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CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. farm groups on Tuesday pushed back against President Donald Trump’s proposal to slash agriculture spending, viewing it as a fresh threat to a struggling farm economy. The White House on Monday proposed $46.54 billion in cuts to federal government funding for the agriculture sector over the next 10 years, including limits on federal subsidies for crop insurance premiums. Congress has the final say on the government’s budget and lawmakers said the president’s plan stands little chance of passing. U.S. Agriculture Department Secretary Sonny Perdue said there was no “sugarcoating” the budget proposal, which could lead to the elimination of 5,263 jobs at the department if implemented, or about 5 percent of its workforce. USDA requested $18 billion for department spending in fiscal 2018, down from $24 billion in 2017. Farmers in the U.S. agricultural heartland overwhelmingly supported Trump last November and are struggling with low crop prices that are hurting incomes. “This budget seems to really go after the people that got the president elected,” said Zack Clark, director of government relations for the National Farmers Union. Some of the biggest proposed cuts come from changes to the crop insurance system, which many farmers rely on to keep their operations running. “It’s clear that this budget was written without input from farmers who would be severely affected,” Ron Moore, president of the American Soybean Association, said in a statement. But changes in crop insurance that cause farmers to cut back on plantings could provide relief to a global balance sheet heavy with supplies. Falling production could pay off in the long run by helping to lift prices, said Scott Irwin, agricultural economist for the University of Illinois. Trump’s budget imposes a $40,000 limit on crop insurance premium subsidies, which could prevent some farmers from insuring their entire acreage. There is currently no limit. Typically, farmers pay a portion of their insurance premiums and USDA covers the rest, said Jeff Harrison, a lawyer who represents the Crop Insurance Professionals Association. “In practical terms, you’re really going after full-time farm families.” U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said she would oppose the cuts, which “would leave our farmers, families, and rural communities vulnerable in tough times.” House Agriculture Committee Chairman K. Michael Conaway and Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, both Republicans, said they “will fight to ensure farmers have a strong safety net.” | 1 |
31 Views November 07, 2016 GOLD , KWN King World News
As investors await the outcome of tomorrow’s election, a former associate of George Soros just warned King World News about what is going “to send the world into total chaos .”
Victor Sperandeo manages over $3 billion, has been in the business 45 years, and has worked with famous individuals such as Leon Cooperman and George Soros. Below is what Sperandeo had to say .
Victor Sperandeo: “The days of low interest rates are over. This is very important for people to understand, Eric. There will be no more lowering of interest rates and QEs… IMPORTANT: To find out which company the richest man in China has invested in, one that Rick Rule and Sprott Asset Management are pounding the table on that is quickly being recognized as one of the greatest investment opportunities in the world – CLICK HERE OR BELOW: Sponsored
Victor Sperandeo continues: “There is still some leftover QE. England and the EU still have some but once that is over, that’s it. That game is finished. It didn’t work. So they are now going to fiscal policy and infrastructure spending because they believe this will keep them in power.
With that said, last week Larry Summers said the Fed has to give up their independence. He said the Treasury has to effectively sell to the Fed and the Fed will print the money and return it to the Treasury. And so he backed up what Rosenberg was saying about the multi-trillion dollar scheme. Eric, this is pure printing of money, but t he theory is that because people don’t directly get that money, it won’t create hyperinflation. But when this begins, this will be the beginning of when serious inflation will come back.
The Beginning Of The End Of The U.S. Dollar I don’t believe this will work in the United States if Trump wins. If Hillary wins it is 100 percent guaranteed that it is going to be implemented. If this does happen you will get a huge amount of government spending that is going to juice the economy. But it will be the prelude to hyperinflation. So that is going to be the coming world event that will be the beginning of the end for the U.S. dollar.
And if you remember, gold was the hedge against serious inflation in the 1970s (see remarkable chart below).
In fact, from 1970 to 1980 gold compounded at a staggering 31.5 percent a year! I have never seen anything compound over a 10-year period at that rate. That’s astronomical. Just to put that in perspective, if gold went to $10,000 today it would only have compounded 22 percent over that same time frame.
A World In Total Chaos And yet when you look at what is happening today, we have a global depression with the banking system blowing up. Look at Deutsche Bank, it has $46 trillion in derivatives and the bank is only valued at $18 billion. That is insane (laughter). Regardless, gold will act as a hedge and the price of gold will skyrocket because paper will be printed to the point where it’s worthless. And as the hyperinflation unfolds, it will send the world into total chaos and people need to be prepared for that.”
Look At What Is Unfolding In China And Other Key Regions Right Now | 1 |
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Chuck Schumer s crying over Muslim refugees.After supporting the attack on Libya that led to the deaths of thousands of Muslim refugees. pic.twitter.com/vELee6v7cp Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) January 29, 2017 | 0 |
BERLIN (Reuters) - German parties exploring a coalition government have dealt an early blow to French President Emmanuel Macron s hopes for more expansive fiscal policies from Berlin, backing a balanced budget and rejecting the idea of a separate pot of cash for the euro zone. The Greens, seen as closest to Macron on economic policy and Europe, appeared to have caved in to demands by Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives and the Free Democrats (FDP) that a new government continue down a path of fiscal discipline. Merkel, whose conservatives placed first but lost seats in an election last month, is trying to forge a coalition with the pro-business FDP and the Greens, which requires bridging disagreements on taxes, immigration and foreign policy. In a joint paper agreed after late-night talks on Tuesday, the parties said they all supported a balanced budget. A senior Greens politician who participated in the talks also told Reuters that the parties were united in opposing Macron s idea for a euro zone budget. None of the participating parties support a euro zone budget, said Reinhard Buetikofer, a member of the European Parliament. The parties are expected to reconvene on Thursday to finalize a joint paper on Europe, after agreeing a rough blueprint for fiscal policy late on Tuesday. That blueprint included a pledge to respect debt brake legislation enshrined in the constitution since 2009, which forces the federal government to virtually eliminate structural budget deficits, limiting them to 0.35 percent of GDP. It also contained a commitment to provide relief to lower and middle income earners, dismantle the solidarity tax for poor eastern states and provide financial incentives to make German homes more energy efficient. Cem Ozdemir, a leader of the Greens who is seen as a possible foreign minister in the new government, highlighted a decision to re-examine plans to raise defence spending by the outgoing grand coalition of Merkel s conservatives and the Social Democrats (SPD), who are moving into opposition. Tax relief and investment needs would be finalised once more details on tax revenues become available next month, Ozdemir said, suggesting that the balanced budget commitment was not final. The Greens politician also said that a new coalition would have to provide a pro-European answer to proposals from Macron and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker for closer cooperation in fiscal matters, defence and migration. There are a lot of differences to overcome. But I am hoping for a clear commitment to Europe, said Ozdemir in a video posted on the Greens website. Buetikofer said the Greens supported the idea of boosting investment within the framework of the existing EU budget. But their rejection of Macron s idea for a separate budget for the euro zone at such an early stage of the coalition talks was seen by some members of the party as an unnecessary cave in to Merkel s conservatives and the FDP. Macron has called for the creation of a euro zone budget of several hundred billions of euros to help the single currency bloc cope with economic shocks. One FDP participant who requested anonymity suggested that the Greens may have given away too much in the talks on Tuesday night and expressed concern that the leadership of the party could be forced to change tack in the days ahead by angry grass roots members. Former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat who ruled with the Greens for seven years, accused the environmentalist party of preparing Frau Merkel s bed in a desperate attempt to re-enter government. Immigration could also be a contentious issue in the coalition talks as Merkel s conservatives row back on the open-door policy towards refugees that she adopted in 2015. This will also be on the agenda on Thursday. | 1 |
Drama On The Docket: High Court's Term Set To End With Slate Of Big Cases
Major decisions are expected this month, as the U.S. Supreme Court works its way through several cases still pending before it closes out its calendar for the 2014-2015 term.
Among the biggest issues hanging fire: the status of same-sex marriages, subsidies for health insurance under Obamacare and the drugs that states may use to administer the death penalty by lethal injection. But the court is also expected to weigh in on the drawing of lines for congressional elections, the right to put the Confederate flag on license plates and the right of a municipality to regulate outdoor signage.
"Decision days" are scheduled for each Monday this month, along with Thursday, June 18 — and there could be yet another day announced, as well. The court has not gone beyond June in more than 20 years.
It is typical for the court to issue its most important and controversial rulings in the final days of its annual session. Many expect the same-sex-marriage and Obamacare decisions to come later in the month. But many court observers are expecting the lethal injection decision sooner, along with more than a dozen cases that carry considerable significance of their own.
The court meets at 10 a.m. ET Monday and on the other decision days of the month. NPR will be covering the proceedings and reporting on the decisions as soon as they become available, on our regular radio programs, on NPR.org, NPR One and other platforms.
Lethal Injection (Glossip v. Gross)
As traditional methods such as hanging, firing squad and electrocution have fallen from favor, states with the death penalty have been injecting a "protocol," or series of drugs, to execute death row prisoners. But pharmaceutical companies now refuse to provide sodium thiopental, the drug used at the beginning of the series to make the prisoner lose consciousness.
States have looked for substitutes, including midazolam, which is a sedative and not an anesthetic. Inmates who have brought this case say that those who receive this drug may remain conscious after dosage, when they receive subsequent drugs. Some members of the court were clearly sympathetic to this viewpoint in the oral argument earlier this year. But some of the court's conservatives seemed to regard it as a "backdoor" means to undermine the death penalty itself.
If the court sides with the inmates, states will have to scramble to find alternative means of execution, which may include a return to the more traditional methods.
Obamacare (King v. Burwell)
Plaintiffs have argued that only those states that have set up their own exchanges for the purchase of health care insurance are entitled to give subsidies to lower-income people. States that let the federal government set up their exchanges for them, they contend, may not accept the federal tax credits that subsidize those eligible in state-run exchanges. The administration argues that the intent of the legislators was clear, whatever the exact wording of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and that all exchanges are eligible for the subsidies.
If the court rules for the plaintiffs, subsidies could go away for more than 6 million current recipients, although the timetable for their losing insurance is somewhat uncertain. Congress would be under pressure to act.
Taking this many people out of the system would also affect the private health insurance market and the amount that people pay in insurance premiums. The degree of impact would depend on how sweeping the justices' ruling is. But it could affect individuals, small business, large business, the insurance industry, doctors and hospitals.
Same-Sex Marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges and related cases)
A series of recent rulings by the high court has led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in three dozen states, which are home to more than 70 percent of the U.S. population. This has happened despite many states' efforts to enact bans on such marriages, either by legislation or by referendum.
These laws and state constitutional amendments have been consistently struck down by federal courts at the district and appellate levels — except for the Federal Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. This one court, sitting in Cincinnati, upheld the ban enacted in that state and several others and said states did not have to recognize marriages performed legally in other states. This "circuit split" between appeals judges brought the case before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
The court now has the opportunity to clarify the legal situation by legalizing same-sex marriage in all 50 states or to adopt any of several more complicated resolutions — leaving some states with legal same-sex marriage but others — perhaps most — without. The court is also deciding a related case regarding the right of a state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage that took place legally in another state.
Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission
Are state laws that put redistricting in the hands of independent commissions unconstitutional? Arizona voters created a commission by constitutional amendment, and some state legislators say that this strips them of their redistricting power, thus violating the U.S. Constitution.
Walker v. Texas Division, Sons Of The Confederacy
May states constitutionally ban the Sons of the Confederacy from displaying the Confederate battle flag on vanity license plates?
Reed v. Town of Gilbert, Ariz.
What should be the constitutional rules for municipalities seeking to limit sign clutter? In this case, a church posted signs that the town wanted to regulate or remove.
Michigan v. EPA
At what point does the federal Clean Air Act require the Environmental Protection Agency to take into account the costs that factory owners face in complying with EPA regulation? Should it be before or after deciding to regulate hazardous pollutants?
Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project
The most significant race-related case of the term involves what's called "disparate impact" in housing. Must plaintiffs have proof of someone's intent to discriminate? | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - France has offered Belgium a deal to purchase Dassault Aviation s Rafale war planes, the French Defence ministry said on Thursday, as Brussels seeks to replace 34 of its Lockheed Martin s F-16 planes. The Defence minister, Florence Parly, has offered the Belgian Defence minister to setup an in-depth partnership between our two countries in order to respond to the need expressed by the Belgian air force, the ministry said. Dassault Aviation had no immediate comment. | 1 |
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sat down for an interview on Sunday and had a few words to say about the birth of America, which was plagued by slavery from its very conception.While discussing her newest book, Democracy: Stories from the Long Road to Freedom, Rice told CBS Sunday Morning that the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s was the second founding of America. We forget in the United States how long it has taken us to make We the People mean people like me. And indeed, I do think that America was born with a birth defect; it was slavery. And so I do think that when we were finally able to deliver the promise of the Constitution to people like me, little girls growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, when finally my father was able to vote without difficulty, yes, it s the second founding of America. The first founding wasn t quite complete. Rice, who spent eight years in the White House serving as national security adviser and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, also called forth a memory from her childhood during the interview. She grew up in Alabama, where Jim Crow was the law of the land. In the summers, her family would travel to Denver. However, these were not your average family vacations. Rather, they were a quest for an education denied to them because of the color of their skin. If you were black, you couldn t go to the University of Alabama for graduate school in 1961, she said. And so my father, who was getting an advanced degree in student personnel administration, and my mother, who was qualifying to teach music in the schools she was a science teacher before that would go to Denver. You can watch her interview in its entirety here, via CBS Sunday Morning.Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
TUNIS (Reuters) - A Tunisian police officer who was stabbed by a suspected Islamist died of his wounds on Thursday, and security unions threatened to stage protests if parliament fails to legislate tougher protections for security force personnel. The suspect, named as Zied Gharbi, was arrested on Wednesday after two policemen suffered knife wounds near the parliament. He shouted Allahu Akbar - God is greatest - as he stabbed the policeman in the neck, witness and officials said. The attack was close to the Bardo museum where 21 people, mostly European tourists, were killed in an attack by gunmen in March 2015. Tunisia suffered two other major attacks that year, one against tourists at the beach resort of Sousse and the other against presidential guards in the capital. Our colleague Riadh Barrouta died Thursday after the terrorist attack in Bardo yesterday, Walid Hkima, a national security spokesman, said. The attacker was 25 and from Ettadamen, one of the largest, poorest suburbs of Tunis. The Interior Ministry said Wednesday s attacker had confessed that he had adopted Takfiri thought three years ago and believes that killing security forces is a form of jihad . Takfiri is a term for a hardline Sunni Muslim who labels followers of other schools of Islam unbelievers, often as a justification for fighting them. Zied Gharbi has no ties with Islamist groups, but he had been influenced by hardline ideology on the Internet, officials said. Initial investigations showed that this terrorist does not belong to any terrorist organization, he had not received orders from any group, Hkima said. Security unions said in a joint statement on Thursday they would give the parliament two weeks to approve a new law strengthening punishments for assaults on security forces. The bill, sent to the parliament two years ago, also aims to give policemen more powers in the face of any possible threat. If the parliament will not pass the bill in two weeks, we will stop providing personal protection to political party leaders and will hold protests. We will escalate , the statement added. Parliament speaker Mohamed Naceur said on Wednesday that the bill should be expedited, but added that a dialogue with civil society should be held to respect human rights and the constitution. Local and international organizations including Human Rights Watch have rejected the bill, asked to withdraw it from parliament and said it promotes a culture of impunity. The 2015 attacks severely damaged the economy of the North African country, where tourists visiting its Mediterranean coast are a significant source of revenue. Since then, security has been boosted and authorities have cracked down on militants, dismantling dozens of cells. | 0 |
During the height of the Cold War, the CIA attempted to develop mind control techniques with the MKULTRA program. As it happens, the Communists already had a leg up on them. We’ll explore how this was done, along with some new twists.
The criticism and self-criticism technique in history This is what happens to people who joke about Chairman Mao ripping off Hillary’s wardrobe.
The technique of “ criticism and self-criticism ” (kritika i samokritika) was developed during the early days of the Soviet Union . This got results. When the early Soviet show trials and purges took place, the targets would confess to committing treason—the details stretching credulity—and beg for execution. The Maoists (Chinese Communists) used it too, typically during “ struggle sessions .” Also, forced confessions were required in Vietnam for prisoners in reeducation camps .
What happened wasn’t much different from a medieval inquisition. Those targeted would be badgered until they confessed to whatever it was they supposedly did. Of course, physical forms of coercion were also an option. These weren’t actual trials; their fates were already decided.
The lucky ones were released and got to resume their lives as before, after their memorable reminder to toe the Party line. Others faced stiffer penalties than that: from loss of Party membership (and accompanying status) all the way up to execution. No amount of compliance or abject groveling could save them if it was predetermined that they were going to be purged or killed.
After the ordeal, survivors were surely scared witless. With their egos beaten down, they were ready to do as they were told without question. It’s basically a form of brainwashing. As for those who were executed after that, the purpose of going through the motions was for benefit of the audience. It was political theater, convincing those present that they were delivering justice to wrongdoers, and serving as an example of what could happen to those who step out of line.
Other than that, the “criticism and self-criticism” technique—badgering and forcing a confession—also was picked up in the USA during the 1960s by certain cults and oddball encounter groups. Today, we might think of these strange and humiliating rituals as a thing of the past, but the truth is that they’ve merely changed form . As I’ve noted previously , cultural Marxism is a crappy and inherently destructive “for-export” variety of Communism, so it’s no great surprise that it has adapted this technique for its purposes.
Modern witch hunts This is what happens to people who say that Bruce Jenner is actually a dude.
When people are encouraged to become incensed over even tiny things , this causes a “walking on eggshells” atmosphere. In today’s politically correct climate, it’s easy to run afoul of the Thought Police. This might result in a visit to the HR Department, or a campus “speech code” investigation. However, if the thoughtcrime is serious enough—or the target is prominent enough—then this can ignite a media circus . Also, someone could end up featured on a mailing list for Social Justice Warriors . Besides just trolling and harassment, this can result in doxxing (release of your personal information) or pressure on an employer to fire the thought criminal.
We in the Western world pride ourselves on the right to free speech. That was one of the main goals of liberalism, back in the 18th Century when liberalism was still a good thing. Actually, many “free” countries criminalize politically incorrect speech. Even in places that don’t have legal penalties for speaking your mind, it carries the risk of the loss of your livelihood . This effectively makes entire policy arguments forbidden to articulate, which naturally is the whole point. Other goals, of course, are information control and thus thought control. So much for freedom of speech! It took a few centuries, but liberals now oppose what they once stood for.
The following scenario has happened time and again. Someone points out an inconvenient truth , writes something that offends someone, donates to the “wrong” cause, mocks a feminist’s First World problems , tells an off-color joke , or even wears the wrong T-shirt . Then the feeding frenzy begins, resulting in torrents of criticism. Usually the target apologizes profusely, but loses his job no matter how abject or groveling his apologies are.
It’s possible to convince a judge and twelve jurors that you’re not guilty of something, but good luck getting the media or an online SJW mob to calm down and leave you alone! The traditional Communist session was better in one way. That is, they quit after breaking the target’s will. A modern feeding frenzy, though, can drag on for months, even after the target has been begging for forgiveness. What goes on the Internet can stay there forever, including lies about you.
If you get caught in a Social Justice Weenie witch hunt , never apologize. Explain and clarify if you absolutely must. This is for the benefit of the uncommitted; the SJWs will already have made up their small minds about you and won’t stop no matter what you do. Never let them break your frame! Instead, go on the attack. You have a right to your own opinion and to express it.
If you beg for their forgiveness, then you will be allowing them to turn their criticism into your self-criticism. Remember that groveling is unlikely to save you! Apologies are for people who actually did something wrong. Having a difference of opinion isn’t wrong, despite some people’s curious notions about freedom of speech.
Here are some other particulars to remember:
You can’t reason with them ; online mobs don’t know you and have been told that you’re an evildoer. You’ll probably never know exactly what was said about you, who said it, and what email list all that was on. (If you do find out, sue for defamation of character.) However, you can be sure that you’ve already been deemed guilty. They’re not interested in the truth. SJWs have great difficulty comprehending basic logic. Many of them don’t even believe in objective reality ; only their feelings are real to them. Why would the truth matter to these idiots? Finally, Social Justice Weenies are a bunch of losers . Their opinion of you matters less than that of a snotty child cursing you out. Therefore, don’t let these oxygen-wasters mess with your self-esteem. Societal criticism and self-criticism Wallowing in guilt at its finest
The Frankfurt School , a Communist think tank that moved to the USA and began subverting the educational system, developed critical theory . One of their top classics was Eros and Civilization by Herbert Marcuse. It contained lots of Freudian arguments on how our society was too repressed and we needed to loosen up our morals. Another was The Authoritarian Personality by Theodor Adorno. That too contained Freudian mumbo-jumbo, smearing right wing politics with accusations of neurosis and homo Daddy issues. All told, they wrote dozens of books along those lines, some attacking Western civilization directly. These vaporings wouldn’t have amounted to much, if they hadn’t become trendy in academia and influenced the 1960s zeitgeist.
Meanwhile, radical feminism—the Second Wave—was starting up. This too had lots of Communist influence , another front of cultural Marxism. This also was all about criticism of our culture. This caused friction between the sexes, driving a wedge deep into the heart of society. The results included the snarky, snotty, and spoiled attitudes you’ve surely encountered. Worse, this caused untold misery from high divorce rates and broken homes .
This was one of several movements that became prominent during the 1960s and are still with us today. (Surely you can think of many others.) The methodology was the same—all angrily made overblown complaints about how bad society has been to them. The way they tell it, they’re out fighting for their rights. The goal of cultural Marxism, though, was all about attacking our morale and softening us up. The people involved in those movements were merely tools, being used by leaders who were in it for power, money, and status.
The educational system has been dumbed down . History has been rewritten too. Figures like Christopher Columbus and the US Founding Fathers are bad guys now. Even as early as the 1980s, campuses were hell-bent in purging “DWEMs” (their charming term for “dead White European males”) from the literary canon. None of this was really about inclusiveness; it’s all about robbing our people of our heritage, making us ashamed of our accomplishments, and destroying our resolve.
The propaganda is everywhere. Television is full of social and political messages, even in shows for children , and piggybacked onto advertisements too. “Sensitivity training” courses deliver politically correct indoctrination. College campuses are notorious for pushing propaganda. This even happens to elementary school kids. (My first exposure was in second grade.) Some of the indoctrination exercises require audience participation, such as forcing them to fill out “privilege” checklists (with the facts cherry-picked ) to instill a sense of “collective guilt.”
All this has worked according to plan. Many are out of touch with their roots, and don’t understand that they have a heritage worth preserving. Worse, others have been infected by guilt trips. Sometimes this leads to public spectacles of wallowing in guilt; again, there’s the self-criticism part.
The antidote to this is the truth. The fact is, every civilization has its good points and its bad points, and ours is no exception. It’s rotten hypocrisy for the bullshit merchants in academia and the media to dwell on our faults and overlook those of other parts of the world, while selectively ignoring our accomplishments and elevating those of others . The truth is that none of our shortcomings or misdeeds are solely found in Western civilization, but some of our good characteristics are indeed unique.
You can protect your children by home schooling them or sending them to a private school where they won’t be indoctrinated. You can always get rid of your TV too. Meanwhile, though, millions of other students will be putty in the hands of propagandizing professors and teachers, and of course the lying media. Those pushing this from the top down must be called out, exposed, and removed from power.
Read More: 13 Common SJW “Arguments” And How to Dismantle Them
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California becomes second state to raise legal smoking age to 21
Ethan A. Huff, staff writer Tags: smoking age , California , prohibition (NaturalNews) If you're between the ages of 18 and 21, live in California and are a smoker, expect to be denied your favorite pack at the convenience store. Beginning in June, the new minimum age for officially jumped from 18 to 21, a prohibition move that lawmakers claim will curb the number of smokers in the Golden State, and ultimately help save lives.Joining both Hawaii and the city of Needham in Massachusetts, California is the third locale in the U.S. to raise the legal smoking age to 21. Officials there hope that, like in these other places, age restrictions on smoking will help reduce the number of smokers and minimize the number of individuals who develop smoking-related health conditions like emphysema and lung cancer.Citing statistics from Needham that show a nearly 50 percent reduction in the number of smokers in the five-year period following the change that was made in 2005, April Roeseler, head of the California public health department's Tobacco Control Program, told the Los Angeles Times that she expects similar reductions in her state.In Needham, the number of high schoolers smoking cigarettes fell by nearly half, according to a study published last year. And adult smoking rates in the town also fell from about 18.1 percent to a mere 8 percent – statistics that experts say can be replicated all across the country."If we can push that age up where fewer and fewer people start smoking as a teen, it's likely that we will start to have some tobacco-free generations ," the Times quotes her as saying. Prohibition never works; people who want 'contraband' will find a way At this point, though, very little, if any, evidence exists to show that the rule change is working as intended. University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) professor Dr. Stanton Glantz, for instance, admitted to the Times that the policy still needs time to "settle in." The California Smokers' Helpline also says it hasn't noticed any increases in the number of callers in the prohibited age range trying to quit, which suggests that not much has changed.There's also the contraband factor – older kids still buying cigarettes for younger kids, for example, including those younger than the former threshold age of 18. Illegal buying has always been an issue, law or no law, which is something that the government never really seems to understand when it comes to issues of prohibition ."They're hanging out and partying together, so they'll just get someone else to buy," says Leonard Charles, the owner of a liquor store in Oakland. Charles says he strictly enforces the new cigarette age law, but believes that if somebody wants cigarettes, he or she is going to find a way, regardless of the law.In the internet age, cigarettes are also freely available to anybody with a WiFi connection. People can order cigarettes off the web and have them delivered right to their doorstep, which means that state-level restrictions are basically moot.And what about e-cigarettes? The State of California classifies e-cigs as a "tobacco product" just like cigarettes, and they are subject to the same laws. However, everybody has them these days, they're very discreet, and they don't produce that typical tobacco smell that's so hard to get out of a room , so trying to enforce restrictions against their use is next to impossible, say experts familiar with the reality of how easy it is to obtain tobacco, regardless of what the law says.When asked how the new law will realistically work in light of the fact that smoking laws often aren't effective, Glantz responded, "The short answer is I don't know." Sources for this article include: | 1 |
Rescuers navigated submerged streets and neighborhoods in parts of southern Louisiana on Monday, plucking people to safer ground and trying to stay ahead of the waterways spilling over into new areas. At least eight people died in the flooding, Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news conference on Tuesday. Tangipahoa and St. Helena Parishes had reported two deaths each by Monday. East Baton Rouge Parish reported three. More than 11, 000 people were in 70 shelters as of Monday, and many more are expected, said Mike Steele, a spokesman for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. “The floodwaters are drifting downstream below Baton Rouge,” Mr. Steele said. “That’s the biggest concern now. ” “We have additional rain in the forecast all week, and it is still a threat each day,” he added. The National Weather Service said Monday that significant flooding would continue along bayous and streams that feed into the Amite River through three parishes south of Baton Rouge — Iberville, Ascension and St. James. Residents of the Iberville Parish were urged to evacuate on Monday. More than 20, 000 people have so far been evacuated in flooded areas, and that number is expected to continue to rise as rain this week falls on saturated ground, he said. The floods have turned roads into surreal lakes in which the tops of cars and other structures are barely visible, breaking the surface of brown, muddy waters. The rescue of one woman was captured on video and broadcast by a local TV station, WAFB. Rescuers drew up near her submerged convertible car in floodwaters in Baton Rouge over the weekend, but they were unable to extract her from the vehicle until one of them got access through its fabric rooftop. “Oh, my God, I’m drowning,” the woman can be heard saying from inside the car, the station reported. Citizens are helping out, volunteering their time and boats to go house to house to pick up residents in trouble. Firefighters, the National Guard and the Coast Guard, using helicopters and small boats, were among those who have also joined the effort. President Obama has declared four parishes north and east of Baton Rouge — Tangipahoa, St. Helena, East Baton Rouge and Livingston — as disaster areas, making them eligible for federal assistance. Mr. Steele said additional parishes were likely to be added to the federal emergency funds list and he urged residents to take advantage of the assistance. State government offices were closed in at least 27 parishes, nearly half of the state’s 64 parishes, officials said. The floods submerged neighborhoods and highways after days of heavy storms in southern Louisiana, stretching from the parishes to the north and east of Baton Rouge west past the city of Lafayette over the weekend. Those stranded by the waters found themselves further marooned by a huge cellular network failure. Two of the victims of the flooding were in vehicles that were swept off the road one was a man who drowned after he slipped and fell in the waters during a rescue and the fourth was a man who had been swept away on Friday and whose body had been found on Sunday morning, a reporter for a local news station, said on Facebook. The Town Talk of Alexandria, La. reported that a fifth person died on Sunday when her car was swept into a ditch. Ms. Faulkner had no further details about the sixth death. Law enforcement officers in the areas have told state officials they expect the death toll to climb. Many houses have lost power and cellphone service, complicating the rescue process as emergency workers rely on . Jim Hawthorne, a retired radio broadcaster, stood on his front porch in floodwaters nearly up to his hips on Sunday, saying “hey, hey” to capture the attention of a passing boat motoring down the street in the Park Forest neighborhood of Baton Rouge where he lived with his wife, Carol. “I heard the boat. We were laying there reading. I had the windows open. I said, ‘Carol, that boat is real close,’” Mr. Hawthorne told The Advocate. “I waded through the water and went out the front door. I could still see the waves rippling from the boat. “I yelled as loud as I could, and they heard me,” the said. “I was in water up to my . I was yelling, ‘HEY! HEY!’ The motor stopped and they came around and came back. ” They were rescued. | 0 |
No wonder we ve had the worst Democrat President in the history of the United States for 7 long years!GOP Consultant Rick Wilson says GOP establishment needs to put a bullet in Trump s head.Wilson has also hurled insults at Trump supporters the past few months.Breitbart reported: On Tuesday evening, establishment Republican consultant Rick Wilson said the GOP establishment donor class must find a way to put a bullet in GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.In an interview with MSNBC s Chris Hayes, Wilson conceded that Trump is still a very powerful force right now because he appeals to part of the of the conservative base that Wilson said was activated by his nativist message. Wilson insisted that the donor class can t just sit back on the sidelines and say, oh well, don t worry, this will all work itself out. They re still going to have to go out and put a bullet in Donald Trump, Wilson said. And that s a fact. Republican establishment figures who have underestimated Trump since he entered the race are reportedly looking to raise millions to try to derail Trump and knock him out of the race. Wilson added that the Republican establishment must figure out a way to find a candidate who can successfully post up against Hillary Clinton because neither Donald Trump or Ben Carson is ready to go up against the Clinton machine. Wilson claimed that Trump and Carson are obviously not ready for primetime. During a September CNN interview, Wilson told Erin Burnett that Trump could eat a live baby on television and Trump s supporters would think it s the greatest thing in America. He has also demeaned Trump s supporters as low-information rubes and has likened them to post-rational conspiracy theorists.In an interview with CNN s Don Lemon, Wilson said Trump s message doesn t have to make sense for his supporters to back him and compared Trump to someone who is a conspiracy theorist like your cranky uncle at Thanksgiving who always has a theory about the Bilderbergers or the World Bank, or the IMF, or the Trilateral Commission. Today Rick Wilson attacked Ann Coulter for supporting Donald Trump. Via: Gateway Pundit | 0 |
If you want to try to dispute Dinesh D Souza s arguments, you should probably start by actually reading his book This is a classic because the woman is so clueless about Obama 2016 and projects what the left does onto the right.Available nationwide, Dinesh D Souza s new book The Big Lie exposes the Left s biggest lie yet: their orchestrated campaign to paint conservatives as Nazis to cover up their own fascism.To cover up their insidious fascist agenda, Democrats loudly accuse President Trump and other Republicans of being Nazis an obvious lie, considering the GOP has been fighting the Democrats over slavery, genocide, racism and fascism from the beginning. | 0 |
BAYONNE, N. J. — Nicole Adamczyk’s drinking water used to slosh through a snarl of pipes dating from the Coolidge administration — a rusty, rickety symbol of the nation’s failing infrastructure. So, in 2012, this port city cut a deal with a Wall Street investment firm to manage its municipal waterworks. Four years later, many of those crusty brown pipes have been replaced by shiny ones, reflecting a broader infrastructure overhaul in Bayonne. But Ms. Adamczyk’s water and sewer bill has jumped so much that she is thinking about moving out of town. “My reaction was, ‘Oh, so I guess I’m screwed now? ’” said Ms. Adamczyk, an accountant and mother of two who received a quarterly bill for almost $500 this year. She’s not alone: Another resident’s bill jumped 5 percent, despite the household’s having used 11 percent less water. Even as Wall Street deals like the one with Bayonne help financially desperate municipalities to make repairs, they can come with a hefty price tag — not just to pay for new pipes, but also to help the investors earn a nice return, a New York Times analysis has found. Often, these contracts guarantee a specific amount of revenue, The Times found, which can send water bills soaring. Water rates in Bayonne have risen nearly 28 percent since Kohlberg Kravis Roberts — one of Wall Street’s most storied private equity firms — teamed up with another company to manage the city’s water system, the Times analysis shows. City officials also promised residents a rate freeze that never materialized. In one measure of residents’ distress, people are falling so far behind on their bills that the city is placing more liens against their homes, which can eventually lead to foreclosures. In the typical private equity water deal, higher rates help the firms earn returns of anywhere from 8 to 18 percent, more than what a regular water company may expect. And to accelerate their returns, two of the firms have applied a common strategy from the private equity playbook: quickly flipping their investment to another firm. This includes K. K. R. which is said to be shopping its 90 percent stake in the Bayonne venture, a partnership with the water company Suez. Rich Henning, a Suez spokesman, said that “Bayonne had chronically underinvested in their water and sewer infrastructure, which has certainly contributed to rate increases during the past few years. ” He added, “We understand that these increases create stresses for ratepayers. ” Donald J. Trump has made the privatization of public works a centerpiece of his strategy to rebuild America’s airports, bridges, tunnels and roads. Members of his inner circle have sketched out a vision, including billions of dollars of tax credits for private investors willing to tackle big infrastructure projects. And Mr. Trump himself promised in his victory speech “to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. ” Private equity firms like K. K. R. have already presented themselves as a willing partner, and Bayonne provides an important case study. Its arrangement is one of a handful of deals across the country in the last few years in which private equity firms have managed public water systems. While these deals are a small corner of private equity’s sprawling interests, they represent the leading edge of the industry’s profound expansion into public services. For residents, the financial from these water deals can be painful. The Times analyzed three deals in which private equity firms have recently run a community’s water or sewer services through a contract. In all three places — Bayonne, and two cities in California, Rialto and Santa Paula — rates rose more quickly than in comparable towns, which included both publicly and privately run water systems. In Santa Paula, where Alinda Capital Partners controlled the sewer plant, the city more than doubled the rates. A fourth municipality, Middletown, Pa. raised its rates before striking a deal. Now, some of these cities are trying to take back their water. Missoula, Mont. wrested away its water system, which had been owned by the Carlyle Group. Apple Valley, Calif. whose waterworks were also owned by Carlyle, has filed a similar lawsuit. Santa Paula bought its sewer plant from Alinda last year. Of course, there’s a reason many communities look for private partners to begin with: Their water systems are in poor shape. Budget shortfalls and political mismanagement can represent a real threat to both infrastructure and citizens. For evidence, look no further than the crisis in Flint, Mich. where the drinking water became tainted with lead. “Keeping rates down may sound like the ultimate righteous good for ratepayers, but the truth is, not if you’re failing to provide basic care and maintenance,” said Megan Matson, a partner at Table Rock Capital, the boutique private equity firm that invested in Rialto’s water and sewer system. She added that it helps for deals to “provide more obvious public benefits,” noting that her firm partnered with Ullico, the nation’s only insurance and investment company. Proponents of the partnerships, citing recent studies in Canada and Europe, argue that private businesses operate more efficiently than governments do and that this translates into cost savings for citizens. And private equity firms, lacking technical expertise in how to manage infrastructure, often team up with private water companies. Supporters also say that the deals require private equity to spend millions of dollars a year to fix things (money that towns may not spend on their own) and that the firms sometimes pay towns millions more up front. Bayonne, for instance, got $150 million up front from K. K. R. ’s team, which the city used to pay off a pile of debt. In a statement, a K. K. R. spokeswoman said, “Our partnership has provided Bayonne residents with better service, modernized technology to detect leaks and conserve water, improved infrastructure and safer conditions for workers — all without a tax increase or public expenditure. ” In Bayonne, a city of about 65, 000 on a peninsula in the shadow of the fallen twin towers, a crucial test for its private equity deal came in July 2012. By then, Bayonne had already spent nearly a year haggling with some of K. K. R. ’s top negotiators. Next, city officials presented the deal to a more skeptical crowd: their own residents. Bayonne’s sales pitch to its citizens illustrates the bold steps town officials can take — including making promises that are at odds with the actual terms of the deal — to attract private equity money. Private equity, in turn, can earn significant returns. At a public meeting in city hall, a lawyer for the city promised that, after an initial rate bump, there would be “a rate freeze for four years,” according to a meeting transcript. Bayonne’s mayor, Mark Smith, later reiterated the freeze in a magazine article. That promise turned out to be fleeting. The contract allowed additional rate increases after only two years. There was no freeze. In fact, rates rose even more than the Bayonne contract predicted — in part because K. K. R’s team had to make unexpected infrastructure upgrades, but also because residents were using less water than expected. The contract guarantees revenue to the team — more than half a billion dollars over 40 years — so water rates have jumped, in part, to make up the difference. The city said it saw the revenue requirement as a way for K. K. R. ’s team to earn steady returns, but not a windfall. But the Times analysis showed that Bayonne’s water rates grew almost 28 percent under the deal, growth that far exceeded that of three other municipalities to which Bayonne has compared itself. (Daniel Van Abs, an associate professor at Rutgers University who specializes in water management, said that a true comparison of water rates in different towns was “extremely difficult” because of the different factors that can influence rates, including the size of the utility, the municipality’s population, droughts and infrastructure investment — or lack thereof. The Times analysis for Bayonne did not include sewer rates.) Former Bayonne officials who had promised the rate freeze said in interviews that they had not meant to mislead residents. They said they had earmarked some of the K. K. R. team’s $150 million payment to offset rate increases in the contract’s early years. But then voters ousted Mayor Smith. And once he left office, the new administration put that money elsewhere. “I think we could have accomplished that minimum,” the former mayor said in an interview. The town’s water rates, he said, are now “exorbitant. ” Tim Boyle, who took over Bayonne’s utilities authority after Mr. Smith was voted out of office, said that various regulations required the city to use that money for property tax relief rather than to stabilize rates. He also blamed the previous administration for guaranteeing too much revenue to K. K. R. ’s team in the early part of the deal, calling those figures “wildly optimistic. ” Bayonne officials also stress the deal’s benefits, including the payment that let Bayonne pay off more than $100 million in old debts. Within three months, Moody’s Investor Service revised the city’s debt outlook from “negative” to “stable” for the first time in five years, and it has since upgraded the city’s credit rating. K. K. R. ’s team contributes about $2. 5 million annually to pay for repairs to water infrastructure, plus $500, 000 to the city itself. K. K. R. and Suez said they have upgraded their safety equipment and replaced inoperable hydrants around town. They also installed sophisticated water meters that can detect leaks in people’s homes, and sent nearly 2, 000 letters to customers warning when such leaks occurred. As such, use has declined, according to Mr. Henning, who said Suez had received “many notes of thanks” for the warnings. But meters could lead to higher bills for some residents whose water use wasn’t fully captured in the past. When negotiating the deal, K. K. R. called this process “meter uplift,” according to emails obtained through records requests. “We gave away too much,” said Gary La Pelusa Sr. a city councilman and former commissioner of Bayonne’s utilities authority, which approved the deal over his objections. Bayonne originally promised residents that the city’s utilities authority would oversee K. K. R. and Suez. But the City Council recently decided to shutter the agency and handle the oversight itself. Stephen Gallo, who headed that authority when the deal was struck, still believes that it benefits Bayonne. “But you’ve got to watch them, you’ve got to keep an eye on things,” he said. “I don’t know who’s doing that now. ” In interviews with The Times, more than a dozen Bayonne residents, including Ms. Adamczyk, expressed dismay over the rate increases. One reason is that people who fall behind on payments face risks: Unpaid water and sewer bills can be sold to investors who try to collect on that debt, a common practice across the country. Failure to pay can ultimately lead to foreclosure. In 2012, the year Bayonne struck its deal, water bill delinquencies led to 200 government liens against local properties, tax records show. That figure more than tripled the next year, the first full year under K. K. R. ’s team. In 2015, the most recent year with data available, the number remained elevated, at 465. The city publishes its lien notices in the local newspaper and residents receive mailed delinquency letters. Still, when a reporter asked one Bayonne resident, Carlos Jimenez, about a water and sewer bill lien that had been listed against his property, he expressed surprise, saying he wasn’t aware of it. “I didn’t know this could happen,” Mr. Jimenez said. “It’s a different ballgame. ” One of the few things Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that the nation faces an infrastructure crisis. In water infrastructure alone, the nation needs about $600 billion over the next 20 years, according to federal estimates. And yet federal spending on water utilities has declined, prompting state and federal officials to try to play matchmaker, courting private investors to fix what needs fixing. For years, the Obama administration has been cheerleading partnerships. In a statement, the White House said it backed them “when they are well structured, include strong labor standards, and when there is confidence that taxpayers are getting a good deal. ” During the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump’s team outlined a new plan to incentivize private investors to take on large infrastructure projects. Wall Street has responded to the call to action. There are now 84 active financial infrastructure funds, according to Pitchbook, a private financial data platform, up 25 percent in just three years. Some belong to big banks like Goldman Sachs, but many are run by private equity firms. “Across our country, we need solutions for infrastructure deficiencies,” said James Maloney, a spokesman for the American Investment Council, the private equity trade group. “Private equity serves as one of these solutions. ” Some critics are wary of expanding private investment in public infrastructure. Although cities may get cash up front in these deals, “there is no ‘free’ money” in partnerships, says a 2008 Government Accountability Office report. Using roads as an example, the report observed “it is likely” that tolls will increase more on a privately operated highway than one run by the government. Ms. Matson, of Table Rock, who has attended White House meetings on infrastructure, has tried to dispel concerns about these deals. Table Rock is part of a team that finances and manages the water system in Rialto, Calif. a deal that provided the city about $41 million to improve the water and wastewater infrastructure, she said. Rialto residents have seen their water rates increase about 68 percent since the deal, according to the Times analysis, more than any other comparable city. But Table Rock said rates were artificially low after the city had declined to raise them for about a decade, giving it the lowest rates among those towns. And unlike in most other deals, Rialto residents had a say in the increases and ultimately approved them in a public vote, as required under state law. This year’s rate increase was delayed. When the deal closed in 2012, all the public water utility employees kept their jobs. Everyone has since received raises. And Table Rock, like its partner Ullico, has committed to all 30 years of the arrangement. “We don’t do flips, we invest for life,” Ms. Matson said, meaning that Table Rock doesn’t seek quick profits by unloading its investments. She also said that Table Rock declined to make deals that provided big payments to towns without a sufficient commitment to infrastructure repairs. “Those deals give the rest of us a bad name,” she said. In an upscale Washington, D. C. restaurant in 2012, an executive from the Carlyle Group, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, put his arm around the mayor of Missoula, Mont. “Mayor,” the executive said, “are you ready to buy a water system?” Three years later, the comments by the executive, Robert Dove, were recounted from a witness stand in the Missoula County Courthouse. The city was suing Carlyle, which ultimately refused to sell to Missoula, to gain control of its water system. Missoula is one of several places in recent years that have tried getting back their water systems from a private company. But after waging costly battles, the towns cannot always guarantee the same services at lower rates. At the time of that dinner in Washington, Missoula was the only city in Montana that did not own its water system — and John Engen, Missoula’s mayor, wanted to change that. So, months before, he had supported Carlyle’s purchase of the regional water company (Park Water) that owned Missoula’s local system (Mountain Water) believing that Carlyle would then sell Mountain Water back to his town. But the mayor’s plans derailed. In October 2013, Missoula made an informal offer to buy its local system. Carlyle declined. Missoula made a formal offer. Carlyle declined again. Missoula then sued, and it won. But the court decided the system was worth $88. 6 million, substantially more than what the city had offered. On top of that, the city must spend millions of dollars on legal and other fees and must also pay some of its opponents’ costs, according to court records. Those costs included lawyers’ fees, limo services and dinners at some of Missoula’s finest restaurants. They also included at least one order of boneless chicken wings at Hooters, and one bottle of Metamucil. In a statement, a Carlyle spokesman said that the firm had considered the city’s offers in good faith. “The city offered many millions less than the company was worth, and an independent panel agreed,” the spokesman said. He also said that under Carlyle’s watch, “capital expenditures more than doubled, leakage was reduced by 19 percent, water quality was excellent and employment was stable. ” And under Missoula’s watch, water rates may rise anyway. Further costly repairs are still needed, for one thing. For Carlyle, the deal was a financial success. The firm sold Park Water in January to another private company for $327 million, more than double what Carlyle had paid. Missoula is not the only city seeking control over its infrastructure. Last year, Santa Paula bought its wastewater recycling plant for about $70 million from Alinda Capital Partners. Alinda, which specializes in infrastructure investing, had teamed up with a private water recycling company to finance, design, build and operate the plant after the city awarded them the contract in 2008. The new facility, Alinda noted, replaced an old plant owned by Santa Paula that had been violating state environmental regulations, saving the city from paying fines. But after years of raising sewer rates, partly to pay “service fees” to Alinda, Santa Paula’s thinking changed: It would be better for Santa Paula to issue its own debt to purchase the plant than to saddle citizens with annual rate increases. Now the town — at the urging of its city manager, Jaime Fontes, and several council members, including Ginger Gherardi — has started issuing rebates to citizens. Still, there will be bumps along the road. After all, cities like Missoula and Santa Paula are now responsible for running an important, and occasionally messy, public service. Soon after Santa Paula regained control of its sewer plant, an equipment failure let partly treated wastewater pour from the plant. The discharge turned a pond green and flowed onto a nearby organic farm. And wastewater, Mr. Fontes said, is “not the kind of organic you want. ” | 0 |
PHOENIX (Reuters) - A federal judge on Wednesday upheld President Donald Trump’s pardon earlier this year of 85-year-old former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, rejecting legal challenges by outside groups. U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton said that she had considered the petitions filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona and other organizations, including one staffed by lawyers who worked for former Democratic President Barack Obama’s administration, but found no legal grounds to overturn the pardon. Bolton did not rule on a request by Arpaio’s attorneys to take the further step of vacating his conviction. Trump, a Republican who has promised to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, has praised Arpaio’s crackdown on illegal immigrants in Maricopa County, Arizona, that drew condemnation from civil rights groups. Arpaio was convicted in July of willfully violating a 2011 injunction barring his officers from stopping and detaining Latino motorists solely on suspicion they were in the country illegally. He had not yet been sentenced when Trump issued the pardon in August. | 0 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China s Commerce Ministry said on Thursday it will continue to handle North Korean trade issues in a way that benefits peace, stability and denuclearization on the Korean peninsula. Ministry spokesman Gao Feng made the comment at a routine media briefing. | 0 |
pirate clip art free printable | Illustration of Pirate Skull ...(image by ) The Pirate Party of Iceland, the one nation that jailed its crooked bankers, is poised to win the election, less than 4 years after forming.
Their motto is: " "We are not here to gain power. We are here to distribute power."
I think this formulation can serve the Progressive Movement in the US, as it approaches mainstream status and is the most popular political movement in the nation, with 67% approving of the term progressive, over 55% supporting Sanders, and a robust majority supporting progressive programs like gun and immigration reform, raising the minimum wage, etc.
And this formulation also deals with the issue of Bigness, which many think incompatible with democracy and human rights. What if the purpose of bigness (ie winning elections) is NOT to consolidate power in new hands but to change the system by using this status to distribute power. - Advertisement -
Progressives are commonly accused by the right of being for Big Government, for thinking that government power is the solution to all problems. This Pirate formulation disrupts that claim, by showing a way to use the consolidation of power in order not to create a stronger state but to redistribute power and thus lessen the power of the state and powerful corporations and other institutions, public and private.
This formulation comes out of the anarchist tradition of decentralized power. The Pirate party has allied libertarians of both the right and left to take power, in order to distribute it from the banks and their servants back to the people themselves. Anarchism, we understand, is self-government, which means decentralized power. - Advertisement -
The success of the Pirate party shows how anarchists and libertarians of all kinds can come together to form a coalition Big enough to win but committed to breaking up the concentration of power, mostly in the hands of the financial institutions and their corrupt public servants.
The way to get beyond the "Iron Law of Oligarchy," which over 100 years ago German sociologist Robet Michels, which states " states that all forms of organization, regardless of how democratic they may be at the start, will eventually and inevitably develop oligarchic tendencies, thus making true democracy practically and theoretically impossible, especially in large groups and complex organizations." is to use consolidation of power (bigness) in the service of decentralizing power, pushing it back to the people and smaller communities.
Therefore, the goal of Progressives is NOT to gain power that is the means: the goal is to replace the old hierarchical system with a system of decentralized power, a model of self-government. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump denied on Thursday that Rex Tillerson had threatened to resign after a news report that the secretary of state had called him a moron and had to be repeatedly persuaded not to leave the administration. “Rex Tillerson never threatened to resign,” Trump said in his most direct refutation of the resignation report. “This is Fake News put out by @NBCNews. Low news and reporting standards. No verification from me.” On Wednesday, the top U.S. diplomat, whose tenure has been dogged with rumors about unhappiness with Trump’s policies and rhetoric, said he was committed to the president’s agenda and had never considered resigning. NBC reported that, in a session with Trump’s national security team and Cabinet officials at the Pentagon, Tillerson had openly criticized the president and referred to him as a moron, citing three unidentified officials familiar with the incident. Tillerson sidestepped the issue when taking questions after making a televised statement to the media. Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway also tried to tamp down speculation that Tillerson was on the verge of leaving the administration. “He said he has never once thought of resigning,” Conway said on CNN. “We’re glad he’s the secretary of state.” Another Cabinet member, Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, announced his resignation last week after acknowledging he used taxpayer funds to travel on private planes. | 0 |
Republicans always talk a big game about being pro-life. One of the ways they lead their clueless voters into thinking that they really care about abortions is by attacking healthcare organizations that provide the services. That s exactly what happened in Wisconsin on Thursday when Governor Scott Walker signed two bills that will block millions of dollars in federal funding from reaching Planned Parenthood.According to Yahoo News:One of the new Wisconsin rules requires the state to apply for federal Title X family planning grant money and to give those monies to less controversial public entities such as state, county and local health departments and clinics, a statement from Walker s office said.Planned Parenthood is currently the only entity in Wisconsin receiving this federal money and the funds will not be sent to the organization, the statement said. Less controversial ? The only reason Planned Parenthood is controversial is because the GOP has made it so. They attack the group because it is an easy target as the country s largest abortion provider. But they actively ignore the fact that only roughly three percent of the organization s services are abortion related and that federal funding does NOT pay for that three percent it is illegal and has been since 1976.The other bill that Walker signed into law will restrict the amount of money Planned Parenthood gets back for birth control (and other prescriptions) reimbursements.The bill singles out Planned Parenthood by referring to a covered entity that is an abortion provider. Of the 22 Planned Parenthood clinics in the state, only three perform abortions. Planned Parenthood affiliates in Wisconsin serve more than 60,000 patients annually.This is really important because in order to truly be pro-life one must actively reduce the need for pregnancy terminations. One of the easiest ways of doing that is by providing women and girls with free birth control. Now, twenty-two clinics are going to have a very hard time doing this because of Walker. If these women do not have access to birth control, then this could result in a boom of pregnancies Walker should have taken a look at Texas.Together the two laws could block more than $7 million of federal funding from reaching the clinics. All of this proves that GOP cares less about preventing abortions and much more about punishing women and Planned Parenthood. Featured image via Gage Skidmore/Flickr | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Several intriguing scenarios could unfold after Tuesday’s U.S. election to break the deadlock over filling a Supreme Court vacancy that has provoked a bitter nine-month standoff between President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans. Obama nominated U.S. appeals court judge Merrick Garland on March 16 to replace long-serving conservative justice Antonin Scalia, who died on Feb. 13. The Republican-led Senate, in a move with little precedent, has refused to consider the nomination, saying the winner of the presidential election should make the pick. If Republican Donald Trump wins, Garland’s nomination would be dead. Trump has already put forth a list of conservative jurists as potential nominees. If Obama’s fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton wins, there are ways Garland could secure Senate confirmation to the lifetime post before Obama leaves office on Jan. 20. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has been adamant that Obama’s successor should select Scalia’s replacement and that he will not consider Garland’s nomination during a post-election “lame duck” session. But McConnell could come under pressure by some Senate Republicans to allow confirmation hearings and a vote on Garland, who has a reputation in Washington as a moderate, out of fear Clinton could instead choose a more liberal nominee. The Senate’s inaction on Garland has made the Supreme Court a potent issue in the election. After many years of leaning conservative, a new Democratic appointment could tilt the court to the left for the first time in decades. Scalia’s death left the court split with four liberals and four conservatives. Conservative activists dismiss the notion Garland is a moderate, saying he would vote with the four liberal justices on major, ideologically divisive issues. “Garland is a liberal, not a centrist,” said Carrie Severino, a lawyer with the Judicial Crisis Network. Liberal activists like Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society, said Republicans should move forward on Garland. “He’s got every qualification you could ask for. He’s exactly the type of judge they claimed they wanted,” Fredrickson said. If Democrats win control of the Senate in Tuesday’s election, the new congressional session would begin on Jan. 3, and they could decide to move forward immediately on Garland’s nomination before Obama’s term ends. Clinton would play a major role by deciding whether or not she wanted to stick with Garland, who was named to his current job by her husband Bill Clinton in 1997, or choose her own nominee. “Chief Judge Garland is the most experienced nominee to the Supreme Court in our nation’s history,” White House spokeswoman Brandi Hoffine said. It is time for Republicans to “stop putting politics over the best interest of the country and do their job by giving the president’s nominee to the Supreme Court a hearing and a vote,” she added. Clinton has said Garland should be confirmed this year but has not committed to re-nominating him if she wins. Some Republicans have floated the idea of staunch opposition to any Clinton nominee, raising the possibility of the seat remaining vacant long-term. McConnell has said no Obama nominee will be confirmed this year. There are no signs so far of Republican leaders backing off that position. Garland, 63, and other members of the Washington legal community joined the eight current justices inside the Supreme Court’s ornate courtroom on Friday at an memorial event honoring Scalia, four days before the election that will help decide his fate. There has been little controversy over Garland’s suitability to sit on the Supreme Court as there has been with some past nominees. He is widely respected in the legal community and has won praise from Democrats and Republicans. | 0 |
With the exception of the sun, Jupiter is bigger than everything in the solar system put together. But little is known about the interior beneath its colorful cloud stripes. Now that Juno has arrived at its destination, it will orbit the planet 37 times over the next 20 months, with the hopes that it will collect data and images that offer clues to the origins of our solar system and the formation of the planets and moons. Several spacecraft have flown past Jupiter, beginning with Pioneer 10 in 1973. NASA’s Galileo spacecraft, entering orbit in 1995, dropped a probe into Jupiter’s atmosphere, sending back data that showed Jupiter had strong, turbulent winds and offering details about the composition of its atmosphere. During its eight years at Jupiter, Galileo confirmed ideas of how Jupiter’s diaphanous rings formed out of dust particles blasted off Jupiter’s small inner moons. It measured the sizzling temperatures of volcanoes on Io, one of the planet’s four large moons, and it found evidence of oceans on the other three moons of Europa, Callisto and Ganymede. Unlike Galileo, Juno will be in an orbit passing over Jupiter’s poles, providing a first close look at those regions. With repeated close passes over the cloud tops, the spacecraft will measure microwave emissions, the gravity field and the magnetic field, offering glimpses into what is deep inside Jupiter. It might seem odd to care about the water on Jupiter, but it is one of the main issues that Juno scientists are focusing on. “That’s in some ways our premier measurement,” said Steven Levin, the mission’s project scientist. On Mars, NASA’s strategy seeks to find out whether there was water there that would have ever made Mars cozy enough for life. Jupiter, with its crushing gravity and radiation, clearly is not a hospitable place for life, but that’s not why scientists are interested about water there. Rather, the question is, “Where’s the oxygen?” Jupiter has greater concentrations than the sun of most of the heavier elements like nitrogen and carbon, except for oxygen, which is scarce. Thus, scientists expect that oxygen atoms have each been tied up with two hydrogens to form water molecules. The measurements collected by Juno of microwave emissions emanating out of Jupiter will tell both the temperature and how much water there is, because water molecules absorb microwaves. If Juno finds a lot of water, that suggests Jupiter formed farther from the sun in the colder, icier regions and later migrated to its current orbit. Why does Jupiter have more of the heavier elements, anyway? That’s a mystery, too. One hypothesis is that the heavier elements came from comets that crashed into Jupiter and it absorbed them. Does Jupiter have a rocky core at its center? Measuring Jupiter’s gravity field will tell the distribution of mass within. If there is a rocky core, planetary scientists will have to explain how rocky bodies formed that early in the solar system. If there is not, then Jupiter formed out of a collapse of a gas cloud, much as the sun did. Jupiter is almost entirely hydrogen and helium, the two simplest and most abundant elements in the universe. Cool these two gases, and they change to a liquid. Inside Jupiter, hydrogen is believed to undergo another transformation, to a metal. Scientists have not been able to recreate metallic hydrogen on Earth. In laboratory experiments, hydrogen, squeezed to tens of millions of pounds per square inch between two diamonds, has remained stubbornly nonmetallic. The pressure inside Jupiter is hundreds of millions of pounds per square inch. By studying Jupiter’s magnetic fields, probably generated by currents of metallic hydrogen, scientists will receive hints about the properties of this elusive substance. Lots. “I’m confident it’s going to work,” Scott Bolton, Juno’s principal investigator, said before the announcement Monday night that the spacecraft had arrived, “but I’ll be happy when it’s over and we’re in orbit. ” Some of the ways that this could have turned into a bad day: If Juno blew up. In August 1993, NASA’s Mars Observer spacecraft vanished. An inquiry concluded that a fuel leak caused the spacecraft to spin quickly and fall out of communication. While Juno’s setup is different, there is always a chance of an explosion with rocket fuel. If the engine did not fire at all. The Japanese probe Akatsuki was all set to arrive at Venus in December 2010, but its engine didn’t fire properly, and Akatsuki sailed right past Venus. Last year, Akatsuki crossed paths with Venus again, and this time, using smaller thrusters, it was able to enter orbit. If it crashed into something. Jupiter does not possess the majestic rings of Saturn, but it does have a thin ring of debris orbiting it. Juno passed through a region that appeared clear, but that did not mean it actually was. Even a dust particle could cause significant damage, as Juno was going 130, 000 miles per hour relative to Jupiter. If it flew too close to Jupiter and was ripped to pieces. In one of NASA’s most embarrassing failures, the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft was lost in 1999 because of a between English and metric units. Climate Orbiter went far deeper into Mars’ atmosphere than planned. Juno traveled within 2, 900 miles of Jupiter’s cloud tops, so a miscalculation could have been catastrophic. If the computer crashed. On July 4 last year, the mission controllers of the New Horizons spacecraft that was about to fly by Pluto experienced some nervous moments when the spacecraft stopped talking to them. The computer on New Horizons crashed while trying to interpret some new commands and compressing some images it had taken, the electronic equivalent of walking while chewing gum. The controllers put New Horizons back in working order within a few days, and the flyby occurred without a hitch. For Juno, the scientific instruments have been turned off for its arrival at Jupiter. “We turn off everything that is not necessary for making the event work,” said Dr. Levin, the project scientist. “This is very important to get right, so you don’t do anything extra. ” The intense barrage of radiation at Jupiter could have knocked out Juno’s computer, even though it is shielded in a titanium vault. Usually, when there is a glitch, a spacecraft goes into “safe mode” to await new instructions from Earth, but in this case, that would have been too late to save Juno. The spacecraft had been programmed to automatically restart the engine to allow it to enter orbit. “If that doesn’t go just right, we fly past Jupiter, and of course, that’s not desirable,” Dr. Bolton said. Juno has been executing an automated sequence of actions since Thursday. A timeline of Juno’s arrival (all Eastern time): 9:13 p. m. Start of transmission of single frequency “tones” that will provide updates on the spacecraft’s condition. 9:16 p. m. Juno begins turning away from the sun to position the engine in the right direction to slow the spacecraft for its arrival at Jupiter. 10:41 p. m. With the main antenna pointing away from the sun, Juno switches to a smaller antenna for sending the tones. 10:45 p. m. Juno adjusts itself to eliminate any wobbling. 10:56 p. m. Juno speeds up its spin rate from two rotations a minute to five rotations a minute, a process that takes about five minutes. 11:18 p. m. The main engine begins firing. 11:38 p. m. The spacecraft has slowed down enough to be captured into orbit around Jupiter. 11:53 p. m. The main engine shuts off, leaving Juno in the desired orbit. 11:55 p. m. The spacecraft starts slowing its spin rate back down to two revolutions per minute. 12:07 a. m. Tuesday Juno changes direction to point its antenna back at Earth. 12:11 a. m. Juno ends the transmission of status tones and switches to its antenna. 12:16 a. m. Juno begins transmitting detailed telemetry, although it may take 20 minutes or longer to lock into the signal. The first two highly elliptical orbits will be 53 days in duration, lasting until . Then Juno will fire its engine again on Oct. 19 to move to a orbit when the science measurements begin in earnest. Three solar panels provide a mere 500 watts to power Juno and its instruments. On Nov. 3, people will be able to start voting on where Juno should point its camera. On the 37th orbit, on Feb. 20, 2018, Juno is to make a suicidal dive into Jupiter, ending the mission, the same way the Galileo spacecraft was disposed in 2003. That is to ensure there is no possibility that Juno would crash into Europa and contaminate it with microbial hitchhikers from Earth. Europa is regarded as one of the most likely places in the solar system to look for life. It took five years to get to Jupiter, and the mission costs $1. 1 billion, yet Juno will have a far shorter stay than the eight years Galileo spent exploring Jupiter in the moons. The close approaches to Jupiter means Juno will pass through intense bombardment of the radiation belts. As the mission progresses, Juno’s orbits will receive more direct hits of radiation. In the best outcome, the mission might be extended for a few months. But over time, the spacecraft’s electronics will fail. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bill to ease restrictions on energy development on U.S. tribal lands has a good chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress this year, after several failed attempts since 2013, the chair of the Senate Indian affairs committee said. Many Republican lawmakers, along with President Donald Trump, have expressed support for more oil drilling, coal mining and other energy projects on Native American reservations, which are overseen by the federal government. Several additional layers of regulatory bureaucracy have slowed those efforts. “I think we will be able to get the bill through the House this go around,” Republican Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota, who authored the bill with seven other Republican Senators, said in a recent interview with Reuters. He said he believed the bill also had the support of “a broad spectrum of tribes across the country” and would “empower” Native Americans. The bill, dubbed the Tribal Energy Development and Self Determination Act, would authorize tribes to conduct their own energy resource appraisals. It would streamline the permitting process for drilling and mining and provide incentives for tribes to enter into joint-venture agreements with private companies. Former President Barack Obama had opposed a previous House version of the bill in 2015 because it would have exempted tribes from some federal environmental regulations. Other versions were blocked after being rolled into broader bills that were defeated. Tribal lands cover just 2 percent of the nation’s surface but by some estimates contain as much as a fifth of all remaining U.S. oil and gas reserves. But clearing regulatory hurdles for a single project on tribal lands can take as many as 50 steps, compared to a half dozen on private property, according to Reuters interviews conducted in January with tribal leaders, lawyers, oil company executives and federal regulators. Hoeven and Montana Republican Senator Steve Daines joined around a dozen representatives of mineral-rich tribes for a meeting with White House officials last week to discuss ways to reduce those barriers. Tribal participants at the meeting included representatives of the Crow Agency of Montana, the Three Affiliated Tribes of North Dakota, the Navajo Nation and the Southern Ute Indian tribe of Colorado - all tribes that currently produce oil, gas or coal. “We are just trying to amplify our opportunities, change the narrative of Indian country, and establish access to the administration,” said C.J. Stewart, a representative of the Crow. | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - North Korea has petitioned the Russian parliament to help 3,500 migrant workers from the isolated Asian country stay in Russia despite new U.N. sanctions, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday, citing a Russian lawmaker. Tougher sanctions on North Korea, imposed by the United Nations Security Council over Pyongyang s ballistic missile and nuclear programs on Sept. 11, banned countries from providing new work permits for North Korean nationals, but allowed existing workers to remain. Most of the around 30,000-40,000 North Korean migrants legally working in Russia were hired before the new sanctions entered into force and the ban will not affect them, Interfax said, quoting an earlier statement from Maxim Topilin, Russia s labor minister. But the ban could apply to 3,500 workers who only signed their contracts in September, the month when the U.N. Security Council, including Russia, voted for the new sanctions, Interfax reported. It cited Kazbek Taysayev, a lawmaker in the lower house of parliament and a member of a friendship group between the Russian and North Korean parliaments, as saying: North Korea s embassy officially addressed us. We supported them and sent our petitions in order to let these people stay so that they can work. Even if the workers signed their contracts after the ban took effect, they had started making arrangements and preparing the documents earlier and could be allowed to stay, said Taysayev. The U.N. resolution said it did not apply to work permits for which written contracts have been finalized prior to the adoption of this resolution. North Korea s embassy in Moscow was not available for immediate comment. | 1 |
President Obama made what was billed as an economic speech in Elkhart, Indiana but in reality it was his first speech of the presidential campaign and was a preview of the sort of case he will make against Donald Trump this fall.Obama made it clear he was speaking about Trump, telling the crowd, If we fall for a bunch of okeydoke just because it sounds funny or the tweets are provocative then we re not going to build on the progress that we started. Echoing the speaking style that led him to back-to-back presidential victories, Obama picked apart, step by step, many of the Republican complaints about his administration.Obama told the crowd he would do some mythbusting, to loud applause. He pointed out that Donald Trump s claim that other countries are killing us on trade and that immigrants are taking American jobs are just completely myths. He also explained that he wanted to bust this myth of crazy liberal government spending hurting economic growth.He pointed out that in nearly every measure of the economy, compared to how it was before he came into office, things are much improved.The White House released a series of tweets and graphs pointing out over and over how his leadership has transformed the economy for the better: Over the past six years, our businesses have created more than 14 million new jobs." @POTUS in Elkhart pic.twitter.com/BYknKBnaa0 The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016 For the first time ever, more than ninety percent of the country has health insurance. @POTUS on Elkhart pic.twitter.com/MsHaN1fnHh The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016 Our deficits haven t grown these past seven and a half years; we ve cut them by almost 75%. @POTUS pic.twitter.com/k24EI0FGQ6 The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 1, 2016Obama also pointed out that Republicans have been wrapped up this cult of small government, when in reality the government has a role to play in helping to keep the economy going. The President pointed out as well that Trump s proposal to weaken regulations on Wall Street is crazy. Discussing economic inequality and worker s rights, Obama explained that these issues were better addressed when more families belonged to unions, and that the move from 1 in 4 families being in unions to now it being 1 in 10 has hurt wage growth. Obama noted, It s not a coincidence that as union membership shrank, inequality grew and wages stagnated . He added, America shouldn t be changing our laws to make it harder for workers to organize. Repeatedly during the speech, Obama encouraged journalists to fact check his claims, and told the audience if they doubted his statements they should look it up. The election has begun, and President Obama is on the trail. Watch out, Trump.Featured image via YouTube | 0 |
Facts are funny things Ever wonder why the Left is so opposed to using them in an argument?CNN law enforcement analyst Art Rodericktold explained to CNN host Brian Stelter, armed protesters in Oregon who took over a federal building to protest a tyrannical federal government, were not being surrounded by federal agents because: They re not destroying property, they re not looting. | 0 |
The broader story in this entire Russia witch hunt is if the one count on Flynn announced today is a plea deal. Flynn is being charged with only one count so this raises red flags There has been talk that Flynn would do what he could to protect his son who is also involved in this witch hunt The crime is not the substance but the cover-up of conversations Flynn had with the Russian ambassador. This is exactly what President Trump fired Flynn for Fox News is reporting:Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has been charged in the special counsel s Russia investigation with making false statements to the FBI and is expected to plead guilty at a hearing Friday morning.Special Counsel Robert Mueller s office released a one-count charging document ahead of the hearing.ABC News is reporting that this is a plea deal and that Flynn will assist in the witch hunt:Flynn s plea signals the former top adviser to Trump is now cooperating with the team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. A brief statement released by Mueller s team Friday morning does not say what information Flynn has provided the government as part of this deal, but sources familiar with the agreement told ABC News Friday he has made a decision to assist investigators.THE DOCUMENT ACCUSING FLYNN:The document accusing Flynn of making false statements pertains to his interactions with Russian officials in late December specifically discussions about sanctions and other matters.According to the document, those statements were that: On or about Dec 29, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Government of Russia s Ambassador to the United States ( Russian Ambassador ) to refrain from escalating situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day; and FLYNN did not recall the Russian Ambassador subsequently telling him that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to those sanctions as a result of his request; and On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution; and that the Russian Ambassador subsequently never described to FLYNN Russia response to his request. Flynn is accused of willfully and knowingly making the false statements to the FBI while serving in the Trump administration. | 1 |
Bizarre! Drone Records Speeding UFO Over Trees Please scroll down for video
POSSIBLE UFO SIGHTING? Man sees 'weirdest thing EVER' while filming fall leaves.
A Parkland County, Alberta, Canada resident has spotted what he believes are flying objects, orbs, and discs while operating a drone camera. The unnamed man was filming at Hasse Lake when he noticed this odd objects zooming through his frame while shooting footage of the fall foliage. The video, recorded with a Phantom3P drone, was sent to the MUTUAL UFO Network (MUFON). The man stated that it was "the weirdest thing" he has ever recorded.
The odd object was not noticed until the drone operator viewed the video at home. He was operating the drone from 500 meters away and did not physically see the weird shapes. The home video shows a collection of white spheres and one darker object that appears as a disc .
The object zoomed past the drone, swerved to the left and then vanished. It had to be moving at incredible speeds, as his camera was recording at 60 frames per second. The objects appear as a blur when a frame is paused. The man at first thought they must be birds, but then noticed birds in the frame that do not look anything like the objects.
The man, who has experience recording over 100 other drone videos, has never recorded anything like this. MUFON is currently investigating the case.
This article (Bizarre! Drone Records Speeding UFO Over Trees) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv Related Articles | 0 |
Senator Lindsey Graham has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Donald Trump, having first condemned and opposed the Republican nominee, then endorsed, un-endorsed, tried to get his other GOP buddies to also stop supporting him, and now he seems to be back on the Trump bandwagon in hopes that by getting The Donald elected, Republicans can keep the Senate.That s why Graham is particularly thrilled about a recent report on the Clinton Foundation that outlines that more than half of the private individuals who met with Hillary Clinton during her tenure as Secretary of State were also donors to the Clinton Foundation in some capacity and that Clinton had given those donors favorable treatment.In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, Graham celebrated this gift from the political gods , claiming that this might actually help Trump close the gap with the Democratic nominee but only if Trump plays his cards right (and we all know what the slim chances of that happening are). Graham said: If Mr. Trump can up his game and he is, he s doing much better. If he can control if he can close the gap I think the chance of keeping the Senate goes up. Graham also criticized the Clinton report, saying that it reeks of wrong, it reeks of insider benefits, the inside versus the outside, and Trump represents the outside and he s in a pretty good spot. Obviously, Graham isn t considering that Trump s own business and charity record is filled with unethical, fraudulent activity.This interview gets somewhat comical when Graham said, with a straight face, that if only Trump could harness his temperament , demonstrate judgment and show that he was qualified to be the next President of the United States, he might be able to make the Republican Party proud. Unfortunately, we all know that Trump is just going to disappoint Graham and break his heart again.You can watch the interview below:Featured image via Darren McCollester / Getty Images | 1 |
Liberal actor and close friend of Hillary Clinton, Ben Affleck, came out with a statement of disappointment over another one of his close friends, the disgraced sexual predator, and Hollywood kingpin producer, Harvey Weinstein.After Affleck released his statement of shock over the Weinstein allegations, he was quickly shot down by actress Rose McGowan who claimed he knew all about Harvey Weinstein s antics, despite his statement of fake outrage and disgust. YOU LIE she tweeted in response to Affleck s comments.You want to play let's play #ROSEARMY pic.twitter.com/uqd26Z78gc rose mcgowan (@rosemcgowan) October 10, 2017Her tweet was followed up by a video posted by Hillarie Burton, another Hollywood that showed the time that Ben Affleck grabbed her breasts during a live MTV show interview:https://t.co/wh2MpJVQzlGirls. I'm so impressed with you brave ones. I had to laugh back then so I wouldn't cry. Sending love. Hilarie Burton (@HilarieBurton) October 11, 2017And now this An embarrassing video was recently released showing actor Ben Affleck with a TV host on his lap during an interview. The interview starts with the female host sitting on the lap of and facing Affleck, as he appears to be pulling her into him. When the female host wrests her way forward for the interview, Affleck tells her, They would like it better if you did the show topless. After moaning, he then asks her, You usually show a lot more cleavage than this. What s the story? The host giggles nervously and replies, It s Sunday morning. Affleck replies to the female host, It s Sunday morning. That never stopped you before from getting the titties out! Who are you trying to fool? Affleck then goes on to discuss the firmness of her breasts. And for his finale, Affleck openly mocks people with cerebral palsy, suggesting they are retards. Watch:[VIDEO] Ben Affleck objectifies female reporter, comments on her breasts, then makes fun of "retarded" people with cerebral palsy. #cringe pic.twitter.com/5OiBtYkkVB Austen Fletcher (@fleccas) October 12, 2017Harvey Weinstein was also a Hillary superfan, in fact, he helped to raise over $1.8 million for her presidential bid against Donald Trump. What is it that attracted both of these misogynist men who clearly use their positions to treat women like subjects? Is it Hillary s undying support for her husband Bill, who is also a serial sexual predator and accused rapist that attracted them to her?Misogynist pig Ben Affleck was so close to Hillary, that he actually was one of the people who was found to be emailing her on her secret private server.But of course, the mainstream media will never call out these Hollywood hypocrites who attempted to label President Trump a misogynist with absolutely no evidence. | 1 |
They whined and fear mongered, but in the end, Republicans had to sit and watch as Oregon took action to help struggling workers make a fair living.On Wednesday, Oregon Governor Kate Brown signed a bill into law raising the state minimum wage to the highest in the country, but in a unique way that takes into consideration the differences between urban and rural business growth.According to The Oregonian:The bill gives Oregon the highest statewide minimum wage rates in the nation, to $14.75 inside Portland s urban growth boundary, $13.50 in midsize counties and $12.50 in rural areas by 2022.The law was agreed upon by labor unions and businesses in a compromise that should stand as proof that both sides can work together for the common good of the hardworking people who are trying to feed and cloth their families.Governor Brown expressed pride at what Oregon Democrats have achieved for families across the state with the help of unions and businesses. I am extremely proud of the collaborative spirit of the stakeholder groups that worked to develop this legislation. Oregon has not only avoided a number of potentially problematic ballot measures, we have taken a very smart approach in a way that makes sense for workers and for businesses no matter where in Oregon they are. On Facebook, Brown wrote that the new law will ensure hard-working Oregonians get a much-needed raise in order to keep up with rising costs of rent, food, and other necessities. Even President Obama praised the new wage hike in a statement via the White House, and called upon Congress to do the same for the rest of the nation.I commend the Oregon Legislature and Governor Kate Brown for taking action to raise their state s minimum wage. Since I first called on Congress to increase the federal minimum wage in 2013, 18 states and the District of Columbia have acted on their own. These efforts will boost the paychecks of hardworking Americans and help support millions of workers trying to make ends meet. Today, more than half of our states guarantee their workers a wage higher than the federal minimum. That s progress. But Congress needs to keep up with the rest of the country. They need to act, and finally give America a raise. And until they do, I ll continue to encourage states, cities, counties and companies to act on their own to support hardworking families.This is a great day for Oregon workers, who must be a little more excited than usual to go to work now that they know they ll be taking home much more needed income to provide for themselves and their families.The same cannot be said for most of Republican-controlled Alabama and other red states. Republicans there recently passed a law banning counties and cities from increasing the minimum wage within their own boundaries, making clear that they have no intention of raising the minimum wage in that state for the foreseeable future.So while people in Oregon can have hope that the future will be financially brighter, people in Alabama are struck and that s why it doesn t make sense for people to vote for Republicans. Featured image via KPTV | 0 |
The Jorge Cabrera Scandal First Lady Photo-OP with Convicted Cocaine Dealer [INLINE] Star The Economics Section - Page A4 Star [USEMAP] October 24, 1996 First Lady Photo-OP with Convicted Cocaine Dealer Inside White House Secured Perimeter! by Staff Journalists, The Daily Republican Newspaper [INLINE] WASHINGTON DESK - The Justice Department released on Wednesday photographs showing a convicted Miami cocaine trafficker who is seen standing next to and posing with vice president Al Gore. The two were attending a party in Florida last December. Apparently, Cabrera was asked to make a large donation to the Clinton-Gore campaign in exchange for perks like hob-nobbing with Al Gore and the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Jorge Cabrera's cash contributions to the Clinton-Gore campaign were so generous, that Cabrera was also invited to the White House and gained entrance there without any FBI & Secret Service security clearance. [INLINE] CNN reported Wednesday that Cabrera's attorney, Stephen Bronis, said $20,000(given to the Clinton-Gore campaign) was not intended to buy protection for drug smuggling. 'He had a lobster and stone crab fishery in the Keys and felt that contribution might promote that future course,' Bronis said. The Clinton-Gore campaign only returned the $20,000 last week after the full story had reached ABC News, and the Clinton administration had been asked for comment by the media. Cabrera was arrested in January during a Miami drug bust of nearly three tons of cocaine. Cabrera was arrested and pleaded guilty to one drug count. He was also imprisoned in the 1980s on narcotics charges. A report that the picture of Cabrera and Gore had been impounded by the Justice Department prompted an angry reaction from Republicans, including Bob Dole's presidential campaign, House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Rep. Bob Livingston of Louisiana, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. Republicans sent letters to Attorney General Janet Reno and the directors of the FBI and the Secret Service seeking information about Cabrera and the campaign contribution. Livingston asked the federal agencies for a complete accounting of the facts relating to the story within three days: whether Cabrera had dined at the White House, details of his relationship with Clinton and Gore and, if he did dine with them, how he passed FBI & Secret Service scrutiny to gain access to them. The U.S. attorney's office in Miami was contacted by reporters. Justice said it would not provide photographs of Cabrera and Gore in Florida and at the White House when reporters requested them on Monday. The Justice Department attempted to claim that Cabrera's story is covered by the Privacy Act law in turning down the media request for information on the arrest for cocaine possession of tons of the illegal drug and dealing. Janet Reno put out information that the photo of Cabrera with Gore and Clinton could not be released without the consent of Cabrera. Later, the Justice Department did release the photographs after Cabrera submitted written authorization. The delay by the Justice Department appeared to be an effort to distance itself from accusations that are mounting from the American public that the Justice Department is receiving guidance from the Clinton White House and the vice president's office on the timing of Janet Reno's investigation. Justice says it is looking into the breach of National Security by Cabrera's ready access to secured areas of the White House and its grounds when he entered as an invited quest of president Clinton for dinner and photo-ops. COMMENT | 1 |
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil s planning minister on Monday acknowledged the possibility of delaying a key vote on a bill cutting social security spending to 2018 but said its approval would be difficult then, an election year. Speaking at an event in Bras lia, Planning Minister Dyogo Oliveira said lawmakers must pass the unpopular bill, which curtails the costly pension system, or risk endangering the nation s fiscal situation. | 1 |
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen joined other European leaders in congratulating Donald Trump on winning the U.S. presidential election but said the world now needs the United States “not to close in on itself”. “I have during the election campaign expressed concerns over signs that the US is closing in on itself, which is unfortunately also the case in Europe,” Rasmussen told a group of reporters on Wednesday. He said a more protectionist United States could create problems for a small export-reliant country like Denmark, just like Britain leaving the EU could. | 1 |
On the Friday edition of Breitbart News Daily, broadcast live on SiriusXM Patriot Channel 125 from 6AM to 9AM Eastern, Breitbart London Raheem Kassam will continue our discussion of the new 115th Congress. [Tom Van Flein, chief of staff to Rep. Paul Gosar ( ) and former legal counsel to Gov. Sarah Palin, will discuss the House Republicans’ thwarted plan to overhaul the House Ethics Oversight panel rules. Legal analyst Philip Holloway, a former prosecutor and police officer and founder of the Holloway Law Group, will discuss the shocking Chicago hate crime incident broadcast live on Facebook. David Rutz of the Washington Free Beacon will discuss his article about Fareed Zakaria’s fawning CNN documentary on “The Legacy of Barack Obama. ” Kassam will also continue our analysis of the election of Donald Trump, the progress of his transition team, and his policy vision. Live from London, Rome, and Jerusalem, Breitbart correspondents will provide updates on the latest international news. Breitbart News Daily is the first live, conservative radio enterprise to air seven days a week. SiriusXM Vice President for news and talk Dave Gorab called the show “the conservative news show of record. ” Follow Breitbart News on Twitter for live updates during the show. Listeners may call into the show at: . | 0 |
First it was the decision by Target to make their toy aisles non-gender specific. Now, in their latest decision to appease the LGBTQ-RSTUVWXYZ (Please excuse me, but I ve lost track of the rapidly expanding acronym) community, they ve stripped women and our daughters (and even our young boys) of the ability to use a gender specific bathroom. Mega-retailer Target Corp. has opened the door today, literally, to the endangerment of children in service of a fake cause. They have a newly restated policy that says you can basically go into whatever bathroom you want, for whatever reason you want, because inclusivity.From the Minneapolis Star Tribune:Target Corp. made it clear Tuesday that transgender people who visit its stores are welcome to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity.The statement by the Minneapolis-based retailer comes amid debates in many state legislatures over restricting public restroom use to the sex listed on a person s birth certificate.While many of those conversations have centered around restrooms in public schools and government buildings, Target appears to be one of the first big-box retailers to take a proactive stance in declaring its position on the matter when it comes to its own restrooms.While they may not be technically public, restrooms in stores are often the most easily accessible and widely available options outside of people s homes and workplaces.Target s position also extends to its fitting rooms. Inclusivity is a core belief at Target, the company said in a statement on its corporate website. It s something we celebrate. We stand for equality and equity, and strive to make our guests and team members feel accepted, respected and welcomed in our stores and workplaces every day. Like other do-good liberal idiots, Target honchos suffer from the delusion that are making some bold step toward tolerance of an oppressed minority by removing rules dividing the bathrooms by gender. But make no mistake, it is a delusion, and a perfectly silly one. It is the same liberal-minded pseudo-hippie social justice warrior philosophy casting aside barriers to entry for bathrooms that simultaneously demand written letters of consent be in the possession of any man seen standing close to a woman. The same movement that rails against manspreading is perfectly fine with manpeeing, it seems, in a virtually perfect display of the nutbaggery of their entire pretend, college-hobby-turned-pain-in-the-ass-for-normal-people movement . And yes I said normal, please find a safe space and wet yourself. But use whatever safe space corresponds with your self-wetting gender identity.Via: Red State | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has asked the FBI whether it warned Donald Trump’s presidential campaign about alleged attempts by Russia to infiltrate the campaign. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley’s office said on Thursday he wrote to Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Christopher Wray asking whether the agency provided “defensive briefings” to Trump’s team given its ongoing investigation of Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager. “If the FBI did provide a defensive briefing or similar warning to the campaign, then that would raise important questions about how the Trump campaign responded,” Grassley wrote in the letter dated Sept. 20. If the FBI did not alert the campaign, Grassley said, that would raise “serious questions about what factors contributed to its decision and why it appears to have been handled differently in a very similar circumstance involving a previous campaign.” The senator said that according to press reports, U.S. intelligence had raised similar concerns with John McCain during the Republican senator’s 2008 presidential campaign. Grassley, however, did not ask the FBI about the possibility that it had offered Trump or campaign officials such a briefing but the offer was declined. After the 2016 election, two U.S. intelligence officers flew to New York to brief President-elect Trump on Russia, only to find when they arrived at Trump Tower that the briefing had been canceled, two senior U.S. officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. Manafort became Trump’s campaign manager in June 2016 but was forced to resign two months later amid reports of his business relationship with the Kremlin-backed former Ukrainian leader, Viktor Yanukovich. Trump denies his campaign colluded with Russia and dismisses investigations into allegations of Russian interference in the election as witch hunts. Russia denies meddling in the U.S. election. | 0 |
21st Century Wire says The Silicon Valley s technotronic oligarchy has been exposed as a mere extension of the CIA in terms of playing a role in Washington s state policy of regime change in Syria.This latest email release reveals how then US Secretary of State, and now Democratic presidential favorite Hillary Clinton colluded with executives at Google to launch a digital PR onslaught against the president of Syria, Bashar al Assad. This is all part of Google s color revolution business, and also part of the Smart Power Complex used to manufacture public consent for humanitarian interventions globally.The leak also reveals how Qatari network Al Jazeera played an active role in this plot too. Al Jazeera has already been caught repeatedly manipulating international news throughout the Middle East.In a just world, Hillary would be held to account by the mainstream media for this revelation, but it seems that it s just being ignored by the mainstream gatekeepers Rudy Takala Washington ExaminerGoogle in 2012 sought to help insurgents overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to State Department emails receiving fresh scrutiny this week.Messages between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton s team and one of the company s executives detailed the plan for Google to get involved in the region. Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from, Jared Cohen, the head of what was then the company s Google Ideas division, wrote in a July 2012 email to several top Clinton officials. Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition, Cohen said, adding that the plan was for Google to surreptitiously give the tool to Middle Eastern media.Hillary Emails: Google tried to boost Assad defections https://t.co/lyma4eJp9a More: https://t.co/ZUfh7WDAT5 pic.twitter.com/nvNG0lFJWt WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 19, 2016 Given how hard it is to get information into Syria right now, we are partnering with Al-Jazeera who will take primary ownership over the tool we have built, track the data, verify it, and broadcast it back into Syria, he said. Please keep this very close hold and let me know if there is anything [else] you think we need to account for or think about before we launch. We believe this can have an important impact, Cohen concluded The message was addressed to deputy secretary of state Bill Burns; Alec Ross, a senior Clinton advisor; and Clinton s deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan. Sullivan subsequently forwarded Cohen s proposal to Clinton, describing it as a pretty cool idea. Cohen worked as a low-level staffer at the State Department until 2010, when he was hired to lead Google Ideas, but was tied to the use of social media to incite social uprisings even before he left the department. He once reportedly asked Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey to hold off of conducting system maintenance that officials believed could have impeded a brief 2009 uprising in Iran Continue this story at Washington ExaminerREAD MORE SMART POWER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Smart Power Files | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump predicted on Sunday that Senator Jeff Flake will oppose the Republican tax bill, but the senator’s office says he has not yet made up his mind. “Senator Flake is still reviewing the tax reform bill on its merits. How he votes on it will have nothing to do with the president,” a spokesman for the senator said in an email. That is contrary to an assertion made by Trump on Sunday in a post on Twitter. “He’ll be a NO on tax cuts because his political career anyway is ‘toast.’,” Trump wrote of Flake on Twitter. Where individual Republican senators stand on the tax bill has become the focus of those trying to determine whether it will pass because Republicans control only 52 seats in the Senate. More than two Republican defections would likely kill the bill. Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson has already publicly stated he opposes the bill in its current form. The House voted last week to approve the tax bill with no support from Democrats and 13 Republicans defecting. Trump and Flake, both Republicans, have been critical of each other in recent months. Flake delivered a speech on the Senate floor in October during which he said Trump threatened the nation’s democracy. In the same speech, Flake announced he would not be seeking re-election to the Senate next year when his term expires. Trump has in turn been critical of Flake, saying he would not be able to win re-election. On Saturday at an event in Arizona, Flake was overheard on a nearby microphone talking with Mesa Mayor John Giles about Trump. “If we become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast,” Flake said, according to television station KNXV, whose microphone recorded him. Moore, who is the Republican candidate for a Senate seat in Alabama, has faced sexual misconduct allegations, and Republican leaders in Congress have urged him to drop out of the Dec. 12 special election. In his Twitter post on Sunday, Trump also suggested that Flake intentionally made those remarks in order to be heard. “Sen. Jeff Flake(y), who is unelectable in the Great State of Arizona (quit race, anemic polls) was caught (purposely) on “mike” saying bad things about your favorite President,” Trump wrote on Twitter. | 1 |
GOD Has Chosen Trump
Trump cannot win. The American people are lost. We are about to be totally destroyed. Based on what I have learned, these are logical conclusions. This is what my logical mind would have me believe and my logical mind is wrong! Against All Odds
To date, Donald Trump has defied all odds. He is the only candidate in the moderate era, with a chance at becoming President, who is still his own person. He owns himself and from a Christian perspective, that is problematic. However, this is clearly God’s plan. He is the only man who broke the choke hold on the GOP by the criminal Bush family. We are a nation whose ruler, at the moment, is planning to attack the American people with foreign troops after collapsing the economy. There are plans to attack the American military, who would dare stand with the people, in defense of our culture, Christian traditions and personal liberties.
In his march to the Presidency, Trump has overcome the following: Vicious and unrelenting attacks from the media. Vilification from both the left and the right. He has escaped assassination. He won a Presidential nomination when the entire leadership of his party, said he would never become President because “they” choose, not the people. Trump is not owned by any special interest and the special interests, despite their hit ads and secret meetings to plan on how to remove Trump for their personal reasons, cannot figure out how to marginalize Trump.
It doesn’t matter who comes against Trump, he only grows stronger with each successive victory. Just ask Glenn Beck how well he is doing after throwing all his resources behind Cruz. And ask lyin’ Ted and Heidi how their marriage is doing after going through this ideal. Hillary is headed to prison. “And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Revelation 19:15 God Will Choose Whom He Wishes
I know that Donald Trump is not running a Christian political campaign. But in case you have not noticed, God can, and has, used anybody to lead of his own choosing. And that this critical time in history, why would God choose a Christian leader? After all, America has become the most unchristian nation. We have murdered 60 million unborn citizens without a trial. We glorify every perversion, wickedness and intrusive behaviors. We live in a nation that kills innocents with drones. Our every move is spied upon. I have covered how Obama, a man of very low moral character, has placed “enemies of the state” (i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization) into key positions in our government (i.e. DHS).
Our church leaders have been recruited to abandon their flock and to lead them astray. Your pastor puts IRS tax laws ahead of the word of God. When was the last time your Pastor spoke to the congregation about the evils of abortion and how it needed to be stopped? Pedophilia is the last prohibition that remains intact in our Godless nation and that prohibition is about to be removed through the efforts of George Soros and Kevin Jennings (Hillary Clinton’s education lackey who happens to be transgender). America has not only become a Godless nation, it has become a despicable collection of perverts and murderers. The Common Sense Show exists thanks to perverts and criminals like Hillary Clinton.
Donald Trump is not a Christian and he does not have to be because he does not lead a Christian nation. Donald Trump is a modern day Jehoshaphat (see 2 Chronicles 20). His people were faced by three overwhelming armies. Jehoshaphat and his people had no chance to survive in the same manner as Donald Trump and the American people. Yet, God worked an amazing miracle and Jehoshaphat’s enemies attacked each and killed each other as Jehoshaphat’s men were signing praises to the Lord. And what followed was truly amazing: And when Jehoshaphat and his people came to take away the spoil of them, they found among them in abundance both riches with the dead bodies, and precious jewels, which they stripped off for themselves, more than they could carry away: and they were three days in gathering of the spoil, it was so much. And the fear of God was on all the kingdoms of those countries, when they had heard that the Lord fought against the enemies of Israel. So the realm of Jehoshaphat was quiet: for his God gave him rest round about. Serving God’s Will
Against all odds, we will soon have a leader who will soon serve God’s will, whether or not he realizes that this is chosen mission.
“And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.” Revelation 19:15 (KJV) Conclusion
I know our plight seems hopeless as we are outnumbered, outspent and out-gunned. However, my Lord does not know defeat. I just need to be silent and trust in the Lord, he will use who and what he needs to advance his will. So what do we do in this monumental time that we live in? Listen to the Lo rd and just keeping working the cause as God would wish it to be. This movement will sweep the planet. We already see a Trump wannabe in the Philippines. We seeing the stage set for the final days. Trump is a central figure in the fulfillment of prophecy. | 1 |
SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Forensic experts have found 86 skulls in a mass grave near the scene of a massacre of Bosnian Muslims and Croats by Serb forces early in the 1992-95 war, officials said on Friday. The skulls and more than 50 other body parts were found covered with rocks in a remote spot near a ravine in central Bosnia, the country s Missing Persons Institute said. Experts began searching on Sept 7, hours after the Bosnian war crimes court ordered the exhumations at Mount Vlasic. At the time, the teams said they were only expecting to find the remains of around 60 people. On Aug. 21, 1992, Bosnian Serbs told prisoners from detention camps for non-Serbs near the town of Prijedor that they would be released in a prisoner exchange. But instead they drove them away by bus, lined them up by the edge of a ravine and shot them. Only a dozen survived what has become known as the Koricani Cliffs massacre, by tumbling or jumping down the steep ravine. The 1992-95 war claimed 100,000 lives. The killings were part of a wave of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serb forces who were trying to create a Serb statelet by removing Bosniaks - Bosnian Muslims - and Croats from the area. Forensic experts have already identified 117 victims of the massacre in several other mass grave sites. We hope that the search for the victims of this massacre has completed today, said Lejla Cengic from the Missing Persons Institute. Eleven Bosnian Serb ex-policemen were convicted for the ravine killings, including Darko Mrdja who was jailed for 17 years by the Hague-based U.N. war crimes court. The remainder were convicted by the Bosnian war crimes court. | 1 |
The conservative 45Committee is out with a new video, Year One, celebrating President Donald Trump s accomplishments so far during his first year in office. President Trump and Vice President Pence have had an incredible year of accomplishments from day one to today, said 45Committee president Brian Baker. Year One showcases their record of historic tax cuts and much, much more. Here are all the accomplishments the group lists for 2017:MAGA! | 1 |
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a diplomatic, nice guy unlike his American counterpart, Donald Trump. While speaking on the issue of how to deal with Trump, Trudeau was able to show class and grace, while still throwing major shade at the bombastic, bumbling American president. Trudeau s low-key handling of Trump could cost him with his progressive base at home, but given Trump s penchant for retaliation, going after Trump explicitly could be harmful to Canada s economy, given the fact that they export so many products to our country.While speaking on Trump, Trudeau said: Why poke a grizzly bear while it s having lunch? Trump has just got into office and he is formulating his economic plans. This is clearly a departure from the closeness Trudeau had with President Obama. Their adorable bromance and open and affectionate friendship is surely something that will not be duplicated with Trump. Those familiar with the situation on how Trudeau may handle Trump acknowledge that no one quite knows what to do with him at this point. One source said: He is totally unpredictable. Of course, this isn t the first time Trudeau has thrown passive aggressive public punches at Trump. After Trump s Muslim ban threw the nation and world into chaos, Trudeau tweeted:To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) January 28, 2017Of course, Trudeau s reluctance to go after Trump may not last long. He is up for re-election in 2019, and will have to continue to tout his commitment to diversity and inclusion in the fact of Trump s crude nationalism and open bigotry. However, Canadian Pollster Nik Nanos says Trudeau is doing the right thing regarding Trump for now: He has to avoid making any kind of criticism. Trump has a very thin skin and he s quick to lash out. That may be, but given Trudeau s public statements regarding diversity and progressive values, he is not likely to hold off for long before he takes the gloves off regarding Trump. We ll be lucky if America has ANY friends left by the end of Trump s term.Featured image via Drew Angerer/Getty Images | 1 |
21st Century Wire says This latest stunt only goes to show what a complete rip-off the US healthcare industry truly is.This week, John Oliver, host of HBO s Last Week Tonight trumped media mogul and billionaire Oprah Winfrey by announcing he will forgive the medical debt of 9,000 people. Presently, the US healthcare industry has the world s highest and most inflated medical pricing on goods and services pushing millions of Americans into debt over health treatments which should not cost the same as a brand new Lexus SUV or Land Rover. Despite the hype, Obamacare did nothing to address this fundamental flaw in the US system. In fact, it made the situation worse, and has turned out to be absolute boon for the corporate insurance racket.If Obamacare was really all it was cracked up to be, then it would ve done en mass what John Oliver demonstrated on his show buying up medical debt at a merger one half cent on the dollar, and then putting that into cold storage. Instead, Obamacare only succeeded in RAISING the cost (and debt) of healthcare for individual payers.More on this story here Watch out, Oprah Winfrey. John Oliver, host of HBO s Last Week Tonight, outdid TV s biggest gift giver on Sunday when he forgave nearly $15m worth of medical debt on his show.Oliver s giveaway came at the end of a 20-minute segment on debt collectors. The segment focused on the bad actors in the industry, who buy debt from banks for cents on the dollar. These predatory collectors attempt to recoup the debt they purchased using threats and other aggressive tactics without first verifying the exact details of the debt. Once the company has bought your debt, whether the information is accurate or not, they are going to try to collect on it, Oliver explained on Sunday.Last Week Tonight spent about $50 to create a debt-acquisition company in Mississippi. The corporation s name is Central Asset Recovery Professionals Inc also known as Carp. According to Oliver, soon after its creation, Carp was offered a portfolio of medical debt worth $14,922,261.76 at a cost of less than half a cent on a dollar, which is less than $60,000 .( ) Thanks to this 5 June airing of the HBO comedy series, Last Week Tonight show with John Oliver, there are a lot more of us now privy to this collection industry practice and the debt treadmill it creates, said Craig Antico, co-founder of RIP Medical Debt. In a painfully hilarious (debt as funny? Somehow, yes) piece, John Oliver triumphantly out-Oprah s Oprah in giving away valuable gifts. Continue this story at The GuardianREAD MORE HEALTH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Health Files | 0 |
Human remains washed ashore Wednesday, as officials continued their search for seven Marines and four soldiers in waters off the Florida Panhandle, where a military helicopter had crashed during a training exercise.
“We have confirmed that we have had some human remains wash ashore in the area where our search and rescue team have begun a larger scale operation,” Andrew Bourland, a spokesman for the Eglin Air Force Base, told The Washington Post.
Bourland also said that debris from the aircraft had been located.
The Army UH-60 Black Hawk is believed to have gone down in the water and foggy conditions were reported in the area at the time of the crash, though it is too soon to say what might have caused the mishap.
At a Wednesday afternoon news conference, Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis, the Adjutant General for the Louisiana National Guard, said the Black Hawk pilots had thousands of hours of flight experience and were “instructor pilots,” which indicates that they were experienced and qualified enough to train other pilots.
According to Curtis, it is one of the highest designations pilots in the Army can receive.
A second Black Hawk that participated in the exercise returned to base after take-off due to the weather conditions, Curtis said. That helicopter landed safely and all personnel on board were accounted for.
“One of them started to take off and realized that the weather was a condition then turned around and came back,” said Curtis, who spoke from Hammond, La.
According to a Pentagon official who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press nearly 12 hours after the craft was reported missing, all 11 service members are presumed dead.
Foggy conditions in the search area have made the operation more difficult, Bourland told The Post. But with the break of dawn, efforts ramped up.
“We’ve got some daylight, but it is overcast and quite foggy,” Bourland said earlier on Wednesday. “It is having an impact on getting the full-scale rescue moving now.”
Local authorities, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Coast Guard were involved in the search efforts, according to a news release.
The helicopter carrying highly trained Marines in a special operations unit, was on a night training mission outside the base, which is near Valparaiso, Fla. Crews were dispatched after the Eighth Coast Guard District Command Center got a report of a downed military aircraft late Tuesday evening, the release stated. A “debris field consistent with a military aircraft” was located at around 1:30 a.m. CST on Wednesday, according to the Coast Guard release.
The helicopter does contain a flight data recorder, the Army said on Wednesday, that can be recovered as investigators try to determine what caused the accident.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the friends and family of the members involved in this incident,” Layne Carter, search and rescue mission coordinator, said in the release. “We are aggressively searching for possible survivors involved in the crash.”
The Marines are part of a Camp Lejeune-based special operations group and the soldiers are from an Army National Guard unit based out of Hammond, La.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Marines, soldiers and family members of those involved in this mishap. We are working closely with all parties involved to locate our Marines and the Army aircrew as soon as possible,” Maj. Gen. Joseph Osterman, commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command said in a statement.
Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the crash reinforces the fact that military personnel are “at risk whether in training or in combat.”
“Our thoughts and prayers with them,” Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said, while speaking on Capitol Hill.
The names of the aircrew and Marines are being withheld while the search and rescue mission is ongoing.
“Today, as you can imagine, is a tough day for the Louisiana National Guard and the Marine Corps,” Curtis said. “At this hour, our priorities are search and rescue for our soldiers and Marines. And secondly to take care of our families. This will remain a search and rescue operation.”
[This post has been updated multiple times.] | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday denounced an attack in London when a blast hit a packed commuter train, and urged authorities and others to take more proactive steps such as better policing of internet use by terrorist groups. Another attack in London by a loser terrorist. These are sick and demented people who were in the sights of Scotland Yard. Must be proactive! Trump wrote in a post on Twitter. Loser terrorists must be dealt with in a much tougher manner. The internet is their main recruitment tool which we must cut off & use better! | 0 |
Donald Trump is clearly a threat to our national security and our intelligence agents know it.In order to keep America safe, American spies are now withholding intelligence from the White House because they don t want the Russians to know what we know.Throughout the campaign, Trump openly praised Vladimir Putin, who now has a puppet in the White House after helping Trump win the election.And Trump has been friendly with Putin ever since, refusing to believe our intelligence agencies who all agree that Russia hacked our political system and interfered with our election process.Because Trump trusts Russia so much, our intelligence agents do not trust Trump and certainly do not want to give him sensitive information that could end up in Russian hands. Our Intelligence Community is so worried by the unprecedented problems of the Trump administration not only do senior officials possess troubling ties to the Kremlin, there are nagging questions about basic competence regarding Team Trump that it is beginning to withhold intelligence from a White House which our spies do not trust, NSA analyst Jack R. Schindler reported for the New York Observer.Most frighteningly, a Pentagon official told Schindler that the Kremlin has ears inside the White House Situation Room.That means the Russians are privy to America s most guarded secrets, and the official lamented that There s not much the Russians don t know at this point. That is absolutely terrifying and demonstrates clearly why Donald Trump and his entire administration need to be removed from office immediately before all is lost.We are talking about critical intel that could prevent nuclear war or give the United States a heads up about what Russia is up to. If the Russians find out we know something about them because Trump gets the intel and discusses it in the Situation Room or with one of his team members who have cozy dealings with Putin, the United States would lose the advantage.And as Russia prepares for war against Europe, it has never been more important that the White House get the intelligence it needs. The problem is that Trump is inept and in league with Putin. So how does the United States military respond to Russian aggression if the so-called Commander-in-Chief is nothing more than Putin s puppet? By making Putin aware of the information we have, Trump would be putting our troops in danger as the intel becomes useless. None of this has happened in Washington before, Schindler wrote. A White House with unsettling links to Moscow wasn t something anybody in the Pentagon or the Intelligence Community even considered a possibility until a few months ago. Until Team Trump clarifies its strange relationship with the Kremlin, and starts working on its professional honesty, the IC will approach the administration with caution and concern. It s time for Donald Trump and his administration to be removed from power. The security and future of the United States is at stake, and as long as Trump is in office the country is less safe than ever before.Photo of Donald Trump by Joe Raedle/Getty Images. Photo of Vladimir Putin by Thierry Chesnot/Getty Images | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sunday’s massacre in Las Vegas spurred a ritual-like response from U.S. politicians following the mass shootings that have left a trail of victims across the country: Democrats renewed demands for tougher gun laws while Republicans offered up prayers but showed no signs of supporting such legislation. One day after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, which left at least 59 people dead and over 500 injured, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, said in a statement on Monday: “The whole country stands united in our shock, in our condolences and in our prayers.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, also a Republican, led his chamber in a moment of silence following the “devastating” massacre and urged “national mourning” and prayer. Democrats were not falling in line. “Thoughts & prayers are NOT enough. Not when more moms & dads will bury kids this week, & more sons & daughters will grow up without parents,” Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a morning tweet. Senator Chris Murphy, whose home state of Connecticut was the scene of a mass shooting in 2012 that killed 20 6-year-olds and six adults, was blunter. “It’s time for Congress to get off its ass and do something,” Murphy said in a statement. Murphy said he would introduce a new background check bill and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi also urged passage of legislation toughening checks on gun sales. The Connecticut tragedy sparked serious negotiations in Congress on tighter gun laws, including tougher background checks for gun buyers. But the effort failed in 2013 amid strong opposition from gun groups such as the National Rifle Association. Subsequent mass shootings have brought a similar call for Congress to act on tougher gun laws, only to see Republicans and some Democrats balk at what they see as infringements on the right to bear arms embedded in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders, asked whether President Donald Trump might now favor tighter gun laws, told reporters: “I think that’s something that we can talk about in the coming days and see what that looks like moving forward.” She said the administration would not want laws created that would fail to “stop these types of things from happening.” Nevada’s two U.S. senators, Republican Dean Heller and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, on Monday both issued statements offering prayers to victims and thanks to first responders, but neither mentioned anything about gun laws. Ryan, when asked in an interview last month with the Associated Press about steps to diminish gun violence, said many mass shootings were at the hands of people with mental illnesses and said Congress needed to ensure that federal funds were available to address such illnesses. “But if you’re saying that this Republican Congress is going to infringe upon Second Amendment rights, we’re not going to do that,” he said. The House, however, recently passed a massive funding bill for next year that would cut $306 million from the government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. Democrats on Monday wrote to Ryan asking that he stop from further consideration a bill before the House that would make it easier to buy gun silencers, something that gun control advocates oppose. Supporters argue the bill would protect more gun users from damage to their hearing. Senate Democrats were holding the floor into the evening on Monday to talk about the Las Vegas massacre and the need for gun controls. One California politician offered another possible path forward. Gavin Newsom, the state’s current lieutenant governor and a candidate for governor in the 2018 election, suggested that California act on its own. “We are heartbroken that we can’t pass commonsense gun laws in our nation,” Newsom said in a statement. “If the Republican leadership of Congress and this president continue with their moral and intellectual abandon, California has and must continue to chart the path of rationality.” California has already acted on gun control, with voters last November approving a proposition outlawing possession of ammo magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. As has been the case following past mass shootings in the United States, the Las Vegas murders raised expectations of brisk gun sales by people who fear that gun control laws will be become stricter, driving up the shares of gun makers. American Outdoor Brands rose 3.2 percent while Sturm Ruger & Co rose 3.5 percent. That followed a trend seen following the June 12, 2016 shooting at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub, when American Outdoor gained 7 percent and Ruger jumped 8.5 percent. #GunControlNow was among the top trending hashtags on Twitter in the United States on Monday. | 1 |
Despite the fact that many election experts have been hoping that the 2016 election results would be examined, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton is being attacked by the Trump campaign for supporting the efforts of Green Party candidate Jill Stein to recount the votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.Earlier today, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway unloaded on Clinton s campaign but Trump couldn t just leave it at that. Shortly after Conway criticized the recount effort, Trump chimed in with a statement of his own. In Trump s response, he blamed Stein and the Green Party for their ridiculous recount scam and accused Stein of trying to profit from it. Trump said: The people have spoken and the election is over, and as Hillary Clinton herself said on election night, in addition to her conceding by congratulating me, We must accept this result and then look to the future. It is important to point out that with the help of millions of voters across the country, we won 306 electoral votes on Election Day the most of any Republican since 1988 and we carried nine of 13 battleground states, 30 of 50 states, and more than 2,600 counties nationwide the most since President Ronald Reagan in 1984. This recount is just a way for Jill Stein, who received less than one percent of the vote overall and wasn t even on the ballot in many states, to fill her coffers with money, most of which she will never even spend on this ridiculous recount. All three states were won by large numbers of voters, especially Pennsylvania, which was won by more than 70,000 votes. This is a scam by the Green Party for an election that has already been conceded, and the results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused, which is exactly what Jill Stein is doing. Trump is right that Clinton conceded the election, but she s not legally bound to that and it s especially insane that Trump would use her concession as part of his argument because he once said he wouldn t concede. Another glaring mistake in Trump s argument is his the people have spoken statement, which is hilarious considering Clinton won the popular vote by a landslide, as The Atlantic s David Frum pointed out:TwitterIn Wisconsin, there have already been four precincts that were reported to have discrepancies. Trump and his team are not hiding their anxiety over this issue very well, and they have every reason to be worried.Featured image via Win McNamee and Ty Wright / Getty Images | 1 |
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Wednesday said he planned to raise the issue of conflicting claims in the South China Sea at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Vietnam, and ask China its real intentions. He added that it was time for Manila to clarify with Beijing if Southeast Asian countries were allowed to freely navigate the disputed strategic waterway through which about $3 trillion in trade passes every year. So it s about time, either in the bilateral or in the plenary, I should be bringing this important matter to the surface, Duterte told a news conference prior to his departure for Vietnam s central city of Danang, the site of the meeting. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. State Department spokesman, commenting on remarks by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday calling for the withdrawal of U.S. special forces from a southern island, said Washington had not officially received such a demand. State Department spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing that he had seen reports about Duterte’s comments, but “we are not aware of any official communication by the Philippine government ... to seek that result.” The United States is committed to its alliance with the Philippines, he added. | 0 |
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police have detained 165 people over suspected links to Islamic State in Ankara and have arrest warrants for a total of 245 suspects in the capital and surrounding province, state-run Anadolu news agency said on Thursday. It said 1,500 police officers took part in the operation across Ankara province, raiding 250 addresses. No further details were immediately available. Private broadcaster CNNTurk said police in the northwestern city of Bursa also detained 27 suspects including some Syrian nationals over alleged links to Islamic State. They confiscated documents and materials linked to the organization during raids at the addresses of some suspects, it said. | 1 |
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - The leader of Zimbabwe s influential liberation war veterans called on Wednesday for South Africa, southern Africa and the West to re-engage with Zimbabwe after the military seized power from 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe. Chris Mutsvangwa hailed the military s overnight move as the correction of a state that was careening off a cliff and said the military administration would usher in a better business environment after years of disinvestment and economic decline. | 0 |
Sara Carter of Circa News is a very trusted source who goes deep like no other journalist we know. Carter is reporting that National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster has been communicating White House internal information to Deep State Acting FBI Director Andy McCabe.Investigating: sources say, McMaster has been communicating WH internal politics 2 Acting FBI director Andy McCabe. More shake-ups? Sara A. Carter (@SaraCarterDC) July 28, 2017We ve written extensively on McCabe who was in hot water for doing unscrupulous things (see below) during his wife s campaign. His loyalty to Trump has been called into question numerous times. The timing is interesting because Judicial Watch just filed three lawsuits for info on McCabe.Investigative reporter Mike Cernovich has been reporting for months that McMaster is on the globalist s agenda and secretly working against President Trump s America First plans. It has also been previously reported that Comey s replacement as Acting FBI Head, Andrew McCabe, has ties to the Hillary Clinton campaign.McCabe is also being investigated by the Office of U.S. Counsel violating the Hatch Act which prohibits FBI agents from campaigning in partisan races. Concerns arose when different media outlets found that a political action committee affiliated with Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe (who has ties to Bill and Hilary Clinton) contributed almost $500,000 to the 2015 Virginia State Senate campaign of McCabe s wife, Jill McCabe. She also received $207,788 from the Virginia Democratic Party, which is connected to McAuliffe, a Democrat.OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON THE FBI S MCCABE BEING UNDER INVESTIGATION:Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is being investigated by the Office of U.S. Counsel violating the Hatch Act according to a new report by Circa News.The Hatch Act prohibits FBI agents from campaigning in partisan races. Photos of McCabe campaigning for his wife raised questions about McCabe s compliance with the law.Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe is being investigated by the Office of U.S. Special Counsel for violating The Hatch Act that prohibits FBI agents from campaigning in partisan races.The Office of U.S. Special Counsel, the government s main whistleblower agency, is investigating whether FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe s activities supporting his wife Jill s Democratic campaign for Virginia state senate in 2015 violated the Hatch Act s prohibition against FBI agents campaigning in partisan races. I am voting for Jill because she is the best wife ever, McCabe put on a sign that he photographed himself holding. The photo was posted on her social media page a few days before the election, in response to Dr. Jill McCabe s plea to help me win by posting photos expressing reasons why voters should vote for her, according to the complaint.Other social media photos in the complaint showed McCabe s minor daughter campaigning with her mother, wearing an FBI shirt, and McCabe voting with his wife at a polling station.Here is another social media photo of our acting #FBI director, #AndrewMcCabe breaking the rules by campaigning on social media. #Corrupt pic.twitter.com/hBCH29yErY Senator Dick Black (@SenRichardBlack) May 9, 2017The Hatch Act prohibits FBI employees from engaging in political activity in concert with a political party, a candidate for partisan political office, or a partisan political group. It defines prohibited political activity as any activity directed at the success or failure of a partisan group or candidate in a partisan election. An ethics expert told Circa the photos raised legitimate questions about McCabe s compliance with the law.Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe s office released to Circa under the Freedom of Information Act documents showing McCabe attended a meeting with his wife and the governor on a Saturday in March 2015 specifically to discuss having Jill McCabe run for state Senate in Virginia as a Democrat. This is a candidate recruitment meeting. McCabe is seriously considering running against State Senator Dick Black. You have been asked to close the deal, the briefing memo for McAuliffe read.Watch Sean Hannity discuss McCabe s involvement in his wife s campaign as well as his ties to Hillary s campaign:Included in the governor s briefing package was a copy of McCabe s FBI biography. The biography made clear that Andrew McCabe was a senior executive who at the time oversaw the FBI s Washington field office that among many tasks supervised investigations in northern Virginia.At the time of the meeting, published reports indicate agents in the Washington field office were involved in both a probe of McAuliffe and of the governor s close friend, Hillary Clinton s and her private email account.h/t Gateway PunditRead more: Gateway Pundit | 1 |
BAKU (Reuters) - An Azeri court on Monday released the director of an independent news agency from pre-trial detention but said an investigation of him can continue, in a case condemned by human rights activists. Mehman Aliyev, the head of Turan news agency, was detained by Azeri police in the capital, Baku, on Aug. 24, on suspicion of tax evasion and illegal business activities. Investigation of those allegations will continue Turan suspended its operations from Sept. 1. I m not under arrest anymore. I consider this decision as positive ... I m glad that mistake has been amended, Aliyev told Reuters by telephone after his release. Azeri officials said Aliyev s release was a demonstration of the president s attitude to journalists. His release is a proof of President (Ilham) Aliyev s special attitude to journalists and mass media, said Aflatun Amashov, the head of Azerbaijan s Press Union. The West has criticized Azerbaijan for what it calls intimidation and repression aimed at the opposition and urged Baku to comply with its pledges on human rights. Azeri officials deny the accusations. The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) as well as opposition parties in Azerbaijan and human rights activists had been calling for Aliyev s immediate release. | 0 |
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Posted on November 8, 2016 by Charles Hugh Smith
Though it has been billed as the main event for months, the presidential election has always been a side show –or from one point of view, a freak show.
As I write this on Monday, I have no idea who will win the side show unpopularity contest (i.e. the presidential race)–and it doesn’t really matter as much as apoplectic partisans would have us believe.
The reason why it doesn’t matter much which unpopular candidate wins is the issues facing the nation are far larger than partisan politics or the corrupt Ruling Elite that is freaking out about the possibility of a Trump presidency disrupting its self-serving skims and scams.
As I described yesterday in America’s Ruling Elite Has Failed and Deserves to Be Fired ,we are in the midst of a fast-moving Industrial-Digital Revolution that is upending the political, economic and social orders. The global economy’s current mode of production is in fits and starts being replaced with a new mode of production that bypasses the Ruling Elite’s centralized skims and scams.
Real reform is impossible in the current Status Quo , a dynamic I described in my book Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform and illustrated with this chart.
The Ruling Elite will never allow real reform because real reform threatens their dominance and wealth. Instead, the Ruling Elite proposes modest policy tweaks that increase their dominance by limiting innovation and competition and transferring the systemic risks and costs of their skims/scams to the non-elites.
If a crisis does threaten their dominance, any meaningful reforms that result from the crisis will be watered down once the storm has passed.
The core problem is the Status Quo and its Ruling Elite rely on centralized hierarchies, regulatory capture and mobile capital to protect their dominance from innovation and competition. This aligned perfectly with the centralized World War II-era state-cartel/ central-bank mode of production that has dominated the economy and society since 1945.
But the Industrial-Digital Revolution is destabilizing these inflexible, centralized hierarchies which cannot compete with decentralized, flexible networks in output, efficiency or cost.
This presents the self-serving Ruling Elites with an impossible choice: either embrace the Industrial-Digital Revolution’s efficiencies and watch the foundation of their own dominance and wealth crumble, or defend their bloated, inefficient and increasingly bankrupt centralized hierarchies from innovation and competition–a war they are losing and cannot possibly win.
The Status Quo is not just financially bankrupt–it is morally and intellectually bankrupt as well. The level of insider dealing, self-aggrandizement, collusion and corruption in the Ruling Elite is off the charts, and this is now visible for all to see.
The Status Quo’s intellectual grab-bag of narratives and ideologies is devoid of anything remotely aligned with the Industrial-Digital Revolution. The Status Quo’s intellectual grab-bag consists of 70-year old cults (the Keynesian Cargo Cult of Paul Krugman et al.) that have visibly failed and tired throwbacks to 1950: if only corporations weren’t global, and if only capital wasn’t mobile and if only the central state taxed us even more and borrowed and spent more…
These 1945 ideas cannot possibly succeed in the Industrial-Digital Revolution’s mode of production . But both political parties, the Ruling Elites and the Establishment they dominate have no idea of how to manage this radically transformative mode of production . They are a clueless herd trampling the non-elites as they rush headlong over the cliff.
(I cover this emerging economy in The Nearly Free University and the Emerging Economy and Get a Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy , and sketch a new systemic approach in A Radically Beneficial World: Automation, Technology & Creating Jobs for All .)
No leader can stop the emergence of a new mode of production . All they can do is engineer a crash by clinging to the expiring mode of production . The leadership of the U.S. sees only one path: further centralization that increases the power of the central state-bank-cartel mode of production . This is the road to ruin, akin to protecting the buggy-whip industry and the Whig Party at all costs.
Politicians aren’t actually leaders. All they can do is give voice to what the people are willing to support, resist needed transformation by supporting a corrupt, sclerotic status quo or introduce the people to a new narrative.
Sadly, our self-serving Ruling Elite is only capable of resisting needed transformation by supporting a corrupt, sclerotic status quo. A new leadership class that actually understands the new mode of production may eventually emerge, but only after the corrupt, sclerotic status quo has deservedly collapsed under its own weight. | 1 |
MarcFaberBlog.com November 1, 2016
It’s nonsense to claim that inflation is only going up 1 percent per year in the United States. The cost of living of a typical family is going up much more than that—insurance, transportation, schooling are all going up.
For example, health care premiums for insurance policies [are rising], so the typical household is being squeezed. The central banks don’t care about that; they don’t look at it..
I suppose the system will collapse before we become like Venezuela. In the West, if they start to print money, the end game will be brief. Within five years, I expect the system to implode.
You better ask the bureaucrats what their plans are. They had zero rates since December 2008; soon eight years [passed], and that hasn’t boosted economic activity for the average household, not in Japan nor the United States nor the EU. Now they talk about fiscal spending.
You better ask the bureaucrats what their plans are. They had zero rates since December 2008; soon eight years [passed], and that hasn’t boosted economic activity for the average household, not in Japan nor the United States nor the EU. Now they talk about fiscal spending.
Then they will find some academics who will blame wealth inequality on the evil capitalists who made so much money out of asset bubbles.
They will blame the economic woes on these people. To some extent this is true. But the rich people did not create the inflated asset values; it was the central banks, by slashing interest rates to zero and negative interest rates in many countries.
First, you create mispricings through artificially low rates and negative interest rates and you boost the income and wealth of the super-rich. It’s at best the 0.1 percent that really benefit from asset inflation, at the cost of all the people that have no assets and so you have this rising wealth inequality. So we have to tax the rich people and tax them more.
Taking money from the rich is appealing if you go to voters, and you say to them, “Look, the reason the economy is doing so badly, it’s because of the rich people, the billionaires. We have to take 20 percent away from them and give it to you.” You can be sure that everybody will vote for that because the wealthy are a minority. This is what happens after monetary policies completely fail.
Some well-connected people will hide their wealth but a lot of people won’t. Even if they take 50 percent from the richest, it’s not going to help. The next step will be to take money from less wealthy people; the interventionists will go all the way.
- Source, The Epoch Times | 1 |
Voters just approved a ban on genetically modified crops and organisms in Sonoma County.
The ban passed by a margin of nearly 12%. The future and sustainability of Sonoma County agriculture was also at hand during the contest race between organic farmer Linda Hopkins and former state Senator Noreen Evans for the District Five Board of Supervisors seat.
With the financial support of many people in the farming and wine industry, won with 54.1% of the vote, a margin of about 2,500 votes.
Hopkins will be the first woman to represent the Fifth District on the Board of Supervisors. The board will be majority-female for the first time in history.
Hopkins will gain the seat and replace Efren Carrillo.
Sonoma County is the sixth California county to ban GMOs, joining Santa Cruz, Mendocino, Humboldt, Trinity, and Marin.
This is a big win for anti-GMO advocates because Sonoma County connects Marin County to Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity. This means that the ban creates a 13,734-square foot zone where genetically engineered plants cannot be grown. This is the largest such area in the United States.
This is a major victory for a movement that has seen mixed results in local and nation-wide efforts to ban GMO crops in other states. Several counties in Hawaii have passed GMO bans that have been overturned by federal judges. There have been many examples of this happening throughout the United States. In 20114, a ban in Josephine County, Oregon was found invalid because it conflicted with state law. Yet a ban in Jackson County, Oregon remains in force because Jackson was exempted from the aforementioned state law.
According to Hudson, farmers who are now growing GMOs will be able to continue growing for the current season as a grace period until the ban begins. If a farm already purchased seed for the following year, he or she will be allowed to plant that year as well.
Yet Tuesday night did not bring victory for all measures. In Healdsburg, Measure T, a ballot measure to eliminate water fluoridation, secured only 41% of the vote.
This was the second time in two years that the people of Healdsburg were rejected a fluoride ban.
While the water in Healdsburg is fluoridated, the rest of Sonoma County’s water is not.
As people become increasingly aware about the health risks of eating GMO food, more and more counties are fighting to ban GMO cultivation on their farmland. GMO plants are known to cross-pollinate with non-GMO plants, putting farmers at risk of losing crop and money. This ban is a step in the right direction for the protection of farmers and consumers alike.
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Thursday that Russia has a “long history” of interfering in elections, but that U.S. officials had never encountered activity like its efforts during the 2016 U.S. campaign. “The Russians have a long history of interfering in elections. Theirs and other people’s... This goes back to the 60s, from the heyday of the Cold War,” he testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee. However, he added, “I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we’ve seen in this case.” | 0 |
Amid allegations of Russian interference with our elections, Republicans are scrambling, trying to defend the leader of their party. The latest defense, which comes from Lindsey Graham and sort of from Paul Ryan, is that Trump is too stupid to collude with the Russians.After former FBI Director James Comey testified in front of Congress, that yes, Trump did ask him to drop the investigation into former national security advisor Michael Flynn. The best defense House Speaker Paul Ryan could come up with was that Trump is new at this. He simply didn t know it wasn t cool to pressure the head of the FBI. The President s new at this. He s new to government. So, he probably wasn t steeped in the long-running protocols that establish the relationships between DOJ, FBI and White Houses. He s just new to this. Pushed further by CNN, Ryan said, I m not saying it s an acceptable excuse. It s just my observation. He s new at government, and so therefore I think that he he is learning as he goes, Ryan said.Source: CNNTeenagers, try that argument next time you get pulled over while driving. On second thought, don t.Now, Sen. Lindsey Graham has taken that argument a step further and said that Trump is too incompetent to have colluded with the Russians. He doesn t believe he did anything wrong with the Russians and I tend to believe him, Graham said on CBS Face the Nation. He can t collude with his own government. Why do you think he is colluding with the Russians? Source: Think ProgressWhat Graham is ignoring is that the fact that Trump is incompetent is likely what made him the most desirable for Russians. Russian journalist Mikhail Fishman says this about Russian president Vladimir Putin s opinion on Trump:They re quite obviously playing Trump. They consider him a stupid, unstrategic politician. Putin is confident that he can manipulate Trump to his advantage, and he should be.In other words, Trump s a useful idiot to them?Exactly. The Kremlin is limited in their knowledge about what s going on in Washington, but they see the chaos and the confusion in Trump s administration. They see the clumsiness, the inexperience. Naturally, they re working to exploit that.Of course, Graham and Ryan know this and that s what s most dangerous of all. While Trump might be too stupid to know that he is a stooge, the Republican Party s cavalier attitude about the fact that Russia might have installed our incompetent Commander-in-Chief is perhaps the most treasonous part of all of this. | 1 |
Earlier this week, as public outrage and media attention focused on his failed response to the Flint water disaster, Michigan s republican governor announced that he was calling in the National Guard to help deal with the escalating crisis.On January 13, those troops arrived in the city of 100,000 people. All SEVEN of them. Yes, seven. As in one less than eight.Doing the math, Snyder s response equates to one guardsman per 14,285.7 people.The city of Flint is experiencing a crisis of epic proportions, thanks entirely to the Snyder administration. Water poisoned with lead, and water that is potentially contaminated with the Legionella bacteria (which has already caused 87 serious illnesses and ten deaths) is just one aspect of what is happening in Flint.After the governor and his appointed emergency managers switched the city s water supply to the Flint River, they decided not to bother to treat it with standard corrosion control measures.According to researchers from Virginia Tech University, Flint is the only city in the U.S. that did not have these measures in place.As Marc Edwards of the Virginia Tech water study described to Michigan Radio back in October: What we discovered to our shock was that they switched to a new water source that was obviously very corrosive, meaning it would eat up the lead pipe and iron pipe and essentially put the metals into the water, without controlling the corrosion. And this is a horrible idea in a city full of lead plumbing and lead pipe like Flint. He went on to describe the standard practice for changing a water source. Before you switch to a new water source, six months to a year ahead of time, you are supposed to do laboratory experiments to determine the corrosivity of the water, and the chemistry the pH, the alkalinity, and the phosphate that you need to make sure that the lead stays on the pipes and out of the water. Edwards explains that Flint s new water system had to have a corrosion control plan in place, otherwise the result is that you re doing an uncontrolled human experiment on a city s population. The decision by Rick Snyder s emergency manager to just skip what was apparently viewed as an unnecessary corrosion control expense has basically been just that. An uncontrolled experiment on a city s population. The amount of damage done to the city s infrastructure is just beginning to be realized.This photo from Flint Water Study researchers Ni Zhu and Siddhartha Roy shows the magnitude of the situtuation.Image credit: Flint Water StudyAccording to a new report released today, researchers believe that the damaged and corroded pipes that are transmitting water throughout the city are likely to become a breeding ground for bacteria, such as the Legionella bacteria which causes Legionaire s disease, along with a host of other potential pathogens.Because of the nature of the Legionella bacteria, which is transmitted through tiny droplets of water in the air, Virginia Tech researchers are recommending that vulnerable populations have minimal contact with the water. That includes people who smoke, the elderly, people with diabetes, people who have recently had surgery and others who might be at greater risk of contracting a waterborne respiratory disease.About 100,000 Flint residents are affected by this unmitigated disaster.In response, Governor Snyder put on a big show of sending in the National Guard. Now we know that only SEVEN guardsmen were actually dispatched to the city.After being forced to respond to questions regarding the number of guardsmen he sent to the city, the governor s office proclaimed that there could be as many as 30 or 40 National Guardsmen sent to Flint by the end of the week.During his PR conference on Tuesday, Snyder told the people of Michigan As we work to ensure that all Flint residents have access to clean and safe drinking water, we are providing them with the direct assistance they need in order to stretch our resources further. The Michigan National Guard is trained and ready to assist the citizens of Flint. He neglected to mention that he was sending SEVEN guardsmen.As reported by Fox 2: The Governor s rhetoric is not doing much to quiet the growing fury in Flint. Gov. Rick Snyder called in the National Guard to assist those helping to get bottled water and filters to the people of Flint. Just seven members of the National Guard showed up to help the nearly 100,000 people in Flint. Watch this video on Governor Snyder s pathetic response to the Flint water disaster, via Fox 2. What an absolute joke.Image credit: video screen capture via Fox 2 | 0 |
Former CIA Agent, Clare Lopez has been ringing the alarm bells about the Islamic influence by members of Obama administration for quite some time now. [See video below.]Clare Lopez is a former CIA officer, and she is risking her professional career to call out President Barack Obama in the biggest way possible.Lopez is well respected in the intelligence community and worked in the Reagan White House. After two decades in the field with the CIA, and as an instructor for special forces and intelligence students, Lopez is now with the Center for Security Policy managing the counter-jihad and Shariah programs.Now, she is claiming Obama is why America has completely switched sides during the war on terrorism. America is now supporting the enemy, especially through the Muslim Brotherhood.Lopez has been unwilling to speak in public, but has confined with a few members of the House of Representatives her serious concerns about Obama s motivations about foreign policy decisions.Lopez noted that the war on terrorism has always been about stopping the spread of Shariah Islamic law, until Obama started to make major changes which clearly supported the Muslim Brotherhood s jihadist interests.She said the global war on terror had been an effort to stay free of Shariah, or repressive Islamic law, until the Obama administration began siding with such jihadist groups as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates.The transition was easy for Obama, who already hates American values and principles as an ideologically radical Why the switch?Lopez explained, when the so-called Arab Spring appeared in late 2010, It was time to bring down the secular Muslim rulers who did not enforce Islamic law. And America helped. And why would Obama want to do that?As she told WND earlier this month, Lopez believed the Muslim Brotherhood has thoroughly infiltrated the Obama administration and other branches of the federal government.She also came to the conclusion Obama had essentially the same goals in the Mideast as the late Osama bin Laden: to remove American power and influence, including military forces, from Islamic lands. The former CIA operative said, as Israel fought enemies on all sides to remain free, secure and Jewish, America began to move away from Israel and toward its Muslim enemies. And, as Iran moved inexorably toward a deliverable nuclear weapons capability, America helped. In addition, Lopez claims that the only reason Obama approved of the killing of Osama bin Laden is he simply couldn t ignore the chance without looking suspicious. The opportunity presented himself, and he couldn t delay it any longer. Via: Top Right NewsHere Is Clare Lopez in 2009 talking about the White House being infiltrated by Islamic Supporters: h/t Freedom Daily | 1 |
The cash flows through the State Department and the famously corrupt U.S. Agency of International Development (USAID), which is charged with providing global economic, development and humanitarian assistance. USAID has allocated about $5 million to leftwing Soros groups in Macedonia since 2012, documents show, and at least $9.5 million has been earmarked by the agency to intervene in the Balkan nation s governmental affairs for 2016-2011.Here s how the clandestine operation functions, according to high-level sources in Macedonia and the U.S. that have provided Judicial Watch with records as part of an ongoing investigation. The Open Society Foundation has established and funded dozens of leftwing, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in Macedonia to overthrow the conservative government. One Macedonian government official interviewed by Judicial Watch in Washington D.C. recently, calls it the Soros infantry. The groups organize youth movements, create influential media outlets and organize violent protests to undermine the institutions and policies implemented by the government. One of the Soros groups funded the translation and publication of Saul Alinsky s Rules for Radicals into Macedonian. The book is a tactical manual of subversion, provides direct advice for radical street protests and proclaims Lucifer to be the first radical.Thanks to Obama s ambassador, who has not been replaced by President Trump, Uncle Sam keeps the money flowing so the groups can continue operating and recruiting, sources in Macedonia and the U.S. confirm.With a population of about 2 million, Macedonia has one of the more conservative governments in Europe. This includes the lowest flat tax in Europe, close ties with Israel and pro-life policies. The country recently built a border fence to crackdown on an illegal immigration crisis that overwhelmed law enforcement agencies. Between 10,000 and 12,000 illegal aliens were crossing the Greek-Macedonian border daily at the peak of the European migration crisis, a Macedonian official told Judicial Watch, and the impact was devastating. This is likely of big interest to Soros, a renowned open borders advocate who pushes international governance, diminished U.S. global power and an increase in Muslim immigration.This appears to be the case in Macedonia with the help of American financing.There have been a number of violent protests in recent months that have been coordinated by Soros Open Society Foundation through its U.S.-funded NGOs, sources tell Judicial Watch.Some U.S. members of Congress have expressed interest in the issue and have demanded answers from Ambassador Baily, USAID and the State Department. In typical fashion, the State Department has stonewalled the inquiries and USAID hasn t been much more forthcoming. Judicial Watch | 1 |
Seven newly elected Senators were sworn into office Tuesday, the start of the 115th United States Congress. Here are the names and faces of the five Democrats and two Republicans who make up the 2017 freshman senate class. [California — Kamala Harris (D) Following a bitter Senate race with Loretta Sanchez, the former attorney general of California Kamala Harris will become the first American Indian to serve in the United States Senate. In a post election interview, Harris promised to “fight” Trump on issues such as immigration, health care, the environment and crime. Illinois — Tammy Duckworth (D) Tammy Duckworth’s victory over the incumbent Republican senator Mark Kirk was one of the few pieces of good news for Democrats on November 8th. A double amputee and veteran of the Iraq war, Duckworth previously served as the Director of the Illinois Department of Veterans as well as the Assistant Secretary for Public and Intergovernmental Affairs in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Indiana — Todd Young (R) Former congressman Todd Young, who also served a decorated career in the Marine Corps, will replace the retired Dan Coats in Indiana. He has previously sponsored legislation such as the ‘Fairness for Families Act,’ which delayed the introduction of mandatory individual healthcare coverage, as well as the ‘Save American Workers Act,’ which sought to define a full time worker as someone working 40 hours a week, in order to prevent companies from reducing contract hours in order to avoid the healthcare mandate. New Hampshire — Maggie Hassan (D) The former governor of New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan also defeated the incumbent Republican Kelly Ayotte by a narrow 1, 067 votes. A staunch supporter of Planned Parenthood, Hassan has said her top priorities in the Senate will be protecting abortion law and tackling climate change. Maryland — Chris Van Hollen (D) A former congressman and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chris Van Hollen will now serve as Chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for the 2018 election cycle, as well as now representing Maryland in the Senate. With 100 percent approval ratings on a number of progressive causes, he has been touted as a possible presidential candidate in 2020. Louisiana — John Neely Kennedy (R) The incumbent state treasurer of Louisiana, John Neely Kennedy will vacate his role in order to serve Louisiana in the Senate. A former Democrat, his career has involved managing Louisiana’s economic policy and focusing on how the state can effectively save money. A supporter of Donald Trump, Kennedy received campaign support from the a day before his run off Senate race with Foster Campbell. Nevada — Catherine Cortez Masto (D) Replacing former House Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, former Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto will become the first Latina woman ever to serve in the Senate. Her campaign was vociferously supported by environmental and groups, given her support for Planned Parenthood and investment in renewal energies. She defeated Republican Joe Beck by 47 percent to 45 percent. You can follow Ben Kew on Facebook, on Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart. com | 0 |
The Democratic National Committee announced Friday that it is still holding onto most of the money it received from Hollywood mogul and alleged sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein.The DNC will donate just ten percent of the almost $300,000 received from Weinstein, money that will go to organizations close to the Democratic Party: EMILY s List, Emerge America, and Higher Heights, all of which predominately help Democratic candidates running for office. The DNC s response to the Harvey Weinstein matter is shockingly bad even by Washington standards, Alexandra Smith of the conservative opposition research firm America Rising said. Donating a mere 10 percent of the entire Weinstein contribution to another left-leaning political action committee is a complete embarrassment. The mission statement of EMILY s List is: We elect pro-choice Democratic women to office. Emerge America adds ethnic diversity to that same basic mission, proclaiming its intent to increase the number of Democratic women leaders. Higher Heights goal is to help black women get elected; the Center for Responsive Politics notes that it gives exclusively to Democrats.Some Democratic politicians are donating money received from Weinstein to nonprofits helping victims of sexual violence, while others have remained silent on the matter. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) announced he would donate his Weinstein money to several charities supporting women following a Washington Free Beacon report about Democrats inaction. WFB | 0 |
It s not about polls, it s not about personalities, it s not about unfavorable (or favorable) ratings, it s not even about policy. Moody s, who has predicted every election since Reagan in 1980, says that the Democrat will win the White House and the odds are getting progressively worse for Trump.According to Moody s, it s the economy. It s always the economy, and despite Trump s insistence that we are stuck in an apocalyptic nightmare of 40 percent or more unemployment, people are pretty happy overall, which favors the party in office: Democrats.It s a bad sign for Trump. Moody s has been predicting a Democratic triumph since last August, but the margin of victory is getting bigger for the left as the economy has stayed relatively strong and President Obama s approval rating has risen.The reason a Democrat will win isn t about polling or personalities, it s about economics, says Moody s. The economy is the top issue in just about every election. When the economy is doing well, the party currently in office usually wins again. When the economy is tanking, Americans vote for change.So far, the U.S. economy is chugging along. It s growing. Millions of people are getting jobs, home prices are rising and gas is cheap. All of this favors Democrats. The bad thing is that this puts Trump right in his comfort zone. Just two years before the housing collapse, Trump, on the Howard Stern Show, actually hoped that the real estate market would collapse. You can bet that he s hoping something similar for 2016.Right now, Moody s says the thing most likely to put a wrench in Democrats plans is if the price of oil was to dramatically rise. Nationally, that level would have to be about $3.00 per gallon. Right now, the national average is about $2.31, which Americans are pretty comfortable with.The other thing Americans are comfortable with, which bodes well for Democrats, is President Obama. His approval rating is over 50 percent for the first time in three years. If it holds at current levels, the two-year increase in the president s approval rating running up to the election would surpass even that of President Ronald Reagan at the end of the Cold War, notes Moody s.Best yet, the swing states are all looking pretty good. Moody s predicts that Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, Florida, Colorado (no wonder Republicans hate legalized pot, it helps the economy and helps Democrats win) and Nevada will all swing for the Dems. North Carolina should go Republican unless the transgender bathroom laws get enough Dems to the polls.Featured image via Joe Raedle at Getty Images (Clinton)/Isaac Brekken with Getty Images (Trump) | 1 |
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Thursday that his now-scrapped meeting with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto would have been “fruitless” if Mexico will not agree to treat America “with respect.” “The President of Mexico and myself have agreed to cancel our planned meeting for next week,” Trump told Republican lawmakers gathered in Philadelphia for a retreat. “Unless Mexico is going to treat the United States fairly - with respect - such a meeting would be fruitless. And I want to go a different route,” said Trump, who wants to build a wall on the southern border of the United States. He says Mexico will pay for it but Mexico insists it will not. | 0 |
Tony Blair helpfully describes Remain voters as ‘insurgents’ 28-10-16
TONY Blair has helped out British politics by calling Remain voters ‘insurgents’ who must ‘mobilise’.
Both sides of the Brexit debate have thanked the former prime minister for framing it in loaded terms that will bring out the best in everyone.
Healthcare worker Helen Archer said: “Let’s see. So on one side we’ve got the Brexit crew already calling anything they don’t like treason and waving flags.
“On the left we’ve got the disturbed followers of a cultish messiah who want the result of a popular vote to be overturned, followed by the overthrow of capitalism.
“And a deposed ruler who started two unending wars for the sake of his ego is telling us it’s a war?
“Great. No problem. Just checking I know where we’re headed.”
Blair said: “My primary role, in and out of government, has been to boost sales for the UK arms industry and that will not change.”
Share: | 1 |
Why let this guy out EVER! He was let out on bond even though there was discussion of concern since he s a world traveler with tax payer dollars! This guy made millions off of fraudulently scamming the SS disability system. He inadvertently called attention to the need for this program to be totally overhauled:The scandal prompted the federal government to review the eligibility of about 1,500 people receiving benefits About 800 of those people lost their benefits. I was always shocked that, when he was arrested, he was actually allowed out on bond. Lawyer who represents Conn s former clientsA slimy Eastern Kentucky disability lawyer scheduled to be sentenced next month for defrauding the government of nearly $600 million has disappeared, the FBI said.Eric Conn pleaded guilty in March to stealing from the federal government and bribing a judge. He was scheduled to be sentenced next month and had been ordered to pay the government tens of millions of dollars.But Saturday, the FBI said Conn removed his electronic monitoring device, violating the conditions of his bond and prompting the U.S. District Court to issue a warrant for his arrest. David Habich, general counsel for the FBI s Louisville office, said Conn s whereabouts are currently unknown. A call to Conn s lawyer was not returned.Conn started his law practice in a trailer in 1993 and built it into one of the most lucrative disability law firms in the country. He created a persona for himself as Mr. Social Security, fueled by outlandish TV commercials and small-scale replicas of the Statute of Liberty and the Lincoln Memorial at his office in rural eastern Kentucky.But Conn s empire crumbled when federal investigators uncovered he had been bribing a doctor and a judge to approve disability claims based on fake medical evidence. As part of his plea deal in March, he agreed to pay the federal government $5.7 million and to reimburse Social Security $46 million. A federal judge ordered Conn to pay $12 million in damages and $19 million in penalties to the government and two former Social Security employees who tried to expose the scheme. And Conn is also facing a liability judgment from a class action lawsuit brought by his former clients, with a hearing scheduled for later this month to determine the damages. It was totally predictable that he would flee, said attorney Ned Pillersdorf, who represents Conn s former clients and said Conn s frequent world traveling was brought up in court to assess whether he was a flight risk. I was always shocked that, when he was arrested, he was actually allowed out on bond. And there has been a betting pool going on in Prestonsburg on not if he would flee, but when. The scandal prompted the federal government to review the eligibility of about 1,500 people receiving benefits. Pillersdorf said about 800 of those people lost their benefits.Read more: Law Newz | 0 |
Donald Trump is hemorrhaging Republican supporters faster than his casinos hemorrhage money. He s losing in almost all polls, including in many swing and Republican states, but to Trump, that means stay the course.Republicans in the public eye are making a very public appeal to Americans, asking everyone to support Hillary Clinton, mostly for one major reason: Trump doesn t have the temperament for the presidency.Americans agree. After a disastrous two weeks following the Republican National Convention, where Trump attacked a Gold Star Family, took a Purple Heart from its recipient and lied about ransom money being handed to Iran, his poll numbers are tanking. He s now behind by double digits. Did I mention he also ejected a baby from a rally?It s even gotten to the point where many serious people, including President Obama, are questioning Trump s mental fitness. That s not something political opponents typically speculate about, but Trump is clearly an exception.Yes, Trump is having a really, really bad time, but to him, that means nothing. After all, he s gotten this far being a xenophobic asshole. Why let a sinking ship tempt him to plug the holes in his campaign? Trump, naturally, disagrees with his critics: I think that my temperament has gotten me here, Trump said during a phone interview on Fox Business s Mornings with Maria. We beat a lot of people in the primaries and now we have one person left, and we re actually doing pretty well there, but we ll see how it all comes out, the Republican presidential nominee said. I certainly don t think it s appropriate to start changing all of a sudden when you ve been winning, Trump said. I think it s going to work out well. Source: The HillHere s the video:The only real pivot coming from the Trump campaign is that he s trying to sound like Bernie Sanders. He accuses all the Republicans turning against him of being insiders, whose opinions shouldn t matter to Trump s angry anti-establishment voters.Trump s refusal to acknowledge that he needs to win a broader support only adds fuel to the fire of the idea that he s unprepared for the presidency. He won 14 million votes during the primaries, which is a lot for primaries, but it s not even a drop in the bucket for the general election, where more than 10 times that many people will likely vote. If Trump has a chance in hell of winning, he has to tone down his rhetoric, not that we re cheering for that.Featured image via Joe Readle at Getty Images. | 1 |
CNN mostly dismisses the Clinton e-mail scandal and just brushes over it but John King makes a great point this morning:Sunday on CNN s Inside Politics, host John King pointed to a Washington Post story detailing that within 24 hours of her telling ABC news last year that she was, dead broke after leaving the White House the Clinton gave speeches making $700,000 in fees.King said, The Washington Post story this past week saying within 24 hours of saying we were dead broke to justify making some money, the Clintons combined made $700,000 in speeches. That is going to be tee-ball for the Republicans. Maggie Haberman of the New York Times said, What you just said, I suspect will have more residence than the emails. Via: Breitbart | 1 |
Here s a great way to explain socialism to the neighbors. Of course, we re not condoning doing anything that might be considered illegal | 1 |
Christian leaders are responding with love, concern and warnings of civil disobedience in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's historical decision on marriage.
The high court has declared that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry anywhere in the United States.
They have already had the right in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Now, the remaining 14 states will no longer be allowed to uphold their definitions of traditional marriage.
*Click play to watch more of our extensive coverage as Christian leaders react to the court's decision.
Former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee tweeted that the ruling is "an out-of-control act of unconstitutional judicial tyranny."
Bob Vander Plaats, a conservative activist in Iowa, told supporters the court "succumbed to demands to invent a new constitutional 'right' never imagined by our Founders."
What impact with the gay marriage ruling have on religious liberty? CBN News spoke with Austin Nimocks of the Alliance Defending Freedom for his perspective. Click below to watch.
Rev. Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, admonished followers in a tweet, "the challenge for Christians now is to speak the truth in love and to speak love in truth. Love of neighbor means we cannot lie about marriage."
Many Christian leaders believe the ruling will create a restricted role for people of faith in American society.
"The Supreme Court has stripped all Americans of our freedom to debate and decide marriage policy through the democratic process," Jim Campbell, of the Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Legal Counsel, said. "The freedom to democratically address the most pressing social issues of the day is the heart of liberty."
*** Many faith leaders believe the Supreme Court ruling recognizing gay marriage will put religious liberty will be at risk.
In the weeks before the ruling came down, the Southern Baptist Convention partnered with the Alliance Defending Freedom to provide guidance for churches and other faith-based institutions called Protecting Your Ministry. CBN News interviewed Dr. Russell Moore about the booklet earlier this month. Watch our interview below.
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez says the decision "serves as a defacto and legal catalyst for the marginalization of Americans who embrace a biblical worldview."
Many leaders, such as Liberty Counsel's Mat Staver, have already called for civil disobedience in response to such a ruling. Others individuals and organizations are studying the ruling to determine the best ways to respond. | 1 |
FAIRVIEW, W. Va. — The coal was piled about as high as it could go, spilling down to the railroad tracks and towering over the elevator shaft. A yellow bulldozer pushed the mound to make room for more. From a distance on this rainy day, the black heap looked like a giant whale about to swallow the mine whole. The word underground was that Federal mine No. 2 would soon have to close. It was early April, and the mine was running out of storage space. There were not enough buyers for all the coal. A few months earlier, this problem would have belonged to Patriot Coal, one of the nation’s largest coal companies, which used to operate the Federal mine, built near a meandering mountain stream called Miracle Run. But this was not Patriot’s problem anymore. Nor was it the problem of the hedge funds and other investors that had lent the company millions. When Patriot filed for bankruptcy in 2015 — its second time in three years — environmentalists and regulators were prepared for the company to figure out ways to shunt liabilities and maximize returns. But no one could have envisioned what happened next. Patriot handed over millions of dollars of environmental obligations to a nonprofit company run by a man named Tom Clarke, who owned a chain of nursing homes and a tourist attraction that had fallen behind on its bills. Until that day in April, Mr. Clarke, 61, had never been in a coal mine. Patriot sold not only the troubled Federal mine to Mr. Clarke, but also several other mines that were no longer in operation, including a sprawling surface mine carved from the top of a mountain in southern West Virginia. Mr. Clarke’s new company agreed to clean up the shuttered mines and reclaim the land that had been ravaged. As part of the deal, the miners’ union invested $10 million in the Federal mine operation, which was supposed to keep producing coal for Mr. Clarke to sell. But the mine has struggled from low coal prices. “It was a spectacular deal for Patriot,” said Patrick McGinley, a law professor at West Virginia University who has been involved in cases against coal companies since 1970s. “This company has had complete success in divesting itself of all liabilities of every kind, including environmental liabilities, which are the hardest to shed. ” Why then, would someone like Mr. Clarke want to take over a troubled mine and the environmental obligations that Patriot Coal was seeking to get rid of? As improbable as it may seem, Mr. Clarke said the Patriot deal had played to his advantage — helping start his grand plan to remake coal mining into a greener industry. He is not only reclaiming Patriot’s mines that are no longer in use. He has come up with a model, he said, for how the industry can keep producing coal, while reducing its impact on the climate. The plan involves creating pollution credits by planting or preserving trees around the world to offset the carbon emitted from burning coal. For every ton of coal he sells, Mr. Clarke attaches some of the credits. Mr. Clarke has had trouble, however, persuading buyers of his coal, like utilities and steel companies, to pay extra for the credits. Mr. Clarke hoped electric utilities would be able to count his credits toward the goals that the Obama administration has set for states in its Clean Power Plan, now before a federal court. But administration officials have effectively ruled that out. That hasn’t stopped Mr. Clarke’s company from acquiring more mines. In addition to Patriot, Mr. Clarke has made deals over the last 11 months with several other struggling coal companies, gaining control of multiple underground mines, millions of tons of coal reserves and thousands of acres of surface mines. He has even tried bidding on steel mills to create a captive buyer for his coal bundled with carbon credits. Now he is in the market for utilities, for the same reason. While the Federal mine has cut back on production, some of his other mines are poised for a rebound. Demand for metallurgical coal — which is used for making steel — has roared back in recent months. One of the companies he founded with a longtime coal executive, ERP Compliant Fuels, is now one of the largest producers of metallurgical coal in North America. “I am the guy that is trying to work from within,” Mr. Clarke said. “The goal is to have a big enough footprint to drive our environmental philosophy home. ” If this were a movie about the American coal industry, Mr. Clarke would be the character who goes completely off script. For decades, the battle lines around coal have been clear. The companies are fighting to protect their diminishing business. Many environmentalists, meanwhile, are trying to limit coal production permanently and force the industry to clean up the damage it has inflicted on forests, rivers and lakes. The debate over coal on the campaign trail is also predictable — Donald J. Trump has vowed to bring back lost mining jobs and roll back overzealous environmental regulations, and Hillary Clinton is promising to help mining communities transition out of coal and into new industries. Environmental groups can almost smell victory. Many of the nation’s largest coal companies have filed for bankruptcy. Natural gas is pulling even and may surpass coal as the top power source in the United States. The industry’s decline is forcing states to deal with how to clean up the mines and who should pay for it. In West Virginia alone, 300, 000 acres of forest — an area half the size of Rhode Island — have been damaged by mountaintop mining, by one estimate. After some challenges, Mr. Clarke’s reclamation work has been meeting regulatory standards and even exceeding expectations by some measures, one West Virginia official said. In January, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin of West Virginia lauded Mr. Clarke in his address for helping develop “new and innovative ideas. ” Mr. Clarke is donating a reclaimed former Patriot mountaintop mine to the state to build an industrial park. “Tom is a real visionary,” said Robert McAtee, one of several coal industry veterans who have come to work with Mr. Clarke. “He stepped in when no one else would. ” Mr. Clarke says he relies on the expertise of several seasoned coal executives to run his mining operations. But environmentalists worry that Mr. Clarke is breathing new life into a polluting industry and that he is incapable of handling the huge mess the coal companies have handed him. In August, several environmental groups granted Mr. Clarke an extension on a court order to treat polluted runoff from a former Patriot mine, saying his “ capital was less than expected. ” Should Mr. Clarke’s company run into financial trouble, environmentalists worry that the cost of reclaiming the mines could fall to West Virginia taxpayers. Unlike Patriot, Mr. Clarke has few Wall Street investors that the state could pressure to cover the costs, they say. “These are strange days,” said Peter Morgan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, who has been challenging the coal industry over water pollution issues for years. “I don’t know what Tom Clarke’s intentions are. But I am skeptical he can pull it off. ” Bankruptcy is like a chess game in which companies seek to minimize liabilities and creditors look to maximize profits. Over the years, Patriot has played like a grandmaster. The company was founded in October 2007 from a spinoff of the coal mining giant Peabody Energy. From the start, Patriot was loaded with liabilities. Peabody gave Patriot 13 percent of its coal reserves but 40 percent of its obligations to pay for health care for thousands of retired miners. In short, Patriot took over many of the company’s unionized mining operations in Appalachia, while Peabody kept its nonunion operations in the West. “The legend in the coal fields is that Patriot was set up as a liability dump,” said Kevin Barrett, a lawyer at Bailey Glasser, who represents the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in the coal bankruptcy cases. “It was destined to fail. ” In a statement, Peabody said: “Patriot Coal was highly successful when it became an independent, publicly traded company nearly a decade ago,” adding that its market capitalization quadrupled in less than a year. But in July 2012, Patriot failed as predicted. A few weeks before it filed for bankruptcy, the company, which is based in St. Louis, took steps to improve its chances in court, according to the union. Patriot created two subsidiaries in New York City, allowing its case to be heard there. The United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan was viewed as favorable to corporations looking to cut their debts. After the coal miners’ union objected, the case was moved to St. Louis. On that first trip through bankruptcy, Patriot was able to deal with its health care obligations after a separate fund was created to administer the benefits. Health care was not Patriot’s only issue, though. The company faced huge costs for cleaning up selenium — a harmful coal byproduct — that was seeping into water sources downstream from its mines. While industries readily used bankruptcy to shed labor and pension obligations, it was unclear whether coal companies could do the same with reclamations and water remediation. In 1986, the Supreme Court blocked a New Jersey company from abandoning its oil waste processing plants in bankruptcy, citing a threat to public health and safety. But it was unclear whether the judges in the coal bankruptcy cases would rule that defunct mines posed the same pressing health threat. In the end, Patriot was able to emerge from its first bankruptcy without dealing with most of its environmental liabilities. By 2015, the American coal market was in a deep slide, as utilities and manufacturers increasingly turned to natural gas and demand from China cooled. One after another, mining companies, including Patriot, declared bankruptcy. “Everybody knew what to expect in Round 2,” Mr. Barrett said. “They would try to sell their best assets and leave their biggest environmental problems behind. ” The Natural Bridge is a rocky arch towering 215 feet above a small creek in southwestern Virginia. Thomas Jefferson bought the property from King George III of England for 20 shillings. Today, it is owned by a nonprofit company started by Mr. Clarke. He bought the bridge in 2014, using a $9. 1 million loan from the State of Virginia. Mr. Clarke planned to revitalize flagging ticket sales to the bridge, then hand over the property as a state park. But his plans ran into trouble early on. Visitors dwindled, and he defaulted on his state loan. He had to use proceeds from selling coal and land to help get caught up on his bills. In September, Mr. Clarke handed over management of Natural Bridge to the state. His nonprofit group, called the Virginia Conservation Legacy Fund, will still own the property until it pays back the loan. Some state officials praised Mr. Clarke’s work preserving the property but also had to give him more time to pay back his debt. Mr. Clarke compares his struggles to those of the former president, who also ran into financial trouble at one point. “I sort of felt like I am having my Jeffersonian moment,” Mr. Clarke said. Relentlessly upbeat, with a near permanent smile and the soothing voice of a public radio announcer, Mr. Clarke has spent a career trying to turn around an eclectic assortment of companies. He has bought troubled nursing homes, a forest preserve in Belize and a restaurant in Roanoke, Va. — a “philanthropub” that was supposed to dedicate its profit to Africa until it closed down in March 2015. In the 1990s, he turned one of his companies, Lenox Healthcare, into a $ business — one of the largest nursing home chains in the country. His former business partner at Lenox, Lawrence B. Cummings, called him a master at bolting together impossible business transactions. “He showed again and again an ability to put together deals that other people couldn’t. ” Lenox was a juggernaut, Mr. Clarke said, until it went bankrupt in 1999. Mr. Clarke said he began to rethink his life’s goals. He went hiking in South America, where he met his wife, Ana, a native of Venezuela. They moved to Virginia, converted his remaining nursing homes to nonprofits and placed them under a new company, Kissito (pronounced ) Healthcare. He became interested in poverty issues in Africa and began raising money and building a maternity hospital in Ethiopia. Mr. Clarke said he realized that many of the problems like drought and extreme floods in Africa were caused by climate change. Back in Virginia, Mr. Clarke said, he decided to take aim at the coal industry’s contribution to carbon emissions. Too often, Mr. Clarke said, the debate over the future of coal is infected with what he called tribalism — a conviction that you are either with the mining industry, or against it. He said he was trying to find some middle ground. Mr. Clarke’s first foray into the coal industry came when he took a job in late 2014 with Jim Justice, a wealthy West Virginia businessman who had built a fortune partly on coal. Mr. Clarke’s job was to assist Mr. Justice and his Southern Coal Corporation in dealing with hundreds of environmental violations at mines across Appalachia. While results are difficult to track, some environmental groups acknowledge that Mr. Clarke’s work had an appreciable impact on the Justice properties. A Democrat, Mr. Justice is running to become West Virginia’s next governor. Through a spokesman, he declined to comment. One of Mr. Clarke’s believers is Chandler Van Voorhis, a founder of C2I, a company outside Washington. C2I’s business is planting trees. The trees soak up carbon dioxide, converting it to wood and leaves. An acre of trees can convert 156 tons of carbon over a period, Mr. Van Voorhis said. C2I plans to reforest a million acres in the southern Mississippi River Valley and sell the carbon offsets to companies to reach goals. Together, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Van Voorhis sketched a plan to bundle C2I’s carbon offsets with coal. Their plan faced some steep challenges including this one: There was no natural market for coal bundled with pollution credits because of its higher cost. Undaunted, Mr. Clarke hired an investment banker and lawyers to hatch his idea. “Wall Street’s a pretty cynical place,” said Tim Hess, a real estate developer in Virginia, who introduced Mr. Clarke to his banking contacts. “But when you see somebody with that kind of passion and integrity, if there’s a way to make business sense out of it, I think people lean forward. ” Patriot Coal’s executives and advisers first met Mr. Clarke around the start of the company’s second bankruptcy case in May 2015. For this second bankruptcy filing, Patriot chose to file in Richmond, Va. where restructuring experts say some judges are eager to move large bankruptcy cases through quickly. The choice turned out to be a fortunate one. During the first day of bankruptcy hearings, Mr. Clarke said he happened to be in Richmond for a meeting with state officials when he wandered over to the federal courthouse. “It just amazed me how quickly they rushed through everything,” Mr. Clarke recalled of the proceedings. The best mines would be sold to Blackhawk Mining, a coal company in Kentucky, which would run the properties with financing from some of Patriot’s lenders. The less valuable mines would be placed in a separate “liquidating trust. ” The sole purpose of that trust would be to clean up water pollution and reclaim the mines. West Virginia officials felt comfortable with this arrangement because they could pressure Patriot’s hedge fund lenders to contribute money to the trust for reclamation work, said Mr. Barrett, the lawyer for West Virginia’s environmental protection agency. Equally important, regulators could hold Patriot’s top executives liable for completing the mine cleanup. If they failed, the government could deny them mining permits until the work was completed. “It was incredibly important to them personally, because these liabilities would follow them,” Mr. Barrett said. But Mr. Clarke was proposing something else entirely. His nonprofit company would assume Patriot’s environmental and reclamation obligations. And ultimately, the deal would release former executives from liability. At first, regulators and advisers to Patriot didn’t know what to make of Mr. Clarke. He had no experience. He had no traditional bank financing. When he came to meet Patriot’s management for the first time, he brought his young daughter with him. A company secretary watched her while he met with the executives for hours at the Charleston airport. Many people involved in the negotiations assumed that Mr. Clarke had the financial backing of Mr. Justice, but that wasn’t the case. Initially, state regulators did not consider Mr. Clarke a realistic option. So when Patriot signaled last summer that it was going to make a deal with Mr. Clarke, Mr. Barrett said, “we were floored. ” Shortly before a crucial court hearing, a major piece of Mr. Clarke’s financing fell through. Patriot’s lawyer and investment bankers scrambled to keep the deal from falling apart. In the end, Patriot agreed to effectively lend Mr. Clarke $5 million, and the coal miners’ union also stepped in with money. Surety companies that had insured Patriot’s reclamation obligations agreed to release millions in cash so Mr. Clarke could start the work. Regulators and environmental groups worried that if the state held up the deal, Patriot could threaten to liquidate its properties, leaving no money for reclamations. “It was the least bad outcome,” Mr. Morgan of the Sierra Club said. Even if Mr. Clarke’s venture proves Mr. Morgan said, he has already completed a good deal of reclamation work. Mr. Clarke said his fund has spent about $28 million on the work to date. As insurance, Patriot’s lenders contributed $12. 5 million to backstop the reclamation work in case Mr. Clarke failed. The state also has some control over the account that Mr. Clarke uses to pay for reclamation work. For Mr. Clarke, the Patriot agreement opened the door to other deals. He took over reclamation obligations from Walter Energy, another mining company that had declared bankruptcy. He also picked up more viable mines and a coke processing plant from Walter. This spring, his company vied to take over an entire coal company, Alpha Natural Resources, but the bid was not accepted in the bankruptcy case. “For someone with zero experience to come into this complex and troubled industry proposing the sort of things he is proposing is astonishing,” said Mr. McGinley, the law professor. “I give him the benefit of the doubt. But I don’t see where it is going. ” It was raining when Mr. Clarke and a clutch of miners rode a cavernous elevator 734 feet down to the dank shafts of Federal mine No. 2 last spring. At the bottom, the men boarded trains that clanked and jerked along wooden tracks through a maze of silent tunnels, empty except for the occasional mouse scurrying. The trains passed emergency shelters and ventilation shafts pumping cool air from above. This is the miners’ commute to the coal seam, where they shave off thousands of tons of black rock each week. “I am proud of you,” Mr. Clarke told some of the miners. As part of the deal with Patriot, the coal miners’ union invested $10 million and took a 20 percent stake in the Federal mine, which Mr. Clarke says he is doing everything he can to keep open even though it doesn’t break even. When he bought the Federal mine from Patriot, Mr. Clarke said he expected to sell its coal for at least $50 a ton. Recent shipments have sold for just above $40 a ton, he said. On some weeks, the mine has had to operate on a schedule because of the low demand for thermal coal, which is used to produce electric power. Phil Smith, a spokesman for the United Mine Workers of America, said the union expected production to improve at the mine when the broader coal market recovered. Still, Mr. Clarke’s company has shifted away from thermal coal and is hunting for mines that produce the much more valuable metallurgical coal used in steel production. Last month, an company acquired a set of huge surface mines in British Columbia out of bankruptcy. Unlike many of the Patriot mines that Mr. Clarke acquired to clean up, these new mines are capable of pumping millions of tons of new coal onto the market each year and he’s projecting big profits next year. Ultimately, Mr. Clarke hopes to offset all of the expected emissions from the coal he is producing with pollution credits. But right now, he is offsetting only 10 percent. That worries environmentalists. “It’s all I can afford,” he said. Mr. Clarke says he has been absorbing the costs personally until he can persuade utilities and steel mills to agree to pay for credits. He is hoping that states, led by West Virginia, will allow utilities to pass through the costs of his credits to ratepayers. Those discussions are continuing, he said. “Coal isn’t the villain,” he said. “The villain is excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and we have to find ways to deal with it. ” | 0 |
The murder charge against Jesse Matthew Jr. comes in addition to a count of abduction with intent to defile filed against him previously, Albemarle County Commonwealth's Attorney Denise Lunsford said.
"These indictments signal the beginning of the next phase in what has been an incredibly difficult process for the family of Hannah Graham, for our community and for the men and women of the many departments and agencies who have worked on this matter since September of last year," Lunsford said.
Lunsford's team decided not to charge Matthew with capital murder, which could have led to a death sentence if he were convicted. Lunsford said she wouldn't give details on what led to that decision, except to say that a "great deal of serious thought" went into it.
Those considerations included "the impact on the community, the Grahams, and the need to provide Mr. Matthew with a fair trial."
"I have discussed this matter with the Grahams on many occasions, and they are aware of the indictments," Lunsford said. Matthew also was charged with reckless driving in two incidents about a week after Graham's disappearance, Lunsford said. Matthew's first court appearance on the indictments is scheduled for February 18. His attorney, Jim Camblos, declined to comment Tuesday, except to acknowledge the February 18 court appearance and to say that he received news of the indictments late Monday afternoon. Graham, 18, went missing before dawn on September 13 after she was last spotted on surveillance video in Charlottesville's Downtown Mall area. In October, authorities found what turned out to be Graham's skull and bones on abandoned property 8 miles from where the college sophomore was last seen. Surveillance video and other accounts led authorities to identify Matthew as a suspect in her disappearance. Matthew, 33, was taken into custody on September 24 on a beach in Galveston County, Texas, about 1,300 miles away from where Graham was last seen. No link to another slaying Matthew's arrest in the Graham case prompted authorities to investigate his possible links to a string of unsolved killings and disappearances in the area. One of those cases involved 17-year-old Alexis Murphy of Lovingston, Virginia, who disappeared in 2013 and whose body has not been found. But on Friday, authorities said they had found no link between him and Murphy's slaying. in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2005; the trial in that case is scheduled for March. in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2005; the trial in that case is scheduled for March. Matthew is also charged in the sexual assault of a woman in Fairfax, Virginia, in 2005; the trial in that case is scheduled for March. Authorities said that in September 2005, a 26-year-old woman returning from a grocery store was grabbed from behind and sexually assaulted. The attacker was scared off by a passerby. Information from the 2005 victim led police to link Matthew to the case of another missing young woman, Morgan Harrington, a Virginia Tech student who vanished in Charlottesville in October 2009 and was found dead a few months later. Matthew has not been charged in that case. Investigators are looking into his possible connection to other similar cases in the area. They include the August 2009 killing of Virginia Tech students Heidi Childs and David Metzler and the October 2009 killing of 23-year-old Cassandra Morton of Lynchburg, Virginia. Police are also investigating Matthew's possible ties to the disappearance of 19-year-old Samantha Ann Clarke of Orange, Virginia. | 0 |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) - California voters on Tuesday were poised to choose two Democrats to face off against each other in the race to succeed Barbara Boxer in the U.S. Senate, shutting out Republicans in a sign of diminished support in America’s most populous state. State Attorney General Kamala Harris and U.S. Representative Loretta Sanchez will meet in what would be the state’s first single-party Senate election under a 2010 California law advancing the top two primary vote-getters to the general election, regardless of party affiliation. With 16 percent of precincts reporting in early returns on Tuesday, Harris, 51, led the crowded field of 34 candidates with 40 percent of the vote. None of the Republican contenders came close to Sanchez, 56, who was firmly in second place with 16 percent of the vote. Boxer, 75, a Democrat, is retiring after 24 years in the Senate. Republicans hold no statewide offices in California and represent about 27 percent of registered voters. The state, home to former Republican Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, last elected a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1988. On Tuesday, former California Republican Party chairman Duf Sundheim was in third place with 10 percent in early returns, followed by fellow Republican Phil Wyman with 6 percent. Harris is the daughter of two college professors. Of African-American and Indian descent, she was raised amid civil rights activism in Berkeley and Oakland, eventually becoming a prosecutor in San Francisco. She was elected attorney general in 2010 and 2014. For the primary, Harris ran a tightly controlled campaign, touting her role negotiating a settlement with big banks over the mortgage meltdown and using her position as the state’s top prosecutor to fight human trafficking, cyber crime and other issues. Sanchez, who represents Orange County near Los Angeles, has served in Congress since 1997. Her win in the once staunchly Republican county was an early sign of California’s demographic shift, as the state became more ethnically diverse and far more Democratic. Such a matchup could easily go negative, experts said, straining relationships within a party that are already bruised by the tense competition between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Clinton and Sanders also face off in California on Tuesday. “The fact that they’re both in the same party doesn’t mean they’re going to treat each other with kid gloves,” political analyst Sherry Bebitch Jeffe said of Harris and Sanchez. “When ideological and policy differences aren’t as great, it’s only natural for the candidates to focus on personal issues,” said Dan Schnur, who heads the Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. Sanchez, seeking to become the state’s first Latina U.S. senator, has raised less money than Harris and trails her by about 8 percentage points in polls. But factors including a recent surge in voter registration among Latinos will make her a strong competitor in the general election, analysts said. She has positioned herself more to the political center than her opponent. With support from Latinos, independents and Republicans, Sanchez could win in November despite Harris’ advantages, Schnur said. “We’re prepared for any turn in the race,” said Harris spokesman Nathan Click. A Sanchez campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. | 0 |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Obama don't see eye-to-eye on much. But there are ways for allies to get along even when their leaders don't.
It’s safe to say that President Obama was hoping for a different outcome in Israel’s election Tuesday – just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did little to hide his preference for Mitt Romney in the last American presidential election.
But Mr. Netanyahu will govern for an unprecedented fourth term that is likely to extend beyond Mr. Obama’s last day in office.
No one anticipates a sudden dissipation in the bad blood between the two leaders, nor that a relationship long deemed dysfunctional will suddenly transform into a happy marriage.
But a variety of constraints on both leaders suggest that United States-Israel relations aren’t likely to get worse, some diplomatic experts say. The US has had times when relations with other allies have degenerated, and they have recovered, at least to some degree.
In the meantime, the US and Israel could create channels that allow the states to work together in important ways while allowing the two leaders to avoid each other. That’s what happened between the US and France when Presidents George W. Bush and Jacques Chirac had widely divergent worldviews and little use for each other.
“It’s going to be a very heavy lift, given the history between these two leaders, but I think if we look at how relations got back on track between the US and France after the Iraq war, there is a lesson,” says Michael Singh, managing director specializing in US Mideast policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
In that case, the making up involved refocusing on vital mutual interests, including counterterrorism and national security issues. It was not carried out by the two leaders but by key aides, Mr. Singh says. “But what you did have was a commitment by the two leaders that this [repair of relations] was very important to do,” he adds.
Singh says he can “envision a channel being created” through which these “key aides” would perform the same task as those in the Franco-American case more than a decade ago: “preventing sharp policy differences from precluding cooperation between two close allies in areas of vital mutual interest.”
Obama’s pursuit of a nuclear agreement with Iran and Netanyahu’s campaign pledge never to allow creation of a Palestinian state while he is in office are two prime examples of the policy differences separating the two leaders.
But neither of these divisions is really new – suggesting that relations have little reason to worsen and might remain more or less the same for the remainder of Obama’s term, some experts say.
“It didn’t take Netanyahu’s reelection to convince anyone that while the Israeli-Palestinian process maybe wasn’t dead, it was frozen pretty hard, and no matter what happened [in the election] an Iran agreement appeared to be a done deal, or at least pretty close,” says Aaron David Miller, a Middle East expert with the Wilson Center who has held government posts in both Republican and Democratic administrations.
A number of factors will “tend to constrain what the administration is prepared to do to press the Israelis,” Mr. Miller says. These include unabated pro-Israeli congressional pressure, a US presidential campaign where all the candidates will be trumpeting their support for Israel, and shared US-Israel national security interests.
Miller points out that the Obama administration has “never gone beyond words to demonstrate its dissatisfaction with Israel,” and he doesn’t anticipate that happening now – simply because he doesn’t see how the US benefits by getting tough with Israel. “I just don’t see what ratcheting up [to concrete steps] gets the administration,” he says.
As a result, he says he can envision the US abstaining on (rather than vetoing) a United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israel over expanded settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. Or the US might support a Franco-Arab resolution proposing a “framework agreement” for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and creating a Palestinian state, Miller says.
And no matter how much the US and Israel may disagree on approaches to the Iran and Palestinian challenges, the reality is that they have common interests in how both play out, Singh says.
Israel may not like any Iran nuclear deal, but if one is reached Netanyahu will have as much interest as Obama in seeing that Iran honors its terms and is not secretly circumventing it, Singh says. At the same time, he adds, the US will have as much interest as Israel in seeing that the “vacuum” left by the absence of a peace process is not filled by something much worse.
“There’s no question it’s going to take hard work,” Singh says, “but I think it’s with sustained effort on these kinds of key mutual interests that you get the relationship back on track.” | 0 |
WASHINGTON — Russian military officials have vociferously denied that their airstrikes have killed civilians in Syria, going so far as to say that eyewitness accounts that a major hospital was bombed last year in the brutal fight to retake Aleppo were mere fabrications. But a new analysis that draws on satellite images, security camera videos, social media and even footage from the Russian television network has challenged Moscow’s claims that its airstrikes on behalf of the Syrian military were an exercise in prudent restraint. The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed. The analysis is presented in a report, “Breaking Aleppo,” which is to be made public on Monday by the Atlantic Council, a policy research center. The report comes as President Trump has signaled an interest in forging better connections with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which could include working more closely with the Russian military in Syria. “Throughout the entire length of the battle for Aleppo, there have been multiple claims of violations of human rights and multiple denials,” said Eliot Higgins, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. “What we have been able to present now is a wealth of evidence confirming the targeting of civilian structures, namely hospitals, which in certain cases has been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” he added. “We have been able to confirm the use in civilian areas of a variety of indiscriminate weapons. ” Syrian forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters, Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force and Russian air power, took Aleppo in late December. The capture of the city was an important milestone that gave the government of President Bashar control over all of Syria’s major cities and strengthened Moscow’s hand in discussions over the country’s future. But while the Atlantic Council report acknowledges that his victory in Aleppo has solidified Mr. Assad’s hold on power, at least for now, it argues that the ruthless strategy and tactics used by the Syrian and Russian governments would make the Syrian president “a poor if not harmful partner” in efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other extremist groups. Experts at the Atlantic Council have long urged the United States to do more to protect civilians in Syria and support the moderate opposition. In the report, the group employs hard evidence, including satellite images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite company, fresh accounts from Syrian activists on the ground and photography published by Russia’s Defense Ministry. Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by Mr. Higgins, a researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat. com. A reconstruction of one key episode — the July 16 bombing of another hospital, known as M2, in the Maadi district — was carried out by Forensic Architecture, a research organization at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was asked to take an independent look at the video and photographic evidence of the bombing. Aleppo was divided in July 2012 between and areas. With the support of Russia, the Assad government began a major offensive in September of last year to take the city. Fragile and temporary were used by the Syrians and their allies to prepare fresh offensives, which, despite Russian and Syrian denials, often targeted civilian areas. One claim that the Atlantic Council report challenges was issued by Lt. Gen. Sergei F. Rudskoi, the head of the operations directorate of the Russian general staff, who insisted in October that no damage had been done to the hospital in a Russian bombing raid. To buttress his case, General Rudskoi displayed satellite photos that he said had been taken between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. Eyewitness accounts to the contrary, he added, were “mere fakes. ” But a comparison of DigitalGlobe satellite photos taken on Sept. 25 and Oct. 13, the Atlantic Council report notes, shows the emergence of a large bomb crater near the hospital, also known as M10, and damage to the hospital building. Security camera videos from inside the hospital offer corroborating evidence of an Oct. 3 attack, as does a photo from the street by a local resident. The report concludes that there were several reasons to think the attacks on the medical centers were deliberate, including the large number of strikes, the Assad government’s knowledge of the terrain, and the Syrian government’s practice of confiscating medical supplies from humanitarian aid convoys. The M2 hospital was damaged by air and artillery strikes at least a dozen times between June and December. Other photographic evidence points to the use of incendiary munitions and cluster bombs. The television channel, Russia Today, provided some of the evidence in video footage it showed in June that had been taken at a Russian air base near Latakia, Syria. (The version of the report that was later uploaded to YouTube deleted the images of the weapons being mounted on a Russian warplane.) When a Russian team later entered eastern Aleppo to clear away unexploded ordnance, a photograph published by the Russian Defense Ministry showed the remains of cluster bombs, the Atlantic Council report notes. A variety of reports from victims and video on YouTube indicate that Syrian government attacks with chlorine gas increased in the final phase of the battle for Aleppo. One video “showed a chlorine gas cylinder with its labels intact,” the report said. The use of chlorine bombs by the Syrian government, Mr. Higgins said, continued even after reports confirming their use were made by the United Nations and an international watchdog organization in The Hague that enforces the ban on the use of chemical agents in war. | 0 |
DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Monday that a U.S. law allowing citizens to sue the kingdom over the Sept. 11 2001 attacks represented a threat to international relations and urged Congress to act to prevent any dangerous consequences from the new legislation. The cabinet, at its weekly meeting in the capital Riyadh, also said that the law, known as JASTA, represented a violation of a leading principle preventing lawsuits against governments that regulated international relations for hundreds of years. “Weakening this sovereign immunity will affect all countries, including the United States,” the statement by Saudi Information Minister Adel al-Toraifi, carried by Saudi state news agency SPA, said. “(The cabinet) expressed hope that wisdom will prevail and that the U.S. Congress would take the necessary steps to avoid the bad and dangerous consequences that may result from the JASTA legislation,” it added. The U.S. Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last Wednesday to approve legislation that will allow the families of those killed in the 2001 attacks on the United States to seek damages from the Saudi government. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Riyadh has always dismissed suspicions that it backed the attackers, who killed nearly 3,000 people under the banner of Islamist militant group al-Qaeda. Riyadh is one of Washington’s longest-standing and most important allies in the Middle East and part of a U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. The Saudi government lobbied strongly against JASTA, which stands for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, in the run-up to the vote, and warned it would undermine the principle of sovereign immunity. But Saudi officials stopped short of threatening any specific retaliation if the law was passed. | 1 |
21st Century Wire says Censorship is running rampant on the world s largest social media website.Watch a video of this report here:. Former Facebook workers have come out with shocking revelations that the social media giant is actively censoring conservative news topics and reports, while also falsifying its list of trending topics.The source says that workers routinely prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul, and other conservative topics from appearing in the highly-influential section, despite the fact that they were organically trending on the site.The workers were known as news curators , and even actively injected news stories and reports into the trending list even when they were not organically popular enough to be included.Facebook claims that the site s news trends section shows you topics that have recently become popular on Facebook , but these revelations mean that the section actually just reflects the personal biases of its owners and the institutional concerns of the corporation.The anonymous source said: Depending on who was on shift, things would be blacklisted or trending, I believe it had a chilling effect on conservative news, I d come on shift and I d discover that CPAC or Mitt Romney or Glenn Beck or popular conservative topics wouldn t be trending because either the curator didn t recognize the news topic or it was like they had a bias against Ted Cruz. The source kept an active log of the omissions, which included former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was accused by Republicans of inappropriately scrutinizing conservative groups; Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker; popular conservative news aggregator the Drudge Report; Chris Kyle, the former Navy SEAL who was murdered in 2013; and former Fox News contributor Steven Crowder.Yet, while omissions are worrying, the scariest aspect of this story is how Facebook actively injects falsified trends into the news feeds of its one billion users. The corporation can fraudulently set not only a national, but international, conversation on a topic of its choosing and also skew its bias toward which ever way its owners lean.The source continued: Facebook got a lot of pressure about not having a trending topic for Black Lives Matter. They realized it was a problem, and they boosted it in the ordering. They gave it preference over other topics. When we injected it, everyone started saying, Yeah, now I m seeing it as number one . The Black Lives Matter movement is widely credited as having originated from social media, but this suggests that its true origins lie elsewhere in the hands of very small group of elite news curators seeking to implement their own personal agenda in American politics.Facebook s response to these damning revelations is most definitely lacking: We take allegations of bias very seriously. Facebook is a platform for people and perspectives from across the political spectrum. Trending Topics shows you the popular topics and hashtags that are being talked about on Facebook. There are rigorous guidelines in place for the review team to ensure consistency and neutrality. These guidelines do not permit the suppression of political perspectives. Nor do they permit the prioritization of one viewpoint over another or one news outlet over another. These guidelines do not prohibit any news outlet from appearing in Trending Topics. READ MORE ON FACEBOOK S SCHEMING: 21st Century Wire Facebook Files | 0 |
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanese Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri said on Thursday Gulf Arab countries were planning no action against Lebanon after a political crisis last month thrust it onto the front line of rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Hariri has been a political ally of Saudi Arabia but his coalition government includes Lebanon s powerful Shi ite Muslim Hezbollah group, an ally of Shi ite Iran and sworn enemy of Sunni Muslim Riyadh. Last month s political crisis, sparked when Hariri announced his resignation while in Saudi Arabia, raised fear in Lebanon that Riyadh and its Gulf allies would take economic action against the tiny Mediterranean country. In an interview broadcast from Riyadh before he returned to Lebanon and rescinded his resignation, Hariri warned of possible Gulf sanctions on Lebanon and of a threat to the livelihood of Lebanese workers in Gulf states. His remarks on Thursday seemed aimed at reassuring that no such action was in the cards. This is not going to happen. I assure you we have the best relationship with Saudi Arabia, we have a very good relationship with the UAE, and most of the Gulf, he said at a business conference. The Gulf has a problem with one political party in Lebanon and does not have a problem with the whole of Lebanon, Hariri added, alluding to Hezbollah. | 1 |
It s no secret that the press has been after Trump in a YUGE (Trumpspeak for huge) way. No matter what candidate you re for, the way Trump s been treated while other candidates have been promoted is disturbing. The main stream media has been blatantly promoting Carly Fiorina and Marco Rubio. The one-sided bashing of Trump proves that the elitist media and elitist Washington politicos can t stand that an outsider has the lead. Here s a clip from the 60 Minutes interview with Trump where he s asked about being thin skinned . As usual, Trump doesn t skip a beat and tells the truth. Even if you don t care for Trump, he s certainly refreshing in that he gives no canned answers like the professional politicians. | 0 |
WASHINGTON/CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has moved since he took office last week to curb the flow of information from several government agencies involved in environmental issues, in actions that may have been designed to discourage dissenting views. Employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have seen directives from the newly minted leadership seeking to limit how they communicate to the public, according to multiple sources. The moves have reinforced concerns that Trump, a climate change doubter, could seek to sideline scientific research showing that carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels contributes to global warming, as well as the career staffers at the agencies that conduct much of this research. All of the agencies affected by the actions have some input on issues related to the environment and have been involved in various efforts related to climate change, including effects on natural resources and human health. On Tuesday, a source at the EPA said that staff had been told by members of the Trump administration not to speak to reporters or publish any press releases or blog posts on social media. EPA staff have also been asked not to publicize any talks, conferences, or webinars that had been planned for the next 60 days, the staffer said, asking not to be named. Asked if the EPA had been gagged, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Tuesday: “I don’t know ... we’re looking into it. ... I don’t think it’s a surprise we’re going to review the policies, but I don’t have any info at this time.” The agency also was asked by the White House on Monday to temporarily halt all contracts and grants pending a review, according to multiple sources. The EPA awards billions of dollars worth of grants and contracts every year to support programs around environmental testing, cleanups and research. “EPA staff have been reviewing grants and contracts information with the incoming transition team,” EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said in a statement. “The goal is to complete the grants and contracts review by the close of business on Friday, Jan. 27.” Environmental groups reacted with outrage. New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, said in reaction to the freeze that his office “will examine all legal options to ensure the EPA meets its obligations to keep our state’s air and water safe.” U.S. Department of Agriculture employees on Monday were also informed in a memo seen by Reuters that all communications with the media should be approved by the administration, and social media posts should be reviewed by managers “to remove references to policy priorities and initiatives of the previous Administration.” The department, meanwhile, disavowed another email sent on Monday to its scientific research unit ordering the suspension of releasing “any public-facing documents,” including news releases and photos, saying it was sent without permission and should not include a ban on publication of peer-reviewed scientific papers. Officials at HHS also received a memo ordering them not to send “any correspondence” to other public officials. Instead, they must refer any requests for information to senior leaders, who are not to do anything until they have received instructions from the White House staff on its policies, according to a source who read the memo. Last week, staff at the Interior Department were told to stop posting on Twitter after an employee retweeted posts about the relatively low attendance at Trump’s inauguration, and about how the issues of climate change and civil rights had disappeared from the White House website. The department has since resumed tweeting - though some tweets have been deleted. On Tuesday, Badlands National Park, located in South Dakota and part of the Department of Interior, posted a series of Tweets about climate change: “Today, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. #climate,” one of the tweets read. By Tuesday afternoon, the tweets were gone. A National Park Service official said the tweets had been posted to the Badlands National Park account by a former employee who was not authorized to use it. “The park was not told to remove the tweets but chose to do so when they realized that their account had been compromised,” the official said. National Park Service social media managers are being encouraged to use Twitter to post public safety and park information but not content related to national policy issues, the official said. Trump has promised to promote oil drilling and mining by cutting regulation, including by targeting former President Barack Obama’s initiative to combat climate change. Trump also has suggested pulling the United States out of a global pact on climate change signed by nearly 200 countries last year. Trump’s nominees to run the EPA, Interior and the Department of Agriculture - Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana and former Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue, respectively - are awaiting Senate confirmation. Trump has drawn heavily from the energy industry lobby and pro-drilling think tanks to build a team charged with preparing the EPA for its new leadership, according to a list of the newly introduced 10-member team seen by Reuters on Monday. An EPA spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | 0 |
There is no other President in the history of the United States who has mastered the art of going around Congress to achieve his radical goals, better than Barack Hussein Obama. In normal times, this scenario would not be of concern to every day Americans. We are not however, living in normal times. We are living in time where our President has actually stated that his goal is to fundamentally transform the United States of America Pray for our nation.The Senate is currently in recess until February 22. The recess began on Friday. Whether this opens an opportunity for a recess appointment depends upon how Senate leaders interpret an adjournment resolution approved last Friday. That will determine whether it will meet for brief activity during the recess, which could close that opportunity.Here s the scenario in which President Obama may be able to appoint a temporary Supreme Court Justice: The Constitution not only assigns to the president the task of making nominations to the Supreme Court, setting off Senate review that may or may not result in approval, but it also gives the Chief Executive the opportunity to fill a vacancy on the Court temporarily, bypassing the Senate initially, if a nominee languishes in the Senate without final action.Within a few hours after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, it became abundantly clear that, first, President Obama will choose a possible successor and try to get the Senate to go along, and, second, the GOP leadership of the Senate say they will try to block any such nominee from final approval.If that does result in an impasse, President Obama may ponder the possibility of putting on the Court a new Justice of his choosing, to serve temporarily. The problem, though, is that less than two years ago, the Supreme Court severely narrowed the flexibility of such temporary appointment power, and strengthened the Senate s capacity to frustrate such a presidential maneuver.It is true that one of the Justices regarded as a giant on the Court s history, William J. Brennan, Jr., actually began his lengthy career with just such a short-term appointment. The chances of that happening again today seem to have diminished markedly.The presidential authority at issue in this possible scenario exists, according to Article II, when the Senate has gone into recess and the vacancy a president seeks to fill remains. Such an appointment requires no action at all by the Senate, but the appointee can only serve until the end of the following Senate session. The president (if still in office) can then try again during a new Senate session, by making a new nomination, and that must be reviewed by the Senate.The Supreme Court had never clarified that power until its decision in June 2014 in National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning.The decision was something of a compromise. The Court expanded the concept of when the Senate would be in recess so that the president could make a temporary appointment, but it also gave the Senate more control over when it does recess and how long the recesses last. The gesture toward the Senate s choices was probably the more important result.Here, specifically, is what the Court decided:First, on the president s side, the Court ruled that the recess appointment power applies when the Senate leaves town for a break in the middle of an annual sitting, or a break at the end of each annual session.Second, also on the president s side, the decision declared that the president during a recess can fill a vacancy even if the opening occurred well before the recess began.Third, on the Senate s side, the ruling made clear that it has to last more than three days, without saying how much more time must pass without the Senate out of town and doing nothing.Fourth, strongly on the Senate s side, the decision left it largely up to the Senate to decide when it does take a recess, allowing it to avoid the formality of a recess by taking some legislative action, however minor or inconsequential and however few senators actually take part in some action.Suppose President Obama goes ahead with a nomination to the open seat on the Court, and suppose that the Republican-controlled Senate chooses not to allow that nominee. The GOP has enough seats in the Senate to control that scenario.Suppose, then, that the Senate goes into recess to allow its members who are running for reelection to spend some more time campaigning back home.Could President Obama make a nominee during that recess? Only if the Senate is taking a recess lasting longer than three days, and does not come in from time to time during that recess to take some minimal legislative action. Both of those circumstances would be entirely within the Senate s authority.In that circumstance, a recess appointment to the Court would not be within the terms of the Constitution, as spelled out in Article II.Read more: scotusblog | 0 |
. Mr Netanyahu has presented this as a rebuff to those who accuse him of jeopardising Israeli security interests with his governments repeated affronts to the White House.
In the past weeks alone, defence minister Avigdor Lieberman has compared last years nuclear deal between Washington and Iran with the 1938 Munich pact, which bolstered Hitler; and Mr Netanyahu has implied that US opposition to settlement expansion is the same as support for the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
American president Barack Obama, meanwhile, hopes to stifle his own critics who insinuate that he is anti-Israel. The deal should serve as a fillip too for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic partys candidate to succeed Mr Obama in Novembers election.
In reality, however, the Obama administration has quietly punished Mr Netanyahu for his misbehaviour. Israeli expectations of a $4.5bn-a-year deal were whittled down after Mr Netanyahu stalled negotiations last year as he sought to recruit Congress to his battle against the Iran deal.
In fact, Israel already receives roughly $3.8bn if Congresss assistance on developing missile defence programmes is factored in. Notably, Israel has been forced to promise not to approach Congress for extra funds.
The deal takes into account neither inflation nor the dollars depreciation against the shekel.
A bigger blow still is the White Houses demand to phase out a special exemption that allowed Israel to spend nearly 40 per cent of aid locally on weapon and fuel purchases. Israel will soon have to buy all its armaments from the US, ending what amounted to a subsidy to its own arms industry.
Nonetheless, Washingtons renewed military largesse in the face of almost continual insults inevitably fuels claims that the Israeli tail is wagging the US dog. Even The New York Times has described the aid package as too big.
Since the 1973 war, Israel has received at least $100bn in military aid, with more assistance hidden from view. Back in the 1970s, Washington paid half of Israels military budget. Today it still foots a fifth of the bill, despite Israels economic success.
But the US expects a return on its massive investment. As the late Israeli politician-general Ariel Sharon once observed, Israel has been a US aircraft carrier in the Middle East, acting as the regional bully and carrying out operations that benefit Washington.
Almost no one blames the US for Israeli attacks that wiped out Iraqs and Syrias nuclear programmes. A nuclear-armed Iraq or Syria would have deterred later US-backed moves at regime overthrow, as well as countering the strategic advantage Israel derives from its own nuclear arsenal.
In addition, Israels US-sponsored military prowess is a triple boon to the US weapons industry, the countrys most powerful lobby. Public funds are siphoned off to let Israel buy goodies from American arms makers. That, in turn, serves as a shop window for other customers and spurs an endless and lucrative game of catch-up in the rest of the Middle East.
The first F-35 fighter jets to arrive in Israel in December their various components produced in 46 US states will increase the clamour for the cutting-edge warplane.
Israel is also a front-line laboratory, as former Israeli army negotiator Eival Gilady admitted at the weekend, that develops and field-tests new technology Washington can later use itself.
The US is planning to buy back the missile interception system Iron Dome which neutralises battlefield threats of retaliation it largely paid for. Israel works closely too with the US in developing cyberwarfare, such as the Stuxnet worm that damaged Irans civilian nuclear programme.
But the clearest message from Israels new aid package is one delivered to the Palestinians: Washington sees no pressing strategic interest in ending the occupation. It stood up to Mr Netanyahu over the Iran deal but will not risk a damaging clash over Palestinian statehood.
Some believe that Mr Obama signed the aid package to win the credibility necessary to overcome his domestic Israel lobby and pull a rabbit from the hat: an initiative, unveiled shortly before he leaves office, that corners Mr Netanyahu into making peace.
Hopes have been raised by an expected meeting at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday. But their first talks in 10 months are planned only to demonstrate unity to confound critics of the aid deal.
If Mr Obama really wanted to pressure Mr Netanyahu, he would have used the aid agreement as leverage. Now Mr Netanyahu need not fear US financial retaliation, even as he intensifies effective annexation of the West Bank.
Mr Netanyahu has drawn the right lesson from the aid deal he can act against the Palestinians with continuing US impunity.
- See more at: http://www.jonathan-cook.net/2016-09-19/palestinians-lose-in-us-military-aid-deal-with-israel/#sthash.fL4Eq28N.dpuf Forget the FBI Cache; The Podesta Emails Show How America is Run By Thomas Frank
November 01, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " The Guardian " - T he emails currently roiling the US presidential campaign are part of some unknown digital collection amassed by the troublesome Anthony Weiner, but if your purpose is to understand the clique of people who dominate Washington today, the emails that really matter are the ones being slowly released by WikiLeaks from the hacked account of Hillary Clintons campaign chair John Podesta. They are last weeks scandal in a year running over with scandals, but in truth their significance goes far beyond mere scandal: they are a window into the soul of the Democratic party and into the dreams and thoughts of the class to whom the party answers.
The class to which I refer is not rising in angry protest; they are by and large pretty satisfied, pretty contented. Nobody takes road trips to exotic West Virginia to see what the members of this class looks like or how they live; on the contrary, they are the ones for whom such stories are written. This bunch doesnt have to make do with a comb-over TV mountebank for a leader; for this class, the choices are always pretty good, and this year they happen to be excellent.
They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.
Let us turn the magnifying glass on them for a change, by sorting through the hacked personal emails of John Podesta, who has been a Washington power broker for decades. I admit that I feel uncomfortable digging through this hoard; stealing someones email is a crime, after all, and it is outrageous that peoples personal information has been exposed, since WikiLeaks doesnt seem to have redacted the emails in any way. There is also the issue of authenticity to contend with: we dont know absolutely and for sure that these emails were not tampered with by whoever stole them from John Podesta. The supposed authors of the messages are refusing to confirm or deny their authenticity, and though they seem to be real, there is a small possibility they arent.
Republican nominee hunkers down at Valley Forge; surrogates spread out as campaign enters final week; Clinton camp accuses FBI of double standards
With all that taken into consideration, I think the WikiLeaks releases furnish us with an opportunity to observe the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy in all its righteousness and majesty.
The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.
Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillarys ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt, smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous email chain, for example, the reader can watch current US trade representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address in 2008, appear to name President Obamas cabinet even before the great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an important clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put out of its misery).
The far-sighted innovators of Silicon Valley are also here in force, interacting all the time with the leaders of the party of the people. We watch as Podesta appears to email Sheryl Sandberg. He makes plans to visit Mark Zuckerberg (who, according to one missive, wants to learn more about next steps for his philanthropy and social action). Podesta exchanges emails with an entrepreneur about an ugly race now unfolding for Silicon Valleys seat in Congress; this man, in turn, appears to forward to Podesta the remarks of yet another Silicon Valley grandee, who complains that one of the Democratic combatants in that fight was criticizing billionaires who give to Democrats. Specifically, the miscreant Dem in question was said to be:
spinning (and attacking) donors who have supported Democrats. John Arnold and Marc Leder have both given to Cory Booker, Joe Kennedy, and others. He is also attacking every billionaire that donates to [Congressional candidate] Ro [Khanna], many whom support other Democrats as well.
Attacking billionaires! In the year 2015! It was, one of the correspondents appears to write, madness and political malpractice of the party to allow this to continue.
There are wonderful things to be found in this treasure trove when you search the gilded words Davos or Tahoe. But it is when you search Vineyard on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these people truly inhabit a different world from the rest of us. By vineyard, of course, they mean Marthas Vineyard, the ritzy vacation resort island off the coast of Massachusetts where presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their summer vacations. The Vineyard is a place for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but as we learn from these emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of enlightened liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever achieve.
Consider, for example, the 2015 email from a foundation executive to a retired mortgage banker (who then seems to have forwarded the note on to Podesta, and thus into history) expressing concern that Hillarys image is being torn apart in the media and theres not enough effective push back. The public eavesdrops as yet another financier invites Podesta to a dinner featuring food produced exclusively by the islands farmers and fishermen which will be matched with specially selected wines. We learn how a Hillary campaign aide recommended that a policy statement appear on a certain day so that It wont get in the way of any other news we are trying to make but far enough ahead of Hamptons and Vineyard money events. We even read the pleadings of a man who wants to be invited to a state dinner at the White House and who offers, as one of several exhibits in his favor, the fact that he joined the DSCC Majority Trust in Marthas Vineyard (contributing over $32,400 to Democratic senators) in July 2014.
(Hilariously, in another email chain , the Clinton team appears to scheme to hit Bernie Sanders for attending DSCC retreats on Marthas Vineyard with lobbyists.)
Then there is the apparent nepotism, the dozens if not hundreds of mundane emails in which petitioners for this or that plum Washington job or high-profile academic appointment politely appeal to Podesta the ward-heeler of the meritocratic elite for a solicitous word whispered in the ear of a powerful crony.
This genre of Podesta email, in which people try to arrange jobs for themselves or their kids, points us toward the most fundamental thing we know about the people at the top of this class: their loyalty to one another and the way it overrides everything else. Of course Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should come from the industry itself. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration. Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one anothers careers, constantly.
Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the Global CEO Advisory Firm that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.
But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, its all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you arent part of this happy, prosperous in-group if you dont have John Podestas email address youre out. | 1 |
Wayne LaPierre has a way about him that defines a**hole. maybe it s the condescending look his beady little eyes get from behind those frameless glasses. Maybe it s the tone in his voice as he declares that the tens of thousands of U.S. gun deaths since his tenure began have nothing to do with guns.Or maybe we all remember his impassioned call for more guns in our schools after 20 1st graders were gunned down on one of the coldest days in American history.No matter the reason you may despise Wayne LaPierre, the fact remains the he is despicable. He s a disgusting human being whose moral code has been lost to the cold hard cash of the gun manufacturers who want as many guns as possible in the hands of whoever has the money to buy one.Understanding all of that, this video will enrage you. LaPierre has decided to challenge President Obama to a one-on-one gun control debate. His terms are that the debate be one hour with a moderator, no pre-screened questions and no long answers.It s difficult for the ammosexual mind to come up with much other than criminals won t follow laws, so the last stipulation isn t really that surprising. He may want to consult with Taya Kyle before he assumes that the president isn t willing to answer tough questions from the opposition.Rather than simply issue the challenge, LaPierre attached it to 8 minutes of propaganda attacking not only the president s stance on gun control but also the affordable care act and yes, you guessed it Benghazi. He calls the president a tyrant who ignores the constitution just before he calls on him to mobilize a national force to turn Chicago upside down in search of felons and criminals with guns.Because sending the National Guard to black communities to illegally search the residents and their homes without warrants or probable cause is just fine, but asking law-abiding white folks to fill out a form and wait ten minutes is an egregious act of tyranny.The entire video is nothing but a propaganda piece aimed at keeping the far-right extremists mobilized and ready to do things like occupy the Oregon wilderness in the name of Murica or shoot up a Planned Parenthoood office in the name of life. In the very least he wants the status quo conservative argument of fear for your guns to weigh on the minds of every idiot who believes their firearm is the most important thing in their lives.You can watch the ridiculous challenge and the bloviating blowhard who issued it in the video below. If ever there was a time to have a puke bucket nearby, this is it. https://www.facebook.com/NationalRifleAssociation/videos/10154021771331833/?permPage=1Featured image via screen capture | 1 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the United Nations for bloated bureaucracy and mismanagement on his first visit on Monday to U.N. headquarters, calling for truly bold reforms so it could be a greater force for world peace. Ahead of his maiden speech to the annual U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, Trump hosted a short event to boost support for changes to the United Nations. In recent years the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement, while the United Nations on a regular budget has increased by 140 percent and its staff has more than doubled since 2000, Trump said. The United Nations must hold every level of management accountable, protect whistleblowers and focus on results rather than on process, Trump said. I am confident that if we work together and champion truly bold reforms the United Nations will emerge as a stronger, more effective, more just and greater force for peace and harmony in the world, Trump said in his first remarks at the U.N. in New York since his inauguration as president in January. In a building where long statements are commonplace, Trump spoke for just four minutes. Some 128 countries were invited to attend Monday s reform meeting after signing on to a U.S.-drafted 10-point political declaration backing efforts by U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to initiate effective, meaningful reform. U.N. Security Council veto powers Russia and China did not sign the declaration. Businessman Trump, who complained during his 2016 election campaign about the United States paying a disproportionate amount of money to the United Nations, made the point again on Monday. We must ensure that no one and no member state shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden and that s militarily or financially. The United States is the biggest U.N. contributor, providing 22 percent of its $5.4 billion biennial core budget and 28.5 percent of its $7.3 billion peacekeeping budget. The contributions are agreed on by the 193-member General Assembly. Guterres, who also took office in January, told the meeting: To serve the people we support and the people who support us, we must be nimble and effective, flexible and efficient. He agreed that U.N bureaucracy was a problem that kept him up at night. Our shared objective is a 21st century U.N. focused more on people and less on process, Guterres said. Value for money while advancing shared values that is our common goal. Trump also said that all peacekeeping missions should have clearly defined goals and metrics for evaluating success. The United States is reviewing each of the U.N. peacekeeping missions as annual mandates come up for Security Council renewal in a bid to cut costs. The United States is a veto-wielding council member, along with Britain, France, Russia and China. On Sunday night, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson met with U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. When asked if the U.N. refugee agency could perform its current missions if the United States cut its voluntary contributions to the budget, according to a pool report Grandi answered: I would say no. U.S. aid is vital to what we do to support refugees around the world and to find solutions to their situations, Grandi said. | 1 |
America has a very ugly history with regards to slavery and racism, and that disgusting legacy continues today. Racist white people want to gloss over all of that, though, and pretend that there s no racism, that it s all over, and they also want to tell a white-washed version of history. Case in point David Barton.Barton appeared on a recent edition of Glenn Beck s program, and made the appallingly racist statement that white people don t get enough credit for the things they have done for black people. He told Beck: I love the fact that in these early paintings you have, there s black and white together. But, my gosh, why not teach the good. As if that weren t bad enough he went on to say: So much of the credit that blacks owed was for whites having gone to bat and doing things for them. That blacks were not able to free themselves, whites did. Barton then insists that it is inaccurate portrayals of history that have blacks against whites now, and kept repeating so-called examples of how black people should be grateful to white folks.Mr. Barton, did you happen to forget that white people owned black people, that they actually owned other human beings, all because of the color of their skin? It s ignorant, offensive statements like this that cause division. You might not like history, how ugly it is, but that doesn t make it any less true. Also, if true history is not taught, we are doomed to repeat it. Get an education, Mr. Barton. You definitely need it.Watch this appallingly racist exchange below:Featured image via screen capture from Right Wing Watch | 1 |
Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for another LIVE broadcast of The Boiler Room starting at 6:00 PM PST | 8:00 PM CST | 9:00 PM EST for this special broadcast. Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore along with Jay Dyer, Andy Nowicki and Daniel Spaulding of Soul of the East for the 84th episode of BOILER ROOM. Dim the lights, dawn the headphones and indulge in a post-election special broadcast of Boiler Room with the crew. This week we re going examining the media backlash from the #DiscreditedMedia (RIP Mainstream Media) that opposed a Trump Presidency, announcing the release of Jay Dyer s first book and much more.Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved!BOILER ROOM IS NOT A POLICTALLY CORRECT ZONE! LISTEN TO THE SHOW IN THE PLAYER BELOW ENJOY!Listen to Boiler Room #84 The Discredited Media Strikes Back on Spreaker.Reference Links: | 1 |
Another winner for America and for President Trump! The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the travel ban! Guess who voted against it Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place. Is anyone surprised by the two lefty judges? Not us!Fox News reports:Handing the White House a huge judicial victory, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled in favor of President Trump s travel ban affecting residents of six majority-Muslim countries.The justices said the policy can take full effect despite multiple legal challenges against it that haven t yet made their way through the court system.The ban applies to people from Syria, Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.Lower courts had said people from those countries with a bona fide relationship with someone in the United States could not be prevented from entry.Grandparents and cousins were among the relatives courts said could not be excluded.The nine-member high court said in two one-page orders late Monday afternoon that lower court rulings that partly blocked the ban should be put on hold while appeals courts in Richmond, Va., and San Francisco take up the case.Liberal-leaning Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have left the lower court orders in place.Both courts are scheduled to hear arguments in those cases this week.Both courts are also dealing with the issue on an accelerated basis, and the Supreme Court noted it expects those courts to reach decisions with appropriate dispatch. Quick resolution by appellate courts would allow the Supreme Court to hear and decide the issue this term, by the end of June.Trump s travel ban has been challenged in separate lawsuits by Hawaii and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both have argued the ban discriminates against Muslims and should not go into effect under immigration laws. | 0 |
Do you have a friend, a co-worker or (in my case) a relative who supports Bernie Sanders? Instead of trying to explain the danger of socialism in America to them (the equivalent of beating your head against a brick wall), share this very informative video: | 0 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A draft law allowing Moscow to designate foreign media as foreign agents gives Russia a tool to reciprocate to restrictions Washington has imposed on Russian media operating in the United States, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. He said it was too early to say how tough the law would be as the draft, approved on second reading by the lower house of parliament on Wednesday, did not spell out how it would be applied in practice. | 1 |
Penn Jillette doesn t want Donald Trump to run for president, and apparently, neither does Bloomberg News. They asked Penn to create a new card trick representing Trump s campaign, and it apparently only took him a few seconds to do so, because that s how much of a disaster Trump s campaign is.He starts with a deck of cards and it seems like an ordinary, pick a card, stick it back in the deck and I ll find it card trick. He then explains how all the shuffling cards while talking around is misdirection, and uses that as an analogy for many of Trump s outlandish statements.The video even shows Trump making some of his idiotic statements and lies, like his repeated attacks on the Khan family, his misogynistic blood coming out of her wherever slam of Megyn Kelly, and his claim that he wouldn t lose support even if he shot someone in the middle of 5th Avenue.But it s the trick itself, and the ending that are the real gems of the video. Watch below:Trump s campaign isn t a train wreck waiting to happen, it s a flat-out train wreck, especially given the week he s had. Come November, his campaign will end the same way this card trick does.Featured image via screen capture from embedded video | 1 |
Sounds great how about a new car?An immigrant-rights group proposed a Bill of Rights for illegal immigrants Thursday, demanding that Americans recognize there are millions already in the country who deserve health care, in-state tuition rates for college and a guarantee of citizenship in the long term.The list of demands runs 10 items long the same as the U.S. Constitution s Bill of Rights and also calls for an end to arrests and deportations for all law-abiding undocumented Americans. The document was circulated by United We Stay, which is a group of illegal immigrants, first generation Americans and human rights activists pushing for changes to immigration law. We know we have human rights, even though our very presence is deemed illegal and our existence alien. Now we have our own Bill of Rights and we want it to be the framework for every immigration decision going forward from the local to the national level, the group said in a statement announcing their demands.The 10 points include a demand that they be accorded respect; calls for citizenship rights and an immediate deferment of deportations; in-state tuition at public colleges; wage equality ; medical care; and protection against deportation if illegal immigrants report a crime as a witness.The list also includes a specific demand for compelled authorization of birth certificates for our U.S.-born children. That appears to be pushback against the state of Texas, where officials have ruled that parents must present valid ID to get children s birth certificates and have deemed the Mexican government s Matricula Consular ID card not to be acceptable as primary identification.A federal court has allowed that Texas policy to go into effect, ruling that there are questions about the reliability of the Mexican cards and that state officials have an interest in making sure only authorized relatives are able to get birth certificates.The list of rights begins with a protest against the terms illegal and alien. Immigrant-rights advocates say both terms are dehumanizing, and have offered undocumented workers or, in the case of United We Stand, Undocumented Americans, as their preferred term.The document is meant to serve as a goalpost for the ongoing immigration debate. Immigrant-rights groups had been gaining ground in recent years, with polls suggesting Americans were increasingly open to legalization.A legalization bill even passed the Senate in 2013 but Democrats, who controlled the chamber, never sent it to the GOP-run House for action.The issue then stalled last year after President Obama took unilateral action to grant a deportation amnesty to as many as 5 million of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. Federal courts have put that amnesty on hold, but Mr. Obama s other policies stopping deportations for most illegal immigrants remain in place, which has effectively checked off one of the list of rights demands. Via: Washington Times | 1 |
Council of Elders Intended to Set Up Anti-ISIS Coalition by Jason Ditz, October 31, 2016 Share This
ISIS has killed a number of Afghan tribal elders and wounded several more in Nangarhar Province’s main city of Jalalabad today, with a suicide bomber from the group targeting a meeting of the council of elders in the city.
The details are still scant, but ISIS claims that the council was established in part to discuss the formation of a tribal anti-ISIS coalition in the area. They claimed 15 killed and 25 wounded, labeling the victims “apostates.”
Afghan government officials put the toll a lot lower, saying only four were killed and seven wounded in the attack. Nangarhar is the main base of operations for ISIS forces in Afghanistan, though they’ve recently begun to pop up around several other provinces.
Whether the council was at the point of establishing an anti-ISIS coalition or not, this is in keeping with the group’s reaction to any sign of growing local resistance, with ISIS having similarly made an example of tribal groups in Iraq and Syria during their establishment there. Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz | 1 |
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A video uploaded in 2013 called “Marine vs. Thug” is nearing five million views on YouTube. People just love seeing disrespectful bottom-feeders get what’s coming to them, I suppose!
While riding on the subway, a thug decided to attack a US Marine for no apparent reason. He quickly found out what a horrible idea that was, though.
The thug left the subway with his life, but certainly not his pride…
Watch: | 1 |
The most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States is allegedly thinking of throwing his hat into the ring as a Democrat contender in the 2020 Presidential race. What better way to invigorate crooked Democrats than to call on the very people who had his back at the DOJ to keep attacking President Trump?Former Attorney General Eric Holder spoke in Los Angeles last week to promote a bill that some observers say would make California a sanctuary state, an appearance that he says is the start of a new phase of his career in which he plans to reenter the world of politics. Up to now, I have been more behind-the-scenes, Holder told Yahoo News in a new interview published Tuesday, describing his plans. But that s about to change. Holder, who served as former President Barack Obama s first attorney general, indicated that his goal is to head the legal resistance to President Donald Trump s agenda. But that may just be the tip of the iceberg.Three sources who have spoken to Holder and are familiar with his thinking told Yahoo that he may consider challenging Trump in 2020 for the White House. Now is the time to be more visible, Holder said. Now is the time to be heard. Holder made his voice heard on Twitter yesterday, as he called on the DOJ and FBI to keep up their attacks on President Trump:To the career men & women at DOJ/FBI: your actions and integrity will be unfairly questioned. Be prepared, be strong. Duty. Honor. Country. Eric Holder (@EricHolder) June 30, 2017Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton whose legal group has helped to expose numerous Holder scandals had this to say about Eric Holder s tweet:Obama's first corrupt AG encourages continued Deep State attacks on @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/9dacBFmdZd Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) July 1, 2017Eric Holder s scandalsContempt of Congress On June 28, 2012, Eric Holder became the first and only US Attorney General in American history to be held in Contempt of Congress on both civil and criminal grounds. The US House vote was 255-67, with Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and 16 other Democrats walking out in protest and refusing to vote. President Obama called the action politically motivated and cited Executive Privilege for refusing to remove his own Attorney General. It then fell on Eric Holder s own Justice Dept to prosecute him, which it declined to do.Black Power Eric Holder s earliest scandal dates back to his college days at Columbia. There, he was campus leader of a black power organization and a public supporter of the Black Panther Party. He organized sit-ins at the school demanding that the ROTC office be officially renamed in honor of Malcolm X.Fort Hood cover-up After the 2009 Fort Hood massacre by US Army Major Nidal Hasan which took 13 lives, the Justice Dept report on the incident refused to mention Hasan s extreme Islamic beliefs and instead ruled the mass shooting a workplace incident, not an act of terror.Spying on Associated Press The Justice Dept was caught spying on Associated Press by collecting months worth of phone records at the news wire, as well as the home phones of reporters and editors. The telephone records the DoJ secretly investigated included the phones at the AP s offices in Washington DC, New York, Hartford, and even the AP s phone inside the US House of Representatives.Spying on Fox News The DoJ monitored the personal email and phone of a Fox News reporter, as well as the Fox News phones in New York and Washington. The Justice Dept said the news outlet had temporarily lost its press freedom when its reporter received classified information from a CIA whistleblower.War on Gun Owners AG Holder has said that his interpretation of the US Constitution is that the Second Amendment guaranteeing the right to keep and bear arms only applies to the Militia. And to him, the Militia is the modern day National Guard and Reserves. Researchers have pointed out that in every instance where state and local authorities have sought the legal advice from the DoJ on proposed gun control laws, the Justice Dept has approved every single one.Protecting Black Power and Voter Intimidation On Election Day in 2008, the New Black Panther Party had set up at Philadelphia polling places, threatening white voters, hurling racial slurs and stopping white voters from voting. The tactics were caught on video and the assailants were identified. After a national outrage, the DoJ refused to take action on either the hate crimes or the Voting Rights violations.Stimulus Program Out of President Obama s $800 billion 2009 Stimulus Program , AG Holder was handed $1 billion of the money to be handed out to local law enforcement officials across the country. Most of the stimulus money turned out to be used as kick-backs to Obama campaign contributors, including Eric Holder who himself was a top campaign bundler for the 2008 Obama campaign.Foreigners voting in US Elections Through his entire tenure, the Attorney General has steadfastly insisted that voters not be required to prove their identity when casting a ballot. The AG publicly touts that his DoJ has challenged two dozen state laws and Governor s executive orders requiring voters to show an official ID before voting.Foreign Terrorists have Rights The DoJ declared that foreign terrorists captured almost anywhere other than a military battlefield were entitled to the same civil rights as US citizens.Buying the Justice Dept In his book Extortion , author Peter Schweizer details how President Obama chose the people who would head his Justice Dept he sold the positions. When President Obama established his Justice Department staff after the 2008 election, something unprecedented happened, Schweizer writes, For the first time, at least half a dozen senior positions were occupied by individuals who had been campaign bundlers (fund raisers) for a presidential candidate, including not only Attorney General Eric Holder but also senior officials who dealt with criminal and civil prosecutions. Those high level Justice Dept appointees who are accused of buying their jobs are, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli, Deputy Associate Attorney General Karol Mason, and Associate Attorney General Tony West. Stealing 1,000,000 American Homes Immediately after the housing collapse of 2007 and the economic collapse of 2008, America s largest mortgage lenders began criminally foreclosing on hundreds of thousands of American families without cause and using robo-signing machines . Most didn t even have mortgages, much less with those banks. Sheriff s across the country removed a half million American families at gun point for no legitimate reason, only because banks had fraudulently filed foreclosure papers. The number of victims was so large, the DoJ cut off new claimants in 2012 when the number of properties stolen by six Wall Street banks hit 750,000. Since then, hundreds of thousands more families have been refused any justice or reimbursement at all by AG Holder. And for the 750,000 families the Justice Dept sued the banks for and settled with, the banks were ordered to pay each family an average of $2,000 each $2,000 as total reimbursement for a $100,000 home criminally stolen, and all the furniture and possessions inside when the bank and police forced the families into the street. The settlement negotiated by the Justice Dept also bars the victims from ever suing the banks to get their money back. The five banks that stole one million American homes and businesses and were protected by AG Holder and the DoJ were Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Ally Financial.Prosecuting Journalists When Anonymous hackers leaked documents from Defense Dept contractors showing that the corporation had a program to spy on the American people inside and outside their homes, a number of news outlets covered the story. Three, including the New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica, along with a handful of freelance journalists, included links to the leaked material online where it was posted by Anonymous for the whole world to see. The DoJ arrested and prosecuted one freelance reporter, charging him with 17 different criminal counts, all because he included the same website link that the other publications published for their readers.Protecting UBS Bank When the DoJ was forced to sue UBS bank for defrauding its customers, AG Holder had to recuse himself because UBS was his former client when he worked at a Washington law firm.Protecting Illegal Immigrants In 2010, the Arizona Legislature passed a law giving its State Police the authority to check the immigration status of anyone police suspected of being here illegally. The DoJ sued the state of Arizona to overturn the law, insisting it was the DoJ s privilege to enforce the country s immigration laws, not the states.Jon Corzine and MF Global Connection Former Democratic New Jersey US Senator Jon Corzine left office to lead the financial firm MF Global, where he stole, pocketed or gambled away $1.6 billion he authorized taking from customers bank accounts. The bank s law firm at the time was Covington & Burlington. Both AG Holder and Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer were recent employees of that firm. The DoJ chose Associate Attorney General Tony West to prosecute Corzine and MF Global. West came from the firm Morrison & Foerester, which was handling MF Global s assets at the time.DoJ Hiring Discrimination In 2011, documents were revealed showing that AG Holder and the Justice Dept s Civil Rights Division used political litmus tests to hire employees. After President Obama s election in 2008, Holder publicly announced that the Justice Department was going to be looking for people who share our values. FBI Assassination Plot of Occupy Wall St leaders In 2011, two separate FBI offices Houston and Jacksonville published internal memos detailing a proposal to identify, photograph and assassinate Occupy Wall Street leaders using snipers. MIT students sued for the details and won. But the DoJ only turned over partial excerpts of 5 of the 17 known FBI documents on the secret project. AG Holder has refused to release the remaining documents or explain the secret assassination program at all.Lying to Congress In 2011, the DoJ admitted to providing false testimony to Congress in their investigation of the Justice Dept and Fast and Furious.Assassinating American Citizens With the targeted killing of Americans beginning in 2011, President Obama became the first President to order the death of an American citizen without charge, trial or conviction. He went on to assassinate an American child using the same secret targeted killing program. AG Holder not only publicly approved the President s legal authority, but personally endorsed it.Fast and Furious In 2012, the US House voted AG Eric Holder in Contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over thousands of documents exposing the true account of the DoJ s secret gun trafficking operation which supplied over 2,000 military weapons to Mexican drug cartels. The gun-running operation began in 2009 and was run out of the Phoenix US Attorney s office along with the BATF.Protecting Mexican Drug Lords In 2012, national media outlets confirmed that the drug lord and prime target of the DoJ s secret Fast and Furious operation, Manuel Celis-Acosta, was actually taken into custody by the Justice Dept twice during the program. But both times the DoJ released him without charges.Anti-white prosecutions In 2013, when the violent knockout game trend was circulating social media, the DoJ got involved and prosecuted a perpetrator for hate crimes. But while the dozens of videoed attackers were all black and admitted targeting white victims, AG Holder found the only known white perpetrator and charged him instead.Too Big to Jail In 2013, AG Holder testified before Congress answering America s question of why not a single banker went to jail for the criminal activity that led to the global economic collapse in 2008. He explained that Wall Street financial institutions had become too big and too important. He freely admitted that the Justice Department had its hands tied and couldn t prosecute any of the banks for fear that it would lead to their collapse and that would lead to another global financial crash.Spying on Americans In 2012, two US Senators warned the American people that they d be horrified if they knew how President Obama and AG Holder were interpreting and executing the Patriot Act. Forbidden by law from telling America themselves, the US Senators called on the AG to declassify the DoJ s interpretation of the counter-terrorism law. AG Holder refused. The ACLU sued and the Supreme Court agreed. The DoJ still refuses.Protecting Senators Reid and Lee In 2012, the DoJ announced it would not get involved in a criminal investigation of US Senators Harry Reid and Mike Lee. In a multi-state criminal scandal that already forced the Utah Attorney General to resign, local Republican and Democrat District Attorneys asked the DoJ for help because the two accused criminals are US Senators. AG Eric Holder refused. After ABC News broke the story, one outlet described the criminal accusations against Senators Reid and Lee as, a massive crime ring that involves gambling, bribery, kickbacks and influence peddling. Protecting the Director of the Office of National Intelligence In 2013, ODNI Director James Clapper testified to Congress that the NSA isn t collecting massive amounts of intelligence on all Americans as Edward Snowden s leaks revealed. He later admitted that his testimony was a lie, but that in the interest of national security, he was above the law and not answerable to Congress. A number of Congressmen called on AG Holder to charge Clapper with Contempt of Congress. Eric Holder refused.War on Medical Marijuana Patients Even though medical marijuana is legal on the state, county and local level in 23 states and DC, the DoJ has led hundreds of military-style raids on legal medical marijuana pharmacies across the country. Rather than target drug cartels and illegal drug dealers, the DoJ has violently arrested hundreds of cancer victims, AIDS patients, dying senior citizens and war wounded. | 1 |
Everyone knows that Donald Trump absolutely HATES Melissa McCarthy s portrayal of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer. Well, this week s edition of SNL certainly will not please The Donald, because McCarthy s Spicey came back with a vengeance.The segment opened with Aidy Bryant doing an absolutely PERFECT impression of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the Deputy Press Secretary and daughter of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, filling in for Spicer as she has been doing all week since Trump fired FBI Director James Comey and sent Washington reeling once again. Huckabee Sanders points out that she is doing Spicer s job because he is on Naval Reserve duty. However, in this episode, he is outside in the bushes, just as the real Sean Spicer did in a pathetic attempt to hide from reporters after the Comey news broke. Bryant s Huckabee Sanders insisted that this was part of a Naval Reserve exercise, though.Then, a couple of members of the White House Press Corps asked if Huckabee Sanders could replace Spicer permanently. Before she could answer, Spicer bursts in with a fire extinguisher and blasts a reporter s pants with it, insinuating that he was lying by pointing out all of Spicer s flaws.A reliably contentious press conference followed, focusing on the fallout from the Comey situation, just as press briefings have all week in real time. After Spicer finally ends the briefing abruptly, he rides to New York City to find Alec Baldwin s Trump. Of course, Trump is not at Trump Tower, so he then continues on to one of Trump s golf properties, where he asks Trump if he is about to be replaced by his Deputy Press Secretary. Trump assures Spicey that he is safe, and then gives him a dramatic kiss the kiss of death.The real Donald Trump is going to be absolutely furious with this. Further, rabidly homophobic Mike Pence will insist that Spicer has to go now that SNL has taken to mocking him and Trump with same-sex kisses.This will definitely fall under the heading in Trump s mind, of course of making his employee look weak.I d be willing to bet we ve seen just about the last of the real life Spicey. That isn t so bad, though I will miss Melissa McCarthy s version.Watch the hilarious segment below:Featured image via video screen capture | 0 |
KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Representatives of Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the United States will meet in Oman next week to discuss reviving peace talks with Afghan Taliban militants, an Afghan official and a Pakistani foreign ministry source said on Wednesday. But it was not clear if Afghan Taliban representatives would join the talks. Taliban sources said they had not yet received an invitation and plan to skip Monday s discussions in Muscat, casting doubt on efforts to revive long-stalled negotiations. The four-nation Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QGC), comprising Afghanistan, China, Pakistan and the United States, has been trying to ease the path to direct talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, with little success. The Taliban, ousted in a U.S.-led military intervention in 2001, has been gaining territory in recent years through a violent insurgency to try to topple Afghanistan s Western-backed government and re-establish a fundamentalist Islamic regime. Amin Waqad, a close aide to Agfhan President Ashraf Ghani and a senior member of the High Peace Council (HPC), said, HPC and government representatives will participate, and it is an important one because the Taliban representatives will be there. We will go with a clear plan. A senior Pakistani foreign ministry official confirmed the talks would take place on Oct 16. Last week, Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif told Voice of America the quadrilateral arrangement will again be in operation in Muscat in October. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad did not comment for the report. Talks and efforts to kick start negotiations have failed following the 2015 announcement of the death of the Taliban s founder and long-time leader, Mullah Mohammed Omar, in 2013. The United States wants Pakistan, which it accuses of harboring Afghan Taliban commanders, to exert more influence on the group to bring them to the negotiating table. Pakistani officials deny sheltering Taliban militants and say their influence on the group has waned. Two senior Afghan Taliban leaders, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the group s leadership council met on Tuesday and decided it would not send a delegation to Muscat even if the group was invited to participate. Till that time, we were not invited, but even if we received any invitation, our senior members decided not to participate in the meeting, said one of the Taliban leaders. | 0 |
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