offers some of the most brilliant political analysis in conservative media. She is brilliant, witty, and has incredible insight. When Monica Crowley gives Trump a plan on how to knock out Hillary in the first debate, he would do well to listen to her It promises to be the greatest show on earth: the first presidential debate to be held Monday night at Hofstra University in New York. Rarely has a political event attracted this kind of Super Bowl-level excitement, curiosity and anticipation. Then again, rarely have we had two presidential candidates who light up the political sky like Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.Mrs. Clinton has been on the national scene for nearly 30 years and carries all of the baggage of those tumultuous decades: endless scandals, ethical tightrope-walking, legal dodge ball, compulsive lying, slimy blame-shifting, bunker paranoia, the systematic selling of her offices for personal enrichment and the deliberate jeopardizing of the nation s most sensitive secrets for her family s gain. We know what Mrs. Clinton will do, which is what she s always done: lie, fabricate, deflect and distract. Boring and predictable. Donald Trump, on the other hand, is neither and he has the advantage of being shiny and new. What he does with that opportunity is anyone s guess. I suspect he s been rope-a-doping everybody with the we re not doing debate prep, we re just hanging out eating cheeseburgers line and will, in fact, knock out Mrs. Clinton with his command of policy, her long record of failure and the positive agenda he embraces.For a full TKO, Mr. Trump should do four main things.First, he should emphasize his pragmatic vision for turning America around: moving to pro-growth economics, restoring law and order, rebuilding the military and a strong national defense, reigniting America s influence and prestige internationally, and defeating the corrupt, rigged system (as embodied by Mrs. Clinton).As a successful presidential candidate, he must offer voters a positive, compelling reason to vote for him, rather than just against his opponent. That s why it s critical for Mr. Trump to focus on his restorative agenda for the country.Second, as a compliment to his optimistic vision, he must smash Mrs. Clinton, both as a failed leader pushing failed policies and a destructive leftist ideology and as a deeply corrupt individual who cannot must not be trusted with the presidency.She will try to swarm him with policy details to try to demonstrate that he s unprepared for the highest office in the land. She ll try to sit above the fray, winking that she s been there, done that. Well, yes. But the question is not whether she was in the game. It s how she played it and what results she produced. For her, the result was evermore power and a net worth of over $125 million. For the country, the result is that we are less wealthy, less prosperous, less safe, less secure, less powerful.Mr. Trump doesn t have to show an encyclopedic knowledge of every policy nuance. He simply has to point to the wreckage of the Obama economy and foreign policy and say: We tried it your way. Mic drop.Third, he should gaslight her (hat tip to Alfred Hitchcock) by remaining totally cool and unflappable while calmly pushing on her vulnerabilities, from her disgraceful lack of integrity to her hypocrisy concerning women to standing by silently if she s seized by one of her interminable coughing attacks.This must be done with the greatest care, taking the Reagan approach of regarding her more in sorrow than in anger: There you go again. And he should call her Mrs. Clinton in order to link her to the deeply flawed boy who brought her to the dance. For all of the talk about Mr. Trump s alleged thin skin, she is extraordinarily prickly. She has never faced a tough election fight or been questioned aggressively or criticized to her face. If Mr. Trump can get under her thin skin, he could provoke a caustic response that will reveal the cosseted elitist behind the frozen smile. Witness candidate Barack Obama s calmly delivered 2008 crack, You re likeable enough, Hillary. The steam came out of her ears for days.Finally, Mr. Trump must be a happy warrior. Most voters want to believe that he s the guy not just to fix the country but to restore their optimism with it. They want to know that he will fight the war for America s future not as a burden but as a joyful privilege. If he can exuberantly convey that America can be saved and that she is worth saving he will not just win the debate but perhaps the election.For entire article: Monica Crowley, Washington Times

(Reuters) - Negotiators from Canada, Mexico and the United States are meeting for a second round of talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, amid threats by U.S. President Donald Trump to pull out of the deal. NAFTA, first implemented in 1994, eliminates most tariffs on trade between the United States, Canada and Mexico. Critics say it has drawn jobs from the U.S. and Canada to Mexico, where workers are badly paid. Supporters say it has created U.S. jobs, and the loss of manufacturing from the United States has more to do with China than Mexico. Key issues facing negotiators include: NAFTA says in order for a good to be traded duty-free within the three countries, it must contain a certain percentage of North American content, which differs for various products. The rule of origin is most contentious in the auto industry; cars must contain at least 62.5 percent American, Canadian or Mexican content. The United States wants to increase the content threshold for NAFTA goods in a bid to return manufacturing jobs to the United States, and the auto industry has conceded that the rules should be updated to account for auto components that did not exist when the original deal was signed. Canada has said it is prepared to discuss some strengthening of rule of origin in the auto sector, but any change must apply equally to all three countries. Mexico is willing to look at strengthening rules, but warns that going too far will make the region less competitive. The United States has sought to ditch the so-called Chapter 19 tool, under which binational panels hear complaints about illegal subsidies and dumping and then issue binding decisions. The United States has frequently lost such cases since NAFTA came into effect in 1994, and the mechanism has hindered it from pursing anti-dumping and anti-subsidy cases against Canadian and Mexican companies. Washington also argues that Chapter 19 infringes on the sovereignty of its domestic laws. Canada has said Chapter 19 can be updated, but said a dispute settlement mechanism is its red line and must be part of any updated NAFTA. Mexico also says dispute settlement mechanisms are a vital part of the deal to give investors security. U.S. negotiators are seeking to allow U.S. seasonal produce growers to file anti-dumping cases against Mexico. Seasonal fruit and vegetable growers in the southeastern United States have come under increasing pressure from year-round Mexican imports under NAFTA and are seeking the ability to pursue anti-subsidy and anti-dumping cases or seek temporary import quotas. But U.S. retailers and food industry groups argue that American producers could be left open to retaliatory measures if more complaints were to be filed, for instance, against avocados, tomatoes and other produce imported from Mexico. Quotas are a feature of NAFTA in several agricultural commodities including dairy and sugar, but Washington is seeking to eliminate non-tariff barriers to U.S. agricultural exports. Most notably, U.S. President Donald Trump has called Canada s restrictions on dairy imports a disgrace. Although dairy was excluded from the original 1994 deal, the United States is seeking to eliminate non-tariff barriers to its agricultural exports. The United States is seeking a provision to deter currency manipulation. While Washington wants a mechanism to ensure the NAFTA countries avoid tinkering with exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, neither Canada nor Mexico is on the U.S. Treasury s currency manipulation watch list. Critics say the U.S. demand is an attempt to get currency manipulation into a global trade agreement to establish a precedent with other trading partners, including China. The United States is pushing for governments in Canada and Mexico to open up their tender processes to U.S.-made products but at the same time is defending existing Buy American procurement laws. The Buy American provisions have blocked the use of Canadian steel to build U.S. bridges, and Canada is pushing for a freer market for government procurement. Mexico says it expects government procurement, already included in NAFTA, to be part of the renegotiation. INVESTOR-STATE DISPUTE SETTLEMENT The United States has proposed minor tweaking of the NAFTA Chapter 11 provisions, designed to ensure that firms that invest abroad receive fair and equitable treatment by foreign governments. As with Chapter 19, opponents of the provisions argue they infringe on sovereignty which benefits multinational corporations. Canada wants to update the mechanism to allow governments to regulate in the interest of the environment or labor, as in the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement that Canada recently negotiated with the European Union.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday he wants Congress to pass legislation to protect illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children but offered no timetable, with existing safeguards due to expire in March. President Donald Trump last month rescinded a program created under his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama that protected the young adult illegal immigrants known as “Dreamers” from deportation and provided work permits. Asked in a Reuters interview whether he thought Congress could tackle legislation this year to help the “Dreamers,” Ryan said the timing was unclear. “I don’t know when we’re going to do it. We’re having lots of discussions on how to do it, and the timing is something that’s just open to debate.” “I want to do it,” Ryan said. “The goal is: we want to fix this and we’re working on it, and we want to make sure that we do it in such a way that we don’t have the same problem down the road - that means border security and interior enforcement.” The illegal immigrants protected under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are primarily Hispanic young adults. Winning passage of legislation to protect the Dreamers may not be easy, as Congress has struggled for years to approve immigration-related legislation. Trump has taken a hard-line stance against illegal immigrants. Under Trump’s action, the protections for the Dreamers disappear in the first week of March. He urged lawmakers to come up with an alternative before the protections expire. Trump took Republican congressional leaders by surprise last month when he met with top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and top House of Representatives Democrat Nancy Pelosi about a potential deal on DACA. Schumer and Pelosi came away from the meeting saying they had the outlines of an agreement with Trump, but his administration subsequently made demands that angered Democrats including for funding of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats have said they see a budget vote in early December as a chance to try to force Republicans to accept legislation to help the Dreamers. In December, Congress will need to pass legislation to continue funding the federal government through the rest of the fiscal year that ends next Sept. 30. Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, will need Democratic votes to approve the spending bill. Senate rules require a super-majority of 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to pass spending bills, and Republicans have a 52-48 majority. In the House, Republican hard-liners often oppose spending legislation.

Kellyanne Conway tried to spin White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer s lies as alternative facts and got her ass handed to her by Chuck Todd.The impromptu press briefing came two hours after Trump whined about media estimates of the inauguration crowd size during a visit at the CIA.Spicer lashed out at the media in an embarrassing display of how Trump apparently intends to use press briefings over the next four years. Yesterday, at a time when our nation and the world was watching the peaceful transition of power and, as the President said, the transition and the balance of power from Washington to the citizens of the United States, some members of the media were engaged in deliberately false reporting, Spicer claimed.He then argued at length that This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration period both in person and around the globe. Both claims are blatantly false as aerial photographs taken at the time of the inaugural address show that Trump s crowd was significantly smaller than both of President Obama s inaugurations in 2009 and 2013. Trump also only drew 31 million viewers on television, which is 7 million less than President Obama drew in 2009.Spicer also tried to blame the count on the Secret Service, but even they refuted Spicer s claim that magnetometers prevented people from filling the National Mall.Overall, Spicer s attack on the media for accurately reporting on the size of the inauguration crowd was petty and a complete pile of bullshit.But Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer s lies on Sunday during an interview on Meet The Press.Conway began by once again bragging about the election results, which happened nearly three months ago, in response to Todd asking why Trump would send Spicer out to utter a provable falsehood. Conway played the victim and then threatened Todd for asking questions she doesn t like. And then she said this: Don t be so overly dramatic about it, Chuck. They re saying it s a falsehood and our press secretary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts to that. Yes, Conway literally called the lies that Trump ordered Spicer to spew alternative facts, and Todd proceeded to hammer Conway for it. Wait a minute. Alternative facts! Four of the five facts that he uttered were just not true. Alternative facts are not facts, they re falsehoods. You sent the press secretary out there to utter a falsehood on the smallest, pettiest thing. And I don t understand why you did it. Conway then played the victim again and told Todd that the media can t prove that Spicer s numbers are wrong. I don t think you can prove those numbers one way or the other. You can laugh at me all you want. You are, and I think it s actually symbolic of the way we re treated by the press. I ll just ignore it. I m bigger than that. I m a kind and gracious person. Here s the video via NBC.But the media has already proven Spicer s claims wrong. Again, we have time-stamped aerial photographs that prove Trump s crowd size was sparse. In fact, at most, Trump drew 750,000, which is smaller than numbers drawn by President Obama in 2009 and 2013.Even PolitiFact rated Spicer s temper tantrum as pants on fire. Spicer said, That was the largest audience to witness an inauguration, period. To support his claim, Spicer offered a few pieces of misleading or inaccurate evidence.He said that floor coverings highlighting empty spaces on the National Mall were not used for previous inaugurations, but these were in place for Obama s 2013 inauguration.He claimed metro ridership was higher for Trump s inaugural than for Obama s 2013 inaugural, but he compared numbers for the morning of Obama s inaugural to the whole day for Trump s.Spicer suggested 720,000 attended Trump s inauguration, while organizers said they expected 700,000 to 900,000, and Trump himself estimated 1.5 million. All of those figures are less than the 1.8 million people who attended Obama s 2009 inaugural.We rate Spicer s claim Pants on Fire.Featured image via screenshot

If Facebook has aligned themselves with Germany to restrict the free speech of its users, what makes us so sure they won t do the same thing in the US with Obama or (God forbid) a Hillary presidency? And wouldn t Germany be better off focusing their policing efforts on the over 1 million freeloaders and terrorists they ve just admitted into Germanista?Police in Germany have started carrying out raids in peoples homes in an attempt to prosecute people for inciting hate speech on Facebook.A press release from Germany s federal police agency confirmed that around 60 homes were searched this week as a result of people posting messages deemed as extreme by the German authorities. The action carried out today shows that the authorities are acting firmly against hate on the internet, which has grown considerably in the wake of the refugee situation, said Holger M nch, head of the BKA, said in the statement. Attacks on refugees are often the result of radicalization, which begins on social networks. These words should not poison the social climate, he continued.The move comes after it was revealed in January that Mark Zuckerberg had teamed up with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in order to censor people s frustrations with her migrant policy, when she decided to open up Germany s borders to millions of migrants last year.Facebook consequently introduced a policy where they agreed to remove anything deemed as hate speech within 24 hours. Bretibart News

President Barack Obama's popularity with the public is on the upswing, according to a new Gallup poll that found him enjoying his strongest approval rating in nearly two years. That breaks down predictably along party lines, with 90% of Democrats viewing him favorably while only 13% of Republicans say the same. The overall boost in popularity seems to be driven in part by a steady improvement in his standing with independents — he's now seen favorably by 52% of independents, up 6 percentage points since April and 17 percentage points since last fall. That's when Obama was suffering from the lowest popularity his tenure, with only 37% of Americans viewing him favorably last fall. But the 53% of Americans that view him favorably don't all approve of his job performance, which typically lags a few points behind a president's personal popularity. Gallup's daily tracking poll found him still underwater with voters in terms of his job performance, with 43% approving while 51% disapprove of the job he's doing in office. Still, that, too marks a favorable upswing from last fall, when Obama was also facing some of the lowest approval ratings of his time in office. Gallup surveyed 1,024 adults from May 6-10 via landline and cell phone, and the poll has a margin of error of 4%.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former U.S. military intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning on Thursday questioned Barack Obama’s legacy after the former Democratic president commuted her sentence last week, and she called for “an unapologetic progressive leader” to fight for minorities’ rights. While not mentioning U.S. President Donald Trump by name, Manning wrote in Britain’s the Guardian that “after eight years of attempted compromise and relentless disrespect in return, we are moving into darker times” and urged Democrats not to compromise. Trump responded in a tweet, calling her a traitor and criticizing the decision to release her. “Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!” Trump wrote. Manning had been sentenced to 35 years in prison after committing the biggest breach of classified information in American history in 2010 by handing over U.S. government secrets to anti-secrecy group Wikileaks. In one of his final actions before leaving office last week, Obama commuted Manning’s sentence to about seven years, allowing it to end on May 17. Republicans, including Trump’s spokesman, criticized the commutation as a dangerous precedent for leakers. Obama has defended the move, saying Manning had served a tough sentence and that justice had been served. He also said it was unrelated to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s pledge to accept extradition to the United States, where there is an open criminal investigation into the group’s activities, if Manning was freed. Wikileaks, in its own tweet on Thursday, rejected Trump’s assertion as “wrong,” noting that Manning was found not guilty of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. Manning, formerly known as U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley Manning, was born male but revealed after being convicted of espionage that she identifies as a woman. She has struggled to cope as a transgender woman in a men’s military prison and last year twice tried to kill herself. In her Guardian piece, she did not directly acknowledge Obama’s commutation. Instead, Manning said the former president compromised too much and left a “vulnerable legacy” with “very few permanent accomplishments.” She raised concerns about worsening healthcare, increased criminalization of racial minorities and “queer and trans people,” and she urged political progressives to prepare to dig in and push for “change at every level.” “The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: Do not start off with a compromise. They won’t meet you in the middle. Instead, what we need is an unapologetic progressive leader.”

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China’s state news agency Xinhua described U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord as a “global setback” and rejected Trump’s claim that it would lead to many more jobs in America. In a commentary published on Friday, Xinhua suggested that no one country was now likely take up leadership of global efforts to fight climate change. China overtook the United States as the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2007 but analysts see the U.S. withdrawal as an opportunity for China to burnish its image as a global leader. “Trump’s decision to ditch the Paris deal will leave a fairly big shoe for a single country to fill,” Xinhua said, adding that major players such as China, the European Union and India had reiterated their willingness to step up efforts. Leaving the 2015 Paris accord would hardly translate into a substantial increase in new jobs as the fossil fuel industries were highly automated, Xinhua said. Noting that Trump said he had had “extensive discussions” with people on both sides of the climate debate, it said: “One can only assume that Trump has very good reasons to leave the Paris agreement, and that he knows the implications of U.S. retreat from the landmark deal”. Trump, tapping into the “America First” message he used when he was elected president last year, said the Paris accord would undermine the U.S. economy, cost U.S. jobs, weaken American national sovereignty and put the country at a permanent disadvantage to other countries such as China. The Global Times, an influential state-run tabloid, said in an editorial published on Thursday before Trump’s announcement that China was not interested in discussions about the leadership of fighting climate change and would focus on its own promises to reduce emissions. It called the withdrawal “reckless” and would “waste increasingly finite U.S. diplomatic resources.” “There are indeed some underprivileged people in the U.S, but their troubles are mainly caused by bad internal governance. Seeking external reasons for domestic woes is by no means what the world’s largest economy should do,” it said.

2 Corinthians 9:7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

Nation Puts 2016 Election Into Perspective By Reminding Itself Some Species Of Sea Turtles Get Eaten By Birds Just Seconds After They Hatch WASHINGTON—Saying they felt anxious and overwhelmed just days before heading to the polls to decide a historically fraught presidential race, Americans throughout the country reportedly took a moment Thursday to put the 2016 election into perspective by reminding themselves that some species of sea turtles are eaten by birds just seconds after they hatch. Cleveland Indians Worried Team Cursed After Building Franchise On Old Native American Stereotype CLEVELAND—Having watched in horror as their team crumbled after a 3-1 World Series lead, members of the Cleveland Indians expressed concern Thursday that the organization has been cursed for building their franchise on an incredibly old Native American stereotype. Report: Election Day Most Americans’ Only Time In 2016 Being In Same Room With Person Supporting Other Candidate WASHINGTON—According to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, Election Day 2016 will, for the majority of Americans, mark the only time this year they will occupy the same room as a person who supports a different presidential candidate. Nurse Reminds Elderly Man She’s Just Down The Hall If He Starts To Die DES PLAINES, IL—Assuring him that she’d be at his side in a jiffy, local nurse Wendy Kaufman reminded an elderly resident at the Briarwood Assisted Living Community that she was just down the hall if he started to die, sources reported Tuesday.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Former Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukayev, accused of taking a $2 million bribe from Rosneft chief executive Igor Sechin, told a court on Thursday he was the victim of a monstrous and cruel provocation. State prosecutors said the bribe was given last year on Nov. 14 in exchange for Ulyukayev approving the sale of state-controlled oil company Bashneft to Rosneft. Ulyukayev denies the charges. He says he thought the bag holding the bribe was a gift of expensive alcohol. A monstrous and cruel provocation was carried out against me, Ulyukayev told the court in his final statement before it hands down a verdict on Dec. 15. This trial has aroused public interest similar to that of a circus, he added. The charges are absurd, the evidence is absurd, and at its base lies the cruelty and impunity of the provocateur. Rosneft head Sechin, a witness in the trial and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, has not appeared in court, citing work commitments. Russian prosecutors earlier this month sought a sentence of 10 years in jail for Ulyukayev.

Politically correct racism condoned by the Left and fueled by Obama, his administration, the media and radical educators (Disclaimer: MRCTV linked to a Facebook event that has since been removed. An archive of the event can be viewed here.)An organized protest at Cornell University supporting racial equality has been canceled after a black student group complained about the lack of people of color in the planning and attendance of the event, which appears to have been organized by a white student.The group also stated that although the members appreciate the solidarity and interest of our allies, the organization would like to address prejudice in [their] own way. They then suggested that individuals who would like to show support for black causes should ask in advance for the organization s approval.Thursday morning, a Facebook event was created for a #ConcernedStudent1950 protest that would take place on Friday at noon. People immediately expressed outrage at the event.AD FEEDBACK The event creator, who appears to be a white man on his Facebook profile, was accused of mocking the struggles of our communities and creating an event to promote himself. Some Facebook commenters called the event creator a troll. Cornell student and alleged Huffington Post writer Paola Mu oz wrote: Are you f**king kidding me? Being an ally is not about starting events because *now* it s actual racism racism takes on different forms, such as through microaggressions, cultural appropriation, people wearing PoC caricatures for Halloween; bull sh*t that ultimately others us that you and so many other folxs poked fun at. Mu oz went on to claim the event creator has posted classist sh*t and use[s] humor to dilute our pain. She called the event a complete mockery. Mu oz requested the student group Black Students United at Cornell University post on the page and cancel the event.Black Students United at Cornell University posted, We, Black Students United, would like to point out the lack of people of color in the planning and attendance of this protest. The organization continued, While we appreciate the solidarity and interest of our allies across campus, we would like to be able to address prejudice on this campus and campuses like it in our own way. Black Students United at Cornell University noted they would like individuals to ask their permission before creating events. In the future, please ask how you can support us before organizing on your own. With that in mind, we would appreciate the cancellation [sic] of this event. In response to the comment by Black Students United at Cornell University, the event creator posted an update canceling the event. He wrote, Thank you for calling me out on my ignorance. Via: MRCTV

Mittwoch, 16. November 2016 Neue App ruft automatisch bei Ex an, sobald man betrunken ist Berlin (dpo) - Mitten in der Nacht im Vollrausch den Ex-Partner anzurufen ist gar nicht so einfach. Oft ist man zu alkoholisiert, um die Nummer korrekt einzugeben. Nicht selten schläft man vorher ein und verpasst die Gelegenheit ganz, der Person, für die man immer noch Gefühle hat, unverständliche Dinge ins Ohr zu lallen. Die neue App "DialX" soll das nun ändern. Das nützliche Programm kontaktiert den Ex-Partner des Smartphone-Besitzers automatisch, sobald dieser deutliche Anzeichen von Betrunkenheit erkennen lässt. Dabei kann "DialX" anhand von Spracherkennung (Lallgrad) sowie durch eine Auswertung der Bewegungssensoren (Torkelgrad) des Handys abschätzen, ob der App-User die richtige Menge Alkohol zu sich genommen hat. "Der Trick ist, nicht zu früh anzurufen, sonst kann man sich im Zweifelsfall am nächsten Tag noch an das peinliche Gespräch erinnern", erklärt Christopher Jungwirth, der die App entwickelte. "Zu spät ist aber auch nicht gut, da der oder die Ex dann womöglich keine der dahingelallten Beleidigungen oder Liebesbekundungen mehr verstehen kann. 'DialX' findet genau den richtigen Zeitpunkt." Ist der ideale Alkoholwert bestimmt, wählt die App automatisch die Nummer der Ex-Freundin oder des Ex-Freundes. Gleichzeitig klingelt das eigene Telefon, damit der alkoholisierte Anrufer informiert ist und das Gespräch führen kann. Während der Unterhaltung bietet die App auf dem Display in extra großen Buchstaben unterstützende Stichworte an wie "ich hab noch ein T-Shirt von dir", "mir doch egal, wie spät es ist", "ich lieb dich doch immer noch", "warum lässt du mich nicht einfach in Ruhe, du Schlampe/Arschloch?" oder "RÜLPS!". Sollte der oder die Angerufene den Anruf in weiser Voraussicht auch nach dem zehnten Versuch nicht annehmen, verfasst die App automatisch eine wütende SMS oder eine WhatsApp-Nachricht mit zahlreichen Rechtschreibfehlern: "DialX" ist kostenlos bei Google Play und im AppStore erhältlich. Dem Macher der App ging es nach eigener Aussage nicht um Geld, sondern nur darum, seine Ex-Freundin zu beeindrucken. fed, ssi, dan; Foto [M]: Shutterstock Artikel teilen:

Trump rape accuser skips press conference, citing threats ‹ › GPD is our General Posting Department whereby we share posts from other sources along with general information with our readers. It is managed by our Editorial Board NATO and Turkey: Time to admit reality By GPD on November 4, 2016 By DAVID ROMANO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was created after World War Two to unite democratic states or Western Europe and North America against Soviet expansionism. The alliance admitted Turkey in 1952, two years after the country transitioned into a democratic electoral system of government. Today, in contrast, neither the Soviet Union nor a democratic Turkey exist. Going on with the charade of NATO may, under the circumstances, do more harm than good. Russia today remains much smaller and less powerful than the Soviet empire was, and bilateral arrangements with countries looking for protection against their eastern neighbor should suffice. From the Russian point of view, a large alliance apparently arrayed against it, working hard to encircle Russia, provokes understandable concerns. The West should consider asking Russia what it would concede in return for the dissolution of the alliance. In the case of Turkey, the country’s NATO membership also increasingly makes a mockery of the alliance’s charter and places significant liabilities on the shoulders of other members. Perusing the NATO charter, one finds statements such as: The Parties to this…are determined to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law…..The Parties will contribute toward the further development of peaceful and friendly international relations by strengthening their free institutions, by bringing about a better understanding of the principles upon which these institutions are founded, and by promoting conditions of stability and well-being. Although Turkey’s military coups in 1960, 1971 and 1980 briefly interrupted democracy there, the military made good on its promises to quickly return power to elected civilian control. Today, in contrast, it seems increasingly clear that President Erdogan will never relinquish power. His purges and complete subversion of democratic institutions and individual liberties may take decades to repair, if ever. This process began well before the failed July 15 coup in Turkey, but that event provided a pretext for taking the purges in Turkey to new heights. Under new “emergency rule” legislation, some 200,000 civil servants have been dismissed with scant evidence of wrongdoing. Around 2000 academics lost their posts, including just about every university dean – replacements for which will all be appointed directly by Mr. Erdogan. Many of the academics dismissed were only guilty of signing a petition for peace between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Mr. Erdogan’s government also shut down some 170 media outlets, including a Kurdish children’s broadcaster. Remaining media, including Turkey most venerable newspaper ( Cumhuriyet ) have seen their editors and journalists arrested and imprisoned. People now face arrest and imprisonment without charge for up to 30 days, and the state can now record conversations between those arrested and their lawyers (when they finally get so see one), with the recordings then provided to prosecutors. According to Human Rights Watch, torture has also now returned to Turkish prisons, where 27 elected mayors from mostly Kurdish cities like Diyarbakir now reside. Judges and prosecutors doing anything even mildly displeasing to the ruling party have been summarily dismissed or arrested themselves, only to be replaced with more pliant sycophants (laws were also changed to allow the ruling party to appoint even High Court judges). Hundreds of generals and officers are behind bars, to the point that the Turkish air force can only operate a portion of its fighter planes. Your columnist could go on, of course, but the point seems clear enough – “freedom, democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law” have withered in Turkey. What’s more, Ankara’s actions and foreign policy threaten NATO. This became abundantly clear when Turkey shot down a Russian fighter plane last year, threatening to drag the alliance into a war it did not want. Although Turkey has since reconciled with Russia, Ankara threatens or even appears poised to go to war with a number actors helping other NATO countries – Iraq, the Democratic Union Party of Syria (PYD), and even Greece, a NATO member itself (Mr. Erdogan recently fumed that the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne made a mistake in giving Greece islands off Turkey’s Aegean coast). During the July 15 attempted coup, Ankara cut off electricity to U.S. forces at Incirlik air base (where they guard nuclear weapons, among other things). Mr. Erdogan and his government suggested that the United States either condoned the coup or even had a role in it. Combined with Ankara’s support for a number of Islamist groups in the region, including some fairly hard-core Jihadi outfits in Syria, these developments ring a lot of alarm bells in Brussels and Washington. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the Republican chair of a House subcommittee on emerging threats, expressed such concerns a few weeks ago when he stated that “Ten years ago Turkey was a solid NATO ally and a staunch opponent of radical Islam and a friend of the United States, and today that’s all in question… Erdogan is purging pro-Western people throughout his country who are in positions of influence. He himself has become more aggressive in his Islamic beliefs, and there’s reason for us to be seriously concerned.” The NATO charter lacks any provisions for expelling members, however, and such a public break is probably not in any member’s interest. The better approach would be to disband NATO and put something new together. American policy makers will protest that Washington can’t afford to lose Turkey. This ignores the fact that they have already lost the Turks to Mr. Erdogan and his ilk – they just haven’t officially left yet. David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw. Related Posts: No Related Posts The GPD 50 Reads Filed under Politics

Lou Dobbs goes after Fusion GPS and their connections to the DNC in the video below The evidence is clear that the Trump Jr. meeting with a Russian lawyer was a total set up by Fusion GPS Was the Hillary camp responsible? How involved was the Obama administration? Dobbs names several in the Obama administration who could have been involved in the set-up FUSION GPS LIED ABOUT KNOWING ABOUT MEETING:Fusion GPS responded in a statement: Fusion GPS learned about this meeting from news reports and had no prior knowledge of it. Any claim that Fusion GPS arranged or facilitated this meeting in any way is false. BUSTED! MEETING BETWEEN FUSION GPS AND RUSSIAN LAWYER BEFORE AND AFTER:The co-founder of Fusion GPS, the firm behind the unverified Trump dossier, met with a Russian lawyer before and after a key meeting she had last year with Trump Jr. The contacts shed new light on how closely tied the firm was to Russian interests, at a time when it was financing research to discredit then-candidate Donald Trump.The opposition research firm has faced renewed scrutiny after litigation revealed that the DNC and Hillary Clinton s campaign paid for that research. Congressional Republicans have since questioned whether that politically financed research contributed to the FBI s investigation of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign making Fusion s 2016 contacts with Russian interests all the more relevant.DNC MONEY FUNNELED THROUGH LAW FIRM TO FUSION GPS?The June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya occurred during a critical period. Bank records show Fusion GPS was paid by a law firm for work on behalf of a Kremlin-linked oligarch while paying a former British spy Christopher Steele to dig up dirt on Trump through his Russian contacts.But hours before the Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016, Fusion co-founder and ex-Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson was with Veselnitskaya in a Manhattan federal courtroom. Court records show email correspondence and published reports corroborate the pair s presence together. They also were together after the Trump Tower meeting.Read more: Fox News

Parts Of Patriot Act Expire, Even As Senate Moves On Bill Limiting Surveillance It was a dramatic day on the floor of the United States Senate on Sunday. Unable to overcome parliamentary maneuvers by Sen. Rand Paul, the body adjourned and let three controversial provisions of the Patriot Act expire at midnight. Trying to beat a midnight deadline during a rare Sunday session, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to fast track a House bill that would overhaul the government's bulk collection of Americans' phone records. At around 7 p.m. ET, the House bill cleared a key procedural hurdle, but as the sun set on Washington, it became clear that a Senate rule allowing for 30 hours of debate would force parts of the Patriot Act to expire at least temporarily. "The Patriot Act will expire tonight," Paul, the Kentucky Republican who has led the charge against the government's bulk collection program, said. "But it will only be temporary. They will ultimately get their way." Before this session, Paul promised to use any parliamentary moves available to him to force any Senate vote on the measure to happen after the 12 a.m. deadline. He was warned by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle that he was putting the country at risk. "To go dark on this is a risk on Americans' lives," Sen. Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, said on the floor of the Senate. McConnell, the senior Republican senator from Kentucky, said that blocking this legislation should be "worrying for our country." McConnell said that even though he had vehemently opposed this bill previously — his chamber had also failed to move it forward earlier this week — he would attempt to pass it. "We shouldn't be disarming unilaterally as our enemies grow more sophisticated and aggressive, and we certainly should not be doing so based on a campaign of demagoguery and disinformation launched in the wake of the unlawful actions of Edward Snowden," McConnell said. Paul fired back, saying he worried that the House bill actually made the government better at collecting phone records in bulk. He said he couldn't trust the secret court tasked with interpreting the law and that he wanted to add amendments to the bill. He added that the U.S. is using fear to convince Americans of the need for these programs, but the country already has the tools to fight terrorists. They could seek warrants, he said, instead of dragging Americans into what he said was an unconstitutional surveillance system. "Mark my words," he said, "the battle is not over." At around 9:45 p.m. ET, after a lengthy break, McConnell took the floor again and admitted defeat. He offered several amendments to the House bill and adjourned until 12 p.m. ET on June 1, guaranteeing that parts of the surveillance programs instituted by the U.S. after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 would end entirely at least temporarily. In a statement, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that the Senate had taken "an important—if late—step forward tonight." The White House has always supported HR 2048 — also known as the House's USA Freedom Act. The bill ends the bulk collection program as we know it. If passed, the government would still have access to the data, but it would now have to query databases kept by phone companies. "We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible," Earnest said. "On a matter as critical as our national security, individual Senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly. The American people deserve nothing less." We'll live-blogged the Senate action as it happened. Keep reading if you want a play-by-play. Update at 11:03 p.m. ET. The Most Dramatic Moment: We'll leave you tonight with video of the most dramatic moment of the night. It happened as Sen. Rand Paul tried to get five minutes to speak. Here's the video via Real Clear Politics: Paul, by the way, goes on to win the parliamentary tousle, finally getting his five minutes. The Senate has adjourned. Three provisions of the Patriot Act will expire at least temporarily. Update at 9:34 p.m. ET. Senate Still In Session: The Senate is still technically in session. A senator suggested the absence of a quorum, which has given the Senate time to figure out what will happen next. Update at 9:31 p.m. ET. Strong Support For 'Comprehensive Reform': In a statement, Michael Macleod-Ball, acting director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, said today's vote and the likely temporary end of the bulk collection program are a reflection of strong support for "meaningful and comprehensive reform of the surveillance laws." He added: "Congress should take advantage of this sunset to pass far reaching surveillance reform, instead of the weak bill currently under consideration." Update at 8:16 p.m. ET. What To Expect? So, where do we stand right now? The Senate now has the ability to move on the House bill, but senators can debate the bill for 30 hours. Manu Raju of Politico reports that Majority Leader McConnell "plans to employ a prerogative Reid rarely used: Making senators actually debate in post-cloture time — or he'll continue process." Congressional Quarterly reports that a McConnell spokesman said there will " 'likely' be no more votes tonight." This means three provisions of the Patriot Act are likely to lapse, if only temporarily. Update at 8:00 p.m. ET. Bulk Collection Will Likely Lapse: Wyden and Sen. Martin Heinrich, a Democrat from New Mexico, are still talking on the floor. It's worth noting that according to White House officials, who briefed reporters last week, it is now likely there will be a lapse in the government's bulk collection program. As we reported: While the statutory deadline is Monday, June 1, "senior administration officials said they have to begin winding down their surveillance programs at 4 p.m. ET on Sunday. That process, they said, could be aborted as late as 8 p.m. ET." We are now past that window. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, just finished a speech on the floor. Wyden has been a long-time critic of the bulk collection program. During his speech, he reminded Americans that the administration had misled Congress in the past. He was specifically referring to a hearing in which he asked National Intelligence Director James Clapper if the National Security Agency collects "any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans." Clapper answered, "No sir," before adding, "not wittingly." Clapper ended up apologizing for that answer. Wyden said that's why the Senate has to ask the "hard questions." "It is our job to ask the hard questions," Wyden said. Update at 7:53 p.m. ET. What Does The House Bill Contain: We've noted Paul's reservations about HR 2048 — or the House's USA Freedom Act. From a previous post, here's what that bill would do: Update at 7:42 p.m. ET. Patriot Act Will Expire: Sen. Paul said: "The Patriot Act will expire tonight. But it will only be temporary. They will ultimately get their way." With that, Paul stepped off the floor. Here's a quick recap of what he said: Update at 7:28 p.m. ET. 'Bill Will Ultimately Pass': Sen. Rand Paul took to the floor shortly after the cloture vote passed. He conceded that the House bill would "ultimately pass," but "tonight begins the process of ending bulk collection." His issue with the House bill, he said, is that Congress may just be replacing one bulk collection program with another. "It's hard for me to have trust in the people who we are giving great power to," Paul said. The senator from Kentucky said he would offer up amendments to the bill. Update at 7:08 p.m. ET. Procedural Vote Passes By Large Margin: The procedural measure to move onto the House bill ultimately passed by a large margin — 77 to 17. It means the Senate has overcome a major procedural hurdle, but any senator can still debate the measure for 30 hours. The votes are still coming in, but the Senate has reached the 60 votes needed to limit debate and move on to the House bill. However, Paul, or any senator for that matter, can force the Senate to debate the matter for another 30 hours before they can vote on the bill. That is of course many hours after the midnight deadline. The vote so far: 75 in favor of cloture, 15 opposed. With a temporary extension off the table, Sen. McConnell said he had only two options: One, let the programs expire. Two, try to pass the House bill. The first option, he said, is "completely unacceptable." So, he said, he would move forward with the reconsideration of the House bill. That motion passed with a voice vote and the Senate is now voting to limit debate and move on to the House bill. That's also known as a cloture vote. As Fox's Chad Pergram reports on Twitter, that doesn't mean much because even if they get the 60 votes needed for cloture, "Paul can still require 30 hrs burn off clock before Senate can get on Hse's NSA bill. Means pgms would lapse." Update at 6:16 p.m. ET. McConnell Proposes To Extend Two Sections: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took to the floor to propose a very limited bill — one that would extend Sections 206 and 6001, the so-called roving wiretaps and lone wolf provisions. Just like that, Paul objected, and McConnell said that his objection should be "very worrying for Americans." "The nature of the threat is very serious," McConnell said; therefore, we should not be "disarming unilaterally." The Senate has reconvened. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is on the floor. Update at 6:05 p.m. ET. The Debate So Far: While we wait for the Senate to reconvene, here's a little recap of what we've heard on the floor so far: Democratic Sens. Harry Reid and Patrick Leahy made the case that the Senate should act quickly to pass the House bill. Leahy said that it had been passed by the House in bipartisan fashion, and that it makes significant changes to the government's surveillance programs. Reid said that this is an important national security program. He said that CIA Director John Brennan and even Senate Republicans agree that allowing parts of this law to expire would "threaten our national security." In his words, this is "big time stuff." In his five minutes, Sen. Paul essentially scoffed at that notion. "How will we protect ourselves?" he asked. "What about using the Constitution? What about getting a warrant?" Update at 5:56 p.m. ET. What To Expect: Right now the Senate is in recess. Both parties are meeting to discuss how to go forward. When the Senate returns, we expect a series of votes to reconsider HR 2048 — also known as the House's USA Freedom Act. The Senate had already failed to move that measure forward earlier this month. It did not take long for the drama to get started. About an hour into the session, Sen. Rand Paul asked to speak for five minutes. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fellow Republican, shot him down, and Sen. John McCain, another fellow Republican, suggested Paul should learn the rules of the Senate. That's when Paul called for a live quorum — a roll call that determines whether a majority of the Senate is in the chamber to continue doing business. To speed things up, the live quorum was called off and Paul was given his five minutes. "This in important debate," Paul said. "This is a debate over the bill of rights, over the Fourth Amendment. ... It is a debate over your right to be left alone." Paul said that the surveillance programs put in place by Section 215 were illegal. Then he issued a warning: "I'm not going to take it anymore."

Why would anyone want to risk their lives while serving their community as a cop in this hostile, anti-cop, free-for-all environment created by Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Al Sharpton?Two NYPD officers are attacked and punched several times by a black man while attempting to arrest a woman. The woman being arrested can be seen trying to grab the female NYPD officer s gun numerous times during the altercation.Via: LiveLeak

VERSAILLES, Ky. — He has put on some weight, 170 pounds to be exact, since sauntering off the racetrack and into what has to be the sweetest retirement in all of sports. American Pharoah, however, carries it well: There are no love handles, and his rich bay coat looks barely able to contain the muscles rippling beneath it. His day starts at sunup with a breakfast of organic grains — the equine equivalent of kale and quinoa — and then his work starts in earnest at 7:30 each day. That’s when American Pharoah hooks a left out of the stallion barn and ambles down the path to the breeding shed. Waiting for him is a mare, but not any old nag. No, securing one of the 160 or so spots on American Pharoah’s dance card this season requires a royal pedigree, an accomplished record as a racehorse and, most important, an ownership with the $200, 000 required to have last year’s Triple Crown champion to “cover” (a nicer term than impregnate) its mare. While horse lovers and aficionados had to wait 37 years for American Pharoah to become just the 12th horse to win the three races of the crown, thoroughbred racing’s holy grail, horsemen have hurried to get their mares in the breeding shed with the Big Horse. What’s a stud’s life? Most days, he does double duty, with a 1:30 p. m. lunch date after the morning fling. Often, he is at again for a third time at 6 p. m. It sounds exhausting until you do the math: up to $600, 000 a day, and a $30 million annual haul for his owners, Ashford Stud, over the course of the breeding season. Best of all, American Pharoah has adapted to his new career with the same efficiency, élan and joie de vivre that he demonstrated while winning nine of his 11 starts, electrifying thoroughbred enthusiasts on the track and charming them off it. He is clearly the Matinee Idol of a breeding farm that already boasts one of the most successful sires in the world, Giant’s Causeway, American Pharoah’s neighbor across the barn. On Tuesday, American Pharoah stood like a medieval knight awaiting his armor from his valet as a tour group aimed cameras and admiring gazes at him. He then stepped gingerly around Garfield, the farm’s cat and the animal here (sorry, Giant’s Causeway). “He’s just a joy to be around,” said Scott Calder, one of Ashford’s executives, about American Pharoah. “He does everything so easily. We were the ones that had to adjust. So many people want to come to see him. He is a household name far beyond the sport of horse racing. ” No horse is born a natural stud. Cigar, who died in 2014, was the sport’s leading money winner when he retired, but proved to be sterile in the breeding shed. The 2002 Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner, War Emblem, was bought for $17. 7 million by Japanese breeders who discovered — disappointingly — that he did not like girls. They tried several unorthodox therapies, including surrounding him with a harem, to no avail. The folks here at Ashford took no chances when American Pharoah arrived here last fall after ending his career with a triumphant victory in the Breeders’ Cup Classic. He spent his initial weeks alongside Thunder Gulch, the 1995 Kentucky Derby and Belmont winner, now 24 years old. The ’s assignment was to teach American Pharoah about life not on the run. New stallions want to play and sprint — a lot — and company only encourages them. Not Thunder Gulch. He taught American Pharoah the finer things in stallion life, such as eating grass and whiling away an afternoon lounging atop the flower buds that roll over these like a royal carpet. The Hollywood version of American Pharoah’s first day at the office says that it came on Valentine’s Day. Not quite, says Calder. It was the day after, and it was filled with tension for Ashford’s breeding team. American Pharoah’s father, Pioneerof the Nile, had earned a reputation for being something of a prima donna over at WinStar Farm. Pioneerof the Nile preferred peppermints to carrots. He was also sometimes reticent and required a whiff of pheromones from a cup of thawed mare urine to become interested. He also took his time and was prone to false starts, rocking back on his hind legs once, twice, as many as four times before consummating the relationship. Not American Pharoah. “Fortunately, those genes were not passed down,” said Calder, a wry smile curling on his lip. Instead, he has been polite and determined, as well as efficient: So far he has a better than 80 percent strike rate when it comes to successfully conceiving a foal. His book of mares reads like a social registry. There’s the aptly named Judy the Beauty, the Eclipse Champion sprinter Take Charge Lady, the dam of the 2013 champion Will Take Charge and Rags to Riches, who in 2007 became the first filly since 1905 to win the Belmont Stakes. When he is not at work, American Pharoah sometimes lounges in a roomy stall in a barn made from oak or gambols here in the bluegrass. Roaming alone in the paddock, he is framed by limestone fences, the handiwork of 20 master stonemasons, and looks every bit to the manner born. American Pharoah has plenty of visitors — more than 3, 000 so far from 45 states and a other countries. The daily tours have been sold out for months in advance. He had two special tours earlier this week when his Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert came Monday and his rider, Victor Espinoza, came Tuesday. While American Pharoah’s first runners will not hit the racetrack until 2019, there is a strong — if very hopeful — vibe that they will have inherited the speed, mind and talent that their father demonstrated throughout his brilliant career. Until his offspring start crossing finish lines in the afternoon, only a couple of things are certain: American Pharoah is enjoying his retirement and seems to be good at it.

Donald trump was making the rounds at a Colorado Springs campaign event and did something that s just priceless! He took not one but two babies and held them priceless!Thank you Colorado Springs. Get out & VOTE #TrumpPence16 in November! pic.twitter.com/wK02fWzJey Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2016

It s official: No one in the Obama family can do or say anything without the Stupid Part of America calling them n*ggers. As she gave her final, powerful commencement speech as First Lady, Michelle Obama dropped a harsh truth on the graduating class of CUNY the White House was built largely using slave labor: It s the story that I witness every single day, when I wake up in a house that was built by slaves. And I watch my daughters two beautiful, black young women head off to school waving goodbye to their father, the President of the United States, the son of a man from Kenya who came here to American to America for the same reasons as many of you: To get an education and improve his prospects in life. Obama is correct. WhiteHousehistory.org notes that black people provided much of the labor that went into building the White House after the U.S. government failed to find qualified workers they could pay to do the work (slave masters were, of course, paid):The D.C. commissioners, charged by Congress with building the new city under the direction of the president, initially planned to import workers from Europe to meet their labor needs. However, response to recruitment was dismal and soon they turned to African American enslaved and free to provide the bulk of labor that built the White House, the United States Capitol, and other early government buildings.Stonemason Collen Williamson trained enslaved people on the spot at the government s quarry at Aquia, Virginia. Enslaved people quarried and cut the rough stone that was later dressed and laid by Scottish masons to erect the walls of the President s House. The slaves joined a work force that included local white laborers and artisans from Maryland and Virginia, as well as immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other European nations.The uneducated f*ckwits at Young Conservatives, naturally, complained that the First Lady whined about that little slavery issue that we should pretend never happened, calling her ungrateful and informing their readers that Obama is ungrateful because she correctly noted the history of her current home. You know, Michelle if you don t like living there, move out, writes blogger John. S. Roberts, who wonders why some people (read: the blacks ) just can t move beyond the fact that their ancestors were owned by white people.Naturally, commenters agreed, calling the First Lady a n*gger because that s pretty much the extent of their intelligence. They, too, think she is ungrateful because white people did her a favor by shipping her ancestors over here and forcing them to work and endure brutal beatings, rapes, and murders: Over at right-wing propaganda mill, Weazel Zippers, the sentiment was the same and they didn t need to write a single word. They just pasted a screenshot of a tweet about the statement. Conservatives are horrible and, unfortunately, each and every single one of them will be headed to the polls in November to vote for Trump. We can not allow someone who fosters this sort of hatred to succeed President Obama. Be sure to get out and do your duty in November vote BLUE across the board and kick the haters out of their respective offices.Featured image via screen capture

Lawyers, especially on Twitter, like giving their own legal opinions on things to their followers. Some of them will try and explain legal matters happening in the nation s capital, and they don t always agree, but they always have insight for us laypeople. Seth Abramson, one such lawyer, has been tweeting threads explaining some of what s happening, and he just posted one that s pretty damning for the GOP.The GOP is calling Comey s testimony a win for Trump. The fact that they would be so obviously false is just amazing, and not in an I didn t expect this, way. Abramson calls them out on that by rehashing Comey s testimony in a series of 21 tweets. Two particular tweets allude to the GOP s, and Trump s, insistence that Comey proved Trump was not under investigation today:(3) The President of the United States IS under criminal investigation for felony Obstruction of Justice by Special Counsel Bill Mueller. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017(4) Comey told Trump he WASN T under *counter-intelligence* investigation but KNEW that that assessment could well change and STILL might. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017Comey testified that he wouldn t tell the world that he told Trump he was not personally under investigation because he didn t want to create a duty to correct the record later. If he publicly stated that Trump wasn t under investigation, and that changed, he d have to correct the record. He went down that road with Hillary Clinton s email investigation. He knew where it led. He didn t want to further damage the FBI s credibility by going down that road again.None of that changes the fact that Special Prosecutor Mueller is investigating Trump for obstruction of justice a probe that includes Comey s contemporaneous memos.Then there s this, which the GOP hasn t yet addressed and seems to have completely forgotten:(5) President Trump never ONCE talked with Comey about ways to STOP Russian cyberattacks nor expressed ANY concern on that score to the FBI. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017(18) Of the THOUSANDS of open FBI investigations, the ONLY one Trump ever asked his FBI Director about was an investigation of HIS campaign. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017As far as Comey s testimony goes, Trump was only concerned about himself. As Comey put it, [W]e re talking about a foreign government using technical intrusion and lots of other methods tried to shape the way we think, we vote, we act And people need to recognize that They re coming after America. Someone needs to ask why Trump doesn t find that concerning.Abramson brings up a major, solid point about Comey s behavior during his testimony. While he answered some questions with I don t know, and, I m not sure, he also had a very strong recollection of the meeting in the Oval Office that prompted him to ask Jeff Sessions to not leave him alone with Trump again:(12) Comey s recollection of these events is SO IRONCLAD he knew who sat where, which doors he used SO MUCH DETAIL he CANNOT be impeached. Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) June 8, 2017Abramson s final take on Comey s testimony today is that we got far more damaging information today than we did yesterday, despite more fireworks being launched during yesterday s hearing. You can read the entire thread here.Featured image via Doug Mills -Pool/Getty Images

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Britain s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson on Monday urged Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to show a lead in ending violence against the country s Rohingya Muslims, which the United Nations has branded ethnic cleansing. What we are trying to get everyone to agree is that, number one, the killings have got to stop, and the violence has got to stop. And we look not just to the military but also to Daw Suu to show a lead on that, Johnson told Reuters ahead of hosting a ministerial meeting on the crisis on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

There are many who want to claim that Climate Change is a hoax. They are usually the people spending an insane amount of money to pretend that fossil fuels have no impact on our environment, the politicians receiving the money, as well as the people who are easily convinced by this paid trickery campaign.Then there are those who are grounded in the reality that Climate Change not only exists, but it is one of if not the most existential threats to not only the world, but humankind.We ve seen photos of receding ice and polar bears stuck on icebergs, but the reality of Climate Change has never been so real as when you look at what it is actually doing to the wildlife in the Arctic.Photographer Sebastian Copeland captured an image that is as important to see as it is heartbreaking to witness. Here, you ll see a young polar bear who literally starved to death, because according to Copeland, it just didn t have the food it needed to survive due to retreating ice. Thus, the food the bears need, which is necessary for survival, is in short supply and/or difficult to find.Photo by Sebastian Copeland via Huffington PostCopeland s latest book explains: For the state of the ice in general, we re headed into uncharted territory. There s no doubt about it The faster retreat of the sea ice, a bear s favoured spot for seal hunting, leads to longer fasting periods and the demise of more animals from starvation. And the more we ignore the fact that Climate Change exists, the more pictures like this are going to be appearing, because the threat is becoming worse and worse as the years go on.It s not only important that we elect people into office that recognize the impact of Climate Change, but it is imperative to our existence on this planet. We can t stand idly by while our world dies around us, because sooner or later, we re gonna be next.Featured image: Wikimedia Commons

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Nepalis began voting in the final round of municipal elections on Monday, an important step before a general election in November that will complete a near decade-long democratic transition after the abolition of Nepal s monarchy. The final round of voting covers parts of the restive southern plains that border India and are dominated by the ethnic Madhesi people. More than 2.6 million people are eligible to choose more than 6,000 representatives in 136 municipal, officials said. Voting in the area had been delayed since June after the Rastriya Janata Party Nepal (RJPN), which dominates the area, called for a boycott of the poll, a call that was only partially successful. Scores of people were killed in 2015 and 2016, mainly in clashes with police, in protests by the Madhesis against a new constitution that they said left them marginalised and favoured those living in the hills. The Madhesis are demanding a unified homeland and greater participation in state organs, including parliament, the judiciary, bureaucracy, and the national army. However, lawmakers rejected a government proposal last month to amend the constitution and meet some of the Madhesis demands. Pressure had mounted on the RJPN to take part in the municipal polls after some of its members quit the party and took part in the second round of polls in June. The first round was held in May. We ll now take our demands to the people through this election and get them passed in future with their support, Sarbendra Nath Shukla, a senior RJPN leader, told Reuters. The municipal elections, the first since 1997, are an attempt by the national government to restore democracy at the local level after a decade-long civil war that ended in 2006 and years of instability after the monarchy was abolished in 2008. They will serve as a barometer of public opinion ahead of the Nov. 26 general election.

SEOUL, South Korea — Rex W. Tillerson, the new secretary of state, offered the diplomatic understatement of the month on Saturday when he told the sole reporter he permitted on his airplane: “I’m not a big media press access person. I personally don’t need it. ” Perhaps, by breaking with a of past practice and flying off without the regular State Department correspondents on board, Mr. Tillerson was hoping to continue to operate in a style that worked well for him as chief executive of Exxon Mobil. In that job, he could negotiate complex oil and gas deals behind closed doors and then inform his board of directors and shareholders afterward. Certainly, his predecessors at the State Department have all wished for more time, space and secrecy to work through some of the world’s knottiest problems. The North Korea crisis that dominated this trip is a prime example of one that, if mishandled, could easily veer into war. Yet long experience teaches that foreign policy is rarely made in the kind of bubble that Mr. Tillerson wants. Maybe John Hay had that luxury as secretary of state under Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, when the United States was just emerging as a global power. But in the modern era, everyone from Dean Acheson to John Kerry has found that superpower diplomacy abhors a news vacuum. When America’s top diplomats create one, adversaries and allies usually fill it with their own narrative of events, their own proposals, their own accounts of encounters with Washington. Sure, there have occasionally been secret deals — Henry Kissinger’s mission to China when he was President Richard M. Nixon’s national security adviser, for example — but they are rare. And American diplomats generally have little luck presenting the world with faits accompli. Both at home and abroad, public diplomacy is about persuading the world that a particular solution is in the global interest, not just the American interest. And that often means building an argument while the diplomacy is in progress, or else risking a loss of influence and control of the narrative. That, and ego, are usually what make a secretary of state a “media press access person. ” Mr. Tillerson got a brief taste of this reality even before beginning his somewhat rocky first outing in Asia. China tried to box him in by reviving an old proposal for a “freeze” of North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs in return for an freeze of all military exercises with South Korea. It is one of those ideas that sound eminently sensible at first hearing. Who would oppose a diplomatic timeout for North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, which are escalating toward demonstration of an intercontinental ballistic missile that could splash down off Seattle or Los Angeles? After all, that’s how diplomacy with Iran began six years ago, ultimately leading to a nuclear deal that, love it or hate it, took an apparently imminent military conflict and defused it for a decade or so. Doing something similar with North Korea is an idea that some American proliferation experts embrace as the option on a menu of nothing but bad options. At a brief news conference in Seoul, Mr. Tillerson did use the words “imminent threat” to describe the North Korean program, and accurately noted that a freeze “would leave North Korea with significant capabilities that would represent a true threat, not just to the region, but to American forces. ” But other than that, he never grappled with the Chinese arguments in favor of their proposal — which left the door open for his Chinese counterpart to restate his case in Beijing. As a senior South Korean official told me after Mr. Tillerson’s meeting, “there are South Korean politicians” — including one or two who could become president after a snap election next month — “who may find the Chinese approach preferable to the risk of a conflict. ” The Chinese example here is a small one, but it is telling. In past administrations, the State Department would have used the long flight to Asia to give reporters a sense of its arguments and strategy. The secretary of state would have wandered back to the press seats on the plane and offered, on “background,” the administration’s thinking about the major issue of the day. Mr. Kissinger was a master of this spin James A. Baker III, Colin L. Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton were no novices, either. And often, it is more than spin: It is a way for the secretary to test whether an idea has a longer than the plane ride. “It’s not about access. It’s about context,” John Kirby, who has served as spokesman for both the Pentagon and the State Department and is considered one of the best at navigating the process, wrote on Twitter in response to Mr. Tillerson’s declarations. Mr. Kirby is right: The most important paragraphs in most articles about diplomatic news are the explanatory ones that lay out the administration’s strategy and assess whether it is tenable in light of history, or the facts on the ground, or other realities that the secretary of state may not want to discuss. As Mr. Kirby himself has noted, State Department correspondents work a bit differently from those at the White House. They do not often shout their questions, and television cameras are absent from many of the most important briefings. “Many have covered the beat for decades,” he noted over the weekend. “They know the complexities, the history. ” (Not all of us took the “decades” part as a compliment.) The group that has covered the State Department is heavy with former foreign correspondents and war correspondents who have lived around the world, have sources in foreign capitals and write books about the global challenges the country faces. Their conversations have been known to run to wonkish topics like deterrence theory. So it might not be surprising that Mr. Tillerson doesn’t want them in the back of his airplane, talking to his staff and probing how the new administration’s approach to North Korea and China might differ from what predecessors tried. As he said in that interview with the one journalist he brought along — a reporter from the Independent Journal Review, a website that had never covered a State Department trip before — Mr. Tillerson has something more in mind. “I view that relationship that I want to have with the media, is the media is very important to help me communicate not just to the American people, but to others in the world that are listening,” Mr. Tillerson was quoted as saying. “And when I have something important and useful to say, I know where everybody is, and I know how to go out there and say it. ” There is something to be said for his approach. Clearly, Mr. Tillerson wants to shake up the foreign policy elite, and that starts with a press corps that feeds in the very swamp this administration says it wants to drain. He also says he is saving money by using a smaller plane (though news organizations pay steeply for each employee who flies with the secretary). This early in Mr. Trump’s tenure, many policy decisions have not yet been debated thoroughly within his administration, so as Mr. Tillerson noted on Saturday, there is not much for him to say. And there would be considerable risk in getting out ahead of his sometimes mercurial boss. (That boss, Mr. Tillerson conceded, went ahead and posted a Twitter message complaining that “China has done little to help!” without running it past him first.) Yet there is something else that Mr. Tillerson’s policy forgoes: the often useful symbolism of top American officials’ being seen to travel with a free and intrusive press asking questions that leaders do not want to hear. When Mr. Kerry was in Bahrain last year, the visit gave the State Department press corps a chance to publicly interrogate his very uncomfortable Bahraini counterpart about some specific human rights abuses in the country. (“I’m glad you asked that,” Mr. Kerry told correspondents later on his plane, making it clear that he knew local reporters could not have done so.) When President Abdel Fattah of Egypt barred the State Department press pool last year, the State Department itself lodged an objection. None of those considerations mattered much when Mr. Tillerson traveled on behalf of the world’s largest oil company. As he said, he personally did not need reporters then, and he doesn’t now. But as secretary of state, he now has 320 million shareholders, and many of them have a stake in how he conducts America’s business around the world.

Birleşik Krallık, Suriye’de cihatçıları eğitmeye yeniden başlıyor Voltaire İletişim Ağı | 2 Kasım 2016 français Español Deutsch Português italiano İngiliz Savunma Bakanı Michael Fallon, ülkesinin Özgür Suriye Ordusunu yeniden oluşturacağını duyurdu. Böylece İngiliz Hükümeti, 2014 yılında Başkan Obama tarafından başlatılan « ılımlı » olarak adlandırılan savaşçıların eğitim programını yeniden başlatıyor. Özgür Suriye Ordusu, 2011 yılında El-Kaide’nin Libyalı önderi Abdülhakim Belhac çevresinde Fransa tarafından oluşturuldu. Söz konusu operasyon, Albay Riyad el-Esat önderliğinde Suriye Ordusundan firar edenlere yapılan bir yardım olarak sunulmuştu. Daha sonra ÖSO üyeleri zamanla El-Kaide’ye katıldı. 2016 yılında, ÖSO etiketi, Türkmen milisleri için bu adı kullanan Türkiye tarafından yeniden canlandırıldı. ABD’ye gelince, yeni « isyancı savaşçıların » eğitimi için bir buçuk milyar dolar harcamıştı. Öte yandan bu eğitilen insanların tümü bugün El-Kaide’ye katılmış durumdadır. Dolayısıyla da İngilizlerin yeni programlarının, El-Kaide’ye yönelik yeni bir örtülü yardım olması kuvvetle muhtemel. Çeviri Osman Soysal

(Reuters) - The legal document charging Michael Flynn with lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation lays out a chronology of events connected with the offense that the former U.S. national security adviser pleaded guilty to on Friday. Here is a timeline based on the document, known as a statement of the offense, and events at the time. The document was drafted by prosecutors working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of ties between President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign and Russia. The period covered includes the presidential transition that followed Trump’s election victory on Nov. 8, 2016, and the first few months of his presidency: * Dec. 21, 2016: Egypt submits a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlement building. * Dec. 22: A “very senior member” of the Trump transition team directs Flynn to contact officials from foreign governments, including Russia, to learn where each country stands on the resolution and to influence them to delay the vote or defeat the resolution. * On the same day, Flynn contacts Russia’s ambassador to the United States about the pending vote. Flynn informs the ambassador about the incoming administration’s opposition to the resolution and asks that Russia vote against or delay it. (The statement of offense does not name the ambassador; Russia’s envoy at the time was Sergei Kislyak.) * Dec. 23: Flynn again speaks with the ambassador, who informs Flynn that if it came to a ballot, Russia would not vote against the resolution. (Russia is among the 14 countries on the 15-member council that approves the resolution that day. The United States abstains, making passage possible, despite heavy pressure from Israel and President-elect Trump.) * Dec. 28: President Barack Obama signs an executive order, to take effect the next day, imposing sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s actions intended to interfere in the presidential election. * The Russian ambassador to the United States contacts Flynn. * Asked by reporters if the United States should sanction Russia, Trump suggests the two countries lay to rest the controversy over Moscow’s interference in the election, saying, “I think we ought to get on with our lives.” Trump, who is at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, has cast doubt on U.S. intelligence agencies’ findings that Russian hackers took information from Democratic Party computers and posted it online to help Trump defeat Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. * Dec. 29: Flynn calls a senior transition team official, who is with other senior transition team members at Mar-a-Lago to discuss what, if anything, to communicate to the Russian ambassador about the sanctions. The discussion between Flynn and the official touches on the potential impact of the sanctions on the incoming Trump administration’s foreign policy goals. The officials and Flynn also talk about transition team members’ desire that Russia not escalate the situation. * Immediately after the conversation, Flynn calls the ambassador and asks that Russia not escalate and that it only respond to the sanctions reciprocally. * Shortly afterwards, Flynn discusses the substance of the call with the ambassador with the transition official, including their discussion of the U.S. sanctions. * Dec. 30: Russian President Vladimir Putin releases a statement indicating Russia will not retaliate in response to the sanctions at that time. * Dec. 31: The ambassador calls Flynn and informs him that Russia has chosen not to retaliate in response to Flynn’s request. * After the call, Flynn speaks with senior transition team members about his conversations with the ambassador regarding the sanctions and Russia’s decision not to escalate. * Jan. 13, 2017: In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump suggests he might do away with the sanctions if Russia proves helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to Washington. * Jan. 16: The Times of London publishes an interview with Trump in which the president-elect says he will propose offering to end sanctions on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in return for a nuclear arms reduction deal. * Jan. 20: Trump takes office, and Flynn becomes national security adviser. * Jan. 24: Flynn agrees to be interviewed by FBI agents. During the interview, he falsely states he did not ask the Russian ambassador to refrain from escalation in responding to the U.S. sanctions. Flynn also falsely states he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which the ambassador said Russia had chosen to moderate its response to the sanctions due to Flynn’s request. Flynn makes additional false statements about his phone calls to Russia and several other countries about the U.N. Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements. Specifically, Flynn falsely says he only asked the countries’ positions on the vote and did not ask any countries to take any particular action on the resolution. Flynn also falsely states the Russian ambassador never told him Russia’s response to his request regarding the resolution. * Jan. 27: At a joint news conference with visiting British Prime Minister Theresa May, Trump says he is only in the early stages of considering whether to lift sanctions on Russia. * Jan. 28: In their first conversation since Trump’s inauguration, Trump and Putin agree to try to rebuild U.S.-Russia ties and to cooperate in Syria, the Kremlin says. A Kremlin spokesman says two days later that sanctions were not discussed. * Feb. 2: The U.S. Treasury Department adjusts sanctions on Russia’s FSB intelligence agency, making limited exceptions to the measures Obama put in place. * Feb. 13: Flynn is fired following disclosures that he had discussed U.S. sanctions on Russia with Kislyak, Moscow’s U.S. ambassador, and misled Vice President Mike Pence about the conversations. * Feb. 16: Trump says he did not direct Flynn to talk to Russia’s ambassador about sanctions before taking office. * March 7: Flynn files multiple documents with the Justice Department involving the Foreign Agents Registration Act pertaining to a project conducted by him and his company, the Flynn Intel Group Inc, for the benefit of Turkey. In the filings, Flynn makes false statements and omissions.

(Reuters) - U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Tuesday that “most likely I won’t be doing the debate” on Fox News in Des Moines, Iowa, scheduled for Thursday night. The billionaire businessman made the comment at a news conference in Marshalltown, Iowa, as the nomination race nears its first contest, the Iowa caucuses, on Monday. Trump has been engaged in a public spat with Fox News since a debate last August in which he said he was subject to unfair questioning by moderator Megyn Kelly. “Let’s see how much money Fox makes without me in the debate,” Trump told the news conference. (Reporting by Eric Walsh in Washington; Editing by Eric Beech) SAP is the sponsor of this coverage which is independently produced by the staff of Reuters News Agency.

Breitbart News Senior Editor MILO claimed that “ educated doesn’t mean stupid,” during his talk at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs tonight, adding that a majority of his educated employees are “some of the smartest and most successful people. ”[ “Let’s be clear about what the left lost. The white working class turned against the Democrat party in a historic fashion during this election. The numbers are stunning, even to someone as stunning as me,” MILO proclaimed. “I’m not a dataporn kind of faggot like those losers at the Guardian and the spectacularly dreadful FiveThirtyEight, but I have to share a few of the key stats from Pew Research with you. ” “ whites voted for Donald Trump by a 4% margin. This is similar to how they voted for Mitt Romney,” he continued. “That is a bit embarrassing to be honest, but we have to admit that those goofy #NeverTrump people are all college eggheads. Proof that college can make you dumber. ” “But the numbers for those that didn’t graduate college are amazing. A 39% margin for Trump! These are the deplorables, ladies and gentlemen, just as much as the hip millennials posting Pepe on Twitter,” explained MILO. “Let’s be clear about one thing. educated doesn’t mean stupid. It means you wisely chose not to pay $40, 000 a year to be lectured on microaggressions. Some of the smartest and most successful people in history have been either college dropouts, like me, or people who never attended at all, like a lot of my crew on this tour. ” MILO continued to claim that “They are smarter — and so am I — than 90 per cent of the people in this room. ” “They’re already more successful and they already have more enjoyable jobs and have more political and cultural influence than most of the people in this room. No offense!” he added. “But my point is that ‘ educated’ isn’t a synonym for dumb redneck or idiot. A good 50 per cent of the most successful people I know didn’t get a university degree. ” “The split among all voters is also amazing. All college graduates went to Hillary by a 9% margin, while all people without degrees went to Trump by 8%. We haven’t seen this kind of gap since 1980,” stated MILO. “So rather than smart versus dumb, try to think of this split in cultural terms. When we look at the way counties voted in battleground states, it is a similar story. Trump won Wisconsin by taking 10 counties that typically go Democrat. ” “Kenosha County has been Democrat since 1972, but it went to Trump. Similar stories and countries exist in every state,” MILO explained. “The evidence very clearly shows the left lost the white working class. ” Written from prepared remarks. MILO wears glasses by Givenchy, $350. Distressed blue jeans by True Religion, $329. Brown leather belt with gold buckle by Louis Vuitton, $450. Light pink dress shirt by Brooks Brothers, $92. Sparkly purple suit jacket by Angelino, $225. Burgundy crushed velvet slippers by Crockett Jones, $370. Socks by Ralph Lauren, 3 pairs for $21. 98. Jewellery and pearls, too much money to count. Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington or like his page at Facebook.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May will travel to the Middle East this week to lend her support to economic reforms in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, her spokesman said. Her trip comes as Britain is looking for new relationships around the world, to replace those it will lose after it quits the European Union in a little more than a year. She will meet Saudi King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where she will also discuss the crisis in Yemen and the dispute in Qatar. In Jordan, she will meet King Abdullah and Prime Minister Hanu Mulki. The London Stock Exchange is competing now to host part of Saudi Aramco s [IPO-ARMO.SE] initial public offering. Britain said this month it would provide $2 billion in credit guarantees to the energy company so it can buy British goods more easily. On Tuesday, British foreign minister Boris Johnson hosted officials from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the United States to discuss humanitarian aid in Yemen, where aid agencies have complained about a port blockade. Aid agencies say it has worsened the crisis in Yemen where war has left an estimated 7 million people facing famine and killed more than 10,000 people.

GOA, India (Reuters) - Russia does not seek confrontation with the United States and is not trying to influence the upcoming presidential election, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday. Putin said he would work with any U.S. leader willing to work with Russia.

Hillary can t even find this many supporters to attend her rallies in the US! Biden shouldn t have expected anything less from a majority Christian nation overrun by mostly Muslim refugees The welcoming committee in Belgrade, Serbia for Joe Biden's visit earlier today pic.twitter.com/8ujDwTdyeK Ian56 (@Ian56789) August 16, 2016Biden gets massively trolled on his visit to #Serbia (part 2). #Trump #Trump2016 pic.twitter.com/5150fU0nNX Nina Byzantina (@NinaByzantina) August 17, 2016h/t Gateway Pundit

Tuesday began as most days do when Donald Trump is announcing a cabinet pick. At precisely 6:43 a. m. the president elect sent out a tweet announcing that he would nominate Rex Tillerson, C. E. O. of Exxon Mobil, to be the next secretary of state. And so the media scramble began. The New York Times’s Michael Shear, who had been up since 5 a. m. pounced on the news and wrote a story for the website within an hour of the announcement. Trump’s team, meanwhile, had lined up prominent Republicans to vouch for Tillerson, including names like James Baker and Condoleezza Rice, two former secretaries of state, and Robert Gates, a former defense secretary. Their support became a prominent feature of The Times news story as the day went on. Only one key fact was missing: Baker, Rice and Gates all have financial ties to Exxon, having done work for the oil giant in one capacity or another. Politico had the story on Monday and Talking Points Memo, a popular political site, was up early with that angle. By the afternoon, ABC and CNN had it too, two TV networks that have been criticized for giving Trump the soft touch. The Times didn’t work the potential conflict of interest into its coverage of Tillerson’s nomination until about 6:30 Tuesday night. In the meantime, several readers noticed, including Avis Boutell of Moss Beach, Calif. “When citing endorsements for cabinet nominees, you should note when the source might have a conflict of interest,” Boutell said, pointing to The Times’s earlier coverage. “Give your readers the information they need to make informed judgments about the news you are reporting. ” It wasn’t just The Times that was slow to point out the issue as the orchestrated Trump cabinet rollout churned ahead. Many other big sites were, too. But holding Trump and his transition machinery accountable for their actions is about the most essential element of strong White House coverage. And so is doing it in a speedy manner — during the day, when millions are coming to the website and getting news alerts from competing new organizations. The Washington bureau chief, Elisabeth Bumiller, whom I contacted in the early evening Tuesday, said Shear had been up early and moved quickly to get the story onto the website. “The Exxon connections are now in the latest version of the story, which is going up on the web soon,” she said. “We should have mentioned and updated earlier. ” She put that responsibility more on the editors than on Shear, who had been up at 1 a. m. and filing a story the previous night. I will say this: The coverage out of Washington so far has been sharp, relentless and thoroughly reported. This instance is an early reminder of just how tiring that job will be, especially for a prone to chronic sleight of hand.

And the agency was ready for the critics. “The only people with reason to oppose the rule,” White House Senior Advisor Brian Deese told reporters on a press call Wednesday, “are polluters who knowingly threaten our clean water.” So who are those willful polluters? Congressional Republicans, along with a select group of Democrats from farm and energy-heavy states, who are already pushing legislation aimed at crippling the rule in both Houses. They’re characterizing it, as they do most EPA regulations, as a “power grab” and an overreach, and are vowing to destroy it the same way, presumably, they want to be allowed to destroy waterways. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) summed up the overwrought sentiment nicely in his reaction to the rule’s release. “The administration’s decree to unilaterally expand federal authority is a raw and tyrannical power grab that will crush jobs,” he said. “These leaders know firsthand that the rule is being shoved down the throats of hardworking people with no input, and places landowners, small businesses, farmers, and manufacturers on the road to a regulatory and economic hell.” Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), who is sponsoring a bill with Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and James Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would overturn the rule, called it “reckless and unwarranted” in a statement, and vowed to “work tirelessly to stop this expansion of federal control.” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, in announcing the rule this morning, in fact pointed out that the agency has received over one million public comments on the rule since it was proposed last year. And it was based, she emphasized, on the best available peer-reviewed science. McCarthy also took care to stress that the rule has been changed from the proposed version to clarify that it does not apply to ditches or groundwater, and that agriculture will continue to be exempted. The rule “does not interfere with private property rights or address land use,” she elaborated. “It does not regulate any ditches unless they function as tributaries. It does not apply to groundwater or shallow subsurface water, copper tile drains or change policy on irrigation or water transfer.” “Farmers, ranchers, and foresters are all original conservationists, and we recognize that,” McCarthy said. Farmers are nonetheless some of the strongest opponents of the rule, along with other business interests New York Times identifies as “property developers, fertilizer and pesticide makers, oil and gas producers and a national association of golf course owners” — again, polluters that, under the status quo, are getting away with it. Those in favor of the rule, on the other hand? Aside from the usual groups interested in protecting the environment, which are all pretty thrilled, it’s backed, per one poll, by 80 percent of voters and, per McCarthy, 80 percent of small business owners. Craft breweries are also big fans: “Beer is about 90 percent water, making local water supply quality and its characteristics, such as pH and mineral content, critical to brewing,” a coalition of beer companies wrote to the EPA in 2014. President Obama, too, stood up for the rule Wednesday, asserting in a statement that it  “will provide the clarity and certainty businesses and industry need about which waters are protected by the Clean Water Act, and it will ensure polluters who knowingly threaten our waters can be held accountable.”

There are those who refuse to believe what is right before their very eyes. When will America stand on its own two feet and put an end to the incessant corruption in Washington? By Ed Mattson Following the public disclosure by FBI Director, James Comey, a mountain of evidence was presented in a press conference regarding Democrat Presidential Candidate, Hillary Clinton, addressing Clinton’s illegal and unauthorized use of a home server to communicate State Department business. Such a breach of security was shocking as well as eye-opening as to how far Clinton’s thirst for financial gain was willing to go. It was blatantly clear that Hillary’s attempt to hide her activity in communications with members of her staff, the President himself, foreigners trying to buy access and favoritism with U.S. government personnel, and those seeking federal contract bid preferential treatment, was something that would not be tolerated by law enforcement anywhere . With Comey however, whom the media continues to portray as a Republican , stated the U.S. Government would not seek an indictment. By the way, for the record, Comey claims he hasn’t voted Republican for years! With the Department of Justice and pressure from the highest office in the land, we can clearly see that in America there is no longer equal justice for all, and that powerful politicians can do just damn-well anything they chose if their name is Clinton, or they are members of the Democrat Party. Comey even had the gall to proclaim that he saw no intent by Clinton to hide her activities, in defiance of logic, common sense, and all rational thinking. NO INTENT? WHY ELSE would Hillary use a private, unsecured server, then purposely destroy tens of thousands of emails, smash cell phones, wipe computer server hard drives, and then lie about it? No . . . her intention was clear to all except those blind Democrat hacks, and many of our poorly educated automatron citizens being turned out by the government controlled school systems who simply don’t pay attention to anything but Dancing with the Stars . Hillary is as qualified to be president as John Gotti if he were still alive today. Yes . . . I said John Gotti, The Teflon Don , who headed the Gambino Crime Family in New York. Definition of the word “mafia”: noun Meaning a hierarchically structured secret organization allegedly engaged in smuggling , racketeering, trafficking in narcotics , and other criminal activities. John Gotti took over the reins of the most powerful crime family in America when he organized the murder of Paul Castellano in December 1985. Crazy as it may seem, his outspoken personality and flamboyant style, gained favor with much of the general public, giving him near-celebrity status. The FBI was hot on the trail of Gotti and accumulated enough evidence to put him on trial three times in the 1980’s, but he was acquitted in each case. The media was there as one would expect, and insured each trial was given high-profit status. It was later revealed that the trials had been tainted by jury tampering and juror misconduct when George Pape , a jury foreman in the 1987 trial reached out to Gotti’s underlings, who agreed to pay him $75,000 in exchange for a not guilty vote. Pape was later convicted of jury tampering and sentenced to three years imprisonment. The tables turned in 1991 when “Sammy the Bull” Gravano turn state’s evidence and testified against Gotti. Gravano, after hearing Gotti making several disparaging remarks about him via an FBI wiretap, calculated his only route to survival was to help the FBI put Gotti away in prison. The wiretaps revealed Gotti had implicated Granvano in numerous murders. In 1992, Gotti was finally convicted of five murders, conspiracy to commit murder, racketeering, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling, extortion, tax evasion, and loansharking. Gotti was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, but died in 2002 of throat cancer. Now . . . that brings us around to Mrs. Clinton, apparently the new Don of the Clinton Crime Family. We can go back some thirty years that we have had to put up with the Clintons: Clintonomics, inside trader deals on cattle futures, Travelgate, Filegate, and a very long list of people being killed, dying of mysterious causes, deaths said to be suicides but appear to be more like mob hits with gunshots to the back of the head or behind the ear. We all know people who have died. It is part of life, right? But how many people can you name who have been friends, business associates, acquaintances, or just people you have heard of that committed suicide, died of mysterious or questionable deaths, or from just plain freaky accidents? One, five, possibly ten? Check out the Clinton scorecard . It is all over the Internet! Forty would be on the low side and many believe the tally runs closer to 100 or more. Pure coincidence the Clintons and the media want you to believe. Do the research and take a close look at the deaths ruled by suicide involving friendly medical examiners . Check out the ones who committed suicide with multiple gunshot wounds, or those who shot themselves behind the ear and in the back of the head – typical of a mob-hit. It would appear that knowing the Clintons is more dangerous to your health than either cancer, smoking, and a lot more dangerous than global warming! While the Clinton haven’t been accused of loansharking or tax evasion (though getting a deduction for old used underwear might be an indication to call for an audit), there is a smell of The Mafia in the air anytime the name “Clinton” comes up. Going back to the scandals of the Mena, Arkansas drug running with Dan Lasater (Political researcher, Mark Gorton, calls him part of the Clinton/Dixie Mafia ), to the money laundering of the Clinton Foundation. Their history looks even more damaging than the many cases filed against the Gambino Crime Family, but most involve the security of our country. They say that Hillary didn’t respond to the pleas for security and then for help the night of the Beghazi attack, because there was no way for her to make money on any such decision. Hillary’s modus operandi has always been financial gain. To hell with ethics; to hell with honesty or integrity, and with complete disregard for the wellbeing of the country. . . that’s Hillary in a nutshell. The Clinton Crime Family’s list of self-serving espionage of our country can be easily seen in the transfer of U.S. technology to America’s adversaries. At Clinton’s urging, Russia was allowed to purchase control of Uranium One through their state atomic energy agency, Rosatom; In return, the Russian paid Bill a heavy $500,000 for a short speech PLUS a healthy donation from Uranium One’s Chairman of $2.35 million for the Clinton Foundation. Hillary bashed Donald Trump over legitimate business dealings with the Russians, yet the Clinton Crime Family is far more involved with Russian under-the-table dealings than the media will ever report. Clinton cut a deal with Yeltson to repay Clinton’s long-time political donor, Dan Tyson. Russia was sending nuclear technology to Iran, and to keep America from interfering with that arrangement, Clinton got Yeltson to lift the ban on shipments of poor quality chickens that had been levied on Tyson Brand Chicken by the Russians. But that was only the tip of the iceberg in the Russian-Iran sell-out according to infowars.com: “Clinton allocated over $1 billion to “help” the Soviets “dismantle” their nuclear weapons. In 1995 the General Accounting Office (GAO) wrote that Moscow refuses to permit American audits of the $1.25 billion disarmament aid. “One and a half years after President Yeltsin told President Clinton that ballistic missile technology transfers to Iran would stop, it still continues… Now time is running out; the stakes are great… Unless this problem is solved we see a potential trainwreck in our relations.” Why was it up to Yeltsin to end the transfers? Why was Clinton allowing Russia to give defense secrets to Iran?” The Russians weren’t the only beneficiaries of the Clinton Crime family give-a-way of our military technology. In the 1990’s, Clinton was involved in granting favorable treatment for General Motors in China. Clinton engineered a deal to give-a-way our technology for guidance systems for ICBMs under the lie it was to aid the Chinese space program. Because of the transfer of such delicate technology, China is now able to aim its ICBMs with accuracy at American targets; up to that time this technology had not yet been figured out by Chinese engineers. General Motors’ Hughes division provided the missing pieces. One has to learn that when the Democrats and in particular, the Clintons, accuse anyone of wrong doing, you have to look deeper in that you will undoubtedly find they are more deeply involved in even worse dealings. A good start for someone searching for the truth about the Clintons, you might want to review a movie the media and the left absolutely trashed (and endorsement which makes it worth seeing) Dinesh D’Souza’s latest movie, Hillary’s America: Secret History of the Democrat Party . Funny thing is, I don’t hear any of those on the left being able to dispel Souza’s documentation. Or review the claims made in The Clinton Chronicles – another hate-fest by the Left that should be seen. There will probably be many who reply to the information I have thus presented with name calling and hate mail. I expect it, but please respond with counter-evidence, or facts that debunk what I have written about. Those who have communicated with me about articles I have written, were surprised to learn that I wrote them back and told them, I actually learned from their input. Source: Veterans Today

Trump supporters have a lot in common. They lack education. They re a bunch of horrible racists. They want to make America great again by viciously beating African-American protesters and homeless people. The idea of keeping brown people out of Murika appeals to them. His appeal to racists is so great that white supremacists are actively campaigning for him and terrorist groups are using his hate speech to recruit. But did you know that one factor you haven t thought of defines Trump support better than jingoism, racism, homophobia, extreme anti-Muslim sentiments, or a desire to build a gigantic wall so we never have to even look at a Hispanic person again?Politico s Matthew MacWilliams says he has discovered one factor that predicts whether or not someone is a Trump voter:In fact, I ve found a single statistically significant variable predicts whether a voter supports Trump and it s not race, income or education levels: It s authoritarianism.That s right, Trump s electoral strength and his staying power have been buoyed, above all, by Americans with authoritarian inclinations. And because of the prevalence of authoritarians in the American electorate, among Democrats as well as Republicans, it s very possible that Trump s fan base will continue to grow.MacWilliams just finished conducting a national poll which sampled 1,800 voters across the nation. I found that education, income, gender, age, ideology and religiosity had no significant bearing on a Republican voter s preferred candidate, he writes. Only two of the variables I looked at were statistically significant: authoritarianism, followed by fear of terrorism, though the former was far more significant than the latter. MacWilliams explains that Trump s pledge to make America great again as well as his horrific suggestions that Muslims be banned from the United States, wear special ID badges if they re already here, and be rounded up into concentration camps (as well, of course, as his Great Wall of Murika), all cater to authoritarian inclinations:Authoritarianism is not a new, untested concept in the American electorate. Since the rise of Nazi Germany, it has been one of the most widely studied ideas in social science. While its causes are still debated, the political behavior of authoritarians is not. Authoritarians obey. They rally to and follow strong leaders. And they respond aggressively to outsiders, especially when they feel threatened.This, of course, describes Trump supporters perfectly. Frighteningly, authoritarianism (while prevalent among Republicans) is not limited to the Right. In the 2008 Democratic primary, the political scientist Marc Hetherington found that authoritarianism mattered more than income, ideology, gender, age and education in predicting whether voters preferred Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, MacWilliams notes. But Hetherington has also found, based on 14 years of polling, that authoritarians have steadily moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party over time since they began to embrace civil rights, gay rights, and other hallmarks of liberalism that are common in the party today.MacWilliams notes that authoritarianism is not a statistically significant factor in the Democratic primary race thus far, but it does appear to be playing an important role on the Republican side, as 49 percent of Republicans score in the top quarter of the authoritarian scale. MacWilliams poll asked voters some simple questions about parenting to gauge authoritarianism: whether it is more important for the voter to have a child who is respectful or independent; obedient or self-reliant; well-behaved or considerate; and well-mannered or curious. Based on these questions, Trump was the only candidate Republican or Democrat whose support among authoritarians was statistically significant, he concludes. This, combined with the 52% of respondents who live in fear of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, gives us something to fear. While it s easy to say President Trump can t happen here that Americans won t stand for the ideological reincarnation of Adolf Hitler being elected MacWilliams points out that it s time that Democrats and all who oppose fascism begin taking Trump seriously.Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr

DANANG, Vietnam (Reuters) - The remaining 11 countries in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal will discuss a proposal for an agreement in principle to proceed after the withdrawal of the United States, Japanese Economy Minister Toshimitsu Motegi said on Thursday. Ministers from the 11 countries are meeting in the resort of Danang in Vietnam on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit. We have collectively reached the stage where we can discuss a proposal for a final package for an agreement in principle of the TPP, Motegi told ministers from the other countries. I would like to emphasize once again the importance of reaching an agreement in principle right here.

21st Century Wire says Out of all the intelligence agencies in the United States, we ve come across stories where not everyone is on the same page . Indeed we ve also heard about factions embroiled in competition, and rivalry. Moral compass, personal principles, and ethics being challenged which lead to inner conflict; just some of the reasons that gave us former NSA whistleblower William Binney and more recently in the last few years, Edward Snowden.You might not have heard of them, but The Shadow Brokers came on the scene last year. A previously unknown collective, the Brokers hacked and released legitimate hacking tools from the NSA s own special-ops entity, the Equation Group . The initial speculation, the Russians, of course. Everything is Russia by proxy these days. The Shadow Brokers released a certain amount of the Equation Group hacking tools asking for one million bitcoins, roughly $568 million at the time.The Shadow Brokers are back and since their initial hack it is assumed that this could be the work of a disgruntled in house employee. Furthermore they re not happy at all with President Donald J. Trump for numerous reasons, including his recent decision to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles into Syria.More on this report from Zerohedge Tyler Durden ZeroHedgeLast August, the intel world was abuzz following the news that a previously unknown hacker collective, The Shadow Brokers had hacked and released legitimate hacking tools from the NSA s own special-ops entity, the Equation Group , with initial speculation emerging that the Russians may have penetrated the US spy agency as suggested by none other than Edward Snowden. The Shadow Brokers released a bunch of the organization s hacking tools, and were asking for 1 million bitcoin (around $568 million at the time) to release more files, however failed to find a buyer. Attention then shifted from Russians after some speculated that the agency itself may be housing another mole insider. At the time, a former NSA source told Motherboard, that it s plausible that the leakers are actually a disgruntled insider, claiming that it s easier to walk out of the NSA with a USB drive or a CD than hack its servers. As famed NSA whistleblower William Binney who exposed the NSA s pervasive surveillance of Americans long before Snowden confirmed it said, My colleagues and I are fairly certain that this was no hack, or group for that matter, This Shadow Brokers character is one guy, an insider employee. In a subsequent Reuters op-ed by cybersecurity expert James Bamford, author of The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, and columnist for Foreign Policy magazine, he said that seemed as the most probable explanation, and that Russia had nothing to do with this latest and most provocative yet hack.Since then, the Shadow Broker group, whose origin and identity still remains a mystery, disappeared from the radar only to emerge today, when in an article posted on Medium, the group wrote an op-ed, much of it in broken English, in which it slammed Donald Trump s betrayal of his core base , and the recent attack on Syria, urging Trump to revert to his original promises and not be swept away by globalist and MIC interests, but far more imporantly, released the password which grants access to what Edward Snowden moments ago called the NSA s Top Secret arsenal of digital weapons. The article begins with the group explaining why it is displeased with Trump.DON T FORGET YOUR BASEDear President Trump,Respectfully, what the fuck are you doing? TheShadowBrokers voted for you. TheShadowBrokers supports you. TheShadowBrokers is losing faith in you. Mr. Trump helping theshadowbrokers, helping you. Is appearing you are abandoning your base , the movement , and the peoples who getting you elected.Good Evidence:#1 Goldman Sach (TheGlobalists) and Military Industrial Intelligence Complex (MIIC) cabinet #2 Backtracked on Obamacare #3 Attacked the Freedom Causcus (TheMovement) #4 Removed Bannon from the NSC #5 Increased U.S. involvement in a foreign war (Syria Strike)The peoples whose voted for you, voted against the Republican Party, the party that tried to destroying your character in the primaries. The peoples who voted for you, voted against the Democrat Party, the party that hates, mocks, and laughs at you. Without the support of the peoples who voted for you, what do you think will be happening to your Presidency? Without the support of the people who voted for you, do you think you ll be still making America great again? Do you be remembering when you were sitting there at the Obama Press Party and they were all laughing at you? Do you be remembering when you touring the country and all those peoples believed in you and supported you? You were those peoples hope. How do you be thinking it will be feeling when those people turn on you? Will they be laughing at you, hating you, and mocking you too?TheShadowBrokers doesn t want this to be happening to you, Mr. Trump. TheShadowBrokers is wanting to see you succeed.The hackers then ask Trump whose war is he fighting:If you made deal(s) be telling the peoples about them, peoples is appreciating transparency. But what kind of deal can be resulting in chemical weapons used in Syria, Mr. Bannon s removal from the NSC, US military strike on Syria, and successful vote for SCOTUS without change rules? Mr. Trump whose war are you fighting? Israeli Nationalists (Zionist) and Goldman Sachs war? Chinese Globalists and Goldman Sachs war? Is not looking like you fighting the domestic wars, the movement elected you to be fighting. You not being in office three months and already you looking like the MIIC s bitch with John McCain and Chuck Schumer double dutch ruddering each other in the corner over dead corpses.The post continues by exposing what the ShadowBrokers believe is the general mindset of Trump s support base;Your Supporters: Don t care what is written in the NYT, Washington Post, or any newspaper, so just ignore it. Don t care if you swapped wives with Mr Putin, double down on it, Putin is not just my firend he is my BFF . Don t care if the election was hacked or rigged, celebrate it so what if I did, what are you going to do about it . Don t care if your popular or nice, get er done, Obama s fail, thinking he could create compromise. No compromise. Don t want foreign wars, Do want domestic wars, drain the swamp , destroy the nanny state Don t care about your faith, you sound like a smuck when you try to say god things DO support the ideologies and policies of Steve Bannon, Anti-Globalism, Anti-Socialism, Nationalism, IsolationismIn the article, the ShadowBrokers also touch upon what until recently was the primary topic of the daily news cycle, namely the whether Russia is behind this (and any other black hat intel hacking operation):For peoples still being confused about TheShadowBrokers and Russia. If theshadowbrokers being Russian don t you think we d be in all those U.S. government reports on Russian hacking? TheShadowBrokers isn t not fans of Russia or Putin but The enemy of my enemy is my friend. We recognize Americans having more in common with Russians than Chinese or Globalist or Socialist. Russia and Putin are nationalist and enemies of the Globalist, examples: NATO encroachment and Ukraine conflict. Therefore Russia and Putin are being best allies until the common enemies are defeated and America is great again.The report than goes on to suggest that the hacking group is in fact comprised mostly of former US spies: President Trump, theshadowbrokers is offering our services to you and your administration. Did you know most of theshadowbrokers members have taken the oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic . Yes sir! Most of us used to be TheDeepState everyone is talking about Continue this report at ZeroHedgeREAD MORE SCI-TECH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire SCI-TECH FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

(The story refiles, to fix quote in 14th paragraph to read “middle-aged white guy,” not “middle-aged white man”; read “has seen his world,” not “who’s seen his world”; add dropped word “and”) By Jeff Mason CHICAGO (Reuters) - With a final call of his campaign mantra “Yes We Can,” President Barack Obama urged Americans on Tuesday to stand up for U.S. values and reject discrimination as the United States transitions to the presidency of Republican Donald Trump. In an emotional speech in which he thanked his family and declared his time as president the honor of his life, Obama gently prodded the public to embrace his vision of progress while repudiating some of the policies that Trump promoted during his campaign for the White House. “So just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are,” Obama told a crowd of 18,000 in his hometown of Chicago, where he celebrated his election in 2008 as the first black president of the United States. Trump, who takes office on Jan. 20, proposed temporarily banning Muslims from entering the country, building a wall on the border with Mexico, upending a global deal to fight climate change and dismantling Obama’s healthcare reform law. Obama made clear his opposition to those positions during fiery campaign speeches for 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, but has struck a more conciliatory tone with Trump since the election. In his farewell speech, he made clear his positions had not changed and he said his efforts to end the use of torture and close the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were part of a broader move to uphold U.S. values. “That’s why I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans,” he said in a clear reference to Trump that drew applause. He said bold action was needed to fight global warming and said “science and reason” mattered. “If anyone can put together a plan that is demonstrably better than the improvements we’ve made to our healthcare system that covers as many people at less cost, I will publicly support it,” he said in another prodding challenge to his successor. Trump has urged the Republican-controlled Congress to repeal the law right away. Obama, who came to office amid high expectations that his election would heal historic racial divides, acknowledged that was an impossible goal. “After my election, there was talk of a post-racial America,” he said. “Such a vision, however well-intended, was never realistic. Race remains a potent and often divisive force in our society.” However, Obama said he remained hopeful about the work that a younger generation would do. “Yes we can,” he said. “Yes we did.” In an indirect reference to the political work the Democratic Party will have to do to recover after Clinton’s loss, Obama urged racial minorities to seek justice not only for themselves but also for “the middle-aged white guy who from the outside may seem like he’s got advantages, but has seen his world upended by economic and cultural and technological change.” Trump won his election in part by appealing to working-class white men. First Lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, his wife Jill Biden, and many current and former White House staff members and campaign workers attended the speech. Obama wiped his eyes as he addressed his wife and thanked his running mate. They all appeared together on stage after the address. The Chicago visit is Obama’s last scheduled trip as president, and even the final flight on the presidential aircraft was tinged with wistfulness. It was the president’s 445th “mission” on Air Force One, a perk he has said he will miss when he leaves office, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. All told, Obama will have spent more than 2,800 hours or 116 days on the plane during his presidency. Obama plans to remain in Washington for the next two years while his younger daughter, Sasha, finishes high school. Sasha, who has an exam on Wednesday, did not attend the speech but her older sister Malia was there. The president has indicated he wants to give Trump the same space that his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, gave Obama after leaving office by not maintaining a high public profile.

MIAMI (AP) — A person with direct knowledge of the negotiations says Joshua Kushner, whose older brother is an adviser to President Trump, has a preliminary agreement to buy the Miami Marlins for about $1. 6 billion. [The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Friday because the Marlins and owner Jeffrey Loria have not commented publicly on negotiations. The preliminary agreement preceded due diligence by Kushner, the person said, adding the final offer could be much lower than $1. 6 billion. Other parties are also interested in buying the Marlins, and Loria might reopen negotiations with them. Kushner is a New York City businessman and investor and part of the real estate family that also includes Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s and an adviser to the president. Any sale must be approved by at least of Major League Baseball teams.

On Saturday morning, Hillary Clinton s campaign counsel posted a statement to Medium to announce that the campaign will back recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan if Green Party candidate Jill Stein follows through with reexamining the votes in those states.The post was written by attorney Marc Erik Elias, who said that the campaign had been questioning the results since the election ended, weighing different options. Elias said: It should go without saying that we take these concerns extremely seriously. We certainly understand the heartbreak felt by so many who worked so hard to elect Hillary Clinton, and it is a fundamental principle of our democracy to ensure that every vote is properly counted. Since the day after the election we have had lawyers and data scientists and analysts combing over the results to spot anomalies that would suggest a hacked result. These have included analysts both from within the campaign and outside, with backgrounds in politics, technology and academia. TwitterTwitterTwitterElias said that although actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology was not found, Stein s successful movement to get votes recounted in Wisconsin has persuaded the Clinton campaign to support the initiative. Now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states Michigan well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself. Echoing Stein s own words about making sure that America s elections maintain integrity, Elias said: We believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported. Elias entire statement can be read here. On Friday afternoon, Stein had filed for a recount in Wisconsin, promising to also follow through in Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Trump is leading by narrow margins. The deadline Stein must file for recounts in those states is Monday and Wednesday.Featured image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - Donald Trump on Friday picked a prominent climate change skeptic to help him craft his energy policy and pushed back against renewed calls that he release his income tax returns - saying his tax rate is “none of your business.” The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is seeking to build out his policy proposals as he pivots from campaigning for his party’s nomination to a likely general election matchup with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Among those he has asked for help is U.S. Republican Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, one of the country’s most ardent oil and gas drilling advocates and climate change skeptics. North Dakota has been at the forefront of the U.S. shale oil and gas boom. Trump’s team asked Cramer, who has endorsed Trump, to write a white paper, or detailed report, on his energy policy ideas, according to Cramer and sources familiar with the matter. Cramer said in an interview that his white paper would emphasize the dangers of foreign ownership of U.S. energy assets, as well as what he characterized as burdensome taxes and over-regulation. Trump will have an opportunity to float some of the ideas at an energy summit in Bismarck, North Dakota on May 26, Cramer said. The senator was also among a group of Trump advisers who recently met with lawmakers from Western energy states, who hope Trump will open more federal land for drilling, a lawmaker who took part in the meeting said. A spokeswoman for Trump’s campaign did not comment. Environmental groups, and Clinton’s campaign, quickly attacked Trump for tapping Cramer. “Kevin Cramer has consistently backed reckless and dangerous schemes to put the profits of fossil fuel executives before the health of the public, so he and Trump are a match made in polluter heaven,” Sierra Club Legislative Director Melinda Pierce said in an emailed statement. The Clinton campaign also criticized the move. “Donald Trump’s choice of outspoken climate (change) denier Kevin Cramer to advise him on energy policy is just the latest piece of evidence that letting him get near the White House would put our children’s health and futures at risk,” said campaign spokesman Jesse Ferguson. Trump has been light on the details of his energy policy, though he recently told supporters in West Virginia that the coal industry would thrive if he were president. He has also claimed global warming is a concept “created by and for the Chinese” to hurt U.S. business. Clinton, meanwhile, has advocated shifting the country to 50 percent clean energy by 2030, promised heavy regulation of fracking, and said her prospective administration would put coal companies “out of business.” Trump also took heat on Friday for not releasing his tax returns, something that American presidential candidates have done for decades. Clinton and her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have both released their returns. Trump has said the Internal Revenue Service was auditing his returns and he wanted to wait until the review was over before making them public. “It should be, and I hope it’s before the election,” Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” Pressed on what tax rate he pays, Trump refused to say. “It’s none of your business,” he said. The candidate has said there is nothing voters can learn from his tax filings. Tax filings show sources of income, both from within the United States and other countries, as well as charitable giving, investments, deductions and other financial information. The IRS declined to comment on whether Trump or any other presidential candidates were being audited. However, the Trump campaign earlier this year released a letter from his attorneys saying his personal tax returns have been under “continuous examination” from the IRS. This week, Clinton began calling on her probable Republican rival to release his returns. Last August, the former U.S. secretary of state posted the past eight years of tax returns for her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, on her website. Sanders released his 2014 return in April. Presidential candidates have a long history in the modern era of releasing their tax returns. “In 1976, Gerald Ford did not release his returns, but he did release some information about his taxes,” said Joseph Thorndike, director of the Tax History Project at Tax Analysts, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that provides tax news and analysis. “That was the last time that a major party nominee hasn’t done it,” he said. (Refiling to change dateline, previous WASHINGTON.)

Patrick Henningsen 21st Century Wire Hillary Clinton is the architect of US foreign policy failures in Libya and Syria. We ve heard that statement many times over the course of this US election cycle, but exactly how much truth is there to it? After researching this issue, one quickly learns that it s not only true, it s an understatement. She wasn t just an architect, she was a chief instigator. Clinton s main source of resume credibility is her tenure as US Secretary of State from January 21, 2009 to February 1, 2013. During that time, Clinton resided over the planning and conception of two devastating conflicts, Libya and Syria. These two disasters will ultimately define both the Obama and Clinton legacies, and not for the reasons one might think. I would like to stress that the case being made here is not a political one, it is a moral and ethical inquiry into the actions and conduct of a public official.Before we get into Libya, which itself is a detailed and grave tale of nation building gone wrong, let s look closely at Syria a conflict (not a Civil War) which has been dominating the international conversation for the last 4 years, but even more intensely in the last 18 months. Thus far, the results of US policy are abominable.What ownership does Clinton have over today s Syria? Today, the conflict is still being fuelled by tens of thousands of US and Gulf-backed militants, mostly of foreign origin, who comprise multiple Takfiri terrorist groups which the US insist calling rebels. This conclave includes the Islamic State (ISIS/Daesh), Al Nusra Front (al Qaeda in Syria), Arar al Sham, Nour al-din al-Zenki, Jaish al-Fatah (The Army of Conquest), along with many others. These armed groups are occupying strategic civilian areas throughout Syria, and it is a statement of fact that these terrorists are using civilian populations as human shields.A US-led Coalition is currently flying over Syria and Iraq, supposedly fighting ISIS, but is also coming dangerously close to conflict with both the Syrian and Russian militaries.Although this situation is now way beyond the pale, there was a time back in 2012 when a genuine diplomatic intervention could have helped to alter a fatal course of events.Hillary Clinton played a crucial role in initiating the current disaster.During a presidential primary debate in Milwaukee in February 2016, Clinton was quick to boast about her many achievements as Secretary of State, especially in Syria: You know, the Security Council finally got around to adopting a resolution. At the core of that resolution is an agreement I negotiated in June of 2012 in Geneva, which set forth a cease-fire and moving toward a political resolution, trying to bring the parties at stake in Syria together. It s a nice statement, but like so many of Clinton s policy eulogies, it has no basis in reality.Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development Solutions, sets Clinton straight explaining, In 2012, Clinton was the obstacle, not the solution, to a ceasefire being negotiated by UN Special Envoy Kofi Annan. It was US intransigence Clinton s intransigence that led to the failure of Annan s peace efforts in the spring of 2012, a point well-known among diplomats. Despite Clinton s insinuation in the Milwaukee debate, there was (of course) no 2012 ceasefire, only escalating carnage. Clinton bears heavy responsibility for that carnage, which has by now displaced more than 10 million Syrians and left more than 250,000 dead. Clinton s job, like most US diplomats, was to uphold the public facade that Washington is engaging in its usual list of honorable pursuits like cease fires, peace plans and protecting human rights while simultaneously helping to advance a covert agenda that achieves the exact opposite: destabilization, escalation of violence, flooding the region with weapons, and of course, working to overthrow the government of Syria. We want to pay special attention to the weapons trafficking part. Clinton was pivotal not only in coordinating with the Gulf states, but also giving political legitimacy to arming the moderate rebels (now commonly recognized as terrorists).Although the initial effort to fuel the armed insurgency in Syria was organized through Libya under the office of Secretary Clinton (which we ll demonstrate below), later efforts were formalized through a series of large weapons shipments out of NATO countries like Croatia, and then through other US-sanctioned covert smuggling projects like Operation Timber Sycamore, where the CIA, with the approval of President Obama, organized weapons shipments into Syria via Turkey and Jordan, but with Saudi Arabia footing the bill for that clandestine operation. The New York Times confirmed certain details of this in January 2016: American officials have not disclosed the amount of the Saudi contribution, which is by far the largest from another nation to the program to arm the rebels against President Bashar al-Assad s military. But estimates have put the total cost of the arming and training effort at several billion dollars. Perhaps the most important aspect of this story is this: it is absolutely illegal under International Law for foreign nations to conspire and trafficking arms into a country with the intent to overthrow the government of a nation-state.Now that might be a cause for concern for those wanting to recognize the international rule of law, but the United States, the Obama and Clinton regime has done this without any compunction at all. History shows however, that such overt flouting of international law places the entire basis of the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations at risk. Beyond this, it is also a running violation of US law in terms of providing material support (weapons, cash, supplies, intelligence and logistical support, and even political backing) to internationally recognized terrorist organizations. On those two points alone, Hillary Clinton should be not only disqualified for public office in the US, but should also face another criminal indictment for her role, along with every other US public official involved in sanctioning these operations, including Barack Obama, Senator John McCain, and a number of other US officials like Mike Rogers, former Republican Congressman from Michigan and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee when Timber Sycamore began. FRIENDS OF SYRIA : Secretary Clinton with Saudi and Qatari government officials in 2012, conspiring to destroy Syria.From 2011, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was effectively the public-facing CEO of the cynically titled, Friends of Syria. This was essentially a lobbying tour, bringing together NATO members, the Arab League and the Syrian Opposition all together to promote a policy of regime change for Syria. In reality, it was really a vehicle for raising money and planning for war. Here Clinton was flanked by her Saudi Arabian and Qatari donors to the Clinton Foundation, along with then UK Foreign Secretary William Hague, Turkey s prime minister, Recep Tayip Erdogan, a hand-picked puppet government-in-exile called the Syrian National Council, and other stakeholders all vying for a piece of Syria.Behind the pomp and circumstance, however, all parties were openly conspiring to arm militants for the purpose of upending the government in Damascus. Clinton effectively steered this process throughout her time in the cabinet a destructive process which has led to the bloodbath we see today. To any rational observer, the whole enterprise would be viewed as a failure; in terms of human loss, the refugee crisis, sectarian violence, and breeding terrorism for the next 30 or 40 years and yet, somehow Hillary Clinton is counting this as one of her achievements. Here, Sachs offers an accurate take on Clinton s abysmal legacy in Syria: .. she joined Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and right-wing Israelis to try to isolate, even defeat, Iran. In 2010, she supported secret negotiations between Israel and Syria to attempt to wrest Syria from Iran s influence. Those talks failed. Then the CIA and Clinton pressed successfully for Plan B: to overthrow Assad.When the unrest of the Arab Spring broke out in early 2011, the CIA and the anti-Iran front of Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey saw an opportunity to topple Assad quickly and thereby to gain a geopolitical victory. Clinton became the leading proponent of the CIA-led effort at Syrian regime change.In early 2011, Turkey and Saudi Arabia leveraged local protests against Assad to try to foment conditions for his ouster. By the spring of 2011, the CIA and the US allies were organizing an armed insurrection against the regime. On August 18, 2011, the US Government made public its position: Assad must go. Since then and until the recent fragile UN Security Council accord, the US has refused to agree to any ceasefire unless Assad is first deposed. The US policy under Clinton and until recently has been: regime change first, ceasefire after. After all, it s only Syrians who are dying. Annan s peace efforts were sunk by the United States unbending insistence that U.S.-led regime change must precede or at least accompany a ceasefire. As the Nation editors put it in August 2012:The US demand that Assad be removed and sanctions be imposed before negotiations could seriously begin, along with the refusal to include Iran in the process, doomed [Annan s] mission.Despite the billions spent on arming and training rebels , the millions of refugees and the hundreds of thousands dead Assad did not go as per the grand plan.Things continue to go septic. A recently released WikiLeaks email from a 2014 exchange between Clinton campaign chair, then White House advisor to President Obama, John Podesta, where the pair openly discuss common knowledge that the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar are funding ISIS terrorists. While this military/para-military operation is moving forward, we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL and other radical Sunni groups in the region, Clinton wrote. This effort will be enhanced by the stepped up commitment in the [Kurdish Regional Government]. The Qataris and Saudis will be put in a position of balancing policy between their ongoing competition to dominate the Sunni world and the consequences of serious U.S. pressure. In his recent interview with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and filmmaker John Pilger, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange explains an unsettling criminal connection between Clinton and her family foundation: All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting ISIS and funding ISIS, but the dodge has always been that it is some rogue princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding ISIS. Aside from verifying what many already suspected, this proves that the Clinton Foundation knowingly accepted millions of dollars in charitable donations from the same Gulf states which both Secretary Clinton and President Obama knew were funding ISIS, Al Nusra Front (al Qaeda in Syria), and the rest.Taken as a whole, this represents a level of corruption that would preclude anyone from running for office, let alone the US Presidency and yet, this issue receives very little airtime in the US. The reason for this is simple: both Democrats and Republicans are up to their neck in Washington s Dirty War on Syria. Illegal Gun-running Out of Benghazi, LibyaWhen the initial Benghazi story broke in the US, the media and the Republican politicians focused almost exclusively on the US casualties during militant raids on a CIA annex and makeshift US embassy in Benghazi. Four men died on September 11th and 12th, 2012 U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyrone S. Woods and Glen Doherty. Ten others were wounded in the fighting.During the aftermath, US media and GOP opposition made the story all about Hillary Clinton and the White House s failure to send reinforcements which they argue could have saved American lives. While this may have been true, it ignores the real story. This diversion was done in order to steer the narrative away from the bipartisan effort to traffic massive amounts of illegal weapons from Libya, and into the hands of US-NATO and Gulf-backed rebels in Syria.We now know that Clinton s diplomat Christopher Stevens was providing diplomatic cover for a CIA operation to transfer ex-Libyan military weapons stocks over to Syria. Many islamist fighters who fought with NATO to bring down Gaddafi in 2011 were later transferred from Libya to Syria to fight against the Syrian government.Still, despite all of this the collapse of Washington s puppet government the National Transitional Council (NTC), and Libya rapidly descending into a failed state, and the emergence of a new ISIS beach head there Clinton s inner circle remained clueless and only seem to be concerned with promoting HRC credentials in advance of her presidential run. Gateway Pundit adds: Hillary s team provides Clinton credit for her many actions that led to Qadhafi s toppling in Libya including, but not limited to: suspending the operations of the Libyan embassy in Washington; evacuating US embassy personnel in Tripoli and closing the embassy there; obtaining sanctions against Qadhafi and his family; working to suspend Libya from the Human Rights Council; appointing Special Envoy Chris Stevens to be the U.S. representative to Benghazi; engaging with UAE, Qatar, and Jordan to seek their participation in coalition operations; holding meetings with House Democrats and Senate Republicans to persuade them not to de-fund the Libya operation; and lastly, it was noted that Hillary worked to construct a $1.5 billion assets package to the National Transitional Council or NTC. Hillary saw this email sent to her from Cheryl Mills because as noted at WikiLeaks she asked for it to be printed in a subsequent email to a colleague. This email proves that Clinton s team created a list to show her responsibility for being the architect behind the overthrow of Qadhafi in Libya and the subsequent horror as a result. It is now known that the NTC in Libya is no longer in charge but it is unknown what happened to the $1.5 billion Hillary pushed to prop up this group. Here is the email via Scribd:NeoCon BedfellowsWith all the hysterical rhetoric by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party this year about Russia Hacking the US Elections, it should be pointed out that Clinton s State Department engineered a complete overthrow of a foreign government in Ukraine.There is also the case of the foul-mouthed Victoria Nuland (photo, left), Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs appointed by Clinton and charged with organizing Washington s 2014 coup d etat in Kiev.Clinton s appointee Nuland absolutely key in destabilizing the Ukraine, a move which effectively ruined US-Russian relations, leading us right up to the present geopolitical confrontation over Syria.During the m l e Nuland was also caught on tape with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, discussing which hand-pick Washington-approved people would be filling which positions in their new unelected junta government, including the office of Prime Minister. Listen to this stunning call: Award-winning journalist Robert Parry adds, The fact is that Clinton has generally marched in lock step with the neocons as they have implemented an aggressive regime change strategy against governments and political movements that don t toe Washington s line or that deviate from Israel s goals in the Middle East. So she has backed coups, such as in Honduras (2009) and Ukraine (2014); invasions, such as Iraq (2003) and Libya (2011); and subversions such as Syria (from 2011 to the present) all with various degrees of disastrous results. The No Fly Zone FantasyAnother big problem is that Clinton sees her path to war in Syria through a No Fly Zone, to Save the poor children of Aleppo. Although it sounds good during a TV debate, it is very unrealistic in practical terms, and if implemented, it would place the US squarely at war with both Russia and Syria, and possible Iran by extension. Is that the best Clinton has to offer? Prof Michel Chossudovsky explains the fundamental flaw in Clinton s proclamation:At the third presidential debate, Hillary Clinton reasserted her commitment that if elected president, she would implement a no-fly-zone, intimating that the objective was to save lives : I think a no-fly zone could save lives and could hasten the end of the conflict. I am well aware of the really legitimate concerns you have expressed from both the president and the general, Clinton said in response to a question from Fox News debate moderator Chris Wallace. This would not be done just on the first day. This would take a lot of negotiation and would also take making it clear to the Russians and Syrians that our purpose here was to provide safe zones on the ground I think we could strike a deal and make it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that this was something that we believe was in the best interest of the people on the ground in Syria. (Fox News, emphasis added)At present, under the Obama administration, the joint chiefs of staff are opposed to the No Fly zone .The Joint Chiefs of Staff are appointed by the Secretary of Defense.Under a Clinton presidency, a new Secretary of Defense as well as a new Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, firmly committed to A No fly Zone over Syria would be appointed.Mich le Angelique Flournoy, a former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is Hillary s choice for the position of Secretary of Defense, who favors the No Fly Zone option. Most considerate and informed commentators now accept that a No Fly Zone is an act of war. Clinton of all people should know this after Libya.Loosening Legal Requirements for WarLast week, vice presidential running mate, Tim Kaine, said that if elected, Hillary Clinton would press lawmakers to rewrite the Sept. 14, 2001, Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) making it even easier to go to war without having the actually declare war with a Congressional vote. This bill has been a favorite of Obama who has used it as an open-ended executive path to multiple undeclared wars of aggression, and to make his war on ISIS appear legal, for now anyway.According to Kaine, Clinton believes that, it s time for us to take that now-outdated authorization, and really think about what we are confronting, and work together to reach some legislative-executive accord about what it is we re doing. Kaine told Axelrod. It s time for Congress to get back in the game and refine and revise that authorization. This is nothing more than another Washington lawyer s parlor trick to pass another AUMF bill to cover the old one. The script just keeps getting revised.This was reiterated by Clinton campaign spokesman Jesse Lehrich in July when he told Yahoo News that Clinton agrees with Senator Kaine that if we are serious about confronting ISIS, Congress ought to express its resolve to stand behind our military and win this fight by passing a new AUMF. The legislation reflected his national security aides desire that it not tie his hands. The document authorized airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in the following three years. It forbade the use of American ground troops in enduring offensive ground combat operations a term the White House described as deliberately vague. It also allowed strikes against individuals and organizations fighting for, on behalf of, or alongside ISIL anywhere in the world.Democrats have balked at supporting such a sweeping measure. Republicans have pointed to the three-year limit and the ground-combat language to argue that the AUMF improperly binds the hands of Obama s successor.The truth of the matter is that both sides see political peril in the president s proposal. Democrats recall how voting in favor of the Iraq War helped to doom Clinton s 2008 presidential ambitions. And Republicans, who could vote to remove the language they describe as objectionable, prefer to criticize Obama s handling of the conflict without taking any steps that might make them co-owners of the strategy. A lawyer s blueprint for a continuation of Washington s status quo: unconstitutional open-ended, undeclared wars of aggression, anywhere, any time.A Threat to World PeaceLike Obama, and Bush before him, and Bill Clinton before them, as president Hillary Clinton will be expected to expedite an establishment agenda written by transnational corporations and other nebulous international crime syndicates. The financial engine for this is the banking houses of Wall Street and the City of London. A basic review of the Clinton s intimate relationship with Goldman Sachs investment house should provide amble proof of Bill and Hillary s ties to that circle. This shows how, throughout their career, the Clintons have been owned and operated by these banking houses.SEE ALSO: PARTNERS IN CRIME: Goldman Sachs, The Clintons & Wall StreetSuffice to say, based on this and many other exhibits which we have left out here, Hillary Clinton is a clear and present threat to world peace.This is not to say the Donald Trump presidency will be a halcyon affair either, but we don t know that yet. This is another problem with this heavily politicized topic in the US. In order to derail any critique of Clinton s chequered past, many Clinton supporters and die-hard liberal Democrats will try to equate to words of private citizen Donald Trump with the actions of public official Hillary Clinton. If we are having a rational argument then that would simply be a false comparison.If Donald Trump were to assume the office of Presidency, then I would not hesitate to apply as harsh an analysis to his actions and policies.In terms of foreign policy and government corruption Trump is an unknown quantity, while Hillary Clinton is very well-known one, as we have demonstrated. We have already seen her handy work in both Libya and Syria. Likewise, we have seen the fruits of Bill Clinton s misadventures in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, not to mention his menacing economic sanctions in Iraq which killed upwards of 1 million Iraqi civilians over a ten-year period, and sowed the seeds for future wars.It should also be noted that Senator Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War in 2003 a war waged on a false pretense, although she now claims the war was a mistake. After a joint US-Terrorist operation that ended in the assassination and street lynching of Libya leader Mumaur Gaddafi near the town of Sirte in October 2011, during a CBS interview, a gloating Hillary Clinton made one of the most callous and disturbing remarks ever from a high-ranking diplomat when she said: We came, we saw, he died! and proceeded to laugh on camera.This clip really sums up the attitude and moral vacuum we might experience with a Clinton White House:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dmp3Jndj_o . The evidence really speaks for itself. SEE ALSO: Hillary s Russian Hack Hoax: The Biggest Lie of this Election SeasonREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 FilesSUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The nearly man of South African politics, deputy president Cyril Ramaphosa, took a big step towards the top job on Monday when he was elected by a whisker as head of the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Ramaphosa s ability has been apparent for decades. Whenever Nelson Mandela needed a breakthrough in talks to end apartheid, he turned to the then-trade union leader with a reputation as a tenacious negotiator. Using skills honed in pay disputes with mining bosses, Ramaphosa steered those talks to a successful conclusion, allowing Mandela to sweep to power in 1994 as head of the victorious ANC after South Africa s first democratic vote. Mandela wanted Ramaphosa to be his heir but was pressured into picking Thabo Mbeki by a group of ANC leaders who had fought apartheid from exile. It has taken more than two decades for Ramaphosa to get another chance to run the country. Monday s party vote, which handed him victory by less than 200 of nearly 5,000 ballots, puts that goal firmly within the 65-year-old s grasp. The rand surged as much as 4 percent, suggesting approval of the business community. Ramaphosa s ambition for the presidency has been clear through his whole adult life. He was quite clearly wounded by his materialization in the Mbeki period, said Anthony Butler, a politics professor who has written a biography of Ramaphosa. The choice of Ramaphosa over his main rival for the ANC s top job, former cabinet minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, is likely to chart a reformist course for South Africa, which has lost its lustre under President Jacob Zuma. A lawyer with an easygoing manner, Ramaphosa has vowed to fight corruption and revitalize an economy that has slowed to a near-standstill under Zuma s scandal-plagued leadership. His message went down well with foreign investors and ANC members who thought Zuma s handling of the economy could cost the party dearly in 2019 parliamentary elections. Dlamini-Zuma promised a radical brand of wealth redistribution popular with poorer ANC voters who are angry at racial inequality. While Ramaphosa has backed calls for radical economic transformation , an ANC plan to tackle inequality, he tends to couch his policy pronouncements in more cautious terms. Unlike Zuma or Dlamini-Zuma, Ramaphosa was not driven into exile for opposing apartheid, which some of the party s more hardline members hold against him. He fought the injustices of white minority rule from within South Africa, most prominently by defending the rights of black miners as leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM). A member of the relatively small Venda ethnic group, Ramaphosa was able to overcome divisions that sometimes constrained members of the larger Zulu and Xhosa groups. A massive miners strike led by Ramaphosa s NUM in 1987 taught business that Cyril was a force to be reckoned with, said Michael Spicer, a former executive at Anglo American. He has a shrewd understanding of men and power and knows how to get what he wants from a situation, Spicer said. The importance of Ramaphosa s contribution to the talks to end apartheid is such that commentators have referred to them in two distinct stages: BC and AC, Before Cyril and After Cyril. Ramaphosa also played an important role in the drafting of South Africa s post-apartheid constitution. After missing out on becoming Mandela s deputy, Ramaphosa withdrew from active political life, switching focus to business. His investment vehicle Shanduka - Venda for change - grew rapidly and acquired stakes in mining firms, mobile operator MTN (MTNJ.J) and McDonald s South African franchise. Phuti Mahanyele, a former chief executive at Shanduka, recalled that Ramaphosa was a passionate leader who required staff to contribute to charitable projects aimed at improving access to education for the underprivileged. By the time Ramaphosa sold out of Shanduka in 2014, the firm was worth more than 8 billion rand ($584 million in today s money), making Ramaphosa one of South Africa s 20 richest people. To his supporters, Ramaphosa s business success makes him well-suited to the task of turning around an economy grappling with 28 percent unemployment and credit rating downgrades. In the Johannesburg township of Soweto last month, Ramaphosa called for a new deal between business and government to spur economic growth. Pravin Gordhan, a respected former finance minister, told Reuters that if Ramaphosa was elected ANC leader, the whole narrative about South Africa s economy would change for the better within three months . But Ramaphosa has his detractors too. He was a non-executive director at Lonmin (LMI.L) (LONJ.J) when negotiations to halt a violent wildcat strike at its Marikana platinum mine in 2012 ended in police shooting 34 strikers dead. An inquiry subsequently absolved Ramaphosa of guilt. But some families of the victims still blame him for urging the authorities to intervene. My conscience is that I participated in trying to stop further deaths from happening, Ramaphosa said about the deaths. Others are unconvinced that Ramaphosa, who has been deputy president since 2014, will be as tough on corruption as his campaign rhetoric suggests. Bantu Holomisa, an opposition politician and former ANC member who worked closely with him in the 1990s, said he was by nature cautious. Cyril has been part of the machinery and has not acted on corruption so far, Holomisa said. It is not clear whether he will if he gets elected. ($1 = 13.6947 rand)

Mar-a-Lago Trump rally !Blacks for Trump &Trump VolunteersMarch 4 Trump !Trump Tower#fisa#wiretapping#wiretap pic.twitter.com/w8b2wqWfBZ Charles Trump2020 (@charlespm777) March 4, 2017BREAKING: President Trump stops Motorcade near Mar-A-Lago to wave at supporters and say Thank You #Florida #BreakingNews #March4Trump pic.twitter.com/5TAzftYWPm Florida Street Team (@ChatRevolve) March 4, 2017WATCH as President Trump as exits his vehicle to show his appreciation for Trump supporters: Breaking Video Pres. Trump gets out of motorcade at Mar-a-Lago Rally! #fisa#wiretap#march4trump#blacksfortrump#Obamagate #Trump pic.twitter.com/aqjH5A8QhK Charles Trump2020 (@charlespm777) March 4, 2017

KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwandan authorities have charged a critic of President Paul Kagame with inciting insurrection and forgery after she was barred from challenging him in August elections, the public prosecutor s spokesman said on Wednesday. Diane Shima Rwigara, a 35-year-old accountant, has repeatedly accused Kagame of stifling dissent and criticized his Rwandan Patriotic Front s near total hold on power since it fought its way to power to end a genocide in 1994. Kagame won the August election with 98.8 percent of the vote. Rwigara s mother Adeline and sister Anne have also been charged with incitement and discrimination and sectarianism , prosecutor s spokesman Faustin Nkusi told Reuters. He said the cases were filed in court on Tuesday and awaited a trial date. The three women have been in detention for around two weeks. They were first taken from their home in the Rwandan capital on Aug. 30 on tax evasion allegations related to the family s tobacco company. That charge was not listed in those filed on Tuesday. Kagame won international praise for restoring stability in Rwanda and presiding over a rapid economic recovery after the genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate ethnic Hutus were killed. But human rights groups say he has muzzled independent media and suppressed potential democratic opponents. Some critics of the government have been imprisoned or killed. Electoral authorities barred Rwigara from standing in August, saying she had not submitted enough supporters signatures and some of the names she did sent in belonged to dead people. Rwigara s brother Aristide, who lives in the United States, said the charges against the three women are politically motivated and intended to punish the family for her attempted presidential bid. He was not reachable for comment on Wednesday. Nkusi said the charges were not related to politics.

It s always depressing when allegations that police target African-Americans are confirmed not just by eyewitness accounts, but with audio or video evidence. Recently, a NYPD officer provided Gawker with chilling audio that sounds a whole lot like his boss pressuring him into profiling black men.Michael Birch recorded the audio in 2012 when he was called to a performance evaluation meeting with his commanding officer and a lieutenant in August 2012. He told the publication that he was expecting to hear that he wasn t generating enough activity which meant he would be ordered to arrest more people and issue more summonses but the conversation just turned completely weird to him when he was flat-out told to racially profile. Who commits the crimes in the city? commanding officer, Constantin Tsachas, who was recently cleared for a promotion from captain to deputy inspector,asks in this rather damning clip.Birch answers that it s mostly teenagers, anywhere between the ages of 15 and 19, mostly male blacks and Hispanics. Asked who he is stopping, Birch explains that he stops everybody.. Fifty-four [TABs] up to 8/20, the commanding officer says. Twenty-five of those are female. Half. Like I said, I stop everybody, Birch replies. I m not targeting anybody. You just told me who the bad guys are, his CO presses. Yeah, I know that. But there s also other people who are committing violations as well, Birch says. I m not saying that there s not violations being made. In other words, people from all demographics break the law. That should have been good enough for the commanding officer, but then the conversation went completely off the rails:CO: The male blacks, that you told me commit the crimes Birch: Plenty of people that I write summonses to are male blacks and male Hispanics.CO: You stopped two male blacks.Birch: Not for the whole year. You re telling me for the whole year I only stopped two male blacks on summonses?CO: 8/20. From January 1st to August 20th. Fifty-four TABs: two male blacks, seven Hispanics, seven other, ten white, three Asian. So where are you targeting the perps that you just told me?Birch: Like I said, if I don t see a perp jumping over the turnstile, what am I supposed to do to him?CO: These people are not going to pop.Birch: How do I know that? A female Hispanic that I stopped in Sheepshead Bay did pop, actually, for a warrant, and I arrested her. Female Hispanic. The Hispanics that we re supposed to be going after. That are committing the crimes. The people that I CO: Did you think that she was going to pop?Birch: Did I think she was going to pop? I didn t put no thought into it. If you come up for a collar, I m taking you in. Pop is a term for when a warrant pops up and leads to an arrest. TAB is a term for a court summons resulting from a transit violation. The conversation continues, getting worse as it progresses:CO: Here s what I see. You just described to me who s committing the crimes. You re fully aware of it. But you re not targeting those people.Birch: I am. I m targeting everybody.CO: Two male blacks.Birch: Whoever is out there. If I CO: So you only saw two male blacks jump the turnstile?Birch: If you re saying that s what s in front of you, then yes, that s all I saw, is two male blacks for the whole year jumping the turnstile. If you re saying that s what s in front of you, I m not disputing that. If that s what I got there.CO: That is what you have. That is not disputed here.Birch: I m saying, we re also talking Hispanics as well. I stopped a lot of Hispanics, too.CO: Seven male Hispanics. But more than half are female.Birch: And like I said, everybody s committing violations in front of me. I was shocked, Birch said of the meeting. I was not only shocked, I was mad. My last name is Birch. I look white. They didn t realize I was a Puerto Rican kid, and they re just saying this to me like it s OK. It s OK, we re amongst friends. I don t want to be stopped because I m Puerto Rican, he says. I want to get stopped because I did something wrong. Birch is suing the department to combat what he sees as a larger trend of policing that disproportionately affects minority New Yorkers, Gawker reports. The targeting of minorities by the NYPD has caused so many problems throughout our city yet the NYPD continues to promote officers who engage in these activities, his lawyer told the publication. It s very hard to have a job where the whole public is against you, including your bosses. And when you actually try to do something right, they don t care, Birch says. I can t wait to get away from this place. Birch is evidence that good cops do exist. The problem is that, unlike him, most good cops stay silent as bad actors disgrace the profession, unfairly targeting people who are not white. Thank you for stepping forward, Officer Birch. Hopefully, your example will lead other good cops to call out the bad ones.Hear the audio for yourself below:Featured image via YouTube

It s going to be a long four years if Donald Trump is going to keep threatening anyone who says something bad about him.Just imagine if President Obama had filed defamation lawsuits against every conservative who ever called him the N-word. Republicans would have thrown a giant temper tantrum.But Donald Trump is apparently going to try to silence people by threatening them with lawsuits, which is something he did to actor Tom Arnold this week after Arnold revealed that he has tapes from Celebrity Apprentice showing Trump calling his own son a retard and saying the N-word. When the people sent it to me, it was funny, Arnold said during a radio show on Friday. Hundreds of people have seen these. It was sort of a Christmas video they put together. He wasn t going to be president of the United States. It was him sitting in that chair saying the N-word, saying the C-word, calling his son a retard, just being so mean to his own children. Oh, this is so funny, this is this guy. Now, Arnold never actually said that he would ever release these tapes, but that has changed because Trump escalated the issue by threatening Arnold with a defamation lawsuit.Arnold revealed on Twitter Wednesday that someone from Trump s team left a message on his voicemail at home.Wife told me there s house line VM from Trump Camp about defamation suit so it s on! Open Apprentice vaults 4 discovery! Miss Universe too!! Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) December 21, 2016So even though Trump is set to take over the presidency in January and the fact that these tapes would do nothing to change that now, Trump has such a fragile ego that he s willing to threaten people with lawsuits for simply saying they have video of Trump being a complete asshole.Trump is being petty by threatening Arnold, and the fact that Trump did so must mean Arnold has something on him that he wants to keep buried.Seriously, it s time for Trump to grow the hell up and learn to take criticism. He s about to hold public office now. Just running for office in the first place opened himself up to this stuff. So he has nobody but himself to blame.Featured Image: Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images

(Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a conservative group’s free speech challenge to a Minnesota law prohibiting voters from wearing T-shirts or other apparel adorned with overtly political messages inside polling stations. A group called the Minnesota Voters Alliance is appealing a lower court’s decision to uphold the law, which forbids political badges, buttons or other insignia inside polling places during primary or general elections. State election officials have interpreted the law as also barring campaign literature and material from groups with political views such as the conservative Tea Party movement or the liberal MoveOn.org. Violators are asked to cover up or remove offending items, but officials are instructed not to bar anyone from voting. The Minnesota Voters Alliance, a St. Paul-based group that says it seeks to expose voter fraud, and several other organizations sued in 2010 claiming state officials turned polling places into “speech-free zones,” violating the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection of freedom of speech. Other states including Texas, New Jersey and Delaware have regulations similar to Minnesota’s, according to court filings. The group’s executive director, Andrew Cilek, was temporarily prevented from voting for wearing a T-shirt bearing the Tea Party logo and a button that stated, “Please I.D. Me.” The button was part of a campaign opposing the state’s lack of a photo identification requirement for voting, court papers said. In rulings in 2013 and 2017, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld the Minnesota restrictions, suggesting the law helps maintain “peace, order and decorum” at polling sites. The plaintiffs, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation conservative legal group, appealed to the Supreme Court saying a total ban on political speech unrelated to candidates or ballot initiatives is overly broad. The high court has allowed states to ban campaign materials and active vote solicitation at polling places, but not all political speech, the plaintiffs said. “The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case is a good sign for First Amendment rights,” foundation lawyer Wen Fa said in an email. A spokesman for Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon declined to comment but state officials said in legal papers the law is neutral with respect to individuals’ viewpoints. It was one of two cases the conservative-majority court took up on Monday in which conservative organizations are seeking to vindicate what they consider to be their free speech rights. The other involved a challenge to a California law regarding private facilities that counsel pregnant women against abortion.

11 Shares 1 9 0 1 Iranians spend 4.5% of their annual earnings on beauty products, three times more than their European counterparts, as per official statistics. The Germans spend 1.5% and the French and British 1.7% of their income every year on cosmetics. According to data from the Iranian Association of Cosmetics, Toiletries and Perfumery Importers, Iran accounts for $2.1 billion of the Middle East’s $7.2 billion beauty products market–second in the region after Saudi Arabia, the Persian daily Shahrvand reported. It is said that there are 15 million consumers for cosmetic products in Iran. Dividing the annual turnover by this number shows that each consumer spends $140 on cosmetics per year. Germany’s online statistics portal (Statista) states that the per capita cosmetic spending in Europe is €90 ($99) on average. The index is $173.5 in Germany, $176 in France, $177 in Britain, $169 in Italy and $150 in Spain. If the raw figures alone are taken, Iranians spend less than Europeans on make-up products. But the results change as other parameters such as the price of products and household average earnings are taken into account as well. As confirmed by the Iranian Association of Cosmetics, Toiletries and Perfumery Importers, 70% of the cosmetics in the market are smuggled into the country and often sold at a lower price than they would be if they were legally imported, not to mention the health risks contraband products are likely to pose. Europeans on the other hand pay the real price of the products which includes tax and are thus more expensive. MORE... Pakistani warships berth in Iran’s port as part of amicable relations, joint drills President Rouhani’s “open-door” economic policy: Recipe for indebtedness, deindustrialization and dependence Iranian Nowruz: A new day has come! Moreover, the spending has to be measured as compared to the average earnings. Based on Gallup Incorporation’s opinion polls, Iranians’ median per capita income has been estimated as $3,100 while that of the Germans, French and British $14,000, $12,500 and $12,300 respectively. The Spanish and Italians earn $6,800 and $7,200. This means that Iranians spend 4.5% of their income on beauty products while the figure is 1.5% for Germans, 1.7% for the French and British, 3% for Italians and 2.5% for the Spanish. These calculations show that people in Iran spend three times as much on cosmetics as German, French and British consumers. Cosmetic Surgery Additionally, Iran’s Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons’ Association has announced that 80,000 cosmetic surgeries are performed each year constituting 0.3% of the operations in the world. This is a rather large percentage given that only 1.08% of the world population lives in Iran. Besides, the figure is said to be approximate due to the absence of an official registration system and the fact that other types of beauty surgeries such as body contouring and facial rejuvenation, among many others, are not included. Data from the Central Bank and the Statistics Center of Iran suggest that cultural pursuits constitute a small portion of Iranian household expenditure. The reports indicate that each family spent only 2% of their income on recreation and cultural activities in 2015, less than half their expenses on cosmetic products. Iran’s share of the world book market is 0.1% which is one-third the country’s share of the cosmetics market. The $2.1 billion incurred on beauty products is said to equal Japan’s cinema turnover and exceeds that of Bollywood and the UK’s film industry. Culture, cinema and books don’t comprise high-income businesses in Iran while cosmetic surgeons and beauty product dealers make fortunes on their business.

Barack Obama’s announcement on Friday that American special forces will take a more active role in the war in Syria is for many critics of his foreign policy a confirmation that the US has inched deeper into a chaotic conflict. It’s also an opportunity for presidential candidates to both praise and denounce him. And most Republican and Democratic presidential candidates propose doing even more than the raids that Obama has authorized, which skeptics call “mission creep”. The war pits the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, against various rebels and the jihadi group Islamic State, and now involves the US, Russia, Iran, Gulf states, Turkey, the Kurds and Iraq. Here’s how foreign policy might look under the ideas of potential presidents. Nearly all the candidates of both parties have called for a no-fly zone over Syria, arguing that denying Assad’s air force will better protect civilians and rebels from bombing runs. “A superpower can impose a no-fly zone if it decides it wants to,” said Stephen Biddle, a professor of international affairs at George Washington University. “But the problems are it’s very expensive, no one is willing to pay the price, and these days there are serious risks of escalation.” A no-fly zone would require far more airstrikes on airfields and anti-aircraft batteries, for instance, putting American pilots in danger against Syrian missiles and jets. Russia’s entry into the war further complicates the proposal, increasing the risk of shooting down Russian aircraft bombing rebels. And while a future president could warn Vladimir Putin to fly strikes at his own peril, the US stands to lose more should Putin simply continue strikes. An American president’s choice would then be to stand down or risk a wider, far more dangerous war – and political disaster at home – by firing on Russian pilots. Nor would a no-fly zone offer certain protection to civilians or rebels whom an American president finds acceptable. Most of the war’s dead – civilian or combatant – have not been killed from the air but on the ground, by bullets, mortars and artillery shells, according to the Violations Documentation Center. The statistics suggest a no-fly zone would not do much to staunch the bleeding of civilians or any friendly rebels. In contrast, Russia’s strategy of indiscriminate bombing boosts Assad’s much more limited aims, which do not take civilian casualties into account. Only Republican Rand Paul and Democrats Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders oppose a no-fly zone. Billionaire Donald Trump has maintained that “safe zones” on the ground in Syria and Iraq would help end the war and solve the refugee crisis, and said that Turkey and the Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar should lead the effort with US help. But while a ground campaign could defend civilians from the deadliest threats, it would also entail all the dangers of mission creep and the painstaking logistics of a war effort. One American has already died in a raid on an Isis facility, and a Russian soldier died in Syria last week. “To keep it safe would require fighting,” the defense secretary, Ash Carter, told Congress on Tuesday. “You need to think in each case … who’s in, who is kept out and how the enforcement of it is done.” Any campaign would probably need snipers, radar and recon teams, artillery and special operations teams – if not full infantry battalions, Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations, has noted in Foreign Policy. “The types of interventions that proponents have endorsed for Syria are often based on deep misunderstandings of how US force was used on behalf of humanitarian missions in the past,” Zenko wrote. “Proposals that consciously ignore or downplay the amount and type of force needed to protect civilians are just wishful thinking.” Biddle agreed, adding that another problem is that safe zones offer cover to both civilians and combatants. “Say you set up a safe zone along the Turkish-Syrian border, and lo and behold guerrillas start operating within it, and the government starts firing artillery into it. What do you do then? Silence the artillery by expanding your perimeter? Push the perimeter until it’s all of Syria?” He also noted the problem of policing – for instance, the dilemma of a suspected rebel whose family vouches for the person’s innocence. “You don’t have to walk very far down the thought experiment to end up with all sorts of problems and ambiguities,” Biddle said. Senator Marco Rubio is the most vocal supporter of embedding special forces with rebel and Kurdish ground troops. Most of the candidates support arms for rebels, though few have specified which groups they find acceptable and how they would vet them – the same problems that have slowed Pentagon efforts in the last two years. More problematically, most of the Syrian rebels eager for weapons and aid are not interested in a concerted fight against Isis. “While there are tens of thousands of rebels willing to receive training and equipment to go after the Assad regime, few are willing to fight the Islamic State,” Zenko wrote earlier this year. Arming anti-Assad rebels may suit US interests, but it would also pit the US against Russia and Iran in a proxy war. Even regional allies disagree with American priorities about Isis, Biddle noted, which is why Turkey continues to bomb Kurds and Saudi Arabia and the UAE arm groups around the region, most notably in Syria but also in the ruins of Yemen. These same conflicted interests make it unlikely that the nations would ever band together to form their own “safe zone”. “They all have bigger fish to fry,” he said. “We’re the biggest, but we’re the only one who thinks Isil is the threat to be resolved first.” Although Kurdish fighters have proven the most reliable allies for US ground offensives, Turkish warplanes have increased bombing sorties against Kurdish forces in Syria and Iraq, meaning increased arms for the Kurds could fuel a war between two American allies on yet another border. Arming Kurdish fighters could also lead to the US supplying groups that it has named terrorists, if it hasn’t inadvertently done so already. In October Amnesty International accused the Kurdish group YPG of human rights violations. Rubio, Jeb Bush and Lindsey Graham have spoken strongly in favor of arming Syrian rebel groups and Kurds, Ted Cruz has called for directly arming the Kurds, Hillary Clinton urged arms for rebels and Kurds while she was secretary of state, and even O’Malley has said the US should “probably” arm the fighters. All candidates except Senator Rand Paul have said they support Obama’s decision to extend the US military presence in Afghanistan to 2017, though a handful say they only do so out of deference to the generals’ advice. But the presence of 5,500 to 10,000 troops, as the president and candidates prescribe, would have little effect on the war against the Taliban, experts said. Most said a steady run of airstrikes had prevented the Taliban from massing, and that the end of “combat operations” – resulting in a lull in airstrikes – had given the militants opportunity to retake cities and regroup. The spread of American troops at four airbases around Afghanistan and continued airstrikes – including one that bombed a hospital – suggests Obama plans to let generals use as much airpower as possible to support Afghan forces. But neither he nor any candidate has shown any appetite for a major reinforcement. Barring dramatic changes to Barack Obama’s plans and the politics of the Middle East, 2017 will begin with 5,500 troops across Afghanistan and a number of special forces teams operating in Syria and Iraq. Paul, Trump and Cruz have all offered variations on a plan that could see US forces withdraw from the region, ceding a lead military role to Russia and Iran but continuing airstrikes against Isis. But while staying out of foreign conflicts has appeal at home to Democrats and Republicans alike – and arguably supports US interests – “it still sacrifices interests that are real, even if they’re limited,” Biddle said. “There’s the prospective future terrorist threat of an ungoverned region, the risk of a war if that metastasizes and spreads,” he said. “If you wash your hands of it, you’re running a social science experiment to sit back and see how many of these bad things unfold. That’s a really bad choice for a person that has the power to make a difference.” Not least on the minds of the president or any would-be commander in chief, he added, was that to do nothing “hands the opposition a bunch of really obvious talking points”.

syrien Die Dokumentarfilmerin Maria Iwanowa hat in Syrien gedreht. Quelle:Elena Kern / Pressebild Was hat Sie dazu bewegt, in den Nahen Osten aufzubrechen, um dort einen Film über Flüchtlinge zu drehen? Die Dreharbeiten begannen in einem Flüchtlingslager in Berlin. Ich war auf der Suche nach einer Protagonistin. Man sagte mir aber, dass junge Frauen aus Syrien nicht alleine fliehen – entweder mit ihren Männern, oder mit Verwandten. Dann schaute ich mich einfach nach interessanten Gesichtern um. So fand ich meinen Protagonisten, den 14-jährigen Muhamed, der von seinen Eltern nach Deutschland geschickt worden war. Er hat den gesamten Weg alleine zurückgelegt, um später einen rechtlichen Anspruch auf Familiennachzug zu haben und seine Verwandten aus Syrien nachzuholen. Während der Dreharbeiten ist mir klar geworden, dass ich weiter nach Damaskus muss, wo Muhameds Eltern geblieben sind. Wegen Problemen mit dem Visum mussten mein Kameramann und ich über Beirut nach Syrien fliegen, weil der Libanon für Russen visumsfrei ist. „Angriff? Kaffeepause!“: Was russische Reporter in Syrien erlebt haben Als wir auf einer Schnellstraße unterwegs waren, da wusste ich: Zehn Kilometer von uns entfernt ist der IS, ganz nah. Wir fuhren 200 Kilometer in der Stunde und als unser Fahrer ein Motorrad sah, drehte er abrupt um und fuhr in die Gegenrichtung. Ich fragte nachher, warum er das gemacht habe. Er sagte, dass die Terroristen öfter mit Motorrädern unterwegs seien. So kamen wir nach Damaskus. Die Heizung in unserer Wohnung funktionierte nicht. Es gab keinen Strom und kein heißes Wasser, wir schliefen auf einer Art Sofa – im Nahen Osten hat man keine richtigen Betten. Um drei Uhr morgens hörte ich Bombenangriffe. Sieht es so in der gesamten Stadt aus? Ich war im Süden und da hat man Angst, sein Haus zu verlassen. Man kann die Angst in den Augen der Menschen sehen und die Atmosphäre ist sehr bedrückt. Haben sie die Eltern Muhameds letztendlich finden können? Konnten sie mit ihnen Kontakt aufnehmen? Sie empfingen uns sehr herzlich und luden uns zum Abendessen ein. Sie haben alles, um in Kontakt zu bleiben, sie nutzen soziale Netzwerke. Nach dem Treffen kehrten wir nach Beirut zurück, um von da aus in Flüchtlingslager in den Bergen zu fahren. Dort haben wir dann nochmal zwei Wochen lang gedreht. Gibt es Unterschiede zwischen den Flüchtlingslagern im Libanon und in Deutschland? Schlacht um Mossul: Steht ein zweites Aleppo bevor? Aber sicher. Im Libanon gibt es kaum Annehmlichkeiten. Im Film geht es unter anderem um einen Mann, der 17 Kinder hat. Er wohnt in einem Zelt, das er einfach in verschiedene Räume geteilt hat. Er flickt, wenn etwas kaputtgeht, sie schlafen auf dem Boden. Obwohl diese Menschen in schrecklichen Bedingungen leben, haben sie versucht, etwas für uns zu kochen. Sie haben Oud – ein orientalisches Musikinstrument – gespielt, haben Witze gemacht: Sie leben und hoffen, dass sie irgendwann nach Hause können. Alle denken nur daran. Viele wollen natürlich nach Europa und haben schon einen Antrag gestellt. Aber nicht jeder wird aufgenommen. Der Libanon ist ein sehr interessantes Land. Stellen Sie sich das mal vor: Auf einem Gebiet, das kleiner als das Verwaltungsgebiet Moskau ist, leben 18 religiöse Bewegungen, vier Millionen Menschen und anderthalb Millionen Flüchtlinge zusammen. Ich habe trotzdem keine Konflikte gesehen, zum Beispiel zwischen Christen und Muslimen. Alle gehen in dieselben Restaurants und Kinos. Alles ist friedlich. Spürt man im Libanon etwas vom Krieg im Nachbarland? Man spürt den alten Krieg, also den Bürgerkrieg: Es gibt zum Teil zerbombte Gebäude, viel Militärpersonal, Kontrollposten. Manchmal sieht man Transportpanzer. Gleichzeitig sieht man aber auch eine Halle für moderne Kunst gleich neben den Soldaten, und ein Stück weiter ein modernes Kino. Es ist ein Patchwork-Land und sehr vielfältig. Ich bin mit dem Auto und einem Fahrer gereist und habe schöne Städte, Berge und eine Weinproduktion gesehen. Ich war auf einem Apfelfest. Angst hatte ich keine. Es gibt einen modernen Flughafen, Taxis, Hotels, sehr gute Restaurants, Strände und Kinos. Aber derzeit kann Ihnen niemand garantieren, dass Sie hundertprozentig sicher sind – das gilt übrigens auch für Frankreich oder Deutschland. Der Libanon unterscheidet sich in diesem Sinne nicht von Europa. RBTH-Check Der Film feierte am 24. Oktober im Rahmen des Russischen Filmfestivals “Fünf Jahre in fünf Tagen” in Beirut Premiere. Dieser Beitrag erschien zuerst bei RIA Nowosti . Alle Rechte vorbehalten

Earlier this month, the Trump campaign posted on its website an advertisement seeking election observers to monitor locations. The move, which is unusual for private campaigns, comes from the irrational fear that should Hillary Clinton win, the election would be rigged. So Trump s solution? Have his rabid, conspiracy theory believing supporters intimidate voters in poll lines.In Pennsylvania, where polls have Clinton ahead by as much as nine points, Trump claims the only way Clinton could win is if she cheats or those in the Democratic Party rig the election in her favor. So his initial call was to have his supporters monitor the stations in the predominantly black and minority -voting urban areas of the state.It was very reminiscent of the 1960s Jim Crow intimidation of the South.After facing some backlash for the dangerous and archaic call to suppress and intimidate voters, Trump doubled down on his claim that the election will be rigged and that supporters should watch the polling locations very closely on election day:You ve got to get every one of your friends. You ve got to get every one of your family. You ve got to get everybody to go out and watch. And go out and vote. And when I say watch, you know what I m talking about, right? You know what I m taking about. I think you got to go out and you got to watch.The question is just what should his people be watching for? Should they be watching and observing people of color? Should they be monitoring young, college-aged millenials? Should they be asking voters their personal information so they can play Sherlock Holmes?Once again, Trump sounds his dog whistle. When he tells his predominantly white audience, you know what I m talking about, the innuendo could not be more clear: watch, intimidate and disenfranchise minority voters.Of course, Republicans, who have been pushing the now widely debunked myth of rampant voter fraud, will be mum on this. In justification, they will point to the said myth that is rampant voter fraud as why they support this dangerous, racist and damaging call to action.Trump s call to intimidate voters should be a warning to all Americans: don t get complacent. Get out, vote, and take this monstrosity down.Featured image via Angelo Meredino/Getty Images

Seriously, Trump supporters are scarily messed up people.The Secret Service needs to be on high alert through Election Day, because Trump supporters are just waiting for Donald Trump to give the word so they can launch an assassination attempt against the Democratic nominee.As the third presidential debate got underway on Wednesday, a Trump supporter watching it on television decided to aim his gun at Hillary Clinton and take a picture of it for Twitter. He a message to Donald Trump telling him he is ready to pull the trigger whenever he commands him to do so.Winning Democrats reports that Faggotini Alfredo (or @yunghomo), which is clearly a fake name, posted the image and tagged Trump with the caption, Give me the go-ahead my guy. Here s the image via Winning Democrats.This isn t the first time a Trump supporter has threatened to assassinate Hillary.Trump himself called for Second Amendment people to do something to stop Hillary during a rally in August.Ever since then, the calls for bloody rebellion and assassination have only grown and gotten more frightening.One Trump supporter told the Boston Globe last week, If she s in office, I hope we can start a coup. She should be in prison or shot. That s how I feel about it. We re going to have a revolution and take them out of office if that s what it takes. There s going to be a lot of bloodshed. But that s what it s going to take I would do whatever I can for my country. Another Trump supporter in Georgia said he s ready for civil war if Hillary becomes president. The war that s going to break out if Hillary Clinton s elected, if that happens, he said. Your patriots are going to overthrow the government.' Trump s supporters are only getting more eager to commit acts of violence as Election Day approaches. These people are scary, and clearly they are just itching to start firing bullets if Trump gives the word. And if he does, he should be immediately arrested for treason.Featured image by Win McNamee via Getty Images, tweet via Winning Democrats

A colleague recently returned from a trip to Europe with that unmistakable glow. Striving to hold on to it for as long as possible, she deployed various strategies including placing her used boarding passes front and center on her desk, and leaving receipts from the TV Tower in Berlin and the Eiffel Tower in Paris on a bedroom chest of drawers that she passes each morning. “It just surrounds me,” she said of the strategic placement of her vacation mementos. “It sustains that warm vibe. ” She also made a point of incorporating items that she bought during her trip into her daily life back in New York. In Berlin, for instance, she picked up a silver Bodum milk frother with the idea that when she returned home she would make her coffee the way a friend made it for her each morning in Berlin. (Yes, she could have bought a Bodum frother in New York, but hers is imbued with meaning because she purchased it in Berlin where her friend bought hers.) Wearing clothes acquired on vacation also helps, she said, especially if you first wore that new dress to a jazz club or while strolling from the Latin Quarter to the Marais. “It brings back the memories,” she said, “because you’re wearing the memories. ” I liked her strategies and began wondering about other potential tactics. A number of studies suggest that much pleasure can be derived from actively anticipating a vacation: looking at photos of the places you plan to visit, reading about the culture, making dinner reservations, or simply imagining yourself enjoying your time there. Maintaining pleasure after a great vacation is more challenging. Researchers have found that the glow, if achieved at all, fades quickly. Indeed, one such study, published in 2010 in Applied Research in Quality of Life, surveyed 1, 530 Dutch individuals and noted that only vacationers who said they had a “very relaxed” trip benefited in terms of happiness. And even among that group, the high lasted a mere two weeks or so. One possible reason that travelers have an easier time anticipating a vacation than hanging on to its afterglow is that, in general, anticipation evokes stronger feelings and images. Research published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2007 by Leaf Van Boven at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Laurence Ashworth at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, found that “the tendency to report more intense emotions during anticipation than during retrospection is robust and pervasive in everyday life. ” Even so, all is not necessarily lost the moment you step off the plane. There are some things you can do before you travel and when you return home that may help keep you in a holiday state of mind. 1. Plan. Make sure that your vacation is likely to provide you with happy memories by nailing down in advance the kind of details that can trip you up (which bus to take into the city, what hours the museum is open). vacations lower stress, according to research by Shawn Achor, a former lecturer at Harvard known for his talks on positive psychology, and the founder of Good Think, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. along with Michelle Gielan, founder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research. “Poorly planned and stressful vacations eliminate the positive benefit of time away,” Mr. Achor wrote in a blog series for the Harvard Business Review last year. “A positive, vacation can make you happier and less stressed, and you can return with more energy at work and with more meaning in your life. ” 2. Reminisce. Most people snap back to their particular baseline level of happiness shortly after returning from a vacation. But psychologists say that reminiscing about a trip, even long after it’s over, can bring deep pleasure in the present. “Flipping through a photo album or watching old video clips (us at the Grand Canyon, me driving my motorbike) helps us relive the positive experience and the positive feelings we had at the time,” writes Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, in “The Myths of Happiness. ” This can also be accomplished, she and others have said, by savoring the details of a trip (the smell of jasmine in the park, the sound of the orchestra in the amphitheater) and sharing them with others. “Rather than letting our possessions and experiences to gather dust on shelves and in closets and memories,” Dr. Lyubomirsky wrote, “we can either literally them in the present (e. g. by taking out the faded Trivial Pursuit) or metaphorically (e. g. by reminiscing about spring break). ” 3. Retreat. “Nowhere is there a more idyllic spot, a vacation home more private and peaceful, than in one’s own mind, especially when it is furnished in such a way that the merest inward glance induces ease,” wrote the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius in a translation of his “Meditations” by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks. “Take this vacation as often as you like,” he continued, “and so charge your spirit. ” Knowing I was in the market for preservatives, another colleague shared with me that passage, which seems as relevant in the 2000s as it was in the 100s. The importance of vacation has been explored in various studies including one published in the journal Society and Mental Health in 2013. The authors, including Terry Hartig, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Uppsala University, Sweden, looked into whether the potential benefits of vacationing (having more energy, fewer health complaints, better life satisfaction) could spread among individuals, contributing “more to population health than the sum of benefits to individual workers. ” Using data from a pharmacy corporation allied with Sweden’s national health care system and from governmental sources, they found that the dispensation of antidepressants declined with an increase in the number of vacationing workers. Ideally, vast swaths of the population would take time off simultaneously for what the researchers call “collective restoration. ” However, the researchers also found that having a good vacation may not only benefit you, it may also benefit others. Those good feelings you return with can spread to your colleagues, even though they themselves didn’t take a vacation. So consider encouraging your to tack those postcards to her cubicle wall, or wear that new bangle from Santorini. Who knows? The happier she is after her vacation, the happier you may be, too.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Please note that the story USA-TAX/STUDY headlined “Wealthy win in U.S. House tax bill, taxes rise for some - think tank” published at 2315 GMT is withdrawn after the Tax Policy Center said it found an error in its analysis and removed all related analyses from its website. TPC said it would release a revised version of its report as soon as possible. A new story will be issued when the revised version of the report becomes available.

Páginas Libres SNIP creó mercado negro e informal Socios | 2 de noviembre de 2016 por Germán Lench Cáceres* 2-11-2016 Por fin se piensa hacer algo realista, reestructurar como sosteníamos desde esta columna, el Sistema Nacional de Inversión Pública (SNIP) que ha creado un mercado negro e informal sin sentido técnico para beneficiar la aprobación de estudios de pre inversión beneficiando “estudios” copiados y/o mal elaborados, que son condición para que muchas oficinas de Programación e Inversiones del Sector Público a nivel del Gobierno Central, Regional y Local le otorguen viabilidad pidiendo prebendas (pagos por debajo para darles pase en algunos casos). La inversión pública complementa a la privada y se le debe acelerar, año 2014 -2.4%; 2015 -2.7%, esto con la finalidad de ayudar al crecimiento económico y aumentar el PBI nacional. El país requiere un shock de inversiones públicas para disminuir brechas de infraestructura y reactivar la economía. El concepto de SNIP fue traído el 2000 por los tecnócratas que aún son dueños del MEF y que enseñan diplomados en universidades y sobre la metodología, perdiendo el objetivo del sistema de evitar el despilfarro en los gastos de inversión del Estado. La idea con el SNIP era tener un sistema administrativo, utilizado para mejorar la calidad de los proyectos, a través de principios, métodos, procedimientos y normas técnicas que tienen relación con las fases de estos. Con su aplicación se ha ampliado el ciclo del proyecto con la implementación de los estudios de pre inversión (perfil y factibilidad) lo que en algún momento exigía la pre factibilidad y se busca: a) Eficiencia en la utilización de recursos, b) Sostenibilidad en la mejora de la calidad o ampliación de la provisión de los servicios relacionados a los proyectos, c) Mayor impacto socio-económico para la población. La pregunta es si con la aplicación del SNIP se incrementó la inversión pública, o mejoró la rentabilidad para la sociedad en su conjunto con el incremento del gasto público. Una clara observación es que el SNIP no debió aplicarse a los proyectos de inversión pública por igual. Otra es que los “profesionales” que se consideran expertos en formular proyectos del SNIP, empiezan a ofrecer sus servicios principalmente a los gobiernos regionales y lo único que cambian es la ubicación del proyecto y los análisis respectivos son los mismos cuando es sabido que cada pueblo tiene una realidad distinta. Un PIP que debe desarrollarse en 60 días, demora 90 días, lo terminan desarrollando en 210 días, 7 meses por la incapacidad en formular proyectos. En el SNIP cuando se ha eliminado los estudios de prefactibilidad, quedando perfil y factibilidad, tampoco contribuye a agilizarlo, el año 2015 se incrementó el techo para los estudios a nivel de perfil, hasta 20 millones de soles, pero nada de lo técnico, aquí debemos ser claros, qué tipo de proyectos deben pasar la evaluación económica requerida, por ello los proyectos que tienen que ver con la producción, su mejora, ampliación, entre otros, deben pasar esta prueba, como los del sector agricultura, producción, transportes, pero no los de educación, salud, investigación, saneamiento, estos últimos pasan mucho tiempo en una evaluación interminable, siendo aprobados por cansancio, o por presiones de los políticos, pero dejando lo técnico, ¿es necesario realizar una evaluación costo-efectividad para decidir si se hace o no una infraestructura educativa?, aquí debe primar los lineamientos de política, o los proyectos para investigación deben pasar por una evaluación beneficio costo, por eso no se aprovecha nuestra biodiversidad, pasamos más tiempo tratando de demostrar lo que es evidente para intervenir, por ello algo del puede ser necesario para proyectos relacionados a la producción. Con la aplicación del SNIP tal como está, no se ha incrementado la inversión pública, y no se ha mejorado la rentabilidad para la sociedad en su conjunto con el incremento del gasto público. Actualmente hay baja eficiencia en la inversión pública y lo hubo antes del SNIP, pero este sistema se utilizó únicamente para frenar el gasto público y generar un superávit fiscal. El sistema que se implante no debe facilitar la corrupción, ni tener tufo populista. Como decía un profesor, “El bypass nunca se hubiera hecho, si hubiese habido el SNIP”. Es hora de reestructurar este instrumento de control cuasi colonial que impone el MEF al resto de la administración pública. .. [email protected] Tomado de http://senaldealerta.pe/econom%C3%A...

in: Government , War Propaganda , World News The neocon Washington Post features their extremist views, urging greater war on a sovereign independent nation threatening no one. Former State Department official/current Wilson Center vice president Aaron David Miller challenged Hillary, saying “(s)he’s on the hook to deliver” as America’s next president. If she…back(s) down…what explanation can she use?” The Center for American Progress, founded by her campaign chairman John Podesta, called for greater use of US air power in Syria – on the phony pretext of protecting civilians. Throughout her campaign, Hillary supported escalated conflict in Syria, not resolving it diplomatically. Expect her to follow through once in office as Obama’s successor, a near-certainty as things now stand. WaPo editors gave retired US Marine General John Allen and Middle East Institute senior fellow Charles Lister feature op-ed space . Both extremists urge “bring(ing) Syria’s Assad and his backers to account now” – their arguments based on a litany of deception, misinformation and Big Lies, commentaries WaPo features repeatedly, suppressing opposing viewpoints urging peace and stability. Allen and Lister: “For 5½ years, the Syrian government has tortured, shot, bombed and gassed its own people with impunity, with the resulting human cost clear for all to see: nearly 500,000 dead and 11 million displaced. Since Russia’s military intervention began one year ago, conditions have worsened…” Fact: Syria is Obama’s war, orchestrated by Hillary Clinton, entirely responsible for horrific carnage and atrocities – using ISIS and other terrorist foot soldiers, supported by US-led “coalition” air power. Fact: Russia’s intervention in September 2015 changed the dynamic on the ground – a vital campaign to preserve Syrian sovereign independence and territorial integrity, what neocons like Allen and Lister want destroyed, so America can claim another imperial trophy and keep the Middle East pot boiling, Iran the next target. Allen and Lister: “While subjecting his people to unspeakable medieval-style brutality, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sabotaged diplomatic initiatives aimed at bringing a lasting calm to his country.” “The most recent such diplomatic scheme was trashed not just by Assad, but also Russia, whose aircraft were accused of subjecting a UN-mandated aid convoy to a ferocious two-hour attack in September.” Fact: Syrians overwhelmingly support Assad, reelecting him democratically in June 2014, wanting no one else leading them. Fact: He’s an eminently decent man, concerned about his nation and welfare of his people, doing his job responsibly, defending them from US-imported death squads. Fact: He’s no “medieval-style brut(e),” a disgraceful Big Lie claiming it – he and millions of Syrians victimized by US imperial viciousness, its genocidal mass slaughter and destruction, what neocons like Allen and Lister support. Fact: Clear evidence shows US-supported terrorists were responsible for attacking and destroying most of a UN humanitarian convoy for beleaguered eastern Aleppo residents. Allen and Lister disgracefully blamed Russia and Syria for war crimes committed by America, its rogue partners and terrorist foot soldiers in Aleppo and elsewhere nationwide. They called for more assertive US action, claiming “(t)he world will not forgive us for our inaction” – while hyping the myth of (nonexistent) moderate rebels waging (nonexistent) civil war against a sitting government both writers want toppled illegally, US-controlled puppet rule replacing it. Allen and Lister: “The credibility of the United States as the leader and defender of the free world must be salvaged from the horrific devastation of Syria.” Fact: Syria was at peace with its neighbors until America and its rogue allies attacked it preemptively without just cause – raping and destroying the country, massacring its people, displacing half its population internally or externally. Allen and Lister urge escalating conflict, not resolving it responsibly – nor holding war criminals in America and its allied countries accountable for high crimes too horrendous to ignore. Submit your review

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders revealed she says a little prayer of God help me each day before walking into the briefing room during an interview on Fox News Sunday. Dana Perino, a former White House press secretary herself, mentioned she would say a prayer of thanks and gratitude as she would arrive at the building each morning. Sanders, speaking about her job taking questions as the Trump administration s chief spokesperson, expressed both love for the job and said there was hostility from the press she has never seen. I ve always said if I ever walk into the building and I m not in awe of being here and being part of it, then I ve been here too long and it s time to go, Sanders said. Thankfully, I still feel a sense of reverence every time I step into the building, certainly every time I step into the briefing room. And I hope I never lose that. I also say a little prayer of God help me every day right before walking into that room, she added.OUR MOST RECENT REPORT ON SANDERS: ALL HAT, NO CATTLE Sarah Sanders hit back at criticism that General Kelly was fabricating his account of Rep. Frederica Wilson grandstanding during an event to dedicate a new FBI office in Texas. The press was all over Sanders who clarified that Rep. Wilson made comments during the event about how she got the funding for the FBI office by picking up the phone and calling Barack. She was grandstanding and making the event about her, according to Kelly. The fake news is saying Sanders said the press couldn t speak to Kelly but when you listen to what she said it s clear she said to go ahead if they want to challenge Kelly. She NEVER said the press couldn t talk to him.Great job Class act!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio met with federal prosecutors on Friday as part of their lengthy investigation into whether people involved in fundraising for his election campaign broke corruption laws, according to news reports. De Blasio, a Democrat who faces reelection in November, has repeatedly said he and his campaign staff have done nothing wrong and that he was cooperating with prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan in their yearlong criminal investigation. “We did everything right,” he said in a television interview last month. “My team did everything right.” Prosecutors and agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation questioned him on multiple topics, according to the New York Times. The meeting took place at his lawyers’ office in Manhattan, and his black sport-utility vehicle was seen departing from the office garage about five hours after it arrived. News photographers briefly gave chase, but de Blasio did not emerge from the vehicle to speak with waiting reporters. A spokesman for the mayor did not respond to questions on Friday. Prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s public corruption unit are looking at whether people who helped raise money for de Blasio’s 2013 election campaign and a non-profit organization that his advisers operated received favorable treatment from the mayor or his aides at City Hall, according to news reports. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office, which typically does not discuss ongoing investigations, declined to comment. After the meeting, the mayor, who had no public events planned for the day, headed to the airport to fly to Atlanta for a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, according to his published schedule. Last month, de Blasio confirmed he was interviewed by state-level prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office in a separate investigation into his fundraising practices. He is no longer a target of that inquiry, although some of his aides may still be under scrutiny, according to the New York Times. The private law firms defending the mayor and other officials are costing the city more than $11.6 million, the paper reported.

Kudos to Catholics4Trump for providing evidence that the story Hillary and her comrades in the media have been telling American voters for months about Trump mocking a disabled man was nothing more than an opportunity for them to fabricate a story about Trump, in hopes of making him look like an awful human being. Meanwhile, it accomplished what they had hoped for. It took the focus off Hillary and her corrupt and dangerous behavior as our Secretary of State and helped to diminish Trump in the eyes of many Americans. But here s the proof they were lying:At the Democratic National Convention speakers repeated the claim, amplified ad nauseam by the left and establishment GOP opponents over the past year, that Donald Trump mocked the disability of New York Times reporter, Serge Kovaleski. This accusation has served as a very convenient tool to both smear Trump s character and to avoid having to confront him on substantive political issues. But is it true? Here is the story the media is not telling you.It all started on November 21, 2015 when, at a rally, Trump said he remembered seeing reports of Arab Americans celebrating the 9/11 terror attacks on rooftops in New Jersey shortly after the twin towers fell. As he told George Stephanopolous in an interview the next day on ABC s This Week :Stephanopolous and all of the major news outlets immediately denied the existence of any such news reports following 9/11. One paper, the Washington Post, even went so far as to write a detailed article claiming to fact check Mr. Trump. After an exhaustive review, the Post lectured that there was absolutely no evidence of Trump s claim and deemed it false.Imagine the Washington Post s surprise when Trump uncovered one of the Washington Post s own reporters, Serge Kovaleski, supporting the claim in an article Kovaleski wrote for them on September 18, 2001. Kovaleski wrote:Very embarrassing for the media, especially the Washington Post which had done such a great job scouring news reports after 9/11 that they missed their very own story on the subject. It was in this state of embarrassment that the media was desperate to distract from the matter. The Washington Post ended up finding Kovaleski, now writing for the New York Times, so he could do damage control. Kovaleski predictably tried to backtrack from his 2001 account saying he didn t remember the details:Enter Donald Trump s rally in South Carolina soon thereafter. During the rally Trump pointed all of this out and paraphrased Kovaleski s backtracking as he impersonated a groveling reporter changing his story under pressure. While he did this, Trump moved his hands around quickly, acting flustered.Soon thereafter, the media revealed still photos of Kovaleski with his right hand in a permanently flexed position downward announcing that he was disabled. The media then shifted from trying to defend their oversight of the 9/11 Post article and instead, with disapproving shocked outrage, accused Trump of mocking a reporter s disability. Some liberals went even further and freeze-framed a millisecond of the Trump video at the exact moment when his hand went into a flexed posture. Then they dishonestly put this screen capture side by side with a picture of Kovaleski s flexed hand. Thus, you saw the following photo spread like wildfire over social media with commentary condescendingly and horrifyingly excoriating trump as a monster:The media s clear implication was that Trump was mocking the way Kovaleski moved his arms. People watching the clip of Trump s impersonation only knew that Kovaleski was disabled. Thus, they naturally assumed Kovaleski s disability must be similar to cerebral palsy where he has limited control of his movements and is prone to have muscle spasms or move his arms in jerky motions as Trump was doing at the rally. This is precisely the image the media wanted in people s minds. They wanted this to be the story: that Donald Trump knowingly and intentionally mocked the flailing arm motions of someone who can t control his muscles. They knew this would naturally trigger a visceral reaction of disgust from viewers and outrage amongst the disabled and all decent Americans, many of whom, to this day, think this is exactly what happened. Is it?What the media did not choose to show you was video of Serge Kovaleski. Notice how the media only showed and still shows photos of him. This was done for a reason. As it turns out, Kovaleski s disability is a congenital condition called arthrogryposis. Arthrogryposis causes restricted movement in the joints but does not cause spasms or uncontrolled moving of the limbs like cerebral palsy does.To show the depths of the deceit, one CNN reporter explained, while displaying a still photo of him, that Kovaleski, suffers from a chronic condition that impairs movement of his arms. Again, the implication is that Kovaleski can t control his arms from moving.To the contrary, Kovaleski appears perfectly calm when giving interviews. Thus, if Trump truly wanted to mock Kovaleski s disability, he would have had to stand perfectly still with a flexed right hand and not flail his arms. don t believe me? Watch the video:Here is Trump explaining that he NEVER mocked the leftist NYT s reporter who was using Trump s misconstrued comments and body language to do a hatchet job on his character:Here s Hillary using a bogus story about Trump created by the leftist media in an attempt to distract from her criminal and reckless behavior as Secretary of State:And finally, watch Trump use almost the EXACT hand movements when referring to the NOT disabled Ted Cruz or the General he spoke of while using similar hand movements:https://youtu.be/ydGOPzW227EBy the way here s the video proving Trump was also correct about Muslim s celebrating in Jersey City after 9-11 terror attack:Via: Catholics4Trump

The Obama administration has been playing loose and free with our national security. It s been revealed over the years that several of the Obama cabinet members have been keeping e-mail accounts that were not secure and were non-government. One of the common themes in the usage of a second e-mail account was to use your dog s name as the account name. In the case of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton it was reckless abandon and wide open access:The New York Post fills in the blanks on Hillary:US intelligence officials so far have determined that at least four and as many as 305 of the more than 30,000 emails Clinton and her aides have printed out and turned over to investigators were classified at the time they were written.They include a 2011 message from Clinton s top aides that contains military intelligence from United States Africa Command gleaned from satellite images of troop movements in Libya, along with the travel and protection plans for Ambassador Christopher Stevens, who was later killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Another staff email sent to Clinton in 2012 contained investigative data about Benghazi terrorist suspects wanted by the FBI. IT S HARD TO IMAGINE THAT IN HER POSITION SHE WOULD FAIL TO RECOGNIZE THE OBVIOUS. retired Army Col. Larry Mrozinski Both emails were classified TS/SI Top Secret/Special Intelligence and required the nation s highest security clearance to read. SI is a control system within the supersecret designation known as Sensitive Compartmented Information. SCI intelligence, which if leaked can cause grave harm to national security, is tightly controlled and usually kept in hard-copy form in bound books numbered and stored in highly secure read rooms known as SCIFs at department headquarters in Foggy Bottom. Before entering, cleared officials are required to place cellphones, BlackBerrys, iPads, laptops and other electronic devices on a shelf outside the monitored facilities. TS/SCI material is transported between SCIFs in locked bags carried by special couriers.LISA JACKSON AND LOIS LERNER USING E-MAIL ACCOUNT NAMED AFTER THEIR DOGSIn 2012 it was revealed that Obama administration officials used pseudonym email accounts to hide their communications. EPA head Lisa Jackson became embroiled in a scandal when it was discovered that she subverted FOIA concerns by using an account under the name Richard Windsor , a name attributed to her dog.Later, as the EPA scandal evolved, Lisa Jackson quit her position. Now, it appears that IRS official Lois Lerner was doing the exact same thing. Using the email name Toby Miles to hide her in house, and ex parte, communication. The IRS plot thickens:FOX News Reports on Lerner:The IRS admitted to a federal court there was a second personal email account that Lois Lerner, the official at the heart of the Tea Party targeting scandal, used to conduct agency business.The email account apparently was set up under the name, Toby Miles, which sources tell Fox News is the name of Lerner s dog.The admission, first reported by The Washington Times, was made Monday in an open-records lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch, a conservative group suing to see Lerner s emails sent during the targeting of conservative groups filing for tax-exempt status.IRS lawyer Geoffrey Klimas told the court that as it was putting together a set of documents to hand over to Judicial Watch, attorneys discovered another email account, in addition to her official account and a separate personal email already known to the agency. In the process of preparing this status report and for the August 24, 2015, release of Lerner communications, the undersigned attorneys learned that, in addition to emails to or from an email account denominated Lois G. Lerner or Lois Home, some emails responsive to Judicial Watch s request may have been sent to or received from a personal email account denominated Toby Miles, Klimas told U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan.Two sources told Fox News that Toby Miles is the name of Lerner s dog.CAROLINE KENNEDY OUR AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN:Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, used a personal email to conduct official business as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did according to a new State Department report.Many State Department staff used their private accounts to both send and receive these emails, the State Department s inspector general found in an investigation of Kennedy s embassy in Tokyo. Senior embassy staff, including the ambassador, used personal email accounts to send and receive messages containing official business, investigators wrote in the report, released Tuesday. In addition, (investigators) identified instances where emails labeled sensitive but unclassified were sent from, or received by, personal email accounts. Via: cnn

The driver pushed his way through the crowd, with some of the demonstrators even riding on the hood for a distance.In his defense, he did initially pick a spot that was mostly covered by a banner to try and break through. The genius protestors then all gathered in front of him and went for a little ride on the hood. At one point one of the pedestrians even tried punching the driver.Apparently, the driver had a job and responsibilities to attend to, unlike his pedestrian counterparts.(Source: Gateway Pundit)

Planned Parenthood workers are sick and tired of being harassed by conservative pricks, and they aren t taking it anymore.Damien is an employee at a Planned Parenthood in Oregon and he was asked by the aunt of a teen boy to give her nephew the sex talk because the boy s mother didn t feel comfortable teaching the boy about sex and the his school lacks a sex ed program.And so, Damien gladly took up the task and later wrote about the experience on Tumblr. Today a 16-year-old boy was brought into the clinic by his aunt to have the talk because his school didn t teach sex ED and his mother wouldn t talk to him about sex. She spent 40 bucks so he could get tested for the first time. I spent an hour talking to this young boy about sex. I got to have the sex talk with him. I showed him how to properly use a condom and protect himself and his partners. We talked about STDs and pregnancy prevention. We even talked about pubic grooming and ways to avoid razor burn. This poor boy has never had someone talk to him about anything related to the changes his body is going through. And then we spent 20 minutes talking about consent and how important it is. Growing up I never, ever had someone talk to me about consent and its importance. I even had sex ED in school! This shit is important ya ll. Of course, it didn t take long for a conservative troll to notice the post and start harassing Damien and trash talking Planned Parenthood. It is the parents duty to have the talk with their kids, not a government funded organization that murders babies, the troll commented.Damien didn t sit back and allow the right-wing troll to get away with it. He ruthlessly fired back. First of all f*cktruck: I am not a government employee. My wages are not paid by the government. Second: zero babies have ever been murdered in a planned parenthood. I didn t say a god damn word about abortion but you had to get your f*cking tighty whiteys in a bunch because an organization that you know nothing about is doing good things for millions of people and you hate it. Shut your face up about shit you don t understand you f*cking dump truck. Abortion is murder, just because they re in the womb doesn t change the fact you re killing an innocent human being, the right-wing troll continued to insist. As I said, it s not a faceless organization s job to provide sex ed while simultaneously killing unborn children. The right-wing troll has slapped Damien with a glove so he picked up a gauntlet and smacked back on behalf of women everywhere. Listen up kiddo: Abortion isn t murder. Murder is illegal. Abortion is not illegal. IE abortion is not murder. As I said (and we ll go with what I said as not total bullshit because it s obvious you have absolutely no real knowledge when it comes to sex or reproduction and i think we can thank your parents for that) this young man had a single mother that didn t feel comfortable talking to him about sex. So i did it. I provided medically accurate and up to date information unlike so many parents today. And by the way, planned parenthood isn t some shadowy faceless organization. For example, this is my face. The face i made while reading your stupid ass response. And then he posted a picture of himself.Image via TumblrAnd that is how Planned Parenthood workers fight back against conservative blowhards.Featured image via Flickr

We told you about the fancy affair Obama was planning to host at the White House for black rappers last week. The latest development with the ankle bracelet on a criminal rapper makes you want to scream, Are you kidding me? An attempt by President Obama to promote his My Brother s Keeper initiative, which aims to keep youths of color out of trouble, came to a farcical end when rapper Rick Ross s ankle bracelet which he received on a kidnapping and assault charge went off.Obama had invited a bevy of hip-hop heavyweights, including Niki Minaj, Common, Busta Rhymes, Pusha T and DJ Khaled, to the meeting at the White House Friday.But none of them least of all Ross himself expected the ankle bracelet to interrupt the president, according to TMZ.Obama reportedly invited the stars to the serious and fancy affair, which was not made public before the event, to promote the initiative.It was so serious, in fact, that Ross, who is typically photographed topless to show off his impressive all-over body tattoos, wore a smart suit and a pair of black Adidas sneakers.That suit conveniently covered the ankle bracelet that he received after last year s kidnapping, assault and battery charges. Unfortunately, it wasn t able to block the sound of his new anklet s random beeps one of which went off just as Obama was finishing his speech.Even the self-styled Hood Billionaire was surprised at the sound, a source said.He later posted a picture of himself and DJ Khaled talking after the event on his Instagram account. Via: Daily Mail

Many thousands of women are expected to converge on the nation’s capital for the Women’s March on Washington the day after Donald J. Trump’s inauguration. Jennifer Willis no longer plans to be one of them. Ms. Willis, a wedding minister from South Carolina, had looked forward to taking her daughters to the march. Then she read a post on the Facebook page for the march that made her feel unwelcome because she is white. The post, written by a black activist from Brooklyn who is a march volunteer, advised “white allies” to listen more and talk less. It also chided those who, it said, were only now waking up to racism because of the election. “You don’t just get to join because now you’re scared, too,” read the post. “I was born scared. ” Stung by the tone, Ms. Willis canceled her trip. “This is a women’s march,” she said. “We’re supposed to be allies in equal pay, marriage, adoption. Why is it now about, ‘White women don’t understand black women’?” If all goes as planned, the Jan. 21 march will be a momentous display of unity in protest of a president whose treatment of women came to dominate the campaign’s final weeks. But long before the first buses roll to Washington and sister demonstrations take place in other cities, contentious conversations about race have erupted nearly every day among marchers, exhilarating some and alienating others. In Tennessee, emotions ran high when organizers changed the name of the local march from “Women’s March on ” to “Power Together Tennessee, in solidarity with Women’s March on Washington. ” While many applauded the name change, which was meant to signal the start of a new social justice movement in Nashville, some complained that the event had turned from a march for all women into a march for black women. In Louisiana, the first state coordinator gave up her volunteer role in part because there were no minority women in leadership positions at that time. “I got a lot of flak locally when I stepped down, from white women who said that I’m alienating a lot of white women,” said Candice Huber, a bookstore owner in New Orleans, who is white. “They said, ‘Why do you have to be so divisive? ’” In some ways, the discord is by design. Even as they are working to ensure a smooth and unified march next week, the national organizers said they made a deliberate decision to highlight the plight of minority and undocumented immigrant women and provoke uncomfortable discussions about race. “This was an opportunity to take the conversation to the deep places,” said Linda Sarsour, a Muslim who heads the Arab American Association of New York and is one of four of the national march. “Sometimes you are going to upset people. ” The post that offended Ms. Willis was part of that effort. So was the quotation posted on the march’s Facebook page from Bell Hooks, the black feminist, about forging a stronger sisterhood by “confronting the ways women — through sex, class and race — dominated and exploited other women. ” In response, a New Jersey woman wrote: “I’m starting to feel not very welcome in this endeavor. ” A debate then ensued about whether white women were just now experiencing what minority women experience daily, or were having a hard time yielding control. A young white woman from Baltimore wrote with bitterness that white women who might have been victims of rape and abuse were being “asked to check their privilege,” a catchphrase that refers to people acknowledging their advantages, but which even some liberal women find unduly confrontational. No one involved with the march fears that the rancor will dampen turnout even many of those who expressed dismay at the tone of the discussion said they still intended to join what is sure to be the largest demonstration yet against the Trump presidency. “I will march,” one wrote on the march’s Facebook page, “Hoping that someday soon a sense of unity will occur before it’s too late. ” But these debates over race also reflect deeper questions about the future of progressivism in the age of Trump. Should the march highlight what divides women, or what unites them? Is there room for women who have never heard of “white privilege”? And at a time when a presidential candidate ran against political correctness and won — with half of white female voters supporting him — is this the time to tone down talk about race or to double down? “If your goal is to get as many people as possible at the march, maybe you don’t want to alienate people,” said Anne Valk, the author of “Radical Sisters,” a book about racial and class differences in the women’s movement. “But if your goal is to use the march as a catalyst for progressive social and political change, then that has to include thinking about race and class privilege. ” The discord also reflects the variety of women’s rights and liberal causes being represented at the march, as well as a generational divide. Many older white women spent their lives fighting for rights like workplace protections that younger women now take for granted. Many young activists have spent years protesting police tactics and criminal justice policies — issues they feel too many white liberals have ignored. “Yes, equal pay is an issue,” Ms. Sarsour said. “But look at the ratio of what white women get paid versus black women and Latina women. ” For too long, the march organizers said, the women’s rights movement focused on issues that were important to white women, such as the ability to work outside the home and attain the same positions that men do. But minority women, they said, have had different priorities. Black women who have worked their whole lives as maids might care more about the minimum wage or police brutality than about seeing a woman in the White House. Undocumented immigrant women might care about abortion rights, they said, but not nearly as much as they worry about being deported. This brand of feminism — frequently referred to as “intersectionality” — asks white women to acknowledge that they have had it easier. It speaks candidly about the history of racism, even within the feminist movement itself. The organizers of the 1913 suffrage march on Washington asked black women to march at the back of the parade. The issue of race has followed the march from its inception. The day after the election, Bob Bland, a fashion designer in New York, floated the idea of a march in Washington on Facebook. Within hours, 3, 000 people said they would join. Then a friend called to tell Ms. Bland that a woman in Hawaii with a similar page had collected pledges from 12, 000 people. “I thought, ‘Wow, let’s merge,’” Ms. Bland recalled. As the effort grew, a number of comments on Facebook implored Ms. Bland, who is white, to include minority women on the leadership team. Ms. Bland felt strongly that it was the right thing to do. Within three days of the election, Carmen Perez, a Hispanic activist working on juvenile justice, and Tamika D. Mallory, a gun control activist who is black, joined Ms. Bland. Gloria Steinem, honorary of the march along with Harry Belafonte, lauded their approach. “Sexism is always made worse by racism — and vice versa,” she said in an email. Ms. Steinem, who plans to participate in a town hall meeting during the march with Alicia Garza, a of Black Lives Matter, said even contentious conversations about race were a “good thing. ” “It’s about knowing each other,” she wrote. “Which is what movements and marches are for. ” But the tone of the discussion, particularly online, can become so raw that some marchers feel they are no longer welcome. Ms. Willis, the South Carolina wedding minister, had been looking forward to the salve of rallying with people who share her values, a rarity in her home state, where she said she had been insulted and shouted at for marrying gay couples. But then she read a post by ShiShi Rose, a blogger from Brooklyn. “Now is the time for you to be listening more, talking less,” Ms. Rose wrote. “You should be reading our books and understanding the roots of racism and white supremacy. Listening to our speeches. You should be drowning yourselves in our poetry. ” It rubbed Ms. Willis the wrong way. “How do you know that I’m not reading black poetry?” she asked in an interview. Ms. Willis says that she understands being born white gives her advantages, and that she is always open to learning more about the struggles of others. But, she said, “The last thing that is going to make me endeared to you, to know you and love you more, is if you are sitting there wagging your finger at me. ” Ms. Rose said in an interview that the intention of the post was not to weed people out but rather to make them understand that they had a lot of learning to do. “I needed them to understand that they don’t just get to join the march and not check their privilege constantly,” she said. That phrase — check your privilege — exasperates Ms. Willis. She asked a reporter: “Can you please tell me what that means?”

These leftist actors are so darn funny. You know what isn t funny? They never mention the 4 Americans Hillary left to die in Benghazi. They never mention that she has put our nation and the national security of our nation at risk with her personal unsecured email server. You know what else isn t funny? That they never mention the person they re supporting, because she has a vagina and a D after her name, has been under criminal investigation for most of her adult life. But let s hear how funny it is that some nit-wit actress who is supported by the general public (not just Democrats) wanted to track down Trump to make a video attempting to humiliate him. I m actually sorry she never found him, it would ve been an amazing career ending move. The 25-year-old Oscar-winning actress joined fellow actors Johnny Depp and James McAvoy on the Graham Norton Show Friday night, where she revealed that she once attended a concert at which the Republican presidential frontrunner was also present. I was at a concert that I heard he was attending, so I had my full security, I was like, Find Donald Trump, Lawrence told Norton. Because I was adamant on finding him and then making a video of me going, Hey Trump, f*ck you! I wouldn t rest until he was found, the actress continued over the audience s enthusiastic applause. He knew I was looking for him. WATCH:Meanwhile, Depp told Norton about his experience playing Trump in left-wing comedy website Funny or Die s Art of the Deal movie in February, and even offered up some on-the-spot impressions of the GOP candidate. Both Lawrence and Depp have predicted apocalyptic disaster if the Republican presidential hopeful were to win in November.During a red carpet appearance at the premiere of his latest film Alice Through the Looking Glass earlier this week, Depp said that a President Trump would be America s last president. If Donald Trump is elected president of the United States of America, in a kind of historical way it s exciting, Depp said, because we will see the actual last president of the United States. Via: Breitbart News

While Republicans constantly shove their judgmental fingers in people s faces over some perverted and hate-filled idea of Christianity, Democratic Senator Cory Booker showed that real Christianity is about love and compassion with his response to a pretty typical Donald Trump twitter insult.Here s the video:It all began after Booker s speech at the Democratic National Convention. Booker had the gall to call Trump out for mocking a disabled reporter.Trump, who insulted all the speakers, had some unkind words about the New Jersey Senator in a tweet, of course:If Cory Booker is the future of the Democratic Party, they have no future! I know more about Cory than he knows about himself. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2016Rather than escalating into a Twitter war, Booker took to CNN to reply that he loves Donald Trump, just not his policies. I love Donald Trump, Booker said Tuesday on CNN s New Day. I don t want to answer his hate with hate. I m going to answer it with love. I m not going to answer his darkness with darkness. He wants us to be speculating. It sounds so sinister, he told CNN s Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota. I don t care, I love you Donald. I pray for you. I hope that you find some kindness in your heart, that you re not going to be somebody that spews out insults to your political opposition, that you re going to find some way to love. Source: CNNThat Trump love doesn t mean Booker will be supporting the billionaire. I love you. I just don t want him to be my president. I don t want you to have the White House to be spewing that kind of mean-spirited hate that doesn t even belong in a playground sandbox, he said.He also said that while he ll keep on spreading love instead of hate, Trump s vitriol, that kind of meanness has no place in the presidency. He challenged Trump to Bring it on! Here s the video:Featured image via video screen capture

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top U.S. nuclear commander said on Saturday that he would resist President Donald Trump if he ordered an “illegal” launch of nuclear weapons. Air Force General John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), told an audience at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia, Canada that he had given a lot of thought to what he would say if he received such an order. “I think some people think we’re stupid,” Hyten said in response to a question about such a scenario. “We’re not stupid people. We think about these things a lot. When you have this responsibility, how do you not think about it?” Hyten, who is responsible for overseeing the U.S. nuclear arsenal, explained the process that would follow such a command. As head of STRATCOM “I provide advice to the president, he will tell me what to do,” he said in his remarks, retransmitted in a video posted on the forum’s Facebook page. “And if it’s illegal, guess what’s going to happen? I’m going to say, ‘Mr. President, that’s illegal.’ And guess what he’s going to do? He’s going to say, ‘What would be legal?’ And we’ll come up with options, of a mix of capabilities to respond to whatever the situation is, and that’s the way it works. It’s not that complicated.” Hyten said running through scenarios of how to react in the event of an illegal order was standard practice, and added: “If you execute an unlawful order, you will go to jail. You could go to jail for the rest of your life.” The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Hyten’s remarks. They came after questions by U.S. senators, including Democrats and Trump’s fellow Republicans, about Trump’s authority to wage war, use nuclear weapons and enter into or end international agreements, amid concern that tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs could lead to hostilities. Trump has traded insults and threats with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un and threatened in his maiden United Nations address to “totally destroy” the country of 26 million people if it threatened the United States. Some senators want legislation to alter the nuclear authority of the U.S. president and a Senate committee on Tuesday held the first congressional hearing in more than four decades on the president’s authority to launch a nuclear strike.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday backed new sanctions on Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, part of an effort to take a tough line against Tehran without immediately moving to undermine an international nuclear agreement. Three Hezbollah-related measures passed by voice vote, without opposition. The House will vote on Thursday on another bill, to impose additional sanctions on Iran related to its ballistic missiles program. President Donald Trump said on Oct. 13 he would not certify Iran is complying with an international agreement on its nuclear program, and threatened that he might ultimately terminate the accord. Trump’s action opened a 60-day window for Congress to act to reimpose sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program that were lifted under the agreement, but there has been no move to do so in the House or Senate. Aides said that, for now, House lawmakers are focusing on clamping down on Iran in other ways such as the Hezbollah and missile-related sanctions. The first of the Hezbollah-related measures passed on Wednesday would impose new sanctions on any entities found to support the group, such as by providing weapons to Hezbollah. The second imposes sanctions on Iran and Hezbollah for using civilians as human shields. The third was a resolution urging the European Union to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. The United State named Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997. Earlier this month, Washington offered multimillion-dollar rewards for two of its officials as the Trump administration developed its strategy for countering Iran’s growing regional influence. “These critical measures will impose new sanctions to crack down on Hezbollah’s financing, and hold it accountable for its acts of death and destruction,” said Representative Ed Royce, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. However, winning international support for an intensified campaign against Hezbollah could prove difficult. The powerful organization is part of Lebanon’s fragile coalition government and commands enormous support for the social services it provides.

Most of the headlines from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s speech at the American Constitution Society on Thursday were, understandably, about her attacks on Donald Trump. Highlighting Warren’s rapid succession of fusillades against Trump makes sense. After all, outside of this election, you don’t often get sitting US senators publicly calling the other party's presidential nominee a "racist bully" who has "never risked anything for anyone and who serves no one but himself." But Warren’s speech did much more than go after Trump. In her high-profile address, she pivoted from attacking the likely GOP nominee to attacking Republicans more generally, accusing the party’s leaders of orchestrating a prolonged "assault" on the independence of the federal judiciary in order to serve the wealthiest Americans. For instance, when Warren highlighted Trump’s racist attacks against Judge Gonzalo Curiel, she said they were born from the same essential motivation as other mainstream Republican initiatives like the blockade of Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court nomination and the Citizens United decision on campaign finance: to help the richest of the rich. "Donald Trump chose racism as his weapon," Warren said. "But his aim is exactly the same as the rest of the Republicans: to pound the courts into submission for the rich and the powerful." Now, it should be noted that many leading Republicans, like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan, have condemned Trump's remarks about Curiel. So it doesn’t seem entirely fair to blame them for what Trump has said there. But the line does give us insight into how one of the leading progressives sees Trump, and it suggests how a Warren-led Democratic Party might respond in 2016 and beyond. Many Democrats have said that Trump’s rhetoric against Curiel amounts to proof that he’s uniquely unfit for the presidency, as a sign that he goes far beyond even what other Republicans are willing to say. Warren didn’t take this approach. Over and over, she insisted that Trump’s comments about Curiel reflect the Republican attacks on the courts — the only difference being that they’re done with less tact. Where do you suppose that Donald Trump got the idea that he can personally attack judges, regardless of the law, whenever they don't bend to the whims of billionaires and big businesses? He's a Mitch McConnell kind of candidate … He is exactly the kind of candidate you'd expect from a Republican Party whose script for several years has been to execute a full-scale assault on the integrity of our courts, blockading judicial appointments so Donald Trump can fill them. Smearing and intimidating nominees who do not pledge allegiance to the financial interests of the rich and powerful. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell want Donald Trump to appoint the next generation of judges. They want those judges to tilt the law in favor of big businesses and billionaires like Donald Trump. They just want Donald Trump to quit being so vulgar and obvious about it. Warren connected Trump’s attacks on Curiel to Republican obstructionism against the judicial branch going back years, citing their unwillingness to confirm appointees like District of Maryland nominee Paula Xinis. She began the speech, for instance, by citing her Senate office’s new report, "Going to Extremes: The Supreme Court and Senate Republicans’ Unprecedented Record of Obstruction of President Obama’s Nominees." And she said wealthy corporations have flooded the political system with cash in an attempt to corrupt the judiciary. "The purpose is also to hamstring the president's ability to protect consumers and workers, to hold large corporations accountable and promote equality," Warren said. "In other words, to undermine the fundamental principle of equal justice under law." It seems pretty questionable whether obstructing federal judicial appointments is really comparable to Trump’s attacks against a judge’s heritage. But whether you buy Warren’s interpretation or not, as a partisan political strategy it has distinct pros and cons. On the one hand, attacking Trump by calling him a mainstream Republican is probably not going to be particularly devastating to Trump himself. Hillary Clinton's best shot at a landslide victory might be peeling away centrist Republicans turned off by Trump. If that's the case, comparing Trump's most outlandish attacks to the policy decisions of the party’s leaders may not prove particularly convincing. On the other hand, though, it could help Democrats in their effort to ensure that it’s not just Trump who goes down to defeat, but rather the Republican Party as a whole.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois said on Monday he wants the Senate to vote on President Barack Obama’s eventual U.S. Supreme Court nominee, in a break with the Republican leader of the Senate. In an opinion piece in the Chicago Sun-Times, Kirk wrote: “I recognize the right of the president, be it Republican or Democrat, to place before the Senate a nominee for the Supreme Court and I fully expect and look forward to President Barack Obama advancing a nominee for the Senate to consider.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said the seat on the nation’s highest court should remain vacant until Obama’s successor takes office in January so voters can have a say on the selection when they cast ballots in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern brought the House down with a scathing rebuke of the pathetic Republican healthcare bill on Tuesday.He began by pointing out that the bill destroys all of the good things that the Affordable Care Act provides, such as covering preexisting conditions and allowing kids to stay on their parents insurance until the age of 26.McGovern conceded that the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is not perfect. It has some issues that can be fixed, and Democrats have repeatedly offered to work with Republicans to fix the problems and cover more people while also bringing down costs.But as McGovern noted, Republicans are only obsessed with repealing the law. They have no interest in fixing the minor problems, many of which they created themselves by chipping away at the law over the years.So far, the Republican bill touted by Trump has failed several times in the House because even many Republicans are concerned about the fact that repealing the Affordable Care Act would strip healthcare away from millions of Americans, including their own constituents.For months, Republicans have been torn a new one by their constituents at town halls over their effort to repeal what has become a very popular law. It is even more popular than Donald Trump now.In their continued effort to sell the bill to the American people, Trump and House Republicans have been insisting that it covers pre-existing conditions. But that is a complete lie.Nowhere in the Trumpcare bill will you find a passage making it clear that people with pre-existing conditions won t lose their insurance. It s just not there.McGovern called out Republicans for this lie on the House floor. To claim or to imply that the Republican plan covers people with preexisting conditions, it is a lie, McGovern declared. It is a lie. And let s be honest about it. This does not cover people with preexisting conditions. And to come on the floor and say it does, to try to fool people, well, you may get away with it in the short term, you may get a headline but I tell you people will figure out soon enough when they are denied health care coverage. Furthermore, Republicans refuse to get a CBO score for the bill before holding a vote because they know it will get a failing grade.For one thing, the bill would be a massive tax cut for the wealthy at the expense of the millions of Americans who finally got healthcare coverage through the Medicaid expansion.McGovern shamed Republicans for this. You should be ashamed, McGovern said. To have a health care bill that cuts Medicaid by $880 billion so you can give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in this country, you should be ashamed. He then called upon Republicans to vote against the bill or pull it entirely and received a standing ovation.Here s the video via YouTube.If Trump and Republicans have their way, millions of Americans will suffer so that wealthy assholes can get even richer. That s outrageous.But even more outrageous is the fact that while the American people will lose the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, Republicans have exempted themselves from losing the same benefits the law provides.That s right. Republicans are literally making sure that they get to keep their Obamacare. That makes them heartless and selfish as well as hypocrites. They should not only be ashamed, they should be booted out of office.Featured image screenshot

It has been almost a week since over 20 armed gunmen occupied a federal building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, demanding the land be returned to its rightful owners . The Chair of the areas Native American tribe had something to say about that, and it s a mic drop.When chair of Burns Paiute tribe heard protestors would return land to its rightful owners, she joked she started writing acceptance letter Salvador Hernandez (@SalHernandez) January 6, 2016One of the armed gunmen, Ryan Payne, spoke to the New York Times on Tuesday, claiming that: the federal government unconstitutionally laid claim to land within the United States, and people who use and love the land ranchers, miners, and loggers, among others deserve to have it back.The 5.2 million Native American and Alaska Native s identified by the 2010 U.S. Census might be a little more familiar with this problem that the ammosexual occupiers of the Oregon reserve.An interactive map put together by the science and humanities magazine Aeon shows details the land grab of 1776 to 1887, during which the United States seized over 1.5 billion acres from America s indigenous people by treaty and executive order.The short video below shows the near total transfer of land from Native American tribes to the United States over that time frame. On Wednesday of this week, the Burns Paiute Tribe, who s reservation is close to the armed occupation, called on the militia-men to leave. The Chairwoman of the Burns Paiute Tribe, Charlotte Rodrique, told Reuters that the occupation was desecrating one of our sacred sites, I don t give much credence to their cause, she continued. We never gave up our aboriginal rights to the territory, so we as a tribe actually view this as our land, no matter who is living on it, she said. We were here first and just want to set the facts straight. Her dignified message somewhat underscores the wanton belligerence of the Bundy militia, who the FBI confirm will face federal charges when their standoff comes to an end. If the federal government owes any group some land, it s certainly not this sad bunch of angry white ammosexuals. Featured Image via ScreenCapture/PL Blog

(Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping reiterated their mutual commitment to denuclearize the Korean peninsula during a phone conversation on Friday, the White House said in a statement. Trump and Xi also agreed that the recent adoption of a United Nations Security Council resolution on North Korea was an important step toward achieving peace and stability on the peninsula, it added. “President Trump and President Xi agreed North Korea must stop its provocative and escalatory behavior,” the statement said. The White House said the “relationship between the two presidents is an extremely close one, and will hopefully lead to a peaceful resolution of the North Korea problem.”

Between Hollywood and our elected officials, it s hard to keep track of who has the worst record when it comes to being a disgusting hypocrite When President Trump was running for office, Alabama s Republican Governor Robert Bentley was one of the first politicians to announce that he would not support him over the exposed private conversation he had with a guy on a bus about a woman. He proudly claimed his support would be given to Governor Kashich of Ohio AP Bentley comments came as state Alabama U.S. Reps. Martha Roby and Bradley Byrne, on Saturday called for Trump to step aside from the GOP ticket. Trump is under fire for his remarks about him groping women in a 2005 recording.Roby was one of the first Republicans to speak out against Trump on Saturday, leading what would soon be a chorus of voices against the GOP nominee. Now, it is abundantly clear that the best thing for our country and our party is for Trump to step aside and allow a responsible, respectable Republican to lead the ticket, Roby said in a statement. Hillary Clinton must not be president, but, with Trump leading the ticket she will be. But that was yesterday before anyone knew what a hypocrite scumbag Governor Bentley was.In June 2014, Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley and first lady Dianne Bentley agreed to a divorce settlement, ending their 50-year marriage, the governor s office said Monday.The settlement was filed just four weeks after the first lady filed for divorce, saying their marriage had suffered an irretrievable breakdown. The governor said he has asked a judge to unseal the case file so the public and media can see it. CBS NewsAfter a tumultuous day in Montgomery, Governor Robert Bentley has resigned from office. The time has come for me to look at new ways to serve the people of our great state. I have decided it is time for me to step down as Alabama s governor. This comes hours after a House committee began impeachment hearings, and about one hour after Bentley was booked in the Montgomery County Jail on misdemeanor charges. He pleaded guilty to the charges.

KABUL (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on Monday on a compound of Afghanistan s national intelligence agency in Kabul, which killed at least five people and wounded two. The blast comes a week after the group claimed responsibility for an attack on a training facility of the same agency, the National Directorate for Security, in Kabul that ended when the attackers were killed before causing significant casualties. In a statement issued through the group s Amaq news agency, Islamic State said it was also behind Monday s attack. In Kabul, security officials said the explosion was caused by a suicide bomber who approached the agency s entrance on foot before blowing himself up. All the casualties reported were of civilian passersby. Najib Danish, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said at least five people were killed and two wounded. U.S. President Donald Trump has been briefed on the attack, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said. Islamic State s local affiliate, which first appeared in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan in early 2015, has become increasingly active and has claimed several recent suicide attacks in Kabul. It has frequently fought Taliban militants and has been heavily targeted by U.S. air strikes and Special Forces operations in its main stronghold in Nangarhar province. But there remains considerable uncertainty about how the group operates and the exact nature of its connections with Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Share on Facebook Experts claim that the improper body posture is the major cause of problems and pain in the joints, legs, and back. Such issues may cause even more complications, so they need to be treated on time. This natural remedy restores the proper function of knees and joints and enhances the structure of bones and ameliorates their consistency. This is how to prepare this gelatin treatment: Ingredients: 2 tablespoons of unflavoured gelatin (40 grams) 8 teaspoons flaxseeds

Apparently, Donald Trump s precious little girl is sick of mean old Congressman Ted Lieu saying mean things about her daddy.Yes, she may be a senior White House official, but Ivanka doesn t think Congress has a right to see her tweets well, she doesn t think Congressman Ted Lieu does, anyway.On Sunday, Lieu tweeted a screenshot showing that Ivanka had blocked him. Hey look, a senior White House official is afraid of tweets from a Congressman. Ivanka blocked me, he wrote. Also, why is she in the White House? Hey look, a senior White House official is afraid of tweets from a Congressman. Ivanka blocked me. Also, why is she in the White House? pic.twitter.com/hTaagBF7MM Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 13, 2017It s unclear when Ivanka blocked him, but a federal judge recently ruled that it s unconstitutional for public officials like most of the Trump family to block American citizens. Lieu posted the screenshot shortly after he called Trump a coward for refusing to condemn the Nazis who showed up in Charlottesville, so it s probably related to that:Having reflected, I have now concluded the #Charlottesville speech by @realDonaldTrump shows he is a coward. Hope he finds some courage soon Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) August 13, 2017Ivanka Trump, like pretty much everyone in the Trump family save Barron, is an absolute coward unworthy of any position that involves leadership especially in government.Ivanka Trump know what everyone else knows her father s time in the White House is coming to a close and has ruined any chance for anyone with the last name Trump to find respect from another human being for the rest of their lives.Featured image via Getty Images (Chip Somodevilla)/screengrab

We Use Cookies: Our policy [X] 43-Year-Old Can’t Get Over The Amount Of Kids In Local Night Club October 26, 2016 - BREAKING NEWS , LIFESTYLE Share 0 Add Comment A COUNTY Waterford man is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment today after he was unable to get over the amount of ‘kids’ in a local night club last night. Michael Roache, 43, is said to be suffering from a rare form of temporary psychosis, which forces him to repeat himself continually for its duration. “It started after he arrived home last night,” wife Deirdre Roache recalls, “I thought nothing of it until this morning, when I found him staring at the ceiling in bed, murmuring the same thing over and over again: ‘I can’t get over the amount of kids in here'”. Worried, the mother of children immediately called her local care doctor, who in turn referred him to a psychiatric unit for further testing. It is understood the self-employed man was overwhelmed when he entered the popular nightclub in the city centre, triggering something in his head and sending him into a loop. “He kept saying over and over again that he couldn’t get over the amount of kids in the place,” friend Dermot Ryan told WWN, who is also way too old for night clubs, “We just went in for a late drink because we were working late. It’ll be the last time I go into that fucking place. I felt so old”. Mr. Roache is currently being treated for verbal looping at the psychiatric unit, and doctors have suggested temporarily moving him to an old folks home in a bid to ‘snap him out of it’. “This kind of thing is common in the over 35’s,” Dr. Kevin Maher explained, “Hopefully an hour or two in the old folks home will neutralize his psychosis. He should have known better going to a nightclub at his age, though”.

DEAD MUSLIMS SOCIETY will sue to force small Massachusetts town to allocate space for 16,000 dead Muslims Negotiations to put a Muslim cemetery in the small town of Dudley have broken down in acrimony, and the contentious issue — replete with charges and countercharges of bigotry and grandstanding — appears to be headed for resolution in the courts, aided and abetted by the litigation jihadists of designated terrorist group CAIR. Boston Globe The Islamic Society of Greater Worcester ended talks this week after the Board of Selectmen did not accept its latest proposal for a graveyard on 55 acres of abandoned farmland , according to the society’s attorney. A counter-offer by the town also was not accepted. Neither side provided details of the private discussions. People are opposed to casket free Muslim burials which could contaminate the water supply Jay Talerman, the Islamic Society attorney, said Thursday the group will now pursue the plan in the courts, following a 10-month process that failed to produce an agreement but generated plenty of heated rhetoric. “Each time, the selectmen retreated to a position that involved violating my client’s rights,” Talerman said. “The most disappointing part appears to be that they never sincerely or genuinely had any intention to accommodate us.” (What a surprise. NOT) A suit filed by the society is pending in Massachusetts Land Court. In addition, the ACLU of Massachusetts is preparing to file a civil rights suit in US District Court, said Sarah Wunsch, the organization’s deputy legal director. The Obama thugs of the US Attorney’s Office in Boston already has launched an investigation into whether civil rights violations occurred. The state Attorney General’s office has been in talks with both sides. The town’s attorney, Gary Brackett, said that the issue always has been about the size and impact of the cemetery — not whether one would be permitted. Throughout the process, Talerman said, “the selectmen never expressed a willingness to abandon procedures that are a direct affront to my clients.” Brackett denounced Talerman’s repeated accusations that anti-Muslim bias tainted the cemetery application. Large crowds have come out to every meeting to protest the proposed cemetery “I would compare Mr. Talerman’s broad-brush claims regarding the citizens and officials of the town of Dudley as being the equivalent of Donald Trump’s attempt at portraying Muslims,” Brackett said. Dr. Amjad Bahnassi, the president of the Islamic Society, said he attributed part of the opposition to a “misunderstanding” of the Muslim religion and said the issue has become a civil rights concern for many of the estimated 5,000 Muslims in Worcester County. “We’re being denied unfairly what is granted to us by the law,” Bahnassi said. At issue is the Islamic Society’s attempt to buy farmland with enough space for an estimated 16,000 graves that, if filled, would be the largest Muslim cemetery in the state. The society currently uses a graveyard in Enfield, Conn., 60 miles from Worcester, which Muslim leaders said poses a hardship for many families. When the society’s plans became public early this year, townspeople expressed fears that burials would contaminate well water, because Muslims traditionally do not use coffins, and that the nearby rural roads would become congested. Muslim leaders continued to pursue their application through town government, even though Talerman said the society was not required to seek approval because the organization is a religious group seeking the land for a religious purpose. The town’s Zoning Board of Appeals rejected the cemetery application in June, and the Islamic Society filed suit in Land Court. The town also began efforts to buy the land under a right of first refusal for certain agricultural property. However, the Islamic Society, which already had signed a purchase-and-sale agreement for the property, argued again that the town had no such right. Facing intensifying pressure, the town eventually waived that claim. On Thursday, Talerman reiterated his longstanding contention that bigotry lies behind the lack of an agreement. “We gave this town an opportunity to lock arms with us and welcome a benign use into their town that would dispel any notion that they were biased or bigoted,” he said. “They have not taken up the olive branch and instead have doubled down on strategies that are solely intended to delay or kill our project.” (Yes, and once Trump is in office you can take your lawsuit and stuff it) RELATED STORIES/VIDEOS:

Wow! Talk about clueless! Austen Fletcher approaches anti-Trump protesters and gets clueless answers on why they re against Trump:Thought you might enjoy this @PrisonPlanet @allidoisowen @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/kdYm2WlfdB austen fletcher (@fleccas) July 17, 2017One individual in a Spiderman mask crouching on the floor begins rambling semi-incoherantly, stating, No Trump says no to racism. Let s have a color-filled America, a melting pot, like America was supposed to be built on, he adds. The man is then asked by Fletcher, What about the diversity you re seeing on the Trump side? There s blacks, Hispanics, gays for Trump, there s a lot of different people that support Trump? Via: InfowarsHere s yet another video from Fletcher that proves the left is clueless and just protesting like sheeple:If You Thought Liberal Protesters Were Inarticulate, Uninformed & Indoctrinated, You Are Wrong OK, That s A Joke YOU RE RIGHT!!ENJOY pic.twitter.com/9zBT49gFPA Love America (@POLITICSandFUN) July 16, 2017Please check out and follow austen fletcher on twitter!

ORLANDO, Fla. (Reuters) - Orlando nightclub killer Omar Mateen had expressed sympathy for a variety of Islamist extremists, including groups in the Middle East that are sworn enemies, the FBI said on Monday, as a picture began to emerge of the angry, violent man who carried out America’s deadliest mass shooting. U.S. authorities said they had found no direct links between Islamic State and Mateen, the U.S.-born son of Afghan immigrants who killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday. Mateen, 29, was shot dead by police who stormed the Pulse club with armored cars after a three-hour siege. In 911 calls during his rampage, the killer expressed allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. But Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said Mateen had made comments favorable to multiple armed Islamist movements and people, which “adds a little bit to the confusion about his motives.” President Barack Obama said Mateen was likely a homegrown extremist. “So far, we see no indication that this was a plot directed from outside the United States and we see no indication that he was part of any kind of network,” Comey told reporters in Washington. “We’re highly confident this killer was radicalized at least in some part through the internet.” Islamic State, which controls territory in Iraq and Syria, reiterated on Monday a claim of responsibility, although it offered no signs to indicate coordination with the gunman. In calls to authorities on Sunday, Mateen also mentioned support for the Boston Marathon bombers and a Florida man who became a Nusra Front suicide bomber in Syria, Comey said. Nusra is an al Qaeda offshoot which is at odds with Islamic State in Syria’s civil war. Co-workers reported Mateen to the FBI in 2013 after he had made “inflammatory and contradictory” statements, including a claim that he had family connections to al Qaeda and membership of Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, a bitter rival. The FBI’s Miami office investigated Mateen for 10 months and interviewed him twice but found no evidence of a crime or connection with a militant group. Comey said the FBI was also “working to understand what role anti-gay bigotry may have played” in the attack. The massacre reverberated on the presidential campaign trail, where Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, the two likely opponents in the Nov. 8 election, clashed over how to confront violent Islamist extremists. Trump proposed suspending immigration to the United States from countries with a history of terrorism against America, Europe or U.S. allies, while Clinton warned against demonizing Muslims and called for tougher gun safety measures. Obama is to visit Orlando on Thursday to pay respects to families of the victims. The Orlando killings followed the massacre of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last year and raised the question of whether the United States will have to confront jihadist attacks in the homeland for years to come. Comey said tracking apparent lone wolf attackers like Mateen was like finding “needles in a nationwide haystack” while also trying to work out what kind of people could become radicalized. The Florida shooting spree began early on Sunday when the club was packed with some 350 revelers at a Latin music night. Many fled as the gunman raked the crowd with bullets from an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle and a pistol. An initial wave of officers charged into the club and trapped Mateen in a bathroom, Orlando Police Chief John Mina told reporters. That allowed many patrons to flee, although others were trapped in the restroom with Mateen, leading to a standoff. Police negotiated with Mateen for about three hours before breaking a hole in the wall, which allowed hostages to escape. Mateen also emerged from the hole and was shot dead by officers, police said. Some 53 people were wounded and 29 remain hospitalized at Orlando Regional Medical Center. Michael Cheatham, chief trauma surgeon at the hospital, told Fox News he expects all of the survivors in the hospital to survive. Amanda Alvear’s last Snapchat video post began with a shot of her on the dance floor of the nightclub surrounded by friends. It ended with gunshots ringing out over the music. Alvear, 25, was identified by police as one of those killed at Pulse. Her friend Mercedez Flores, 26, who worked for Target, was also on the list. Another victim was Edward Sotomayor, 34, a marketing manager at a Florida-based gay-themed travel company. He was a legend in the industry, his boss, Al Ferguson, said. Pastor Deyni Ventura visited a survivor in the hospital, whom she identified only as Norman, who had taken refuge in a handicapped bathroom stall crammed with 30 people. Norman could hear the shooter laughing loudly as he sprayed gunfire over and under the bathroom stall. “They couldn’t see the shooter but they could hear him laughing,” Ventura said, intimating a loud cackling laugh. Norman, who was shot four times, crawled over the bodies of his friends to safety. Everyone else in the stall died, Ventura said. Most of the people fatally shot were Latino, more than half of them of Puerto Rican origin and at least three of them Mexican citizens. Hundreds of people attended a vigil on Monday night for the dead in downtown Orlando. Law enforcement officials searched for clues as to whether anyone had worked with Mateen on the attack, said Lee Bentley, the U.S. attorney for the middle district of Florida. But officials said they believed there had been no other attackers and had no evidence of a threat to the public. Mateen’s ex-wife, Sitora Yusifiy, described him as mentally unstable and violent toward her. “He would get mad out of nowhere. That’s when I started worrying about my safety and then after a few months he started abusing me physically very often,” she told reporters. The couple split in 2009 after four months of marriage. When Mateen met with his father the day before the killing, he betrayed nothing of the rage that would soon erupt. “I didn’t notice anything wrong,” Seddique Mateen said in an interview. “He was very slick.” In the close-knit Muslim community of about 100 families in Fort Pierce, Florida, Mateen was known as quiet with few friends. “He wasn’t a people person. He was not extremely friendly but he wasn’t rude either,” said Mohammed Jameel, 54, who worshipped at his mosque. Mateen was an armed guard at a gated retirement community, and had worked for the global security firm G4S (GFS.L) for nine years.. He told the FBI during its investigation of him that he had made pro-Islamist remarks because he was angry at co-workers who he felt were discriminating against him and teasing him for being a Muslim, Comey said.

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States provided intelligence to Russia that helped thwart a potentially deadly bomb attack in St. Petersburg, U.S. and Russian officials said on Sunday, in a rare public show of cooperation despite deep strains between the two countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday to thank him for the tip-off, which the Kremlin said helped prevent a militant bomb attack on a cathedral in the Russian city, as well as other sites. The White House did not disclose details about the plot itself, but said the attack could have killed large numbers of people. Neither the Kremlin nor the White House identified the would-be attackers. The U.S. warning allowed Russian law enforcement agencies to arrest the suspects before they could carry out their plans, the White House and Kremlin said. Relations between Washington and Moscow have been damaged by disagreements over the wars in Ukraine and Syria, although Trump pledged during his election campaign to pursue better ties with Moscow. That has been complicated by U.S. allegations - denied by Russia - that the Kremlin meddled in last year s U.S. presidential election to help Trump win. Russian officials say Putin believes Trump is not to blame for the tensions. The phone call on Sunday between Trump and Putin was at least the second such call in the past week. On Thursday, Putin and Trump discussed the crisis in North Korea. The foiled attack was to have been carried out on Kazansky Cathedral, in Russia s second city of St. Petersburg, and on other locations in the city where large numbers of people gather, the Kremlin statement said. The cathedral is a popular tourist site. The White House seized on the foiled plot in St. Petersburg as a sign of what Moscow and Washington could do if they cooperate. Both leaders agreed that this serves as an example of the positive things that can occur when our countries work together, the White House said, adding Trump appreciated the call from Putin. Russian media reported last week that the Federal Security Service had detained followers of the Islamic State group who had been planning a suicide bomb attack on Kazansky Cathedral on Saturday. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to requests for additional details on the foiled plot. Putin said Russia would alert U.S. authorities if it received information about any attack being planned on the United States, the Kremlin said. Russia has repeatedly been the target of attacks by Islamist militant groups, including an attack in April that killed 14 people when an explosion tore through a train carriage in a metro tunnel in St. Petersburg. Russian police detained several suspects in that attack from mainly Muslim states in ex-Soviet central Asia.

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - An outspoken deputy of Cambodia s detained opposition leader fled the country on Tuesday, saying she feared for her safety after Prime Minister Hun Sen threatened further arrests of opposition politicians. Kem Sokha, leader of the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), was arrested on Sept. 3 and charged with treason in a widening crackdown on critics of Hun Sen, which his opponents say is a ploy to win an election next year. Without a true opposition and with the wide level of fear, there s no hope for free and fair elections in 2018, Mu Sochua, 63, told Reuters after leaving Cambodia, adding that she did not feel safe . Democracy in Cambodia is very rapidly eroding to a point where no other opposing forces are left to fight dictatorship, she said. Government spokesman Phay Siphan said Mu Sochua had left of her own choice and he did not know whether authorities had planned to arrest her. Known internationally for campaigns to fight sex trafficking and assert women s rights, Mu Sochua had been among the most vocal opposition politicians in Cambodia since Kem Sokha was arrested and accused of plotting to take power with U.S. help. She told Reuters last week that around half the CNRP s members of parliament had fled the country in fear. Hun Sen, who has ruled for more than three decades, threatened more arrests of opposition politicians on Monday, attacking them as rebels in the city bent on staging a colour revolution despite past failures. Western countries have condemned the arrest of Kem Sokha and called for his release, saying the credibility of next year s election is in doubt, but they have given no sign of taking measures against the government. Meanwhile, China has voiced support for the government of Hun Sen, 65. He is a former commander in the Khmer Rouge who later defected from the group whose genocide devastated Cambodia in the 1970s. Strong gains by the CNRP at local council elections in June had pointed to a tough battle for Hun Sen in next year s general election. Despite years of annual economic growth of around 7 percent that have helped transform Cambodia from a failed state, popular anger has grown over inequality and accusations of cronyism. In his first comments since his arrest, Kem Sokha said in a Facebook posting on Monday that he was seeking positive change in Cambodia through the ballot box and not through revolution as charged. One of his three deputies remains in Cambodia. The evidence presented against Kem Sokha so far is a video from 2013 in which he tells supporters that he has support from unidentified Americans for a plan to gain power.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Republicans on Tuesday linked repealing a key component of Obamacare to their ambitious tax-cut plan, raising new political risks and uncertainties for the tax measure that financial markets have been monitoring closely for months. In comments that infuriated Democrats and left some senior Republicans unsure what comes next, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters: “We’re optimistic that inserting the individual mandate repeal would be helpful and that’s obviously the view of the Senate Finance Committee Republicans as well.” The finance panel, which had been in session for two days, abruptly adjourned on Tuesday as Democrats slammed the Republicans’ handling of their tax proposals, for which formal legislative language has still not been unveiled. Ron Wyden, the committee’s top Democrat, demanded more time for Democrats to discuss the issue “because we were never told that healthcare was going to be part of it and this just flew in literally out of nowhere in the last 20 minutes.” Tying Obamacare to the tax program introduces new risks for the Republicans and for President Donald Trump. Together, they have yet to score a major legislative win since Trump took power in January, even with control of Congress and the White House. The president, who has struggled in his relations with Congress, suggested in a tweet on Monday that the mandate repeal should be added to the tax plan, following up on a similar Nov. 3 tweet. No final decision on such a move was made at the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon, Senator Susan Collins told reporters afterward. She played a key role in July’s collapse of a years-long push by fellow Republicans to gut Obamacare, former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, formally known as the Affordable Care Act. “I personally think that it complicates tax reform to put the repeal of the individual mandate in there,” Collins said. Asked if she would back the tax bill if a mandate repeal were added, she said: “I’m going to wait and see.” Senator John McCain, who was also central to his party’s failed Obamacare repeal earlier this year, was non-committal on putting the mandate repeal in the tax plan, saying: “I want to see the whole bill before I decide.” The Senate and House of Representatives are developing separate tax-cut packages they plan to reconcile eventually and send to Trump’s desk for enactment into law, an outcome Republicans are eager to achieve so they can face U.S. voters next year with at least one major legislative achievement. House Speaker Paul Ryan, asked why the repeal of the Obamacare mandate was not in the House version of the tax proposal, told Fox News on Tuesday: “We didn’t want to complicate tax reform, make it harder than it otherwise would be.” The House had already agreed to eliminate the mandate in a healthcare bill it passed in May, he noted, adding: “We want to see the Senate go first and see if they can get that done and then we’ll discuss whether or not it’s included at the end.” The Trump administration strongly supports the House version of the tax legislation, saying its passage would be “an important first step in achieving comprehensive tax reform,” the White House said in a statement on Tuesday. U.S. financial markets have been watching closely, with U.S. stocks rallying in recent months, partly on hopes of business tax cuts. They showed little reaction to Tuesday’s developments. The individual mandate requires Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty to Washington, a provision that Republicans have long opposed as government overreach. But the mandate plays a critical role in Obamacare by requiring young, healthy people, who might otherwise go without coverage, to purchase insurance and help offset the costs of covering sicker and older Americans. Underscoring the devastating consequences for Obamacare if the mandate were repealed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last week that such a change would increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 13 million by 2027. The CBO added that mandate repeal would raise the average insurance policy premiums in the Obamacare marketplaces by about 10 percent annually over the next decade. Repealing the mandate would also lower the federal deficit by $338 billion over the same time period, the CBO said, a finding that several Republican senators said influenced the move. Eliminating the individual mandate would lower the number of Americans with health insurance, meaning the federal government would spend less on subsidizing coverage for lower- and middle-income people, making that money available to pay for tax cuts. Neither the Senate nor the House tax plans now includes repealing the mandate. But both plan would add about $1.5 trillion over 10 years to the federal deficit and the national debt, which now exceeds $20 trillion. Congressional Republicans hope to pass tax legislation by the end of the year and are moving fast, despite uncertainties. They hold only a razor-thin 52-48 majority in the Senate. If Democrats remain united in opposition, Republicans could afford to lose no more than two senators from within their own ranks and still secure passage of tax legislation. Democrats have dismissed the Republican plans as deficit-expanding giveaways to corporations and the wealthy. Representative Lloyd Doggett, a senior member of the House tax committee, said in a statement that the House tax bill was “just a way to curry favor with Washington special interests – awarding tax windfalls to large multinational corporations and the fortunate few that sit way atop the economic ladder.”

SCOTUS returned a split 4-4 decision on North Carolina s repressive voter ID law, which means the lower court s ruling that it s unconstitutional stands. North Carolina cannot use that law in November as a basis for turning people away from the polls, and, predictably, Governor Pat McCrory is unhappy with this. His statement on the matter reads more like a toddler whining about being punished for being bad than anything: North Carolina has been denied basic voting rights already granted to more than 30 other states to protect the integrity of one person, one vote through a common-sense voter ID law Even without any support from our state s attorney general, we were pleased that four justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, agreed with this right while four liberal justices blocked North Carolina protections afforded by our sensible voter laws. B-O-O H-O-O. Our hearts bleed pink carbonated peanut butter for this because McCrory s a delusional twit. Whose rights are being violated without this repressive law in effect? This law is what violates people s basic voting rights.The lower court held that this particular law was actually a voter suppression law, enacted with the intent to suppress minority votes. Why? Probably because North Carolina is a swing state, so every vote really does matter, and they can t have too many people voting Democratic, especially in a presidential year, now can they?No, they can t. Republicans lose power when too many minorities vote. The horror.What McCrory is missing is that, yes, 30 other states have voter ID laws of some sort, but several of those states have seen part, or all, of their laws struck down as well. Those states include North Dakota (home of the attempted six-week abortion ban), Texas, and Wisconsin. Other states Arizona, Kansas, Alabama, Virginia, Ohio and Georgia have litigation on their laws pending.SCOTUS hasn t ruled on all of these cases, and they may not, depending on what else there is to be heard from other states. To hear McCrory talk, however, one would think that all of the courts in the entire country had ruled specifically against North Carolina when other states must have worse laws. These laws don t protect one person, one vote, though. They protect Republicans.So what, exactly, did SCOTUS refuse to grant a stay on? North Carolina tried to tighten restrictions on acceptable IDs, for one. That inevitably harms poor minorities. It can also harm young people, who like to vote Democratic more than Republican.They also reduced early voting, another blow to the minority community; eliminated both same-day registration and out-of-precinct provisional ballots; and they eliminated pre-registration for 16- and 17-year olds that indicates an intent to vote when they turn 18.McCrory can cry about this all he wants this is a major victory for everyone who believes in civil rights. The law will stay off the books for November, helping to keep the state in play for the presidential election, ensuring that many more voices are heard, and hopefully meaning that McCrory will lose his job.Featured image by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images