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Newly released footage of the 2014 and 2015 National Abortion Federation trade shows reveal abortionists discussing the difficulties they face in their jobs, such as “the head that gets stuck that we can’t get out,” and “an eyeball just fell down into my lap, and that is gross! ”[ The video, published to YouTube on Wednesday, is the work of Center for Medical Progress leader David Daleiden who, along with Sandra Merritt, has been charged with 15 felony counts under California’s law protecting “confidential” conversations. Daleiden’s criminal defense attorneys say the California Attorney General’s interest in his case is “entirely political, meant to manipulate the law to do the bidding of their benefactors at Planned Parenthood. ” Former Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley Associates (SCA) are defending Daleiden, the journalist who released the series of videos in 2015 that shocked the nation as they brought attention to the fetal tissue procurement industry. The undercover investigation led to congressional probes into allegations that Planned Parenthood sells the body parts of babies aborted in its clinics for a profit, and to vehement cries for the elimination of Planned Parenthood’s taxpayer funding. Cooley and former Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Brentford J. Ferreira are launching a new media resource page that features all the filings in the case against Daleiden and all the videos mentioned by the California AG in their complaint, including those that have never been seen before. In the new video, which is a compilation of excerpts from video filmed at the trade shows, abortionist Dr. Susan Robinson of Planned Parenthood Mar Monte is heard saying, “The fetus is a tough little object and, taking it apart, I mean taking it apart on day one is very difficult. ” Dr. Lisa Harris, medical director of Planned Parenthood Michigan, is also heard saying, “Let’s just give them all the violence, it’s a person, it’s killing, let’s just give them all that. ” Director of abortion services for Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast Dr. Ann states in the video, “If I’m doing a procedure, and I’m seeing that I’m in fear that it’s about to come to the umbilicus [navel] I might ask for a second set of forceps to hold the body at the cervix and pull off a leg or two, so it’s not PBA [ abortion]. ” SCA states the prosecution from the California AG against Daleiden is “grossly . ” In April of 2016, Daleiden contacted SCA immediately after agents of the AG’s office served a search warrant at his home and confiscated his computers, hard drives, and electronic documents. “ General, now U. S. Sen. Kamala Harris, wielded unprecedented police power against a true American journalist while civil suits were already pending in Federal District Court concerning the same ” says Cooley. “Public Records Act requests filed by SCA reveal the Attorney General’s real interest in this case is entirely political, meant to manipulate the law to do the bidding of their benefactors at Planned Parenthood. ” In September 2016, emails obtained by the Washington Times showed that AG and U. S. Senate candidate Kamala Harris’s office collaborated with Planned Parenthood to produce legislation that specifically targeted Daleiden. The emails, according to the Times, were accessed through a public records request, and revealed conversations between officials of Kamala’s office and Planned Parenthood regarding legislation that criminalizes undercover journalists for publishing and distributing recordings of private communications with abortion providers. Following receipt of a preliminary injunction in a civil suit — currently on appeal — against the release of Daleiden’s videos from secretive abortion trade shows, the National Abortion Federation (NAF) and Planned Parenthood pursued the California AG to initiate a criminal investigation in order to stifle Daleiden’s undercover work even further. On March 28, 2017, the new California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, announced a criminal complaint charging Daleiden and Merritt with 15 felony counts against the state’s “confidentiality” legislation. “Every video recording for which the Attorney General is charging David was obviously and unquestionably made in a public place where it could not possibly be considered ‘confidential,’” says Brent Ferreira. “The only difference between David’s conduct and that of undercover video journalists every day in the state of California is the fact that he recorded the political backers of the state’s top prosecutor. ” SCA points out that Daleiden’s accusers were listed in the complaint anonymously as Does 1 through 14. The attorneys’ request for the names of the Does was ignored, and the Attorney General later informed them their names were confidential. “There is no protective order in place in state court that would protect the names of the Does, and David is entitled to a public defense,” SCA states. “The First Amendment must apply equally whether you are or ” says Ferreira, “and a defendant is entitled to face his accusers in a public trial. Anything less is a corrupt attempt by the Attorney General to orchestrate a proceeding reminiscent of the witch hunts and show trials of more unenlightened eras. ” A list of the Does can be found here.

Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan does a lot of media but only has 2 public supporters

(This October 25 story has been refiled to clarify that IATA CEO remarks referred to March rules) By David Shepardson and Jamie Freed WASHINGTON/TAIPEI (Reuters) - New security measures including stricter passenger screening take effect on Thursday on all U.S.-bound flights to comply with government requirements aimed at responding to threats of hidden explosives, airlines said. Airlines contacted by Reuters said the new measures could include short security interviews with passengers at check-in or the boarding gate, sparking concerns over flight delays and extended processing time. They will affect 325,000 airline passengers on about 2,100 commercial flights arriving daily in the United States, on 180 airlines from 280 airports in 105 countries. U.S. Transportation Security Administration officials are giving some airlines or airports additional time to comply with the new interviews as long the U.S. government has approved security plans by Thursday. TSA will continue to work closely with our aviation partners and verify that all security enhancements are accurately implemented, TSA spokeswoman Lucy Martinez said in a statement Wednesday. The United States announced the new rules in June to end its restrictions on carry-on electronic devices on planes coming from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa in response to concerns that explosives could be hidden in electronic devices. Those restrictions were lifted in July, but the Trump administration said it could reimpose measures on a case by case basis if airlines and airports did not boost security. European and U.S. officials said at the time that airlines had 120 days to comply with the measures, including increased passenger screening. The 120-day deadline is Thursday. Airlines had until late July to expand explosive trace detection testing. We see this as a big issue for China Airlines, Steve Chang, senior vice president of the Taiwanese firm told reporters on Wednesday, adding the airline was trying to consult with the American Institute in the country over the issue. Korean Airlines, South Korea s flagship carrier, also said it had a lot of concerns with the new measures. We are asking customers to show up at the airport early ... It s just inconvenient for the passengers, President and Chief Operating Officer Walter Cho told Reuters in Taipei. Lufthansa Group said on Tuesday the measures would be in place by Thursday and travelers could face short interviews at check-in or at the gate. Economy passengers on Lufthansa s Swiss airline have been asked to check in at least 90 minutes before departure. Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd said it would suspend in-town check-in and self bag-drop services for passengers booked on direct flights to the United States. The airline said passengers would also have short security interviews and it has advised travelers to arrive three hours before departure. Singapore Airlines Ltd said the security checks could include inspections of personal electronic devices as well as security questioning during check-in and boarding. Airlines for America, a U.S. trade group, said the changes are complex security measures but praised U.S. officials for giving airlines flexibility in meeting the new rules. Alexandre de Juniac, CEO of the International Air Transport Association, said the industry understood security threats to aviation were made regularly but in this case the U.S. government had not shared any specific dangers before announcing the initial Middle East and North Africa electronic device restrictions in March. What we have seen is very strange, he told reporters in Taipei. Unilateral measures announced without any prior consultation... That is something that is very concerning and disturbing. Airlines were however consulted after the March changes. At their annual meeting in Taipei, Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) members passed a resolution calling for security measures to be risk-based, outcome-focused and proportionate to the probable threat. Unilateral actions taken by individual governments reacting to emerging threats may result in unnecessary disruption or lead to unintended safety consequences, said the members. AAPA includes most large Asian airlines but not mainland Chinese carriers. The risk is other countries make similar demands, AAPA Director General Andrew Herdman said. U.S. authorities in June also ordered increased security around aircraft and in passenger areas, and other places where travelers can be cleared by U.S. officials before they depart and ordered enhanced screening of personal electronic devices. Some of those new requirements take effect this week as well. The TSA said in July it was imposing new security rules requiring U.S. domestic airline travelers to remove all electronic items larger than mobile phones such as tablets, e-readers and video game consoles from carry-on baggage for screening.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Marco Rubio on Monday sought to quash speculation that he might emerge as the vice presidential running mate for Republican candidate Donald Trump, saying he still has deep reservations about the billionaire. “He will be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign. As such, I have never sought, will not seek and do not want to be considered for vice president,” Rubio said in a statement. Rubio, a former Republican presidential candidate himself, and Trump clashed repeatedly in the weeks leading up to the bitterly contested primary vote in Rubio’s home state of Florida in March. Trump had dismissed Rubio as “little Marco” and won the state handily, dealing a death blow to Rubio’s campaign. Rubio had blasted Trump as a con artist who is not a conservative. “While Republican voters have chosen Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee, my previously stated reservations about his campaign and concerns with many of his policies remain unchanged,” Rubio said. GOP, short for Grand Old Party, is an acronym for the Republican Party. A former Trump campaign rival, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, is leading Trump’s search for a vice presidential running mate. Trump has said he is considering a variety of his former rivals for the nomination, but some have ruled themselves out or declared they will not support him. Rubio said he plans to focus his attention in the run-up to the Nov. 8 helping Republicans hang on to control of the Senate and “electing principled conservatives across the country.”

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany s foreign minister urged parliament on Tuesday to extend a military mission training Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in northern Iraq, saying to withdraw the German force would raise the risk of a new civil war there. Germany resumed its military mission last month after a brief suspension following a referendum for independence in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. The vote was rejected by Baghdad and triggered an Iraqi military offensive that recaptured disputed areas of the north from the Peshmerga. German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who will step down soon as his Social Democratic party returns to opposition after heavy losses in the Sept. 24 election, was appealing to likely participants in the next government, particularly the Greens, not to oppose an extension of Berlin s military mission in Iraq. Germany has about 150 soldiers training Kurdish forces to fight Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria. But the sharp rise in tensions between the Kurds and Iraq s central government has raised concern in Germany about the mission s future. Gabriel said, however, The more international groups are active there, the lower the chance of a new escalation. A withdrawal would be the wrong signal to the parties to the conflict, as if we were resigned to accepting the danger of a new civil war, he told reporters. He said the Berlin government had met with a variety of parties recently to urge a political solution to tensions between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and Baghdad. We hope that the very fragile ceasefire holds and that a political solution can be achieved. A new civil war in Iraq would bring unbelievable suffering to this country, which has already suffered too much as a result of political conflicts in recent years. Iraqi Kurds voted overwhelmingly to break away from Iraq in the Sept. 25 referendum, defying the central government in Baghdad as well as neighboring Turkey and Iran who have their own Kurdish minorities. In retaliation, Iraqi government forces and the allied, Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation militia recaptured the oil city of Kirkuk and other disputed territories held by Peshmerga just outside official KRG boundaries. On Oct. 27 Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declared a pause in the offensive, though it was unclear whether there was any official agreement on a ceasefire.The German cabinet has urged the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) to vote to extend the mission by three months to give the next government time to review all foreign missions. Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives are trying to form a new coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmentalist Greens after losing considerable support to the far right in the Sept. 24 election.

HOUSTON (Reuters) - With a number of U.S. states proceeding with investigations of Exxon Mobil Corp’s (XOM.N) record on climate change, the attorney general of Massachusetts and investment funds of the Rockefeller family on Friday told a Congressional committee it lacked powers to oversee those probes. The pushback is the latest chapter in a high-stakes fight between the world’s largest publicly traded oil company and a coalition of state attorneys general who have said they would go after Exxon to try and force action to tackle climate change. The House Committee on Science, Space and Technology last week reiterated demands that state attorneys general hand over any records of consultations the prosecutors had with outside environmental groups before their probes were opened. Republicans on the committee have said about 20 state officials overreached when they jointly said in March they would participate in inquiries into whether Exxon executives misled the public by contradicting research from company scientists that spelled out the threats of climate change. State officials have said the committee has no right to get involved. “The Committee lacks authority to interfere with an investigation by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office into possible violations of Massachusetts law by ExxonMobil,” said a letter to the committee from the office of Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey that was seen by Reuters. In another letter to the House panel seen by Reuters, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Rockefeller Family Fund, two investment funds that have been critical of fossil fuels linked to climate change, said the committee’s request “imperiled the funds’ First Amendment rights” and said “Congress’s investigatory power is not unlimited.” Last week, Exxon asked a federal court to throw out a subpoena that would force it to hand over decades of documents on climate change to Healey’s office. Both sides in the standoff have sought to use the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom speech and freedom of assembly, among other protections, to press their cases. The House committee has complained the inquiries risk stifling free speech and scientific inquiry, and that state officials were coordinating with special interest groups. Exxon, which declined to comment on Friday, has repeatedly said that it has acknowledged the reality of climate change for years and communicated this to investors.

Heres the nations would-be first lady and right beside her, a second lady. Three years before she met husband Donald Trump, Melania Trump was snapped in a nude frolic with another female model, bombshell photos obtained exclusively by The Post show. Modal Trigger The lesbian-themed pics are from a two-day photo shoot in Manhattan in 1995, when Melania Knauss, as she was called, was 25 years old and modeling under the name Melania K. (Photographer Al de Basseville later told The Post that he misspoke, and the photo session actually took place in 1996 in Manhattan, and appeared in a 1997 issue of the magazine.) Several were featured in Max Magazine, a now-defunct French mens monthly, more than 20 years ago. Others have never been in print until now. The raciest of the photos shows Melania lying nude in a bed as Scandinavian model Emma Eriksson, also naked, embraces her from behind, just below her breasts, which are fully exposed. In another photo, Eriksson wears sheer stockings, a low-cut bustier, high heels and a long robe all designed by John Galliano and raises a whip as if preparing to spank Melania, who pretends to recoil. Melania is more conservatively dressed in a skin-tight gown and high heels. I always loved women together, because I have been with a lot of women who desired the mnage trois, said Jarl Ale de Basseville, the French fashion photographer who snapped the pictures. Melania Trump (right) poses for the January 1997 issue of Max Magazine.Photo: Jarl Ale de Basseville This is beauty and not porn. I am always shocked by the porn industry because they are destroying the emotion and the essence of purity and simplicity. Part of the shoot, which de Basseville said was inspired by Renaissance art, took place on the buildings rooftop, said a fashion-industry insider who was present at one of the photo sessions. Melania behaved like a true professional during one of the nighttime shoots with Eriksson, the source said. She was charming throughout, said the source, adding that the pics lesbian theme didnt faze her. She was always smiling, with a very pleasant personality and was polite and very well educated. Al de BassevillePhoto: Al de Basseville Melania had recently arrived in the city from modeling stints in Paris and Milan at the time. In Gotham, she was booked for mostly commercial work and was later featured in an ad for Camel cigarettes, the source told The Post. Her sexy photo spread appeared in the January 1996 issue of Max Magazine, whose cover featured a photo of supermodel Cindy Crawford. In addition to the lesbian-themed shots, de Basseville took several nude pictures of Melania from different angles. In one of them, Melania pouts at the camera while clad only in stilettos. In another, her back is to the camera, and her arms are raised as if up against a wall. 0:00 / 1:10 I think it is important to show the beauty and freedom of the woman, and I am very proud of these pictures because they celebrate Melanias beauty, de Basseville said. Asked about the photos, Donald Trump said: Melania was one of the most successful models, and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. This was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common. The Slovenian-born beauty, now 46, first met Trump at a Fashion Week party in 1998. They married in January 2005 and have one son, Baron, 10. She has modeled for Sports Illustrated and Vogue among other publications, posing for such top photographers as Helmut Newton and Mario Testino. Modal Trigger Melania Trump in the January 1997 issue of Max Magazine.

If you re one of the people who saw Sarah Palin endorse Donald Trump for president and thought to yourself, oh, God, she s back with utter misery in your soul, you re most definitely not alone. She was the poison pill for John McCain s career. No, not just his presidential run in 2008, his career. He will always be the guy who put Palin on the national stage to torture all the world.Trump, being the bombastic person that he is, and not caring what anyone really thinks of him (even though he s obsessed with polls) thought it wise to bring Palin back into the spotlight after her failed attempts at everything from being a governor to a reality star, and propped her up embracing her endorsement. However, the endorsement isn t even half of his plans for her, and we, as a nation, should be f*cking mortified.Trump has now declared that there will be a role for Palin within his administration if he were to win the White House this upcoming November. He doesn t think she d actually want a role, which may actually be true considering that would require actual work and follow through, but he said the door is open to the possibility. He told NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie: She never made a deal, like so many people want to try and make deals. I mean, she just said: I really like what s going on, it s an amazing thing, I ve never seen anything like it in politics. Trump even insinuated that he may consider her as a potential vice presidential running-mate, saying: I haven t discussed it with her. No, I haven t discussed anything with her about what she d do, but she s somebody I really like and I respect. And certainly, she could play a position if she wanted to. The real estate mogul also took the chance to rub in the fact that he got Palin s endorsement over other candidates when he said: It s such an honor, because as you know, very badly, so many people are so disappointed that she didn t support them. Is it really, though? I mean, come on, look what she did to McCain.However, to drive the point home that a Trump win in November equals Palin in his administration, he said: But certainly there d be a role in the administration if she wanted, and I m not sure that she does want that. But there d certainly be a role. If Trump being the orotund racist with no policy experience wasn t enough for you to vote against him this November, his saying Palin will have an open spot in his administration should be the icing on the cake. It s more important now, than ever before, to make sure a Democrat wins the White House this fall.Would @RealDonaldTrump consider @SarahPalinUSA as a running mate? Watch what he told @SavannahGuthrie: https://t.co/KADXx3KSQy TODAY (@TODAYshow) January 20, 2016Featured image: Gage Skidmore (flickr/flickr)

Federal taxpayers dumped more than $205 million into Hawaii's ObamaCare insurance exchange, but after a steady downward spiral the once-highly praised Hawaii Health Connector is on life support. The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has already restricted grant funds to the Hawaii Health Connector, after telling officials in March it was out of compliance with the Affordable Care Act because of fiscal instability and ongoing IT issues. With state lawmakers also blocking additional funds, the system is struggling to stay afloat. The governor's office said it is doing what it can to salvage the situation, including approving $30 million to temporarily transition the local portal to the federal exchange, HealthCare.gov -- where residents could continue to enroll over the next year while problems with the local site are addressed. Laurel Johnston, deputy chief of staff for Gov. David Ige, claimed the state will "negotiate the release of federal grant funds" and ensure compliance with the law. Whether they will succeed remains to be seen. CMS still has to accept the governor's proposal -- and the exchange reportedly is making contingency plans in case the system has to shut down entirely. The drama has only hardened critics' concerns that millions of taxpayer dollars are going to waste. "The $200 million was a complete waste of tax dollars that could have been used for much more productive efforts," said Reg Baker, a well-known CPA in Hawaii who for many years was the chief financial officer for the health insurance plan, HMAA. The news about the Hawaii Health Connector's troubles went national this week when Hawaii's largest daily, the Star Advertiser, broke a story based on a "leaked" draft of the state's report to CMS, which reportedly said the exchange prepared a contingency plan to shut down local operations and transition to federal government control by Sept. 30. The plan purportedly directed that no new enrollees would be accepted by the local exchange after the end of this week, outreach services would conclude May 31, and a 73-member workforce, including staff and consultants, would be laid off by Feb. 28. The governor's office maintained that was just a draft report and said "recent news reports based on confidential working draft documents have misrepresented ongoing discussions between the federal government, the state administration and Hawaii Health Connector." The Connector's executive director Jeff Kissel said the first priority "is to ensure the continuity of coverage for the 37,000 to 40,000 Hawaii residents who are receiving health insurance coverage through Hawaii Health Connector." If CMS does not accept the governor's plan, Hawaii also risks losing $1 billion in matching federal Medicaid funds, according to Ige's office. Baker told FoxNews.com the state should just abandon plans to keep the local Connector open, and merge with the federal government website. "Piggy-backing on the federal system is the financially smart thing to do," he said. While many of the state's Democrats praised the ObamaCare exchange when it launched in October 2013, it was riddled with trouble from the start. The web portal never worked properly despite the state spending $74 million on a contract with CGI to build and maintain it. The exchange experienced tremendous staff turnover, with three executive directors appointed in two years. Enrollment reached just over 8,500 in the first year, and as a result, Hawaii was ranked the most costly exchange in the nation at more than $$23,899 per person. Enrollment never reached the 300,000 number then-Gov. Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, enthusiastically predicted at the opening press conference launching the Connector. The enrollment number also never hit 70,000, the minimum needed to stay financially solvent. At its peak, enrollment reached 37,000, a fraction of the state's 1.4 million people. Hawaii's uninsured population, at 8 percent when the exchange opened, dropped just 2 percent. "Some folks might suggest that the Connector was 'successful' because of the 30,000 people who signed up, but those numbers are questionable since many already had insurance to begin with, were transferred to the Medicare system or are no longer enrolled, and signups are not as important as the number currently enrolled in the insurance plans offered on the Connector," Baker said, noting each enrollee cost the federal government about $6,666.66. Millions of dollars went to the failed web portal developed by controversial Montreal-based company, CGI Federal, the same company that developed the botched federal web portal for HealthCare.gov under a $93.7 million contract, but was replaced in January 2014 after numerous enrollees had problems registering. Besides the fact that Hawaii's web portal did not function properly since the site launched, because it didn't sync with the state Department of Human Services website offering Medicaid, the site had another major technical problem: the Connector's Small Business Health Options Program targeted at small business owners sent garbled data to insurers preventing them from signing up small businesses and their employees. Hawaii is just the latest state that has struggled to sustain its ObamaCare exchange, at great cost to taxpayers, watchdog group Americans for Tax Reform notes. Despite the government investing $4.5 billion into state-run exchanges, Oregon, Massachusetts, Maryland, Vermont, New Mexico and Nevada shut down their operations. "One wonders where these tens of millions of dollars actually go," ATR President Grover Norquist said. Baker said the system is failing "for the same reason most businesses fail -- the customers did not see the value of the product they were trying to sell."

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela s socialist government gifted chocolates to creditors on Monday, but offered no firm proposals at a brief meeting in Caracas that left investors without a clear understanding of the government s strategy to renegotiate $60 billion in debt. President Nicolas Maduro confused investors this month with a vow to continue paying Venezuela s crippling debt, while also seeking to restructure and refinance it. Both restructuring and refinancing appear out of the question, however, due to U.S. sanctions against the crisis-stricken nation. A default would compound Venezuela s dire economic crisis. Monday s short and confused meeting, attended by senior Venezuelan officials blacklisted by the United States, gave no clarity on how Maduro would carry out his plan, bondholders and their representatives who participated said afterwards. That means Venezuela remains with the dilemma of whether to continuing paying debt at the expense of an increasingly hungry and sick population, or defaulting on creditors and burning its bridges to the global financial system. There was no offer, no terms, no strategy, nothing, said one bondholder, leaving the meeting that lasted a little over half an hour at the White Palace , departing with a colorful gift-bag containing Venezuelan chocolates and coffee. But bond prices maintained last week s rally, with one investor saying there was relief the meeting did not include a default announcement. Nearly $300 million in late interest payments on three bonds - PDVSA 2027, Venezuela 2019 and Venezuela 2024 - was also due on Monday after 30-day grace periods ended. But bondholders appeared unconcerned at the delay, which was due in part to increased bank vigilance of Venezuela transactions. My expectation is that the coupon payments will come through as well, said Jan Dehn, Head of Research at Ashmore Investment Management. We know that these delays exist and why they exist. About 100 investors, including some bondholders from New York and lawyers representing creditors, entered the White Palace via a red carpet and were greeted by a poster of Maduro s predecessor Hugo Chavez at the entrance of the meeting room inside. Chief debt negotiators Vice President Tareck El Aissami and Economy Minister Simon Zerpa - on U.S. sanctions lists for drug and corruption charges respectively - attended the meeting for half an hour. They met with some bondholders, while others stayed out of the room on concerns about penalties for dealing with officials sanctioned by Washington. El Aissami told creditors that Deutsche Bank may soon cut off some financial services to Venezuela, participants said. Deutsche declined to comment. He read a statement protesting unfair treatment by global financial institutions, including U.S. President Donald Trump s sanctions aimed at preventing Venezuela from issuing new debt. Now Maduro can say: I showed goodwill, the bondholders showed goodwill ... but unfortunately because Uncle Sam is not playing ball we can t (refinance) , said Dehn, who did not attend the meeting. I m not hugely surprised nothing s come out of that meeting. Separately, the European Union approved economic sanctions and an arms embargo on Venezuela on Monday, although it has yet to name who will be subject to the sanctions. Markets continue to remain optimistic that Venezuela will service its debts, noting it has made close to $2 billion in payments in the past two weeks, albeit delayed. Bond prices were up across the board on Monday, with the benchmark 2022 notes issued by state oil firm PDVSA [PDVSA.UL] rising 3.3 percentage points. The economic implosion has already taken a brutal toll on Venezuelans. Citizens are suffering from malnutrition and preventable diseases because they cannot find food and medicine or cannot afford them because of triple-digit inflation. The sight of poor Venezuelans eating from garbage bags has become a powerful symbol of decay. It contrasts sharply with the era of Chavez, when high oil prices helped fuel state spending. Halting debt service would free up an additional $1.6 billion in hard currency by the end of the year. Those resources could be used to improve supplies of staple goods as Maduro heads into a presidential election expected for 2018. But the strategy could backfire if met with aggressive lawsuits. A default by PDVSA, which issued about half of the country s outstanding bonds, could ensnare the company s foreign assets such as refineries in legal battles - potentially crimping export revenue. (For a graphic on 'Venezuela's economy' click tmsnrt.rs/2pPJdRb)

Americans were warned by Attorney General, Loretta Lynch to not offend Muslims or they would pay a heavy price. Did anyone think she, or her boss were kidding? Barack Obama offends Christian Americans on a regular basis when will the FBI place a bounty on his head? The FBI is offering a $5,000 reward for information that helps them find the person who put raw bacon on the door handles of a Las Vegas mosque.The FBI said in a statement Wednesday that agents are trying to find the man seen in a surveillance video putting the meat on the entrances of the Masjid-e-Tawheed mosque. Authorities call it a desecration of the Islamic worship center.The Quran, the holy book of Islam, prohibits Muslims from eating pork, and pigs have been used to taunt or offend Muslims.Both the FBI and Las Vegas police say they re investigating the case as a possible hate crime.Las Vegas police spokesman Larry Hadfield said the bacon was wrapped on the door knobs, and was also found on the ground and fences.Officials at the mosque couldn t immediately be reached for comment.The FBI said the incident happened about 3:15 a.m. Dec. 27. The culprit is described as a white man wearing a dark blue hat, jacket and black-framed glasses. He had black or dark brown hair with long, thin sideburns.The site west of the Las Vegas Strip wasn t damaged, and no one was hurt. The mosque was empty at the time, and the case was reported by members who came to worship later that morning.Several threatening incidents at mosques have been reported in recent weeks. A Molotov cocktail went off at an Islamic center in Tracy, California, days ago, and a severed pig s head was found outside a Philadelphia worship site earlier this month. Via: APThe vandalism, which is being called a hate crime, has left the Las Vegas Muslim community on edge, according to KSNV.

Every union member who believes the Democrats are looking out for them needs to remember, that President Bill Clinton signed the NAFTA agreement and Hillary defended the outsourcing of American jobs Ladies and gentlemen Here she is, the champion of the foreign worker in 2005: https://twitter.com/magnifier661/status/761359175716712448Is it any wonder Indian gave her a standing ovation?Here s the full gut-wrenching video:

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Tuesday invited 33 Syrian groups and political parties to attend what it called a Syrian Congress on National Dialogue which it is organizing in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi on Nov. 18. The list of invitees was published on the Russian Foreign Ministry s website. Russian officials have suggested they hope the congress can consider what a new constitution for Syria might look like and discuss possible political reforms.

Nothing says tolerance like putting a loaded gun to a strangers head because you disagree with the flag they re holding A family was threatened at gunpoint for waving the Confederate flag on their own private property in another illustration of how controversy surrounding the flag is only driving more animosity.The incident occurred on Monday night in Moseley, Virginia while the family was expressing their First Amendment right by waving the flag in their own driveway next to a busy highway. A man driving an SUV pulled into the driveway, took out his gun, chambered a round, pointed it at the family and started yelling. He slammed on the brakes and when he got right beside me, he pulled out a gun, chambered a round and told me my cause wasn t worth anything now, Mark Wilson told CBS 6. He got out of the car and took three steps towards me and the gun was maybe six inches off my head. Wilson said he was concerned that the gunman would shoot his children. 46-year-old James Baker was later arrested by police for brandishing a weapon. Baker dubiously claimed that the family had threatened his life. This is a busy highway and he is in a vehicle going 70 miles per hour, how are we threatening him by walking across? said Wilson, who called for Baker to be sent to jail. The police went and investigated it and they let him go, he admitted everything and they just let him go, added Wilson.Baker is in court on September 3 facing a class one misdemeanor charge.Wilson asserted that his decision to fly the flag is founded on a desire to express pride in his southern heritage and has nothing to do with racism. I m not gonna be scared away from people that are acting ignorant and trying to act violent when it s not a violent thing. This shouldn t be a race thing, it should be a heritage thing, Wilson told NBC 12.The nature of the confrontation clearly illustrates how the gunman had a political gripe with the family displaying the Confederate flag, which has become a target for irate leftists in the aftermath of the Charleston shooting.On Monday we reported on the new viral Twitter craze called #NoFlaggingChallenge which Black Lives Matter supporters are using to encourage Americans to violate people s private property rights and steal Confederate flags being displayed on privately owned homes and vehicles.Given that the flags are predominantly displayed in southern states where private ownership of firearms is common, many on social media are warning that the stunt could end up with people being shot dead.Via: Infowars

BANGKOK — The death on Thursday of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, whose leadership helped bring stability to Thailand over the past seven decades, introduced a new era of uncertainty in a sharply divided nation. He was the only monarch most Thais had ever known, and his death set off widespread grief throughout the country. “His Majesty was a beloved and revered king,” said Prime Minister Prayuth head of the military junta that seized power in 2014. “He unified the hearts of all Thais. It is the greatest loss and despair in the lives of all Thais nationwide. ” King Bhumibol, 88, who ascended to the throne in 1946 and became the world’s monarch, helped balance rival political factions, at times giving his blessing to juntas that seized power from democratically elected governments, including the current leadership. His son, Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn, who for years has spent most of his time in Germany and who has a reputation as a playboy, is expected to take the throne. It was unclear whether he would have the same moral authority to insert himself into the nation’s contentious politics. On Thursday evening, the crown prince unexpectedly said he was not ready to become king and requested more time to grieve the loss of his father, General Prayuth told reporters. The prince, who has been the royal heir since 1972, wants to wait until an appropriate time to take on the mantle of monarch, the prime minister said. Thailand’s National Assembly, which had been expected to crown a new king, convened in the evening. Members stood in silence for nine minutes — the king was the ninth in his dynasty — but adjourned abruptly soon afterward without taking further action. Thai news media reported that Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd, the government’s chief spokesman, asked all TV channels to show only the government channel’s programming during a mourning period. Throngs of people had gathered at Siriraj Hospital on Thursday afternoon as rumors of the king’s death spread. Many wore pink, the color thought to bolster his health, and knelt on the ground to pray for his recovery. At one point, the crowd chanted, “Long live the king. ” By then, it was too late. President Obama said in a statement that King Bhumibol, who was born in Massachusetts, was a “close friend” of the United States. “His Majesty was a tireless champion of his country’s development and demonstrated unflagging devotion to improving the standard of living of the Thai people,” Mr. Obama said. “With a creative spirit and a drive for innovation, he pioneered new technologies that have rightfully received worldwide acclaim. ” General Prayuth said flags would fly at for 30 days and asked the public to refrain from holding celebrations during that period. Government officials will be in a state of mourning for one year, he said. “Even though we are in sorrow and tears are in our faces, our beloved Thailand and the monarchy must continue,” the prime minister said during an appearance broadcast on all television channels. “Do not let the death derail his majesty’s determination to see his kingdom prosper, the people live in blessedness and be kind to each other. ” Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a professor at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, said King Bhumibol’s accomplishments included helping to develop the nation’s economy and preventing the communist movement from making inroads in Thailand as it swept through neighboring countries. While the last 10 years in Thailand have been volatile, he said, the king’s leadership was especially critical during the height of the Cold War, from the 1950s through the 1970s. “He has left behind a great nation, a grieving and grateful nation,” Professor Thitinan said. “There are detractors and critics who might argue that the monarchy has impeded democratic development over the past decade, but in the broader, overarching perspective, Thailand would not be where it is today without this monarchy and this monarch. ” Thailand has been divided for years between poor farmers mainly in the rural north and more prosperous urban residents centered in Bangkok. At the same time, Muslims have been fighting a insurgency in the far south for more than a decade, seeking independence from the central government. The military has staged two coups over the past 10 years to oust populist governments that favored the rural poor, first the government led by a billionaire businessman, Thaksin Shinawatra, and later the government of his sister, Yingluck. Part of the rationale for the current government’s remaining in power was to ensure a smooth transition after the expected death of King Bhumibol. The announcement of the king’s passing came about three hours after the official time of death, 3:52 p. m. He died at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, where he had been confined for most of the past few years. He had a number of health problems, including kidney failure, and in his final days was on a ventilator. On Wednesday rumors of his death sent the Thai stock market plunging nearly 7 percent before it recovered somewhat later that day to a loss of 2. 5 percent. “Even though the team of doctors tried their best, his illness hasn’t improved and he declined accordingly until 13 Oct. 2016,” the palace said Thursday in its announcement. Although the king’s death had long been anticipated, the reality still came as a shock to many Thais. “I really, really love the king,” said Thanthai Kaenwong, 35, a bartender. “He is the father of all Thais,” he added. “We closed our club today to mourn him. But no one is in the mood, anyway. ” Wimonsiri Kaewsadet, 39, a Bangkok food vendor, grew teary as she spoke of the king. She said her chest felt tight, her face was numb, and she could not eat. She said her sense of loss was even greater than when her own father died. “My heart is broken in pieces,” she said. “No one wished him to go so soon like this. But he was very, very sick. He could not go on. He had endured so much pain. ” She said the king’s absence made her feel uncertain about the country’s future. “It’s the news that no one wants to hear,” she said.

Home / Be The Change / Antiwar / Russia is Hoarding Gold at an Alarming Rate — The Next World War Will Be Fought with Currencies Russia is Hoarding Gold at an Alarming Rate — The Next World War Will Be Fought with Currencies Jay Syrmopoulos October 26, 2016 1 Comment Moscow, Russia – With all eyes on Russia’s unveiling their latest nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which NATO has dubbed the “SATAN” missile , as tensions with the U.S. increase, Moscow’s most potent “weapon” may be something drastically different. The rapidly evolving geopolitical “weapon” brandished by Russia is an ever increasing stockpile of gold, as well as Russia’s native currency, the ruble. Take a look at the symbol below, as it could soon come to change the entire hierarchy of the international order – potentially ushering in a complete international paradigm shift – and much sooner than you might think. The symbol is the new designation of the Russian ruble, Russia’s national currency. Similar to how the U.S. uses the dollar sign ($), the U.K. uses the pound sign (£), and the European Union uses the euro symbol (€), Russia is about to begin exporting its symbol internationally. After the failed “reset” in U.S./Russian relations by the Obama administration, and the continued deterioration of the countries relationship, Washington began targeting entire sectors of the Russian economy, as well as specific individuals, meant to impose an economic burden so severe that it would force Moscow into compliance. Instead of decimating Russia, what it precipitated was a Russian response of gradually weaning themselves off of the hegemony of the U.S. petrodollar, and working with China to create an alternative to the SWIFT payment system that isn’t solely controlled by Western interests (see Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank , New Development Bank). According to the Corbett Report : New reports indicate that China is ready to launch its SWIFT alternative, and for those who have their ear to the ground this is the most significant move yet in the unfolding process of de-dollarization that is seeing the BRICS-led “resistance bloc” breaking away from the financial stranglehold of the US-led “Washington Consensus.” For those who don’t know, SWIFT stands for the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication and is shorthand for the SWIFTNet Network that is used by over 10,500 financial institutions in 215 countries and territories to transmit financial transaction data around the world. SWIFT does not do any of the clearing or processing for these transactions itself, but instead sends the payment orders that are then settled by correspondent banks of the member institutions. Still, given the system’s near universality in the financial system, it means that virtually every international transaction between banking institutions goes through the SWIFT network. This is why de-listing from the SWIFT network remains one of the primary financial weapons wielded by the US and its allies in their increasingly important financial warfare campaigns. Recently, financial guru Jim Rickards, author of the book “Currency Wars,” wrote that “Russia is poised for a major comeback in its economy. Russian bonds and stocks and the Russian currency, the ruble, will all benefit.” Rickards believes a “strong turnaround” is coming within Russia, and that this comeback will benefit the ruble. While still suffering from the economic warfare being waged by the U.S., Russia has realized that as long they are subservient to the petrodollar, there remains a clear and present danger of the Russian economy being devastated by the whims of Washington. The Bank of Russia, that nation’s central bank, is extremely clear about its mission, and monetary policy declaring on its website: Monetary policy constitutes an integral part of the state policy and is aimed at enhancing well-being of Russian citizens. The Bank of Russia implements monetary policy in the framework of inflation-targeting regime, and sees price stability, albeit sustainably low inflation, as its priority. Given structural peculiarities of the Russian economy, the target is to reduce inflation to 4% by 2017 and maintain it within that range in the medium run. In layman’s terms, that means that monetary policy, similar to nuclear weapons and the military, are “an integral part of the state policy” in Russia. While many analysts have noted the increased build-up in Russia’s military arsenal, seemingly few have highlighted the massive build-up of Russian gold reserves over the past decade. Below is a chart showing Russian gold reserves between 1994 and last year, 2015: Since 2006, there has been a year-on-year increase that reveals a significant upward trend. The chart clearly reveals that Russia’s state policy of increasing state monetary assets, in the form of gold. Additionally, the Russian government has been converting state rubles into gold assets. From 2006 to 2015, Russia’s state holdings of gold tripled. Within just the past year Russia has substantially increased its gold holdings According to the Business Insider : In July of this year, the central bank of Russia added 200,000 ounces of gold to its reserves. The one-month uptick in Russian gold reserves — 200,000 ounces — is approximately equal to the entire annual output of Barrick Gold’s Turquoise Ridge gold mine in Nevada. At that same rate — 200,000 ounces per month — in a mere five months, Russia would add to state gold reserves the equivalent of the entire annual output of Barrick’s massive Goldstrike mine in Nevada. Currently, Russian gold reserves rank seventh in the world. It’s clear that there is a concerted effort by Russian authorities to build up the country’s gold reserves as part of a national strategy to negate the effects of economic warfare waged by the United States. Rickards, in his 2011 book “Currency Wars,” theorized that Russia and China could combine their gold reserves to form a global gold-backed currency to compete against the U.S. dollar. Currently, Russian reserves stand at roughly 1,500 tonnes, with Chinese reserves totaling over 1,800 tonnes (according to China — it’s likely more), which would amount to a combined total of roughly 3,300 tonnes of gold. The U.S. is about to lose overarching control of policymaking within the International Monetary Fund (IMF), thus the U.S. lockup on global gold is about to vanish, according to Business Insider. Imagine for a moment the distinctly real possibility that Russian-Chinese alliance could exercise indirect (or even direct) control over the IMF’s gold reserve of over 2,800 tonnes. Russian, Chinese and IMF gold combined would equal roughly 6,100 tonnes, and would allow for direct competition with the U.S. gold reserves, estimated at 8,100 tonnes. Russia and China have realized that the petrodollar is wielded by Washington as it’s weapon of choice when opposing a well-armed state, and clearly see the writing on the wall – thus working together to create a new global financial paradigm. The reality is that the United States is $20 trillion dollars in debt, and eventually the time will come when the U.S. economy begins to implode — and all the fiat currency people are stuck holding will essentially be worth nothing more than the paper it’s printed on. Hard assets, such as gold and silver, should be bought and taken custody of while there is still an opportunity to do so, as a means of hedging against the potentially disastrous results of the U.S. using the petrodollar as a “weapon.” It’s not Russian nuclear weapons that people should fear, as the policy of mutually assured destruction essentially voids any benefit of a state launching a first-strike nuclear attack. The true threat to America is our economic house of cards, built upon the back of a neoliberal trade policy that puts the “rights” of corporations over that of people . Ultimately, the United States, Russia and China are all controlled by centralized power-hungry tyrants attempting to command powerful global bureaucracies like the IMF, the World Bank, SWIFT, New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Share Google + T. Mohr Tell the Red Queen and her arms manufacturing friends that. Bullets and bombs will never go out of style with these murderers. Social Trending

Al Sharpton says Bill Maher got off easy when he apologized for using a racial slur on last week’s episode of his HBO show Real Time. [“It was disgraceful,” Sharpton told TMZ of Maher. “I have a lot of respect for Bill. He’s a friend, I’ve been on his show many times, but he is totally wrong. This is outrageous. He must be held accountable. There is no joke about using the . ” “I’m very disappointed in Bill and I think to just say it and apologize and not have some accountability is not enough,” the activist and former MSNBC anchor added. On Friday’s episode of Real Time, Maher referred to himself as a “house ni**er. ” The comment sparked backlash on social media and calls for Maher’s firing by Sharpton and Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson. HBO issued a statement Saturday condemning Maher’s remarks, and promised that the slur would be edited out of future broadcasts of the show. “Bill Maher’s comment last night was completely inexcusable and tasteless. We are removing his deeply offensive comment from any subsequent airings of the show,” the premium cable channel said. Maher apologized in a statement Saturday, saying “The word was offensive and I regret saying it and am very sorry. ” But Maher’s apology is meaningless, according to Sharpton. “How do you get a pass for saying something like that?” Sharpton asked. “They weren’t even talking about race! He just out of nowhere took this — you felt you got so comfortable with us that you can denigrate us?” However, Maher will apparently come out of this controversy unscathed. His weekly show is scheduled to air Friday. Sen. Al Franken ( .) has pulled out of his scheduled appearance on the show this week in the wake of the controversy, but rapper Ice Cube, former Florida congressman David Jolly, journalist David Gregory, and Symone Sanders, former national press secretary for Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, are all scheduled to appear on the next episode. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai is back in a South African hospital for a medical review, nearly two weeks after he returned home from that country, his spokesman said on Friday, denying reports that he was critically ill. Tsvangirai, who suffered severe vomiting after a party meeting and was in September airlifted to a Johannesburg hospital where he spent nearly a month receiving treatment and recuperating. He returned to Zimbabwe on Oct. 13 but has not been seen in public since. He came back knowing full well he would return for a review and he went for the review as scheduled, Luke Tamborinyoka, Tsvangirai s spokesman said. He could not say when he expected Tsvangirai back. Tsvangirai s illness has divided the opposition, with some senior party officials saying the former trade unionist should consider stepping down to make way for a younger and fit leader. Tsvangirai, 65, declared last year that he was receiving treatment for colon cancer. Despite the illness, he is leading an opposition alliance to challenge 93-year-old President Robert Mugabe in elections next year.

Episode #137 of SUNDAY WIRE SHOW resumes this Sunday May 29, 2016 as host Patrick Henningsen broadcasts 3 HOURS of LIVE power-packed talk radio on ACR LISTEN LIVE ON THIS PAGE AT THE FOLLOWING SCHEDULED SHOW TIMES:SUNDAYS 5pm-8pm UK Time | 12pm-3pm ET (US) | 9am-12pm PT (US)This week s edition of THE SUNDAY WIRE is broadcasting LIVE from the US as this week s guest hosts Shawn Helton and Hesher McHeshington team-up to achieve escape velocity from the matrix as they fill in for Patrick Henningsen who is on the road. In the first hour, Hesher and Helton cover some of the top news stories throughout the world. Later in the program, we connect with Basil Valentine for global commentary.Strap yourselves in and lower the blast shield this is your brave new world *NOTE: THIS EPISODE MAY CONTAIN STRONG LANGUAGE AND MATURE THEMES*Direct Download of Our Most Recent Show// <![CDATA[ broadstreet.zone(46707); // ]]&gt;Sunday Wire Radio Show Archives

President Trump’s decision to strike Syria has upended assumptions about American military involvement in the Middle East, angering adversaries and raising hopes among allies that it signals a new willingness by the United States to deploy force to help its friends and punish its foes. “People are jubilant in the Gulf right now,” said Mohammed Alyahya, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council who is from Saudi Arabia. “What is clear is that Trump understands what American power can change and is willing to use it. ” The swift decision, by a president who had previously shown no interest in entering conflicts like Syria’s, set Mr. Trump apart from his predecessor’s far more cautious approach to the war. The missile strikes on a Syrian airfield inflicted only minor damage and are unlikely to change the dynamics of a complex conflict that rages on local, regional and global levels. On the ground, it pits an array of rebel groups against the Syrian president, Bashar . Supporting the rebels are nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, who oppose Mr. Assad and his ally, Iran. The war has also entangled Russia and the United States, and sent shock waves through Europe, which streams of Syrian refugees have fled to. But Mr. Trump’s decision to launch quick strikes raised questions about whether it would give the involved powers pause as they pursue their objectives in a war that seems to have no end in sight. Russia and Iran, who back the Syrian government, have responded angrily to the strikes, while allies who criticized President Barack Obama’s cautious approach have welcomed the change. Some allies renewed their calls for a leadership change in Damascus, although officials in the Trump administration did not portray the strikes as the start of a broader campaign. “A lot of this is an emotional response, but nothing about this strike suggests that the fundamentals of the Syria conflict have shifted,” said Noah Bonsey, a Syria analyst with the International Crisis Group. As president, Mr. Obama sought to differentiate himself from his predecessor, George W. Bush, by limiting direct American involvement in Middle Eastern wars. That angered some allies. Israel, Saudi Arabia and others accused him of overlooking aggressive moves by Iran in order to clinch a deal to limit its nuclear program. And Persian Gulf states and Turkey were irate when he did not enforce his own “red line” on the use of chemical weapons in Syria by using force against Mr. Assad after an attack in 2013 that killed more than 1, 000 people. Now, many who felt that Mr. Obama’s caution gave a green light to Mr. Assad’s brutality are lauding Mr. Trump for his forcible response to this week’s chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, a town in northern Syria. “Everyone here in Khan Sheikhoun is happy. It is revenge for the families of the victims,” said Yasser Sarmini, a rebel fighter who was in the town at the time of the strike. “Trump is more frank and earnest than Obama. He promised and fulfilled his promise. ” In Turkey, which has long backed Syrian rebels in their effort to topple Mr. Assad, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a rally that he supported the attack but wanted further action. “I want to say we found this positive as a step taken against the war crimes the Assad regime has committed with chemical and conventional weapons,” Mr. Erdogan said. “Is it enough? I don’t reckon it is enough. ” He called for the establishment of “safe zones” inside Syria, an idea considered but ultimately rejected by the Obama administration. Turkey’s foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, went further, calling in a televised speech for a leadership change in Syria. “This regime should be removed from Syria right away,” he said. “The best way to do this is to establish the interim government, an interim government without Assad. ” In Israel, which has kept its distance from the war raging across its northern border, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the strikes sent a clear message against the spread of chemical weapons. “Israel fully supports President Trump’s decision and hopes that this message of resolve in the face of the Assad regime’s horrific actions will resonate not only in Damascus, but in Tehran, Pyongyang and elsewhere,” he said. But Mr. Trump’s actions could complicate the pursuit of other American priorities, including defeating the Islamic State. Russian officials, who have denied that the Syrian government has retained any chemical weapons, condemned the American attack and suspended their agreement with the United States over the use of Syrian airspace, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday. Russia has argued that the deaths in Khan Sheikhoun on Tuesday occurred when a bomb hit a chemical weapons facility belonging to the rebels. So far, Mr. Trump has not clarified whether Thursday’s strikes were a response to the chemical attack or the start of more direct American involvement. He had previously spoken of cooperating with Russia against the Islamic State, and his spokesman, Sean Spicer, said just last week that Mr. Assad’s staying in power was “a political reality that we have to accept. ” Maha Yahya, the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon, said, “It’s too early to call this a game changer, because we don’t know what the next step will be — or if there will be a next step. ” Ms. Yahya said she had learned of the strikes in the company of Syrian dissidents in Washington, where some applauded and others stayed silent. “There were a lot of mixed emotions,” she added. “They were worried about what this means, yet at the same time incredibly relieved and happy that someone is finally standing up for them against Assad. ” Some analysts said that even if the strike did not represent a major blow to Mr. Assad’s military abilities, it could be a deterrent by signaling new American assertiveness in the conflict. In Iran, the attack, and the swiftness with which it was executed, caught the establishment by surprise. Most in the crowds at Friday Prayer said they had heard of the attack only through social media. State television broadcast the reaction of the Foreign Ministry hours after the strike. Farshad Ghorbanpour, an analyst close to the government of President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, predicted that the country would take the news seriously. “They will choose not to be confrontational towards the U. S. and the West,” Mr. Ghorbanpour said. “Iran will continue to support Bashar but not at all costs. ” The strikes did not appear to have significantly degraded the ability of Mr. Assad and his allies to wage war. A correspondent in Syria for Rossiya 24, the main Russian satellite news channel, filed video from Al Shayrat airfield. The barrages of Tomahawk cruise missiles destroyed nine airplanes and littered a runway with shrapnel, among other damage, the reporter said. He posted a photograph on Instagram of at least one warplane that he said had not been damaged. Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs Province, which includes the air base, said by telephone on Friday that five people in the military and two civilians had been killed in the strikes. “What happened today is biggest evidence that the U. S. and its allies are the biggest supporters of the Daesh terrorist,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. While chemical attacks draw the world’s attention, most of the more than 400, 000 people who have died in the Syrian civil war have been killed with conventional weapons whose use has not piqued Mr. Trump’s ire, leaving some observers skeptical that the strikes would change the war’s course. “I feel the ecstasy of revenge now,” said Malek an antigovernment activist who recently fled to Turkey. “I don’t feel the strike will change anything. Unless Bashar goes, nothing will change. ”

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has intensified a clandestine war in Somalia over the past year, using Special Operations troops, airstrikes, private contractors and African allies in an escalating campaign against Islamist militants in the anarchic Horn of Africa nation. Hundreds of American troops now rotate through makeshift bases in Somalia, the largest military presence since the United States pulled out of the country after the “Black Hawk Down” battle in 1993. The Somalia campaign, as it is described by American and African officials and international monitors of the Somali conflict, is partly designed to avoid repeating that debacle, which led to the deaths of 18 American soldiers. But it carries enormous risks — including more American casualties, botched airstrikes that kill civilians and the potential for the United States to be drawn even more deeply into a troubled country that so far has stymied all efforts to fix it. The Somalia campaign is a blueprint for warfare that President Obama has embraced and will pass along to his successor. It is a model the United States now employs across the Middle East and North Africa — from Syria to Libya — despite the president’s stated aversion to American “boots on the ground” in the world’s war zones. This year alone, the United States has carried out airstrikes in seven countries and conducted Special Operations missions in many more. American officials said the White House had quietly broadened the president’s authority for the use of force in Somalia by allowing airstrikes to protect American and African troops as they combat fighters from the Shabab, a militant group that has proclaimed allegiance to Al Qaeda. In its public announcements, the Pentagon sometimes characterizes the operations as “ strikes,” though some analysts have said this rationale has become a prophecy. It is only because American forces are now being deployed on the front lines in Somalia that they face imminent threats from the Shabab. America’s role in Somalia has expanded as the Shabab have become bolder and more cunning. The group has attacked police headquarters, bombed seaside restaurants, killed Somali generals and stormed heavily fortified bases used by African Union troops. In January, Shabab fighters killed more than 100 Kenyan troops and drove off with their trucks and weapons. The group carried out the 2013 attack at the Westgate mall, which killed more than 60 people and wounded more than 175 in Nairobi, Kenya. More recently it has branched into more sophisticated forms of terrorism, including nearly downing a Somali airliner in February with a bomb hidden in a laptop computer. About 200 to 300 American Special Operations troops work with soldiers from Somalia and other African nations like Kenya and Uganda to carry out more than a raids per month, according to senior American military officials. The operations are a combination of ground raids and drone strikes. The Navy’s classified SEAL Team 6 has been heavily involved in many of these operations. Once ground operations are complete, American troops working with Somali forces often interrogate prisoners at temporary screening facilities, including one in Puntland, a state in northern Somalia, before the detainees are transferred to more permanent prisons, American military officials said. The Pentagon has acknowledged only a small fraction of these operations. But even the information released publicly shows a marked increase this year. The Pentagon has announced 13 ground raids and airstrikes thus far in 2016 — including three operations in September — up from five in 2015, according to data compiled by New America, a Washington think tank. The strikes have killed about 25 civilians and 200 people suspected of being militants, the group found. The strikes have had a mixed record. In March, an American airstrike killed more than 150 Shabab fighters at what military officials called a “graduation ceremony,” one of the single deadliest American airstrikes in any country in recent years. But an airstrike last month killed more than a dozen Somali government soldiers, who were American allies against the Shabab. Outraged Somali officials said the Americans had been duped by clan rivals and fed bad intelligence, laying bare the complexities of waging a shadow war in Somalia. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said the Pentagon was investigating the strike. Some experts point out that with the administration’s expanded justification for airstrikes, a greater American presence in Somalia would inevitably lead to an escalation of the air campaign. “It is clear that U. S. support to Somali security forces and African Union peacekeepers has been stepped up this year,” said Ken Menkhaus, a Somalia expert at Davidson College. “That increases the likelihood that U. S. advisers will periodically be in positions where Al Shabab is about to launch an attack. ” Peter Cook, the Department of Defense spokesman, wrote in an email, “The DoD has a strong partnership with the Somali National Army and AMISOM forces from Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Burundi operating in Somalia. They have made steady progress pressuring Al Shabab. ” The escalation of the war can be seen in the bureaucratic language of the semiannual notifications that Mr. Obama sends to Congress about American conflicts overseas. The Somalia passage in the June 2015 notification is terse, saying American troops “have worked to counter the terrorist threat posed by ’ida and associated elements of . ” In June, however, the president told Congress that the United States had become engaged in a more expansive mission. Besides hunting members of Al Qaeda and the Shabab, the notification said, American troops are in Somalia “to provide advice and assistance to regional counterterrorism forces, including the Somali National Army and African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) forces. ” American airstrikes, it said, were carried out in defense of the African troops and in one instance because Shabab fighters “posed an imminent threat to U. S. and AMISOM forces. ” At an old Russian fighter jet base in Baledogle, about 70 miles from the Somali capital, Mogadishu, American Marines and private contractors are working to build up a Somali military unit designed to combat the Shabab throughout the country. Soldiers for the military unit, called Danab, which means lightning in Somali, are recruited by employees of Bancroft Global Development, a company that for years has worked with the State Department to train African Union troops and embed with them on military operations inside Somalia. Michael Stock, the company’s founder, said the Danab recruits received initial training at a facility in Mogadishu before they were sent to Baledogle, where they go through months of training by the Marines. Bancroft advisers then accompany the Somali fighters on missions. Mr. Stock said the goal was to create a small Somali military unit capable of battling the Shabab without repeating the mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to build up large armies. Still, American commanders and their international partners are considering a significant expansion of the training effort to potentially include thousands of Somali troops who would protect the country when African Union forces eventually left the country. Maj. Gen. Kurt L. Sonntag, the commander of the American military’s task force in Djibouti, the only permanent American base in Africa, said the proposed training plan would increase and enhance the Somali national security forces, including the army, national guard and national police. “The specific numbers of forces required is currently being assessed,” General Sonntag said. He added that it must be large enough to protect the Somali people but “affordable and sustainable over time, in terms of Somalia’s national budget. ” Independent experts and aid organizations say the Somali Army is still largely untrained, poorly paid and poorly equipped, and years away from coalescing regional militias into a unified army. American policy makers tried to avoid direct involvement in Somalia for years after the Black Hawk Down episode. But in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Special Operations troops and the Central Intelligence Agency began paying Somali warlords to hunt down Qaeda operatives in the country. In 2006, the United States gave clandestine support to Ethiopian troops invading the country to overthrow an Islamist movement that had taken control of Mogadishu. But the brutal urban warfare tactics of the Ethiopian troops created support for an insurgent movement that called itself Al Shabab, which means “The Youth. ” American involvement in Somalia was intermittent for several years afterward, until the Westgate attack refocused Washington’s attention on the threat the Shabab posed beyond Somalia. The Shabab still control thousands of square miles of territory across Somalia. A Somali university student who travels in and out of Shabab areas said the group’s fighters were becoming increasingly suspicious, even paranoid, checking the phones, cameras, computers and documents of anyone passing through their territory, constantly on guard for another American attack. He said Shabab fighters were becoming younger, with a vast majority under 25 and many as young as 10. American law enforcement officials think that the bomb that nearly brought down the commercial jet in February was most likely made by a Yemeni who is believed to have constructed other laptop bombs in Somalia. Pictures from an airport machine show the explosive packed into the corner of the laptop, next to a battery. Several aviation experts said that the bomb was obvious and that airport security officials in Mogadishu might have intentionally allowed it through. The bomb exploded about 15 minutes after takeoff, punching a hole through the fuselage and killing the man suspected of carrying the bomb on board, though the pilot was able to land safely. Aviation experts said that if the bomb had exploded a few minutes later, with the cabin fully pressurized, the fuselage would have most likely blown apart, killing all of the approximately 80 people on board.

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

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Arab League is to hold an emergency meeting on Saturday on U.S. plans to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the head of the Palestinian delegation to the body said on Wednesday. The Palestinians and Jordan had requested the meeting which will take place at 3 p.m. (1300 GMT), Ambassador Diab al-Louh told Reuters by phone.

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe s ruling ZANU-PF party said on Tuesday it would never succumb to military pressure and described a statement by the armed forces chief that he would intervene to end a purge within the party as treasonable conduct . In the statement, ZANU-PF said it stood by the primacy of politics over the gun and accused armed forces chief Constantino Chiwenga of trying to disturb the peace and stability of the impoverished southern African nation.

MANILA (Reuters) - As she announced in January 2016 that the Philippines would immunize one million children with a new dengue vaccine, the nation s then health secretary Janette Garin boasted it was a world-first and a tribute to her country s expertise in research. At the time, it seemed the Philippines could be on the cusp of a breakthrough to combat a potentially lethal tropical virus that had been endemic in large parts of the Southeast Asian nation for decades. Almost two years later, the program lies in tatters and has been suspended after Sanofi Pasteur, a division of French drug firm Sanofi, said at the end of last month the vaccine itself may in some cases increase the risk of severe dengue in recipients not previously infected by the virus. Documents reviewed by Reuters that have not been disclosed until now, as well as interviews with local experts, show that key recommendations made by a Philippines Department of Health (DOH) advisory body of doctors and pharmacologists were not heeded before the program was rolled out to 830,000 children. After Garin s announcement, the Formulary Executive Council (FEC) of advisers urged caution over the vaccine because it said its safety and cost-effectiveness had not been established. After twice meeting in January, the panel approved the state s purchase of the vaccine on Feb 1, 2016 but recommended stringent conditions, minutes of all three meetings show. Based on the available scientific evidence presented to the Council, there is still a need to establish long-term safety, effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, the FEC told Garin in a letter on that day. The letter was reviewed by Reuters. The FEC said Dengvaxia should be introduced through small-scale pilot tests and phased implementation rather than across three regions in the country at the same time, and only after a detailed baseline study of the prevalence and strains of dengue in the targeted area, the FEC letter and minutes of the meetings said. The experts also recommended that Dengvaxia be bought in small batches so the price could be negotiated down. An economic evaluation report commissioned by Garin s own department had found the proposed cost of 1,000 pesos ($21.29) per dose was not cost-effective from a public payer perspective, the minutes from the meetings reveal. For reasons that Reuters was unable to determine, these recommendations were ignored. The DOH purchased 3 million doses of Dengvaxia in one lot, enough for the required three vaccinations for each child in the proposed immunization program and paid 1,000 pesos per dose, a copy of the purchase order reviewed by Reuters shows. It did conduct a limited baseline study in late February and March 2016, but the survey looked at common illnesses rather than the prevalence of dengue, according to guidelines issued by Garin s office at the time and reviewed by Reuters. Garin, who was part of the government of former president Benigno Aquino and replaced when President Rodrigo Duterte took power in June, 2016, did not respond to requests for comment on why she ignored the local experts recommendations. A physician, Garin has defended her conduct and a program that she said was implemented in accordance with WHO guidance and recommendations . I understand the concern, she told Philippine TV station ABS-CBN on Friday. Even us, we re also very angry when we learned about Sanofi s announcement about severe dengue. I m also a mother. My child was also vaccinated. I was also vaccinated. DOH spokesman Lyndon Lee Suy also did not respond to text messages or questions emailed to him. Sanofi Philippines declined comment on the Philippines government decision. However, Dr. Su-Peing Ng, Global Medical Head of Sanofi Pasteur, told Reuters: We communicated all known benefits and risks of the vaccine to the Philippines government. Rontgene Solante, former president of the Philippines Society for Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, said health officials were motivated to end the debilitating impact of dengue on the Philippines, where there are about 200,000 reported cases each year and many more unreported. Over 1,000 people died of the disease in the country last year. Two months after the FEC wrote to the health secretary, the DOH began immunizing one million students around the age of 10 in all three target areas in April 2016, in accordance with its original plan but at odds with the FEC s recommendations to conduct a slow roll-out of the vaccine. The usual process for the DOH that has protected our children for so many decades was not followed. That s a fact, said Susan Mercado, a former Philippines health department undersecretary and former senior official at the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO said in April 2016 that the Philippines campaign appeared to meet its criteria for using Dengvaxia because the targeted regions had high levels of dengue exposure; the vaccine would be provided to children 9 years and older; and they would each receive three doses. WHO was not involved in the deliberations of the FEC, according to the minutes. It said in a statement last week that a position paper on the dengue vaccine it published in July 2016 did not include a recommendation for countries to introduce it. Now, after Sanofi s warnings, WHO has said it agrees with the government s decision to suspend the immunization program. The current secretary of health in the Duterte administration, Francisco Duque, said he would carry out a thorough analysis of the FEC s recommendations and the program before passing judgment. He said the Council s recommendations were not legally enforceable. At the end of the day, the final decision is made by (the)secretary of health, he told Reuters. But because of the expertise that the members of the FEC have, it is something that you don t want to ignore. Underpinning the concerns in 2016 about Dengvaxia, since confirmed by Sanofi, were fears that the vaccine would act like a primary infection for those who had never had dengue. If they were bitten by a mosquito carrying the virus after the vaccination, it could be akin to getting dengue a second time, which often leads to far more severe symptoms and potentially death if bad cases are not treated quickly. The concerns were first raised by noted U.S.-based tropical disease expert, Dr. Scott Halstead, who urged both Sanofi and the WHO to proceed with caution. In the Philippines, Dr. Antonio Dans, an epidemiologist from the University of the Philippines, led a delegation of physicians to the DOH in March 2016 where, citing Halstead s research, they pressed for the campaign to be aborted. The data was not definitive but it was clear there were uncertainties and risks. Why not wait for the complete studies to be finished before endangering so many children? Dans told Reuters. In a Senate hearing late last year, Garin said she was aware of Halstead s assessment but dismissed it. This is a theory ... it has not been proven, she said at the time. Two sources involved in the program said no antibody testing was undertaken, as recommended by the FEC. Antibody testing, while not 100 percent accurate, indicates whether an individual has had dengue before. Duque, the current health secretary, is demanding the company refund the 3 billion pesos ($60 million) paid for the vaccinations and has threatened legal action against Sanofi if it is proven to have withheld information. A criminal probe is underway into how a danger to public health came about and two Congressional inquiries have been convened in the Philippines. Duque told Reuters he was concerned that the program was paid from an off-budget allocation, meaning it bypassed Congressional scrutiny. Reuters was unable to confirm this. Until now, one child out of the 830,000 vaccinated, a girl who was hospitalized with severe dengue, has been linked definitively by the DOH to the campaign. But the department of health says it still does not have complete data on those who fell ill after taking Dengvaxia.

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May s office confirmed that Penny Mordaunt has been appointed Britain s new minister for international development, replacing Priti Patel who resigned on Wednesday over undisclosed meetings with Israeli officials that breached protocol.

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar s Fine Gael party surged into an 11-point lead in a poll on Thursday, gaining credit for the government s Brexit negotiating stance and indicating its recent near-collapse had not hurt his popularity. Varadkar has played a key role in negotiations over Britain s withdrawl from the European Union this week, insisting that a tentative deal struck on the Irish border on Monday must be fulfilled if talks are to move onto the next phase, as London wants. That was in sharp contrast to a week earlier when his deputy prime minister had to resign to avert a government collapse and election before Christmas, an episode that members of Fine Gael feared would damage both the party and its leader. Yet support for Fine Gael rose by five points to 36 percent in the Irish Times/MRBI poll, while fellow centre-right rival Fianna Fail has fallen four points to 25 percent since October. The left-wing Sinn Fein party was unchanged on 19 percent. The most recent survey taken by another polling company, conducted during the government crisis, showed that the two main parties were almost neck and neck. The number of undecided voters was far higher in the MRBI sample. Satisfaction with the government also rose by five points to 41 percent in Thursday s poll, the highest level achieved by any government in almost a decade. Today s poll proves that timing is everything, said MRBI director Aisling Corcoran. Interviewing took place on Monday and Tuesday against the backdrop of Brexit negotiations and the government has been credited with approaching the negotiations with clarity and determination.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday after holding talks with U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson that some progress had been made on Syria and that a working group would be set up to examine the poor state of U.S.-Russia ties. Lavrov, addressing a news conference, said President Vladimir Putin had said Moscow was ready to restore an air safety agreement covering Syria which it had suspended after last week’s U.S. missile strikes on Syria. Moscow and Washington had also agreed to continue cooperating to try to find a political solution for Syria, he said.

When NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell calls a presidential candidate uneducated on foreign policy, we should listen.Because that s precisely what she had to say about Republican front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday during an appearance on Meet The Press.Mitchell has been NBC s foreign affairs expert for over 20 years so she knows what she is talking about. So whenever Trump has opened his mouth to talk about international affairs, she is taken aback. He cannot stick to a subject. It is remarkable, Mitchell told Chuck Todd. And when he doesn t know something, he just changes the subject, and makes it all about himself. Todd had just referenced an interview where Trump changed the topic rather than answer a question about whether he would use a nuclear weapon against ISIS.Chuck Todd mentioned that national security talk is especially noticeable to people like Mitchell who have literally spent their careers keeping up with foreign policy. He would cancel defense treaties with Japan and South Korea against North Korea, Mitchell said in reference to a Trump interview with the New York Times. He would be okay if Japan and South Korea go nuclear. American policy for decades since World War II has been trying to keep nukes out of that arena. Then Mitchell explained how Trump would hurt America by cutting off our oil supply from Saudi Arabia if the Saudis refuse to pay the United States more money for defense, which would likely hit our economy like a ton of bricks as oil prices rise and the price of gas skyrockets. If we re going to make America less dependent on foreign oil, we have to do so gradually because all at once would be a disaster.But she was particularly concerned about the fact that Trump doesn t seem to understand that Iran isn t allowed to buy American planes, nor does he know that China is North Korea s biggest trading partner. He is completely all over the lot Mitchell said. On Iran, he complains that Iran isn t buying our planes. It had to be pointed out to him that Iran is still under sanctions and cannot buy American planes. He thinks North Korea and Iran are the biggest trading partners, when North Korea s biggest trading partner is China. And then she finished slaying Trump with a single line that should worry every American. He is completely uneducated about any part of the world. Todd went on to consult Katy Tur about what she has learned about Trump s lack of foreign policy chops, and she mentioned that Trump doesn t understand the function of US military bases around the world and why they are there, which would be a very important thing to know to be an effective commander-in-chief of our armed forces.Here s the video via YouTube:Donald Trump is an idiot when it comes to domestic policy and foreign policy, but considering the issues we face internationally whether it be terrorism, rising tensions in the Middle East, competing with China on the world economic stage, and dealing with a refugee crisis, the last thing America needs is a leader who doesn t know anything about any of these issues beyond campaign rhetoric that lasts a full sentence before the subject is changed.Presidents cannot just change the subject rather than deal with a foreign policy crisis. They have to figure out a solution to the problem and being uneducated about the situation to begin with doesn t exactly build confidence that the problem will be solved competently.And since Trump has proven that he can t do that, it doesn t make any sense whatsoever to elect him to the highest office in the land with a greatest responsibility in the world.Featured image: screenshot

This is great! Protesters let it rip on Hillary!

LONDON (Reuters) - Two people were injured on Thursday, police said, after a report of an explosion near the Scottish town of Glasgow. The blast was reported inside a building in Wishaw, southeast of Glasgow, and police said they had evacuated nearby buildings as a precaution. Emergency services are at the scene and two injured parties are being treated by ambulance, Lanarkshire Police said on Facebook. Scotland s Fire and Rescue Service said it too was at the scene. We are in attendance at Bonkle Road, Wishaw tackling small fire following small explosion in commercial building, it posted on its Twitter feed.

In 2008, it was former Gov. Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin, whom beltway political mavens had built up for years as an exciting Republican reformer with big “new ideas” (like welfare reform and school vouchers). In the wake of the Bush debacle, he was especially attractive as an “outsider” who could make the American people forget what they’d just endured. Unfortunately, like Walker, on the stump Thompson was frighteningly unprepared, even making embarrassing gaffes about Jews and Israel, and he dropped out in August of 2007. Undeterred by this embarrassment, the establishment once again anointed a Midwestern Governor as the GOP’s salvation for exactly the same reasons in 2014, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who also flamed out before any votes were cast. This year it was Scott Walker, who “suspended” his campaign yesterday after having been in precipitous free fall from front-runner to last place and facing the prospect of being booted from the main debate stage and forced to spar with Lindsey Graham at the kids’ table next time out. If you don’t count Gerald Ford, who backed into the presidency by being appointed vice president and succeeding Nixon when he resigned, the GOP has never nominated a governor and only one politician from the Midwest since Alf Landon back in 1936: Senator Bob Dole in 1996. (And neither of them were exactly resounding victories — Landon only got two electoral votes and Dole was soundly defeated by the incumbent Bill Clinton.) Eisenhower more accurately belonged to the nation, not the region where he was born and his executive experience was in saving the world from fascism so such parochial electoral concerns were not particularly relevant. But while it’s true that the modern electoral map is very daunting for the GOP, they seem peculiarly fixated on this region. Walker took the early lead in the Midwestern savior race, but for months people were also talking up Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence as similarly excellent choices to lead the GOP out of the wilderness.  Back in 2014, as they all made pilgrimages to the Republican Governor’s Association, Politico described them this way: The fact that they seemed to be able to transcend the party’s, shall we say, cruder side was also a big selling point. As Walker put it during his apparently impressive appearance: By strong leadership he meant that one should be as crackpot right-wing as one can get away with and not be Michele Bachmann. And Walker was that guy in every way. The New Republic described him this way: He took his marching orders from The Club For Growth, Americans for Prosperity and anti- immigration guru Jeff Sessions. He had evangelical credentials equal to those of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum. His record of union bashing was second to none. And he certainly seemed nice, so nice in fact that he appeared to be something of a grinning simpleton at times, particularly on social media, where his tweeting of his dinner menus and constant pictures of himself riding on a Harley were ruthlessly mocked. While all the constituencies in the party who were presumed to be his greatest fans gave him plenty of chances, his gaffes and flip-flops made them doubt his sincerity and abilities. He had been widely assumed to be the Koch brothers’ choice due to their involvement in the union busting and recall campaign in Wisconsin. And they were admittedly very impressed with him until he started making embarrassing mistakes, like saying that Ronald Reagan’s greatest foreign policy achievement was taking on the air traffic controllers union, and flip-flopping on immigration several times, finally landing on the opinion that even legal immigration should be ended. Not ready for prime time doesn’t begin to describe it and the Kochs have known that for a while now. Additionally, for reasons that remain somewhat elusive, the Christian right just didn’t trust him. To someone who isn’t a member of that club, his tiny deviations from the dogma seemed understandable, but they saw it differently. With other candidates in the race with strong conservative evangelical credentials (as well as Trump, who rightly notes that many evangelicals love him too) that constituency never materialized for him either. And even aside from the now predictable consecration as this year’s Midwestern savior, the rationale for Walker’s campaign was built on the fallacy of his alleged prowess in bending the Legislature to his will and dominating at the ballot box. Apparently, managing to win in years that were national Democratic electoral bloodbaths and only being recalled once makes you a giant slayer in the Republican Party these days. And having a legislative majority that had been building an agenda and a game plan for many years before you were elected counts as a demonstration of heroic power. (Juggling numerous scandals and managing to avoid indictment is likewise considered a useful skill — which, come to think of it, it actually is in the GOP.) The sad fact is that Walker has been the most overrated politician in the country based largely upon the Republicans’ quixotic desire to find a leader who can put a respectable face on its increasingly disreputable base — and the media’s odd willingness to not believe what their eyes were telling them: that Walker was a terrible candidate. Like Pawlenty and Thompson before him, he may have looked good on a PowerPoint presentation, but in reality he showed few signs of life on the debate stage or on the stump. The good news for Washington’s pundits and establishment Republicans is that there’s still some hope for their Midwestern hero scenario to come true in 2016. There is another one in the race: Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Whether or not he can make the cut is still unknown, but if there’s one thing you can say about him, it’s that he’s anything but dull. Unfortunately, the Republican electorate seems mesmerized by “outsider” amateurs this year so far and Kasich is the embodiment of a lifelong politician who took some time out to cash in  — he’s the fourth richest Republican running — and then jump back in to become governor, and then president. He also has a habit of diluting his hardcore conservatism with some pragmatic deal-making from time to time, which is unlikely to be acceptable unless he adopts some Trumpish attitudes about Mexicans and Muslims to cover it. But whatever happens this time out, for those who believe in the Great Whitebread Hope as the only salvation for a fractured party that needs someone who can convince the country it hasn’t gone completely stark raving mad, there’s every reason to believe that the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.

This is an Anthem for Our Times Share on Facebook Tweet I think the world deserves to see the truth about #NoDAPL I tried my best to portray what I felt at camp, I felt LOVE. Love for all people, all living things, Mother Earth herself, and concern for future generations. I felt what this world needs at this time, Unity beyond race, concern for one another, and togetherness. I felt peace and calm. Then when the police came I felt the opposite, I... read more I think the world deserves to see the truth about #NoDAPL I tried my best to portray what I felt at camp, I felt LOVE. Love for all people, all living things, Mother Earth herself, and concern for future generations. I felt what this world needs at this time, Unity beyond race, concern for one another, and togetherness. I felt peace and calm. Then when the police came I felt the opposite, I felt lies, setups, and oppression, but I'm trying not to dwell on the negative. My only wishes with this video is that it helps in some way. Wasn't sure how to help so I just started filming. Much love to everyone on the front lines!! Much love Standing Rock, Oceti Sakowin, Turtle Island, all Indigenous Nations overseas, all spiritual leaders, and all beautiful Human Beings of all colors (Black, Red, White, Yellow, Pink, and Orange haha! jk). You are all important and I love you all equally! When I was at camp I got the feeling that this is the beginning of something new, something that excited me and woke me up, learning a new way to fight injustice, something bigger than what I thought it was, and it's beautiful. The energy, courage, and unity I felt at camp is inspirational. To EVERYONE at home let's keep spreading truth for those on the front lines! If anyone seeing this goes to Standing Rock, I would encourage you to be humble, sit by the microphone where they talk and feed, and listen to the leadership teach good things. It's a beautiful happening, don't go to lead, go to help... Peace love and prayers to all including the police, sheriff, gov, and ETP, maybe they will have a change of heart. And if not I'll see you on the front lines! hahaha!!! - Prolific The Rapper Follow Red Warrior Camp , Sacred Stone Camp , Dr0ne2bwild Photography & Video and others for the latest news daily!!.... [watch video below]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama spoke by phone on Monday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto about the economy, organized crime and migration, the White House said in a statement. The presidents agreed to “take steps to solidify the relationship and institutionalize mechanisms of cooperation,” the White House said.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation has found breaches in Illinois and Arizona’s voter registration databases and is urging states to increase computer security ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election, according to a U.S. official familiar with the probe. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that investigators were also seeking evidence of whether other states may have been targeted. The FBI warning in an Aug. 18 flash alert from the agency’s Cyber Division did not identify the intruders or the two states targeted. Reuters obtained a copy of the document after Yahoo News first reported the story Monday. Accessing information in a voter database, much of which is publicly accessible, does not necessarily suggest an effort to manipulate the votes themselves. When registering, voters typically provide their names, home addresses, driver’s license or identification numbers, and party affiliations. But U.S. intelligence officials have become increasingly worried that hackers sponsored by Russia or other countries may attempt to disrupt the presidential election. Officials and cyber security experts say recent breaches at the Democratic National Committee and elsewhere in the Democratic Party were likely carried out by people within the Russian government. Kremlin officials have denied that. An FBI spokeswoman would not comment on the alerts but said the agency “routinely advises” on “various cyber threat indicators observed during the course of our investigations.” The intrusions come amid repeated unsubstantiated claims by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that the U.S. election system is “rigged.” Trump has cited emails leaked from the DNC that indicated the party leadership favored Hillary Clinton over rival candidate Bernie Sanders as reason to cast doubt on the electoral process in general. David Kennedy, chief executive officer of information security consulting company TrustedSec, said the attacks referenced in the FBI alert appeared to be largely exploratory and not especially sophisticated. “It could be a precursor to a larger attack,” he added. Citing a state election board official, Yahoo News said the Illinois voter registration system was shut down for 10 days in late July after hackers downloaded personal data on up to 200,000 voters. State voter systems are often targeted by hackers, and 200,000 is a relatively small number compared to other recent incidents. An independent computer security researcher uncovered in December of last year a database on 191 million voters that was exposed on the open Internet due to an incorrect configuration. The Arizona attack was more limited and involved introducing malicious software into one state employee’s computer, said Matt Roberts, communications director for the Arizona secretary of state’s office. That office publicly reported a cyber incident in June after being contacted by the FBI, which led to it temporarily shutting down its election site to deal with the potential threat. Roberts said he was uncertain if the FBI advisory was in reference to that same June incident, during which investigators found no evidence of any data exfiltration. In that episode, the FBI told Arizona officials the hackers were believed to be Russian and described it as an “eight out of 10” on a threat severity scale, Roberts said. Arizona will hold Republican and Democratic primaries for congressional races on Tuesday.

Is karma knocking on her door?Mayor Lyda Krewson released a statement following the verdict saying, I am appalled at what happened to Anthony Lamar Smith. Krewson s comment drew a rebuke from Neil Bruntrager, Stockley s lawyer. How do you promote all those things by creating distrust in a system that clearly worked under these circumstances? Bruntrager said. It is irresponsible and a disservice to the community to make statements like that. It s an insult to Judge Wilson to make statements like that. And it falsely encourages the belief that an injustice was done here when in fact justice was done. St. Louis DispatchAgitators refuse to disperse causing property damage near Mayor's home. Those who don't comply w/police orders subject to arrest #stlverdict St. Louis, MO Police (@SLMPD) September 16, 2017According to this Twitter user, there is an unruly mob outside of the St. Louis Mayor s home and they ve asked for a white female to knock on the door. Asking for white female ally to knock on door of @LydaKrewson pic.twitter.com/SuXVNo8CJi P. Kim Bui (@kimbui) September 16, 2017Here s a shot of the police in front of the mayor s home:Police in front of @LydaKrewson's house. pic.twitter.com/xAOU4SWaDd P. Kim Bui (@kimbui) September 16, 2017Red paint was thrown at the Mayor s home:Paint thrown as well. Leaders are asking people to move pic.twitter.com/4pT2ESKWFX P. Kim Bui (@kimbui) September 16, 2017 Here s a video of the mob:BREAKING: Rioters just busted the Mayor's windows in St. Louis. This is getting out of control. #STLVerdictpic.twitter.com/K8SLkHnd3l Tennessee (@10_gop) September 16, 2017St. Louis Police posted pictures of the projectiles being thrown at police officers.Rocks & water bottles have been thrown at our officers throughout the day. Officers used great restraint. #STLVerdict pic.twitter.com/LIl2OxKhcO St. Louis, MO Police (@SLMPD) September 15, 20174 officers assaulted. 1 treated for hand injury. 3 not treated-1 hit w/ water bottle, 1 knocked off bike & 1 pinned on bike. #STLVerdict St. Louis, MO Police (@SLMPD) September 15, 2017

THOMAS SOWELL:Avoiding the fatal mistake of disregarding the record of the pastAny honest man, looking back on a very long life, must admit even if only to himself being a relic of a bygone era. Having lived long enough to have seen both the greatest generation that fought World War II and the gratingest generation that we see all around us today makes being a relic of the past more of a boast than an admission.Not everything in the past was admirable. Poet W. H. Auden called the 1930s a low dishonest decade. So were the 1960s, which launched many of the trends we are experiencing so painfully today. Some of the fashionable notions of the 1930s reappeared in the 1960s, often using the very same discredited words and producing the same disastrous consequences.The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past.If you want to understand the fatal dangers facing America today, read The Gathering Storm by Winston Churchill. The book is not about America, the Middle East, or nuclear missiles. But it shows Europe s attitudes and delusions aimed at peace in the years before the Second World War which instead ended up bringing on that most terrible war in all of human history.Black adults, during the years when I was growing up in Harlem, had far less education than black adults today but far more common sense. In an age of artificial intelligence, too many of our schools and colleges are producing artificial stupidity, among both blacks and whites.The first time I traveled across the Atlantic Ocean, as the plane flew into the skies over London I was struck by the thought that, in these skies, a thousand British fighter pilots fought off Hitler s air force and saved both Britain and Western civilization. But how many students today will have any idea of such things, with history being neglected in favor of politically correct rhetoric?You cannot live a long life without having been forced to change your mind many times about people and things including, in some cases, your whole view of the world. Those who glorify the young today do them a great disservice, when this sends inexperienced young people out into the world cocksure about things on which they have barely scratched the surface.In my first overseas trip, I was struck by blatantly obvious differences in behavior among different groups, such as the Malays and the Chinese in Malaysia and wondered why scholars who were far more well-traveled than I was seemed not to have noticed such things, and to have resorted to all sorts of esoteric theories to explain why some groups earned higher incomes than others.There are words that were once common but that are seldom heard any more. The phrase none of your business is one of these. Today, everything seems to be the government s business or the media s business. And the word risqu would be almost impossible to explain to young people, in a world where gross vulgarity is widespread and widely accepted.Back when I taught at UCLA, I was constantly amazed at how little so many students knew. Finally, I could no longer restrain myself from asking a student the question that had long puzzled me: What were you doing for the last twelve years before you got here? Reading about the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, and the widespread retrogressions of Western civilization that followed, was an experience that was sobering, if not crushing. Ancient history in general lets us know how long human beings have been the way they are, and dampens giddy zeal for the latest panaceas, despite how politically correct those panaceas may be.When I was growing up, we were taught the stories of people whose inventions and scientific discoveries had expanded the lives of millions of other people. Today, students are being taught to admire those who complain, denounce, and demand.The first column I ever wrote, 39 years ago, was titled The Profits of Doom. This was long before Al Gore made millions of dollars promoting global-warming hysteria. Back in 1970, the prevailing hysteria was the threat of a new ice age promoted by some of the same environmentalists who are promoting global-warming hysteria today.Read more: National Review

BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany will spend an initial 10 million euros to help remove mines from the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the Handelsblatt newspaper said in Friday editions. The foreign ministry is set to announce the increased funding as part of a pact with the United States on Friday, the paper added. The agreement calls for Germany to help fund Tetra Tech , a U.S. government contractor working to clear mines from Raqqa, where U.S.-backed militias last month declared victory over the Islamic State extremist group. The U.S. military continues to press Germany for additional aid in Syria, but Germany is waiting for measures on how to stabilize Syria, the newspaper said. Norbert Roettgen, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel s conservatives, told the paper that financial aid for rebuilding must be combined with a reliable solution and political stability for Syria . The paper said the German contribution to the effort to de-mine Raqqa could be stepped up if the situation stabilized.

On September 27, 2017, an unhinged, liberal, Trump-hating student, who has now been identified as Edith Macias, was captured on what has now become a viral video. In the video, Macias can be seen ranting and screaming, during an unbelievable exchange that took place in a campus office building at the University of California, Riverside, only moments after she stole a hat off the head of Matthew Vitale, a UC Riverside student who was walking on the campus, and minding his own business. The exchange between this Hispanic woman, (who we re pretty sure is not a legal citizen, based on her comment to the victim, when she screamed, F*ck your laws! after he cited his right to free-speech) and the victim is stunning. Over and over again, this ill-informed and unbelievably angry student makes up her own facts with absolutely no basis whatsoever. Saying things like the signature Trump hat that reads Make America Great Again represents the genocide of a bunch of people and America was never great and of but of course, You stole this land! Just another ungrateful immigrant who is likely one of Obama s Dreamers. ***WARNING*** The video below will make your blood boil.According to Campus Reform, here s how the unbelievable exchange went down:A Trump-supporting student at the University of California, Riverside had his MAGA hat stolen by a peer who demanded that administrators refuse to allow him to continue to wear it.A video of the incident obtained by Campus Reform shows an enraged female student taking the hat to the school s Student Life Department as Matthew Vitale fruitlessly attempts to explain to the young woman that the hat is his property. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t. I swear to God I could burn this sh*t, she continues as several staffers look on. Are you people not going to do anything? She is stealing my property, Vitale pleads, though the altercation went on for several more minutes. We will need to return his property to him, but we can talk about one university employee begins to explain before being abruptly cut off by the student thief. How about we talk about not letting him wear this sh*t on campus? the thief retorts, while Vitale later tells a growing presence of administrators that the fact that you people haven t gotten this back for me is sad and wrong. The altercation continued for several minutes until the hat was relinquished to an administrator who then returned it to Vitale, though not before his fellow student got in the last word. F*** your f***ing freedom of speech, boy. F***it. F*** it because your freedom of speech is literally killing a lot of people out there.According to the College Fix: The UC Riverside student who stole Vitale s Make America Great Again hat off his head and refused to give it back now faces steep legal consequences.A criminal complaint provided to The College Fix by the Riverside County District Attorney s Office states that Edith Macias has been charged with one misdemeanor count of grand theft for the September 27 incident.The next court date on the matter is slated for March, and the maximum penalty Macias faces if convicted as currently charged is one year in county jail, a spokesman for the DA s office told The Fix.The charge was filed after UC Riverside student Matthew Vitale, the student who had his Make America Great Again hat stolen from off his head, decided to press criminal theft charges against Macias.According to the declaration in support of an arrest warrant, Macias told the officer who responded to the incident that the reason she swiped the hat was because it represented genocide of a bunch of people. She stated she wanted to burn the hat because of what it represented, it states.In a statement to The College Fix on Monday, Vitale said he is gratified by the developments. I m very pleased that the DA decided to charge her, especially because I am skeptical that UCR student conduct did anything. I will be following up with the student conduct office to determine if anything was done, Vitale said. In the meantime, I can t thank UCPD enough for actually taking this matter seriously. The detective and officers involved with this case were the epitome of professionalism, he added. If, as I suspect, UCR decided not to discipline her in some way this decision by the DA s office shows two things: First, that UCR does not protect and shows no respect for speech that does not conform to their ideology. Second, that, in this case, UCR chose not to discipline a person who committed a crime on campus against another student. After Vitale had requested charges be brought against Macias, he explained his motives to The College Fix: I do want to send a message. I am not vindictive, I am not vengeful, but people, especially in my generation, need to realize you can t do things like this because you don t like what someone is saying or wearing. Knock, knock.Who s there?Karma

George Ciccariello-Maher | November 9, 2016 The final election results are not in, but one thing is crystal clear: Hillary Clinton is a failure. And so is the neoliberal establishment. Even if she narrowly manages to defeat Donald Trump, she has still lost. Her failure is not individual, however, but a failure of Clintonism, the Democratic Party, and decades of failed economic policies. According to some exit polls, Clinton is losing half of union households and getting routed in a rust belt abandoned by Clintonism: in Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, a state that she took so much for granted that she didn’t make a single campaign stop there . All this against a racist misogynist with no ground game, hemorrhaging the support of his own party leadership, with far fewer resources and a thousand character flaws and weaknesses to be exploited. All polls show that even many Trump voters doubted his qualifications and character, but they voted for him anyway. Confronted with this reality, Clintonite liberals have been willfully ignorant, managing to both write poor whites off as racist deplorables while simultaneously underestimating their potential to swing to the Right. Neglecting poor whites, Clintonism holds Black and Latino Americans hostage, offering no solution to police murder and promising more deportations to boot. The blame game is already in full swing: Democratic apparatchiks are already preparing to blame FBI director James Comey, third party candidates, and it wouldn’t be surprising to hear Vladimir Putin’s name come up—the Red Scare never gets old. But the ire of a wounded Clintonism will no doubt be directed above all at the Left. But the liberal establishment and its neoliberal economic policies have failed, and it’s time for liberals to own that. The pundits, the talking heads, the press, and the pollsters are admitting that they had no idea what they were talking about and flailing for explanations. Maybe if liberal and conservative elites alike don’t have answers, it’s time to build a fighting left that can offer real solutions. The left needs to directly confront the racism that Trump harnessed, but it also needs to better understand what caused the Trump phenomenon to begin with. For all of his flaws, Bernie Sanders did the second, and you don’t have to like Sanders to admit that there’s no way he would have fucked this up so bad. But Sanders’ failure to capture the Democratic Party was no accident. If Trump wins, the same Democratic Party has been calling him a fascist and would-be dictator will demand that we recognize his legitimacy. They will suddenly discover that, instead of fighting back, they can reach across the aisle and work with this eccentric leader. But the reality is this: if you really believe that Trump is a fascist, you’d better be prepared to do more than just vote. George Ciccariello-Maher is an organizer, radical political theorist, and professor at Drexel University. Follow him on Twitter @ciccmaher .

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali government forces have regained control of a town on the border with Kenya after al Shabaab militants stormed an army base there on Monday, causing heavy clashes in which at least 17 people died, the military said. Islamist insurgents attacked the base at Balad Hawo early in the morning with a car suicide bombing before entering the compound, both sides said. We were awoken by a suicide car bomb this morning and then fierce battle followed, Major Mohamed Abdullahi told Reuters from the town. We chased al Shabaab out of the town, he said. Al Shabaab spokesman Abdiasis Abu Musab said the group s fighters left the town after releasing 35 prisoners from the local jail. At least 30 soldiers were killed, he said. According to the military official, at least 10 soldiers and seven al Shabaab militants were killed, though the death toll on both sides could still rise. Formed in 2006, Al Shabaab wants to topple the Western-backed government and impose its strict interpretation of Islam. Somalia has been at war since 1991 when clan-based warlords overthrew dictator Siad Barre and then turned on each other. Al Shabaab carry out frequent attacks on security and government targets, but also on civilians. They also target African Union peacekeeping troops. Residents confirmed fighting had ended and that the militants had left the town. Now Balad Hawo is calm and government forces fully control it, Ahmed Hassan, a resident of the town told Reuters. Hassan said he saw 13 bodies collected from the military base.

Marine Le Pen, the presidential candidate for France’s populist National Front (FN) has pledged to put France first, hitting out at “financial globalisation” “mass immigration” and “Islamic fundamentalism” in a landmark speech. [The said that “financial globalisation and Islamist globalisation are helping each other out” and “those two ideologies aim to bring France to its knees”. According to Le Pen, globalisation can be summed up as “manufacturing with slaves to sell to the unemployed”. She pledged that an republic would be “will be all about the local, not the global”. Speaking to a cheering crowd of some 3, 000 supporters, Le Pen said her government would be “French first” — with French citizens going to the front of the queue for both employment and social housing. In contrast to the representatives of “the Right and the Left” she said she was “only the candidate of the people”. Le Pen appeared to be invoking the spirit of Donald Trump’s successful presidential campaign in the U. S. which explicitly rejected “the false song of globalism” and pledged an “America First” foreign and economic policy. “People are waking up,” confirmed FN deputy leader Florian Philippot immediately before Le Pen’s speech. “They see Brexit, they see Trump and they’re saying to themselves: ‘It’s worth going to vote. ’” This idea of an impending in world politics was Le Pen’s key theme: “The people are waking — the tide of history has turned” she said. “What is at stake in this election is the continuity of France as a free nation, our existence as a people … The French have been dispossessed of their patriotism. They are suffering in silence from not being allowed to love their country … The divide is no longer between the Left and the Right, but between the patriots and the globalists. ” Le Pen also reiterated her calls for the euro to be scrapped and France’s membership of the European Union (EU) to be put to a referendum unless the Schengen Agreement is abandoned and the bloc reconfigured as a much looser association of sovereign .

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military will not provide details on specific cases of American service members injured in Iraq and Syria because it could give information to Islamic State militants, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday The spokesman, Peter Cook, was responding to a question at a Pentagon press briefing seeking confirmation that four Americans had been wounded in Syria earlier this month. Cook said there had been no a change in policy and aggregate numbers would still be provided. “Our policy is not to identify wounded service members for a variety of reasons, including operational security, including privacy reasons,” Cook said. “Also, we do not want to provide additional information to the enemy that might enhance their own assessment on the battlefield situation,” he said. However, the Pentagon has released such information in the past and responded to queries, and it was unclear how Cook’s comments were consistent with previous disclosures. Last month a spokesman said two U.S. service member had been injured, one each in Iraq and Syria, during the last weekend in May. Captain Jeff Davis said the incident in Iraq took place in the north, near Erbil, while the injury in Syria was north of Raqqa, Islamic State’s de facto capital. According to Pentagon data, there have been 16 American service members wounded in action since the start of Operation Inherent Resolve, the military’s name for an operation targeting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria which started in 2014. Cook’s comments came the same day that President Barack Obama visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center; he has visited wounded U.S. service members there throughout his presidency.

WASHINGTON, D. C. — On Wednesday Director Mick Mulvaney of the Office of Management and Budget gave some insight into the shift in department funding of President Donald Trump’s “America First Budget” ahead of its Thursday release. [“This is the America First Budget,” Mulvaney told reporters at a White House briefing. “In fact we wrote it using the President’s own words. We went through his speeches. We went through articles that have been written about his policies. We talked to him and we wanted to know what his policies were and we turned those policies into numbers. ” Mulvaney said increases like the $54 billion increase to the Defense Department would be offset in other areas of the budget blueprint to prevent any further increases in the budget deficit. The Director made clear that this does not mean that the budget is balanced. “There’s more money for enforcing security at the border. There’s more money for enforcing laws on the books just generally. There’s more money for things like private and public school choice. ” The State Department and and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will also see cuts according to Mulvaney. He went on to say that reductions in the State Department were not a reflection of the President’s support, but rather that areas like foreign aid that face cuts, simply fall under the State Department portion of the budget. The State Department reductions will be around 28 percent according to Mulvaney. Mulvaney went on to state that the budget being released is not a full budget, but rather a blueprint and only deals with the portion of the budget that makes up discretionary spending. He said that those who oversee the various departments are being given great flexibility in managing funds within their own departments. He also stated that the core functions and beyond of the EPA can be satisfied with the dollars included in this budget. Asked if the budget assumes passage of the House Republican Leadership’s American Health Care Act, Mulvaney said generally no, adding that will be dealt with in a budget to be released in May. The budget to be released on Thursday morning will also show suggestion for ending funding for public broadcasting according to Mulvaney. NASA will see a very slight reduction in funding around one percent, but Mulvaney was clear that some areas within that area of the budget will see increases. He said space exploration remains among the President’s priorities. This budget will not be a spreadsheet. Mulvaney said that the budget will show money allocated for moving forward with building a wall along the U. S. southern border. He said that the budget in May will show more, but that this budget includes allocation for pilot cases to find most cost efficient, safest and most effective ways to complete the wall. Director Mulvaney said that the budget will be available online starting at 7 a. m. Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana

We live in a brave new world and change is coming whether we like it or not. Economies around the world are being centrally managed, technology is advancing at a rapid pace, and the human population continues to expand by the billions. The next 40 years could see super powers turn to third world countries, while formerly third world countries rise to become global influencers. We’re already seeing these effects around the world. The time to prepare for these changes is now. Those who refuse to see the future or fail to understand the signs will be relegated to what Wealth Research Group calls the “perpetual poor.” Like all tectonic changes in human history, there will be life altering ramifications for those who can’t or won’t adapt to new realities…No one is sure how this will all play out… what is certain is that you can’t afford to bury your head in the sand… Assuming responsibility and taking massive action is the only way to avoid being added to the perpetually poor who won’t have jobs, income or assets as this wave shifts the power structure of world finance in the next few years. No matter your age – whether you are approaching retirement or just entering the workforce – the future will be difficult to navigate. Watch the following micro-documentary to understand what’s coming and how to position yourself for a global paradigm shift: ( Watch At Youtube ) Article posted with permission from SHTFPlan Don't forget to Like Freedom Outpost on Facebook , Google Plus , & Twitter . You can also get Freedom Outpost delivered to your Amazon Kindle device here . shares

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - A car bomb exploded outside the Somali capital Mogadishu on Friday killing the driver, police said, and a witness said there were at least two bodies. The explosion happened around noon in the village of Markaz, just over 20 km (12 miles) northwest of Mogadishu, Police Major Nur Ali told Reuters, adding that police had not reached the scene which he called an area inhabited by hardline Islamists . A witness in the village who gave his name as Ahmed told Reuters by telephone that he had seen two dead bodies. The car was ruined and the dead bodies were cut in halves, he said. The number killed in twin bombings in the Somali capital Mogadishu last weekend has risen to 358, the government said late on Friday. It was the deadliest attack in the country s history. The Islamist insurgency al Shabaab was blamed for Saturday s blasts, which happened when a car bomb and a truck bomb headed for the airport detonated prematurely.

Go read the previous post first , then add this for a bit of additional entertainment. A Russian TV event (vid) covered a nation wide geographic competition for schools children. This is somewhat comparable to the national spelling bee contest in the U.S. and elsewhere. The guest star at the event was the Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was on stage with a nine year old participant who gave his specialties as "borders, neighboring countries and capitals." Putin asked the candidate "Where do Russia's borders end". The answer was "In the Bering Strait at the border with the U.S." Putin replied: "Russia's border does not end anywhere." (When the audience then laughed and Putin sensed that it did not immediately get the real meaning of what he said he added: "That was a joke.") But it was no joke. It was serious science. A whole lot of pundits, "western" reporters and anti-Putin haters now claim that Putin somehow did wrong, showed lust for new, unlimited Russian expansion or announced the fourth World War for the coming new Russian Empire. See for example the BBC , Newsweek , Daily Mail , Express and many others who felt the urgent need to comment on a Russian quiz for kids. From the Newsweek piece: A Kremlin spokesperson was not immediately available to explain if the joke referred to Russia’s military efforts to redraw the borders of Moldova, Georgia and most recently Ukraine, or if the president had a different, more figurative meaning in mind....Ukraine’s Ambassador to Finland, whose country has experienced firsthand Russia’s willingness to alter its borders, tweeted a photo of a ruined country log cabin with the ironic caption ‘Russia’s borders end nowhere.’ ALL THESE WRITERS, THEIR EDITORS, THE PUNDITS AND DIPLOMATS MUST HAVE SLEPT THROUGH BASIC MATH LECTURES, ESPECIALLY IN EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY OF TWO DIMENSIONS. It is all Greek to them - literally. The basic definition of a border is: A part that forms the outer edge of something. A country, any country, is defined by a limited area (or areas) with an area characterized by an outer edge and a circumferential line known as "a border". Does the circumferential line of, ideally, a circle have a limit? Does it have a beginning or an end? This is exactly what Putin asked the kid. Putin asked a pupil: "Where do Russia's borders end?" The answer "nowhere" is the (only) mathematically and geographically correct one. The geographic area characterized by a border is limited. The circumferential (border) line is, by mathematical definition, not "limited" in the sense that it has no beginning and no end (it has a length though). This is basic math which Putin sympathetically lectured to a child in a scientific school competition on public TV. It probably was too much for a tired evening audience. That is not an excuse for professional writers (not) doing their day job. I am sure that, over time, the kid will get it. The "News" journalists though ... Indeed one can bet on the low level of "western" scientific education, especially of political pundits and news writers, to make an "imperial intent" mountain out of any scientifically correct description of a flyspeck. It is a new subcategory of "fake news" that they expose. It has its roots in basic stupidity. 08:59 AM | Permalink

Gambling on the Unknowable Trump November 13, 2016 Donald Trump’s victory may have shaken up the System but it also revealed a recklessness (or a desperation) among Americans in handing over such immense power to someone so untested, says Michael Brenner. By Michael Brenner At this moment of unprecedented upheaval, it is striking that some things never change. We are being subject to a tidal wave of interpretation and speculation as to what a Trump administration means for American foreign relations in regard to inter alia Russia, Syria, the Iran nuclear deal, the “pivot to Asia,” trans-Atlantic ties and, of course, Mexico. It is entirely natural for a distraught political elite to wonder what comes next from this unstable, quixotic showman who soon will be sitting in the White House. It is neither natural nor appropriate, though, to make believe that Washington in experiencing a transition of power to be approached in standard terms. The unpalatable truth is that we have no idea as to what Trump will do or not do. President-elect Donald Trump. Trump’s campaign remarks are the sole evidence available for indications of the direction that he will take. That is an extremely flimsy a basis for forecasting actions abroad. For two reasons. Candidates’ calculated sound bites while running almost never are a reliable guide to their thinking – in its rudimentary form or as it takes shape under the influence of real life conditions and the counsel of advisers. Consider Barack Obama, a far more thoughtful, sober and intelligent man. Remember the objective of eliminating nuclear weapons (rather than committing $1 trillion to the development of a more “usable” arsenal). Remember closing Guantanamo and reining in electronic surveillance of Americans. Remember ending the engagement of American troops in the “GWOT” (we now are fighting in 38 places by one means or another). Remember “resetting” relations with Vladimir Putin’s Russia to emphasize dialogue. Remember the stated goal of normalizing relations with the Mullahs in Teheran instead of treating them as inherently hostile to America. Remember promoting democracy as the long-term cure to what ails the Middle East (instead, backing full tilt the Gulf autocracies, including Saudi Arabia’s homicidal war on the Yemeni people; Sisi’s oppressive autocracy in Egypt; and Israel’s increasing brutalization of the Palestinians). Points of Demagoguery Second, Trump’s comments about foreign policy were mere points of demagoguery meant, as with everything else he said, to appeal to the primitive instincts of an aroused audience. There is not the slightest sign that he had thought seriously about any of it. Donald Trump finds serious thinking itself an alien mental activity. Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, one of the few Senate Republicans to support Donald Trump, donning one of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps. Moreover, he has few experienced advisers in his entourage. Apart from some conversations with retired General Michael Flynn, the off-beat former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the chairman of his national security advisory panel, James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, his “advisers” have been a collection of odd-balls, non-entities and dogmatists. Woolsey himself is an uber-hawk whose views on all matters of consequence align with those of the neocons, the Cheney-like hard nationalists and Hillary Clinton – and are diametrically opposite to Trump’s much publicized iconoclastic remarks. So what we will be seeing between now and the Inauguration, and afterwards, is a mad rush by a horde of aspirants for the power and access to occupy Donald Trump’s mind – if they can find it. This is the brutal reality. Since it provides little of substance for the habitual commentators, they are inclined to play a game of make-believe – conjuring supposedly meaningful evidence from what is a kaleidoscope of emotional outbursts and a fantasia of day dreams. There is good reason to believe that within six months of Trump’s taking office, when his administrations undertakes its first half-baked measures abroad, the think tank crowd will be writing articles and monographs on “The Trump Doctrine.” In other words, the same mentality that helped get us into this mess. Americans have become committed to a new categorical imperative: I sound off, therefore I am. If Truth be told, the America we have known and imagined is ended. It never will return. In terms of relations with others, image is of enormous importance. The United States has gained great advantage from being seen as exceptional. From its earliest days, it fascinated and gave inspiration as the first working democracy, as the embodiment of the hope-filled New World, as the land of the common man and common decency. Later, as it grew into a world power, it held the allure for many as being somehow beyond the world’s pervasive tawdriness. These images held even as contradicted by slavery and racism, by imperial wars of expansion, by signs of hypocrisy. America did tip the balance in favor of the right side in two world wars; it did demonstrate uncommon magnanimity in its support for German and Japanese reconstruction and democracy. Even when playing the game of power politics, it retained a measure of credibility as the one underwriter and arbitrator to whom others might resort. The resulting “soft power” or “soft influence” has been a unique asset. Already dissipated to a high degree over the decades of the Global War On Terror, it now is destined to fade into a shadow of its former self. A blatantly racist, xenophobic, studiously ignorant, and belligerent country cannot retain the respect of other governments or the high regard of their peoples. A country so feckless as to choose Trump the buffoon as its President is mocking itself. The negative impact will be compounded as the United States is riven by internal conflicts of all kinds, repressive actions and perhaps another serious economic crisis. The damage to America’s standing in the world should hardly be a surprise; yet many are inclined to underestimate the effect. One cannot appreciate what we have become by talking to foreign friends on the Washington circuit, or by listening to the polite regrets of those around the world who are interviewed by the media. Walk the streets of cities abroad for unscripted reactions to this historic act of national self-mutilation. We can expect that whoever winds up in senior policy positions in a Trump administration will downplay these intangibles – if they even acknowledge them. In this, they will be encouraged by the tradition of self-delusion that has become a feature of American thinking about its place in the world. Think of the Middle East where just about everything that we have been doing since 2001 has been guided by a fantastical view of the region – from Iraq, to Syria, to Yemen, to the Gulf, to Turkey, to Palestine and Israel. Divorced from Reality This tendency to divorce ourselves from reality so as to perpetuate myths of American omnipotence and superiority is also witnessed at the operational level. Consider these examples: President George W. Bush in a flight suit after landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln to give his “Mission Accomplished” speech about the Iraq War on May 1, 2003 –The U.S. habitually characterizes anybody who resists our use of force against them as evil and criminal. Thus, the insurgents in Iraq are “anti-Iraqi” forces; the Houthis in Yemen are Iranian proxies, the Palestinians are nothing but terrorists, the Russian population in the Donbas region of Ukraine are Russian commandos directed from the Kremlin with the aim of unraveling all of Europe and NATO, etc. etc. –American policy-makers find it convenient to pursue strategies that entail squaring circles. The outcome is predictable. The outstanding case in point is Syria where for four years they have committed themselves to ousting Assad by force while continuing the fight against violent Islamist groups. That has placed us in the absurd position of allying with Al Qaeda (providing indirect material, and indirect political support) while still fulminating about the grave danger of terrorism. –We present ourselves as the promoter and well-wisher of democracy while giving unstinting support to oppressive regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and elsewhere while facilitating the ouster of democratically elected reformist leaders in Honduras, Bolivia. Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. These self-delusional practices have prepared the psychological ground for the grand illusion to come in assuming that the America of Trump will continue to draw the world’s admiration and its deference to American leadership. Normalizing Trump The inclination to “normalize” the transition in treating Trump, his utterances and his odd-lot entourage as if they somehow could be squeezed into conventional molds is understandable. It is a manifestation of an unwitting coping strategy for coming to terms with the shattering event of his election. Americans in general are pursuing a similar psychological strategy for the sake of preserving the conception of themselves and their country deeply rooted in their consciousness. Hence, the impulse to minimize the singularity of this revolutionary development without precedent – not only in the United States but anywhere in the democratic world. This is one instance where American “exceptionalism” is not prized. This is a natural reaction to a brutal Truth about Americans – and its dire consequences. For the choice of Trump reveals most Americans as immature and prone to juvenile behavior. To vote for Trump is the ultimate act of political immaturity. There are, of course, identifiable reasons why many were drawn to the flamboyant candidate, why his demagoguery resonated, why his exaggerated imagery struck a receptive nerve. However, for that emotional response to translate into the actual selection of this man to be President crosses a critical threshold. Children – at times – let emotion rule their conduct. Children only weakly feel the imperative to impose logic and a modicum reason on their impulses. Children disregard consequences. Children overlook the downside in their implicit weighing of the balance in giving in to those impulses or not. Grown-ups do not. Immediate satisfaction – at all and any cost – does not eclipse other considerations for adults. Even a child’s tantrum usually lasts no more than ten minutes or so. The tantrum of Trump voters has lasted 18 months. That’s pathological – anyway you cut it. Admittedly, some Trump supporters share his perverted view of the world – even if contradicted by his own personal history. Let’s say 12 to 15 percent of the electorate. A larger slice was represented by dyed-in-the-wool Republicans who relished sticking it to the Hillary and the Democrats to such a degree that their thrill at the spectacle overcame their realization that Trump was unfit for the office. Indeed, many probably expected him to lose and, therefore, felt free to go along for the fun of it. That leaves roughly 10 to 20 percent of the electorate who placed their emotional gratification above their responsibilities as citizens and above the wellbeing of the Republic. That is the difference between the nearly 50 percent he received and what a broad rejection would represent. They constitute the hard core of the culpable juveniles. What about those who could not stand Hillary, who felt an irresistible impulse to express that feeling somehow? Many options were open to them: abstain, vote for one of the minor candidates, go to the gym and exhaust oneself on an elliptical trainer, get drunk, smoke some weed, pick a fight with one’s spouse. Any of these represents more grown-up behavior than voting for Donald Trump. By comparison, in France when Jean Marie Le Pen – candidate of the racist far-right party, the Front National – FN, made it into the second round of their presidential election, he and his party were rejected by 82.2 percent of the electorate. In other words, the French rallied together to reject Le Pen. That is what a mature polity does. And Le Pen is sane, albeit a crypto-fascist. Michael Brenner is a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

MADRID (Reuters) - The Catalan government said around 2.26 million people had cast a ballot in a banned referendum to leave Spain on Sunday and 90 percent of them had voted in favor of secession. This represents a turnout of around 42.3 percent of Catalonia s 5.34 million voters.

NAACP President becomes victim in 5 4 3 2 1 North Carolina NAACP President William Barber was removed from a flight in Washington, D.C., Friday night after he was deemed a disruptive passenger by an American Airlines pilot.Barber wrote in a statement that he had boarded the plane and was sitting in the two seats he had purchased when he overheard a man sitting behind him talking loudly. Barber says after he asked a flight attended to ask the man to lower his voice, that s when the altercation started. But as she left, I heard him saying distasteful and disparaging things about me, Barber said in the statement. He had problems with those people and he spoke harshly about my need for two seats, among other subjects. Barber says he purchased two seat because of a physical disability, the same ailment that caused him to stand up instead of simply turning his head to confront the passenger behind him. I asked him why he was saying such things, and I said he did not know me, my condition, and I added I would pray for him, Barber said.The police were called and Barber was escorted off the plane.Via: Breitbart News

Watch:good thing we don't have govt-controlled media in this country pic.twitter.com/fLkt9lQZa6 Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 7, 2017Brian Williams is getting hammered on Twitter after making what many consider to be an insensitive and even repulsive choice of words to describe an airstrike on human beings in Syria:Brian Williams must love the smell of Napalm in the morning . pixzen (@pixzen) April 7, 2017Twitter user Brett Eversole suggests that Brian Williams and John McCain apparently share the same lust for war with this tweet:Somewhere John McCain and Brian Williams are engaging in a threesome w/ a cruise missile right now Brett (@NeverKnovvsBest) April 7, 2017Peter Gratton took issue with Williams referencing the beauty of the missiles as though it was a fireworks display:How morally obtuse to react to missile launches that will kill scores of people like they're July 4th fireworks? https://t.co/km9VtvWx02 Peter Gratton (@PeterMGratton) April 7, 2017Another "BEAUTIFUL" Brian Williams bombshell. When will the drama queens at FAKE NEWS learn to just REPORT the news? @MSNBC @greta @CNN Liberty Wins (@ScottLynch149) April 7, 2017And finally, this Twitter user asks Williams, What is wrong with you? https://twitter.com/earthmann/status/850453062804262913

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Thailand is seeking to prosecute ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for graft under a law that allows politicians to be tried in absentia, an official said on Tuesday, months after Thaksin s sister was sentenced to jail in her absence. Thailand is divided broadly between those backing Thaksin and his sister, former Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, whose government was removed in a 2014 coup, and the elite in the capital, Bangkok. A former commerce minister and member of Yingluck s Puea Thai Party that was ousted in the coup said the planned prosecution of Thaksin was politically motivated. The former telecommunications tycoon was ousted in a 2006 coup and has since lived in self-imposed exile to avoid a graft conviction in 2008 he says was politically motivated. Separate cases against Thaksin, including graft cases in 2008 and 2012, had to be suspended until he returned to Thailand for trial. But an amendment to the law in September makes it possible for politicians to be prosecuted in their absence. The 2008 and 2012 cases involved Thaksin s alleged conflict of interest in a telecoms concession and suspected abuse of power. Public prosecutors put in a request to the supreme court today to proceed with the two cases without presence of the accused, in accordance with the new law, Wanchart Santikunchorn, a spokesman for the office of the attorney-general, told reporters. Thaksin was not immediately available for comment. Thaksin re-shaped Thai politics after building a business empire, winning staunch support with populist policies that raised living standards, especially among the rural poor, and propelled him or his loyalists to victory in every election since 2001. Yingluck fled the country in August, ahead of a verdict in a negligence trial, but was eventually found guilty and handed down a five-year jail term in absentia in September. Former commerce minister Watana Muangsook said the junta was damaging the country with politically motivated court cases. The law which allows court proceedings in absentia of the accused is aimed at destroying the regime s political opposition, Watana said in a statement to Reuters. Wanchart denied the moves against the Shinawatra family were biased, saying they were in line with the newly amended law.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump called Hurricane Irma some big monster as it battered the Florida coast, saying he wanted to go to the state very soon and praising emergency officials for their efforts to protect people. The bad news is that this is some big monster, Trump told reporters at the White House, saying damage from the storm would be very costly. Right now, we are worried about lives, not cost, Trump said after returning from Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland where he monitored the storm and met with his Cabinet. The path of the storm, tracking the west coast of Florida, meant it might be less destructive than it would otherwise have been, Trump said, noting the next five or six hours would be critical. I hope there aren t too many people in the path, he said. You don t want to be in that path. The U.S. House of Representatives canceled votes scheduled for Monday because of the hurricane. Trump said the U.S. Coast Guard had been heroic and that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was doing a good job to help coordinate the response with states. He added, however: I think the hard part is now beginning. Trump has offered the full resources of the federal government to Florida and the affected states, Vice President Mike Pence told reporters during a visit to FEMA s Washington headquarters on Sunday. Wherever Hurricane Irma goes, we ll be there first, Pence said. We ll be there with resources and support, both to save lives and to help to recover and rebuild these states and these communities. On Sunday, Trump also issued a disaster declaration for the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, and expanded federal funds available to the U.S. Virgin Islands in the aftermath of Irma, the White House said. Trump owns a resort in Palm Beach, Florida, where he has often traveled during his presidency, as well as three golf courses in the state. He told reporters he hoped to travel to the state soon. We re going to Florida very soon, Trump said.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Seven European Union states urged Romania s ruling coalition on Thursday to avoid legislation that could weaken its judiciary and the fight against corruption, hours after senators approved a contentious overhaul of the justice system. Senators passed the last of three bills which critics say limit the independence of magistrates and which have triggered street protests across Romania, widely regarded as one of the EU s most corrupt states. The three bills change the process of appointing chief prosecutors and set up a special unit to probe crimes committed by magistrates, making them the only professional category with a prosecuting unit dedicated to investigating them. France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden said in a joint statement from their embassies in Bucharest that the bills and criminal code changes under debate in parliament undermined Romania s progress on judicial reforms. We appeal to the parties involved in the justice reform project to avoid any action that could lead to weakening the independence of the justice system and of the fight against corruption, the joint statement said. The seven states joined a chorus of criticism that included the European Commission, the U.S. State Department, thousands of Romanian magistrates and centrist President Klaus Iohannis. Romania s ruling Social Democrats, which command an overwhelming majority in parliament together with their junior coalition partner, ALDE, have so far ignored the warnings. They are also working on changes to the criminal code that critics say will derail law and order. Opposition politicians challenged the bills in the Constitutional Court on Thursday. Romania s top court also said it will challenge legal changes to the status of magistrates. It was unclear when the court would meet to rule on the challenges but it could be months before the bills are enforced, as the president must also sign off on them. Iohannis has repeatedly criticized the bills. The proposed changes place Romania alongside its eastern European peers Hungary and Poland, where populist leaders are also trying to control the judiciary, in defying EU concerns over the rule of law. The Commission launched an unprecedented action on Poland on Wednesday, calling on other member states to prepare to sanction Warsaw if it fails to reverse judicial reforms it says pose a threat to democracy.

TV3 Día extraordinario el de ayer en la parrilla televisiva. Por primera vez desde que hay registros, La 2 de Televisión Española consiguió ser la cadena más vista. Aprovechando el tirón de “Operación Triunfo: el Reencuentro”, emitió el documental de National Geographic titulado “La Cobra” . Gracias a esto, #ChenoaDiosa fue Trending Topic mundial. Telecinco ocupó el segundo puesto en el ránking catódico con la emisión de un especial Sálvame Deluxe , donde Susana Díaz se sometía al polígrafo. El minuto de oro fue el momento en que la andaluza negó haber conspirado contra Pedro Sánchez y el polígrafo explotó. El estreno del nuevo reality de Cuatro alcanzó unas cifras aceptables, constatando que el mundo del sadomasoquismo está en auge. La cadena de Mediaset ya ha confirmado que habrá segunda temporada de Sadomaso busca esposas . No tuvo tanta suerte Antena 3, que también estrenaba un nuevo formato: Tu tara me suena . Diferentes famosos se caracterizan de gente con diferentes defectos físicos. La estrella de la noche fue Arévalo, que sacó del baúl de los recuerdos su fantástica interpretación de un gangoso. La Sexta vivió una de sus peores jornadas desde su nacimiento. Una afonía de Ferreras dejó en cuadros a la cadena, obligándola a suspender sus emisiones y a poner en bucle el mítico desmayo de Lopetegui. La cadena estatal menos vista ayer fue La 1 de Televisión Española. No logró convencer a la audiencia con su capítulo especial de El Ministerio del Tiempo . La trama situaba a los protagonistas en un pasado reciente, cuando Bárcenas entró de tesorero en el Partido Popular. Sin embargo, los discos duros donde se guardó el capítulo fueron formateados misteriosamente, precipitando el final del capítulo tan solo 15 minutos después de empezar. En clave autonómica, la catalana TV3 obtuvo un espectacular 93% de “share” con el programa “Tapetes de ganchillo para tu butaca” , evidenciando el considerable envejecimiento de su audiencia. En Euskadi, ETB tuvo unos resultados discretos con el documental “Searching for Pintxo Man” , la biografía de un vasco que, sin saberlo, es una celebridad en Sudáfrica gracias a sus pintxos de txistorra. La Televisión de Galicia pinchó con la final de su reality “Operación Munheira” . El público debía votar al mejor concursante del programa. Como siempre que se vota, ganó el PP.

(Reuters) - New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said on Thursday he has urged Donald Trump not to leave the Republican Party, saying it remains unified despite scathing criticism of Trump’s presidential candidacy by a senior party leader earlier on Thursday. “I have urged him not to leave the party,” said Christie, a former candidate himself, who gave Trump a major boost last week when he endorsed him for the party’s nomination for the Nov. 8 election. “I don’t think that’s a constructive way to go about it, and he knows that,” Christie told reporters. Trump, who has repeatedly threatened to leave the Republican Party if it does not respect him, told ABC News on Thursday that Republicans should be glad he has brought millions more people into the party: “They’re leaving the Democrats. They’re leaving the independents. And they’re with me 100 percent.” The New York real estate magnate is the clear front-runner to be the Republican nominee in November but is facing heavy criticism from many in the party establishment - including a blistering speech on Thursday by the party’s 2012 presidential candidate, Mitt Romney. U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, and Ohio Governor John Kasich are trailing Trump in their bids for the nomination, but are trying to coalesce the support of establishment Republicans to topple Trump before or at the party’s nominating convention in July. Trump told MSNBC that the increasing number of ads from the establishment targeting him are “really unfair,” and that he could depart the party to run as an independent. “If I leave, if I go ... which I may do, I mean, may or may not, but if I go, I will tell you these millions of people that joined, they’ve told them, they’re all coming with me,” he said. Concern about Trump among Republicans increased at the weekend over his failure to quickly disavow support from a leading white supremacist. “I’ve know Donald Trump for 14 years, and Donald Trump is not a bigot,” Christie told a news conference in New Jersey. “In fact, Donald Trump is someone I think who has given a lot of opportunity to a lot of people of a lot of different backgrounds, and I disagree with Governor Romney on that one.” (Reporting by Washington newsroom; Editing by Mohammad Zargham and Frances Kerry) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production.

Southeastern Australia has suffered through a series of brutal heat waves over the past two months, with temperatures reaching a scorching 113 degrees Fahrenheit in some parts of the state of New South Wales. “It was nothing short of awful,” said Sarah of the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales, in Sydney. “In Australia, we’re used to a little bit of heat. But this was at another level. ” So Dr. who studies climate extremes, did what comes naturally: She looked to see whether there was a link between the heat and climate change. Her analysis, conducted with a group of researchers called World Weather Attribution, was made public on Thursday. Their conclusion was that climate change made maximum temperatures like those seen in January and February at least 10 times more likely than a century ago, before significant greenhouse gas emissions from human activity started warming the planet. Looked at another way, that means that the kind of soaring temperatures expected to occur in New South Wales once every 500 years on average now may occur once every 50 years. What is more, the researchers found that if climate change continued unabated, such maximum temperatures may occur on average every five years. For the overall summer in New South Wales, the researchers say, climate change made the hot average temperatures — which set records for the state — at least 50 times more likely than in the past. The findings are the latest in what has become a growing field: studies that try to assess the influence of climate change on extreme weather as soon as possible. The idea is to offer scientific analyses of heat waves, floods and other events while people are still talking about them, and to counter the spread of misinformation, intentional or not, about the impact of global warming. Climate scientists have long said that climate change should bring an increase in extreme events like dry spells and heat waves. Because warmth causes more evaporation and warmer air holds more moisture, climate change should also lead to more intense and frequent storms. Studies have shown that these effects are occurring on a broad scale. But the natural variability of weather makes looking at individual events more difficult. World Weather Attribution, which is coordinated by Climate Central, a research organization in Princeton, N. J. is one of a number of groups doing rapid analysis. Among other events, they have looked at flooding in Germany and France last May high temperatures in the Arctic in November and December and an usually strong storm that hit northern Britain in 2015. Not all attribution studies have found a link. In general, studies of heat waves tend to produce the clearest signal of the influence, or not, of global warming. Australian heat waves have been examined in the past, most recently in several studies that showed a clear link between climate change and a period of torrid weather in 2013. David Karoly, a scientist at the University of Melbourne, was involved in one of the studies, which took more than six months to produce. “That was considered very rapid at the time,” Dr. Karoly said. As a member of World Weather Attribution, Dr. Karoly helped with the study of the recent heat waves, which took about two weeks. A big difference between the two studies is in the use of computer climate models — both of the current atmosphere with its greenhouse gas emissions and of a hypothetical atmosphere as if those emissions had never occurred and climate change was not happening. For the older study, as for most attribution studies in the recent past, the models were run over and over again, which took months. The newer, rapid studies use models that have already been run, extracting data as needed.

21st Century WireAccording to reports, the FBI have obtained a warrant to examine newly discovered emails relating to possible classified material originating from Hillary Clinton s unauthorized private email server. The FBI will now pour through 650,000 emails found while investigating a laptop belonging to former US Congressman Anthony Weiner (photo, left) who has been caught in a sexting scandal alleged to have involved an underaged girl. Weiner is estranged husband of top Clinton aid and long-time confidant Huma Abedin. The process has begun, said an FBI source to the New York Times.This comes after a Friday afternoon announcement by embattled FBI Director James Comey stating the agency intended to reopen the previously closed investigation into former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton s long-running email scandal.21WIRE reported on Comey s shock announcement Friday, and also detailed a leaked memo supplied to Fox News indicating that there might be an internal upheaval within the FBI over botching the previous leg of the investigation and possibly caving into the political pressure from the White House and the DOJ to drop the case in order to preserve Hillary Clinton s presidential run.Since the FBI announcement, the Clinton campaign has gone into full damage control mode, while the Trump campaign has enjoyed a small surge which has cut into Clinton s lead across all national polls. All this happening less than 10 days before voters go to the polls on Nov 8th.Oddly, Clinton, a former lawyer, has publicly demanded that the FBI release all the information, and let the public know exactly what they have, even though this would be a violation of legal procedures in a criminal investigation.Nevada Senator Harry Reid (photo, left) issued an open letter/press release accusing director Comey of somehow being in violation of the Hatch Act by attempting to interfere with a US election, stating, I am writing to inform you that my office has determined that these actions may violate the Hatch Act, said Reid. Through your partisan actions, you may have broken the law, he added.Congressman Trey Gowdy (SC-R), the Chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, was the first to discover Clinton s illegal email server during the initial Benghazi hearings. According to Gowdy, this latest move by the FBI could net an indictment due to possible evidence of a cover-up. Gowdy s reponse on FOX News to Reid s letter was stunning: Thank God he s leaving (office), is my initial reaction. My second reaction is, I did not know Mormons used drugs. Anyone who is capable of sending out that press release has to be under the influence of something. Watch Gowdy here: SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV

CNN Reports Three members of the legal team known to have been hired so far by special counsel Robert Mueller to handle the Russia investigation have given political donations almost exclusively to Democrats, according to a CNN analysis of Federal Election Commission records.

Since Donald Trump enacted the travel ban from seven majority Muslim countries last week, he s spent most of his time on the defensive. That position got worse after Trump posted a fake news story on his Facebook timeline that was quickly debunked by the country of Kuwait, but not before the right-wing media ran with it as proof that Trump s Muslim ban is cool, even in the Muslim world.The article, which is still on Trump s Facebook page, said that Kuwait enacted a similar ban to Trump s.Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and Afghans will not be able to obtain visit, tourism or trade Kuwaiti visas with the news coming one day after the US slapped its own restrictions on seven Muslim-majority countries.Passport holders from the countries will not be allowed to enter the Gulf state while the blanket ban is in place and have been told not to apply to visas.Trump s post has more than 250,000 likes and nearly 70,000 shares. It was also shared by right-wing sites like Breitbart and Infowars. The only problem is, it didn t happen.The foreign ministry of the Middle Eastern country categorically denies these claims and affirms that these reported nationalities have big communities in Kuwait and enjoy full rights, according to a Sunday morning report in Reuters.The story shared by Trump had alleged that Syrians, Iraqis, Iranians, Pakistanis and Afghans will not be able to obtain visit, tourism or trade Kuwaiti visas with the news coming one day after the US slapped its own restrictions on seven Muslim-majority countries. The story in the Jordanian news outlet Al Bawaba did not have an official statement or order from the Kuwaiti government nor from any of the countries it said were facing a ban.Source: The Daily BeastOf course, Trump hasn t taken the story down, which shouldn t be a surprise at all. The Trump administration is apparently far more comfortable with lies than they are the truth. If they told the truth, they d lose the support of the majority of their followers.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images.

Jeffrey Cohen was a man who believed The meaning of life is OOPS!' according to his obituary. The 70-year-old Pennsylvania man passed away Sunday morning at his childhood home in Squirrel Hill, a suburb of Pittsburgh. He was a person who took pride in being the only Jewish cowboy that he knew of, and an accomplished chiropractor one who treated Gold Medal-winning Olympians, members of the Pittsburgh Ballet, professional boxers, and many of the Pittsburgh Steelers throughout his career. Even Weird Al Yankovich stopped by to see him.He is described as compassionate and kind someone who would always put others before himself, happily and without hesitation. His love of dirty and groan-inducing jokes was legendary. He also has one final request of those who love him and all who read his obituary don t f*ck up the next election, or at least do some good in the world:Jeffrey would ask that in lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Donald Trump. (Also acceptable donations to the Nimmo Educational Foundation www.nimmoed.org or a charity of your choice .)That s right to honor his memory, Cohen asks one simple thing: Don t vote for Trump. Don t throw away our future.His obituary does not indicate whom he would choose as president, but he doesn t want people to vote for someone who would ban Muslims from entering the United States, throw them into concentration camps (after forcing them to register in a national database and wear special badges, of course), or any of the multitude of horrific ideas the brain-gerbils that reside beneath his hairpiece suggest. Cohen doesn t want a big beautiful wall running the length of our (southern) border, nor does he want someone who would allow Sarah Palin to speak.This request is the opposite of an obituary request that popped up earlier this month when a Virginia man asked, in lieu of flowers please vote for Donald Trump. The billionaire tweeted the obituary, declaring thanking the deceased man and declaring him to be a great person. It seems as though Cohen made this request as a light-hearted retort to the Trump fan s suggestion that Americans vote for someone who would later be endorsed by Sarah Palin.Thank you so much. Earnest must have been a great person. https://t.co/2DZp7YOadj pic.twitter.com/2YtLlEwceB Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2016It is highly doubtful that Trump will say the same of Cohen.While no thinking individual would vote for Trump anyway, if you are considering voting for Trump, think about honoring this Cohen s dying wish instead. We don t need to make America great again. America is already great.But we can make it better by voting Blue in November.Featured image via Legacy/YouTube

Pingyang County’s verdant hills still hint at a China. Rice paddies and villages surround its bustling towns, and in the fields, farmers wade into the mud to plant seedlings as they have for thousands of years. It is an odd place to find the people behind a Chinese corporate powerhouse that is turning heads on Wall Street with a global takeover binge. Yet the area is home to a tiny group of just such people — merchants and villagers who happen to control stakes in the Anbang Insurance Group, which owns the Waldorf Astoria in New York and a portfolio of global names and properties. American regulators are now asking who these shareholders are — and whether they are holding their stakes on behalf of others. The questions add to the mystery surrounding a company that seemed to come out of nowhere, surprising deal makers with offers to pay more than $30 billion for assets around the world. Anbang’s shopping spree is part of an outflow of money from China that has reshaped global markets but has often been shrouded in secrecy, sometimes by prominent Chinese looking to shift their wealth abroad without attracting attention at home. That poses a problem for international regulators trying to identify the buyers behind major acquisitions and to assess the riskiness of these deals. The Anbang shareholders in the Pingyang County area hold their stakes through a byzantine collection of holding companies. But according to dozens of interviews and a review of thousands of pages of Anbang filings by The New York Times, many of them have something in common: They are family members and acquaintances of Wu Xiaohui, Anbang’s chairman, a native of the county who married into the family of Deng Xiaoping, China’s paramount leader in the 1980s and ’90s. In many ways, Anbang and Mr. Wu appear to be archetypal products of China’s mix of freewheeling capitalism and Communist Party dominance, a formula that has fueled nearly four decades of untrammeled growth. Anbang got its start as an auto insurance company in 2004 in the eastern Chinese city of Ningbo. For years it was only a minor player. But it took off as it became more aggressive with its finances, buying stakes in Chinese banks and bringing in money by selling investment funds to ordinary Chinese. Mr. Wu, 49, a former car salesman and antismuggling official, led Anbang through this transformation and is now known as one of China’s most successful businessmen. He wears tailored suits and polished loafers, hobnobs with the likes of Stephen A. Schwarzman of Blackstone, and sometimes holds court at Harvard. But he does not appear in Anbang’s filings as an owner. It is common in China for the wealthy to have their shares in companies held in others’ names. Known in Chinese as baishoutao, or white gloves, these people are often trusted relatives or acquaintances. Many defend the practice as a way to protect their privacy in a nation where riches can be a political liability. But others say white gloves can be used to hide gains and thwart corruption investigators. Anbang did not respond when asked if Mr. Wu was a shareholder and declined to answer questions about its owners. The company, a spokesman said, “has multiple shareholders who have made all required disclosures under Chinese law. They are a mix of individual and institutional shareholders who made a commercial decision to invest in the company. Anbang has now grown to be a global company thanks to the support of these shareholders. ” For investors and regulators, white gloves can make it difficult to evaluate the financial health of a Chinese buyer. Ownership may be concentrated in the hands of a few people, posing hidden risks, and companies with government connections could be vulnerable to political shifts or become magnets for corruption. “It is very important for businesses to know who they are ultimately doing business with, and for investors, what they are investing in,” said Keith Williamson, a managing director in Hong Kong at Alvarez Marsal, a firm that carries out corporate fraud investigations. It is not clear whether the shareholders in the Pingyang County region are holding large stakes on behalf of anyone else. But on May 27, Anbang withdrew its application with New York State to buy an Iowa insurer, Fidelity Guaranty Life, for $1. 6 billion. Regulators had asked about ties between several shareholders with the same family names, said one person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. A $6. 5 billion deal for a portfolio of hotels that includes the Essex House in New York and several Four Seasons locations is awaiting results from a security review by the American government. In March, Anbang withdrew a $14 billion bid for Starwood, the operator of Sheraton and Westin hotels, in a move that surprised Wall Street. The company could come under greater scrutiny as it prepares to sell shares in its life insurance business on the Hong Kong stock exchange next year. Already, at least one major New investment bank has raised concerns about Anbang’s ownership after studying its shareholding structure to evaluate whether to help with its overseas deals, according to two people involved in the matter who asked not to be identified because the process was private. The bank did not participate in Anbang’s deals. Separately, the Chinese magazine Caixin reported in May that Chinese regulators were examining Anbang’s riskier financial products. It is unclear where that inquiry stands or whether Anbang’s ownership structure is being investigated. President Xi Jinping has waged a campaign against graft since taking office, and the use of white gloves has recently come under scrutiny. “White gloves are accompanied by power’s black hands,” the Communist Party’s disciplinary watchdog wrote in a report last year. Questions about Anbang’s owners come as Chinese companies make deals around the world — sometimes representing efforts by China’s powerful to move money out of the country, as the economy slows and the party tightens its grip on everyday life. China has encouraged some capital outflow to improve the performance of its investments and expand its influence. But the subject of the elite moving money overseas is politically sensitive, raising questions about the source of their wealth and their confidence in the Chinese economy. Luo Yu, the son of a former chief of staff of China’s military, said China’s most politically powerful families had been transferring money out of the country for some time. “They don’t believe they will hold on to power long enough — sooner or later they would collapse,” said Mr. Luo, a former colonel in the Chinese Army whose younger brother was a business partner with one of Anbang’s founders. “So they transfer their money. ” At its founding in 2004, Anbang had an impressive list of politically connected directors. Records show early Anbang directors included Levin Zhu, son of a former prime minister, and Chen Xiaolu, the son of an army marshal who helped bring Communist rule to China. Then there was Mr. Wu, who was born Wu Guanghui but was known as Wu Xiaohui from a young age. Relatives said he grew up in a Catholic family a crucifix sat on his aunt’s dining room table, and she wears a necklace with a portrait of the Virgin Mary. Mr. Wu married Zhuo Ran, a granddaughter of Deng, the Chinese leader who brought China out of the chaos of the Mao era. Together, Mr. Wu, Ms. Zhuo, Mr. Chen and their relatives owned or ran the companies that controlled Anbang, according to company filings. Anbang leapt onto the global stage with last year’s purchase of the Waldorf Astoria and its aborted bid for the Starwood chain. By this year, Anbang’s assets had swelled to $295 billion. It is not clear what prompted Anbang’s sudden interest in overseas assets. But the shift came after a reshuffling of its ownership structure that also led to the injection of more than $7. 5 billion into the company. Company documents filed with Chinese agencies show that the number of firms holding Anbang’s shares jumped to 39, from eight, over six months in 2014. Most of those firms received large injections of funds. At the same time, Anbang’s capital more than quintupled. Ms. Zhuo disappeared from the ownership records by the end of that year. Many of Mr. Wu’s relatives did as well. Mr. Wu and Mr. Chen had disappeared earlier from the records. Mr. Zhu, who does not appear to have owned shares, disappeared in paper filings from Anbang’s roster of directors by 2009, though he was listed as a director on online government filings as late as 2014. Mr. Wu, Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhu did not respond to requests for comment, and Ms. Zhuo could not be reached. In March, Mr. Zhu told Chinese reporters that he was not an Anbang director. Anbang’s current shareholding firms are not names in China, and some appear to have been set up just to hold Anbang shares. One lists its address as the empty 27th floor of a dusty Beijing office building. Two more list an address at a mail drop above a Beijing post office. Using corporate filings, The Times compiled a list of nearly 100 people who own shares in the firms and traced about a dozen to Pingyang County or nearby. Reporters visited the area, in China’s eastern Zhejiang Province, and interviewed dozens of residents, including several whose names appeared on the list. They also interviewed an uncle, an aunt and a nephew of Mr. Wu. The latter two, as well as others in the area, said one name matched that of his sister, Wu Xiaoxia. The family members said several other names matched those of Mr. Wu’s extended kin, including two cousins and others on his mother’s side of the family. Through their various stakes in Anbang shareholding companies, these people control a stake representing more than $17 billion in assets. Other names matched local acquaintances of Mr. Wu, including Huang Maosheng, a local businessman who confirmed in a brief phone interview that he had a business relationship with Mr. Wu but declined to elaborate. One village leader and neighbors identified the names of four of Mr. Huang’s relatives — including some whom they described as common workers — from among those on the list. Their Anbang holdings represent about $12 billion in assets. Another resident, Mei Xiaojing, said two names on the list matched those of her relatives. Asked if she knew Mr. Wu, she said, “Well, yes,” then ended the phone conversation and did not respond to subsequent calls. Through multiple holding companies, those three people have a stake representing about $19 billion in Anbang assets. As Anbang rose, so did Mr. Wu’s profile. In 2013 Mr. Wu secured a yearlong position as a visiting fellow at the Asia Center of Harvard, joining a growing list of politically connected Chinese billionaires with ties to Harvard. Ezra F. Vogel, a professor emeritus at Harvard who wrote a biography of Deng, said he met Mr. Wu on several occasions. “He had this staff of sharp people who were working for him,” Mr. Vogel said. “It seems that they were doing the detail work, and he was the friendly man supplying the connections. ”

DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson held almost an hour of talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday after flying to Tehran to seek the release of a jailed British-Iranian aid worker. Both spoke forthrightly about the obstacles in the relationship and agreed on the need to make progress in all areas, said a spokeswoman for Britain s Foreign Office after Johnson concluded what was only the third visit to Iran by a British foreign minister in the past 14 years. The Foreign Office confirmed Johnson had raised consular cases of dual nationals during talks. These cases include Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who Britain says was visiting family on holiday in April 2016 when she was jailed by Iran for attempting to overthrow the government. The woman s husband later told Sky News that a court appearance scheduled in Iran for Sunday had been postponed. I think I am very optimistic today, Richard Ratcliffe said. He added that he hoped his wife would be home before Christmas but cautioned that there could still be setbacks. Without doubt having the foreign secretary there was a big thing. Without doubt the court case not happening is a big thing. There may be a number of big things that have to happen before she s home, but ... as I sit here I am a lot more optimistic than I was. Iranian state television had reported that bilateral relations, the nuclear deal and regional developments made up the axis of the talks , between the president and Johnson. TWO-DAY VISIT The case of Zaghari-Ratcliffe has taken on domestic political importance after Johnson said last month that she had been teaching journalists in Iran, which her employer denies. Johnson later apologized. Opponents have called for him to resign if his comments lead to her serving longer in prison. Johnson met Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran s Atomic Energy Organization earlier on Sunday and had talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on Saturday. The two-day visit took place against a complex backdrop of historical, regional and bilateral tensions. It has been a worthwhile visit and we leave with a sense that both sides want to keep up the momentum to resolve the difficult issues in the bilateral relationship and preserve the nuclear deal, the Foreign Office spokeswoman added. International sanctions against Iran have only recently been lifted as part of the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal to curb Tehran s disputed uranium enrichment program. That deal is under threat after U.S. President Donald Trump decided to decertify Iran s compliance with its terms. Johnson told Zarif he believed the deal should be fully implemented. Zaghari-Ratcliffe is not the only dual national being held in Iran, but has become the most high profile case. A project manager with the Thomson Reuters Foundation, she was sentenced to five years in prison after being convicted by an Iranian court of plotting to overthrow the clerical establishment. She denies the charges. The Thomson Reuters Foundation is a charity organization that is independent of Thomson Reuters and operates independently of Reuters News. It says Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been on holiday and had not been teaching journalism in Iran.

On behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives, I extend my warmest wishes to everyone celebrating Christmas this year. We spend a lot of time this season asking for what we want. But perhaps it would be better to ask for what we need. We have been given so much in this country that it almost seems ungrateful to ask for more. But all of us—at all times—need more of what is good. And this year, I hope that all of us continue to live in what I consider the spirit of Christmas: a courageous humility. It took courage for God to humble Himself. He came down from heaven and became a man—a child in a manger. He did this while knowing that one day He would have to lay down His life for us. He would have to give up His only Son. At first, this might seem like a sad story. But we are to “rejoice in the Lord always.” Christmas is a day of celebration. And it is only through grace and prayer that we come to realize: what a gift He’s given us—what a profound act of love. And so we rejoice. This year, may we continue the spirit of Christmas by facing our flaws fearlessly and by giving back boldly. May we recognize that our way is not the only way—it is not even the right way. It is God’s way we seek. May we cherish all the gifts we have been given—especially the men and women of our armed forces, the people who keep us safe. And may we remember that it takes courage to put others first. It is courageous to do the right thing. May we remember, and be brave—and be glad. Republican Paul Ryan is Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He represents Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District. Follow him on Twitter @SpeakerRyan.

Hillary Clinton defended herself Thursday against accusations she was out of touch as the situation in Benghazi spiraled out of control before the 2012 terror attack, at a long-awaited congressional hearing where Republicans grilled the former secretary of state for 11 hours over her role. While the day-long hearing spanned everything from the initial decision to intervene in Libya to Clinton's public explanation of the Benghazi attack, a central GOP allegation was that Clinton paid more attention to emails from friend Sidney Blumenthal than pleas from murdered diplomat Chris Stevens to increase security in the face of growing threats. But, even as Clinton said she "took responsibility," she accepted little blame for the denial of security requests before the attack, or for the faulty narrative about an anti-Islam video that formed after. Clinton testified to the Benghazi committee that the security requests were handled by security professionals in the department and not her. "I did not see them. I did not approve them. I did not deny them," she said, while saying she was aware of the risks on the ground. Clinton insisted Blumenthal, whose frequent messages to her turned up in recently released emails, was not a primary source of information or even technically "advising" her. But when she questioned what the emails have to do with the tragedy, committee Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., contrasted the frequent and direct communication with Blumenthal against Stevens' struggle to get help. "I think it is eminently fair to ask why Sidney Blumethal had unfettered access to you, Madam Secretary ... and there's not a single solitary email to or from you, to or from Ambassador Stevens," he said. Clinton earlier admitted that Stevens did not even have her personal email, while also claiming she didn't have a computer in her office. "I do not believe that he had my personal email," Clinton said, before adding that Stevens had a "direct line" to others. Clinton acknowledged some of his requests were approved, and others were not. But she said Stevens emailed regularly with her close aides and "did not raise security with the members of my staff." The exhaustive hearing, which featured not only tough questioning of Clinton but frequent infighting between Republican and Democratic committee members, came as the former State Department leader tries to reclaim momentum in the Democratic presidential race. On Capitol Hill, she tried to settle lingering questions on her role surrounding the 2012 attacks. Republicans suggested the investigation, though, is far from over. In a tense exchange, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, grilled Clinton on why the administration initially seemed to blame protests over an anti-Islam film. "Where'd the false narrative start? It started with you, Madam Secretary," he charged, pointing to a State Department statement that night saying some were using the video to justify violence. Jordan said she later told the Egyptian prime minister they knew the attack was "planned" and had "nothing to do with the film." He alleged she didn't tell the American people the "truth." But Clinton responded, "There is no doubt in my mind that we did the best we could with the information we had at the time." She said they were dealing with "fluid" and "fast-moving" and "conflicting" information, and stressed that the night of the attack, she only said some "sought to justify" the attack with the video. She said there were probably many motivations. And while former top intelligence officials have indicated they knew the attack was terrorism from the start, Clinton seemed to suggest it was the intelligence community guiding the public narrative. "The intelligence community did the best job they could," she testified. At other times in the hearing, Clinton said Stevens had volunteered for the mission itself and said that while the risk in the region was known, "there was no credible actionable threat known by our intelligence community against our compound." Clinton at times also tried to rebuff tough questioning by suggesting American agents should not be disparaged, though lawmakers did not appear to imply this. In another tense exchange later in the evening, Rep. Susan Brooks, R-Ind., questioned if Clinton had a personal conversation with Stevens after he was sworn in that May. When Clinton initially responded "I believe I did," Brooks pressed her further, saying there were no call logs or record she spoke with Stevens directly. Clinton responded again she believed she did have a conversation with Stevens before his was killed. Generally, Clinton and Democrats on the committee argued that the attack has already been thoroughly investigated, by the Accountability Review Board and other congressional panels. Democrats accused Republicans of leading a partisan hunt against Clinton to damage her presidential candidacy. Indeed, the hearing comes at a critical time for Clinton. Following a strong debate performance last week, Clinton on Wednesday also saw the man who may have represented the biggest primary threat to her candidacy, Vice President Biden, opt out of running. Yet questions about her personal email use and her actions relating to the Benghazi attack loom over her run. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., the committee's top Democrat, said the panel was only formed because Republicans "did not like the answers" from prior investigations. So, he said, they established the committee and "set them loose, Madam Secretary, because you're running for president." Cummings called it an "abusive effort to derail" her campaign. But Gowdy denied this. Of allegations that the investigation is all about Clinton, Gowdy said Thursday, "Let me assure you it is not." The former State Department leader meanwhile tried to downplay questions about what her emails did and did not show by claiming much of her work was done over phone, in person and other ways. She said she mostly did not work over email, and said she did not have a computer in her office while secretary of state. "I didn't conduct the business that I did primarily on email," she said, adding that she generally did not email during the day. Despite these claims, investigators are looking into a number of work-related emails Clinton sent at the department and whether they contained classified material. The emails came up under questioning from Brooks, R-Ind., who asked why so few of her emails addressed Libya in the lead-up to the attack. At the hearing, Clinton also was challenged over her advocacy for military intervention in Libya, with a GOP member describing her as the "architect" of a policy that has led to "disaster." Clinton defended her role, saying she pushed for intervention to prevent "mass massacres," but stressing that President Obama made the final call to use U.S. military force. She also told the committee the night of the Benghazi attack, she only had one call with President Obama. There were no meetings or calls with then-CIA director Leon Panetta or Gen. Martin Dempsey, according to Clinton, even though she said they were "the decision makers" who could have sent in U.S. military forces. Clinton added that she did not talk to the survivors of the attack until they had been debriefed, and after they arrived back in U.S. "Our Libya policy couldn't have happened without you, because you were its chief architect," Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., told her, adding: "Things in Libya today are a disaster." Clinton said she does not "subscribe" to that view. Gowdy, in explaining the purpose of the hearing, said they owe the "truth" about what happened to the victims of the 2012 terror attack. "They were more than four images on a television screen.... They were Americans who believed in service and sacrifice," Gowdy, R-S.C., said. For that sacrifice, Gowdy said, "We owe them and each other the truth." He said he wants a "final definitive accounting" of what happened. Gowdy said that includes answers over what the U.S. was doing in Libya, what happened to requests for additional security and what the government told the public after the attacks. In her opening statement, Clinton said she was there to "honor the service" of the four men who died. She argued that America "must lead in a dangerous world" and said it would "compound the tragedy" for America to "retreat from the world."

(Welcome) to America We hope you enjoy our benefits. Please feel free to NOT assimilate Coming soon: Press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish and 3 for Arabic The Obama Administration is on pace to issue more than a million green cards to migrants from majority-Muslim countries, according to an analysis of Department of Homeland Security data.A chart released by the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest Friday details the surge in immigration to the U.S. from majority-Muslim countries since President Barack Obama took office in 2009.Specifically, in the first six fiscal years of Obama s presidency (FY2009 FY2014), his administration issued 832,014 green cards to migrants majority-Muslim countries, the most of which were issued to migrants from Pakistan (102,000), Iraq (102,000), Bangladesh (90,000), Iran (85,000), Egypt (56,000), and Somalia (37,000).The total 832,014 new permanent residents do not include migrants on temporary, nonimmigrant visas which allow foreign nationals to come to the U.S. temporarily for work, study, tourism and the like. As the subcommittee notes, the number also does not include those migrants who overstayed the terms of their visas.Regardless, as the subcommittee explained in its analysis, the U.S. is playing host to immigrants from majority Muslim countries at an increasing pace.Between FY 2013 and FY 2014, the number of green cards issued to migrants from Muslim-majority countries increased dramatically from 117,423 in FY 2013, to 148,810 in FY 2014, a nearly 27 percent increase. Throughout the Obama Administration s tenure, the United States has issued green cards to an average of 138,669 migrants from Muslim-majority countries per year, meaning that it is nearly certain the United States will have issued green cards to at least 1.1 million migrants from Muslim-majority countries on the President s watch. It has also been reported that migration from Muslim-majority countries represents the fastest growing class of migrants.Green cards, or Lawful Permanent Residency, puts immigrants on the path to citizenship and allows for lifetime residency, federal benefits, and work authorization. Included in the totals are refugees, who are required to apply for a green card after one year of residency in the U.S. Unlike other types of immigrants, refugees are immediately eligible for welfare benefits including Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), food stamps, and Medicaid. Via: Breitbart News

Hillary Cleared As FBI Folds Again Comey Says "Conclusions Unchanged From July" On Clinton Email Review By Tyler Durden November 06, 2016 " Information Clearing House " - " Zero Hedge" - In a letter to several committee chairmen released Sunday, FBI Director James Comey announced on Sunday afternoon that just over a week after the FBI reopened its probe into Clinton emails, the Bureau has not changed its July conclusion regarding Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State. House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz made waves Sunday afternoon, when he tweeted about the FBI letter. FBI Dir just informed us "Based on our review, we have not changed our conclusions that we expressed in July with respect to Sec Clinton" — Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) November 6, 2016 Below is the full letter from FBI Director Comey, with the key section highlighted. The Clinton campaign is exuberant... We were always confident nothing would cause the July decision to be revisited. Now Director Comey has confirmed it https://t.co/BMQQx9eRzw — Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) November 6, 2016 So, having reviewed 650,000 emails in less than a week (?), we can now go back to Democrats loving Comey and the FBI and Trump hating on them.

21st Century Wire says Here is a perfect example of a story where the mainstream media will treat the surface narrative without identifying the real underlying scoop The Reuters report below reveals how a recent police raid of a phony back alley US Embassy in the African capital city of Accra, Ghana, netted seizures of a number of illicit travel documents, including authentic European Union Schengen Zone travel visas. It turns out that this organized crime operation was being run by a Turkish crime syndicate This is distrurbing when considered in conjunction with recent demands by Turkey and its President Tayip Erdo an, to be given Schengen Zone free travel throughout the EU for all Turkish citizens (Image Source: California Courier)Last year, Turkey was effectively using the Syrian refugee crisis to blackmail the EU into paying Ankara 3 Billion Euros in cash as well as Schengen free movement for Turks in and out of the EU. 21WIRE raised the alarm over one year ago that if Turkey was given a green light by bureaucrats in Brussels for EU travel, then this would potentially enable thousands of ISIS, Al Nusra Front and other salafi terrorists who ve been allowed to roam freely since 2011 into Turkey (with the blessing of the Turkish government) over the Syrian border. Terrorism and organized crime go hand in hand. Can the Turkish government, who is already implicated in aiding and abetting terrorist fighters along its Jihadi Highway, really guarantee that there will not be mass document fraud including Turkish passports for various terrorists moving freely throughout its country?The Ghana syndicate shows just how deeply entrenched Turkish organized crime is in the business of forging visa travel documents. Another reason to be worried about opening up Europe to Turkey . Reuters Authorities in Ghana have busted a fake US embassy in the capital Accra run by a criminal network that for a decade issued illegally obtained authentic visas, the US State Department has said.Until it was shut down, the sham embassy was housed in a rundown, pink two-storey building with a corrugated iron roof and flew an American flag outside. Inside hung a portrait of the US president, Barack Obama. It was not operated by the United States government, but by figures from both Ghanaian and Turkish organised crime rings and a Ghanaian attorney practising immigration and criminal law, the State Department said in a statement.Turkish citizens who spoke English and Dutch posed as consular officers and staffed the operation. Investigations also uncovered a fake Dutch embassy, the State Department said.Officials in the Netherlands were not immediately reachable for comment on Sunday.The crime ring issued fraudulently obtained but legitimate US visas and false identification documents, including birth certificates at a cost of $6,000 ( 4,700) each, the statement said.During raids that led to a number of arrests, authorities also seized authentic and counterfeit Indian, South African and Schengen zone visas and 150 passports from 10 different countries along with a laptop and smartphones Continue this article at The GuardianREAD MORE TURKEY NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Turkey Files

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DOUALA, Cameroon (Reuters) - A military court in Cameroon sentenced an opposition leader on Monday to 25 years in prison, his lawyer and Amnesty International said and denounced the trial as politically motivated. The court convicted Aboubakar Siddiki, the president of northern Cameroon s main opposition party, of hostility against the homeland as well as revolution and contempt of the president over accusations he plotted to destabilise the country. We are going to appeal this decision, which does not seem to us to be at all just, Siddiki s lawyer, Emmanuel Simh, told Reuters. In a statement, Amnesty said the prosecution was part of a government campaign to stifle its critics. The government denies the charges are political. Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds arrested in a crackdown in recent months on protests in Cameroon s English-speaking regions. Residents there say they suffer social and economic marginalisation in the predominantly Francophone country. The protests have become a lightning rod for opposition to President Paul Biya s 35-year rule. Besides Siddiki, the court sentenced Abdoulaye Harissou, a well-known notary, to three years in prison for failure to denounce a crime. The court also dropped charges against three journalists arrested in connection with the same case.

GaryNorth.com November 1, 2016 Here is a video of a recent protest at the University of California, Berkeley, the nation’s most academically prestigious tax-funded university. It is the premier state school today. It was in 1964. It was in 1880. This is not a threat to the social order. It is an annoyance for students who want to go to class. WHERE AND WHEN THE SIXTIES BEGAN On September 10, 1964, the Free Speech Movement began at Berkeley. Almost no one remembers why. The University’s Board of Regents had long imposed restrictions on what kinds of recruiting were possible on school property. Everyone involved in student government knew the rules. Every group had to be approved: fraternities, sororities, religious groups, and political activists. The underlying motivation, more than anything, was to restrict religious proselytizing: the church/state separation issue. There were almost no conservative political groups on any of the six campuses (San Diego was opening with under 200 undergraduates that semester). As an undergraduate, I was probably the hardest core right-winger in any of the student governments on the five campuses. I had been involved in student government. I had been president of the sophomore class (1960) and president of the Associated Men Students (1961). I was part of an elite group of campus leaders called the California Club. The president of the University, Clark Kerr, met with us once year. In the fall of 1964, a 26-foot strip of land close to the Berkeley campus on Telegraph Avenue had long been used by Left-wing activists for recruiting. They set up tables at the beginning of the school year. In early September, the University’s administration learned that this strip of land was actually inside the boundaries of the campus. So, the rules governing recruiting applied. The Assistant Dean of Students, Katherine Towle, decided to enforce the rules. She sent out a letter on September 14. “Provisions of the policy of The Regents concerning `Use of University Facilities’ will be strictly enforced in all areas designated as property of The Regents… including the 26-foot strip of brick walkway at the campus entrance on Bancroft Way and Telegraph Avenue…””Specifically, Section III of the (Regents’) policy…prohibits the use of University facilities `for the purpose of soliciting party membership or supporting or opposing particular candidates or propositions in local, state or national elections,’ except that Chief Campus Officers `shall establish rules under which candidates for public office (or their designated representatives) may be afforded like opportunity to speak upon the campuses at meetings where the audience is limited to the campus community.’ Similarly, Chief Campus Officers “shall establish rules under which persons supporting or opposing propositions in state or local elections may be afforded like opportunity to speak upon the campuses at meetings where the audience is limited to the campus community.” “Section III also prohibits the use of University facilities `for the purpose of religious worship, exercise or conversion.’ Section IV of the policy states further that University facilities `may not be used for the purpose of raising money to aid projects not directly connected with some authorized activity of the University…’ “Now that the so-called `speaker ban’ is gone, and the open forum is a reality, student organizations have ample opportunity to present to campus audiences on a `special event’ basis an unlimited number of speakers on a variety of subjects, provided the few basic rules concerning notification and sponsorship are observed… The `Hyde Park’ area in the Student Union Plaza is also available for impromptu, unscheduled speeches by students and staff. “It should be noted also that this area on Bancroft Way… has now been added to the list of designated areas for the distribution of handbills, circulars or pamphlets by University students and staff in accordance with Berkeley campus policy. Posters, easels and card tables will not be permitted in this area because of interference with the flow of (pedestrian) traffic. University facilities may not, of course, be used to support or advocate off-campus political or social action. “We ask for the cooperation of every student and student organization in observing the full implementation of these policies. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to come to the Office of the Dean of Students, 201 Sproul Hall.” This was reasonable. She was enforcing the rules. The Best of Gary North Tags: Gary North [ ] is the author of Mises on Money . Visit http://www.garynorth.com . He is also the author of a free 31-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible . Copyright © 2016 Gary North

Maybe the Left became a bit too optimistic after America put a radical Community Organizer in the White House. Perhaps they overplayed their hand. Until now, Democrats have been able to quietly organize, and for the most part, the media helped to make Americans believe that everything they did was for the common good. Thanks to Black Lives Matter and the radical organizations who fund them, the curtain has been pulled back, and America is starting to see the ugly truth about the Democrats who support this ugly, hateful and divisive movement. Will the woman who has spent her whole life plotting and scheming for this moment be taken down by her own party?As a student radical during the Black Panthers era, Hillary Clinton gravitated to the company of anti-cop activists. At Yale, she helped edit a law journal that depicted police officers as racist pigs and ran numerous articles in defense of cop-killers.During her law school stint, she spent free moments offering assistance to the lawyers for Black Panthers who had killed a federal agent. She monitored the Bobby Seale trial in New Haven, hoping to catch the prosecutors out in mistakes that could later trigger an appeal.She also hobnobbed with the Radical Chic social set, going to cocktail parties with the lawyers for the Black Panthers. Through one of those events, she met Robert Treuhaft and Jessica Mitford, two Stalinists from California whom historians have established collaborated with the Soviet Union as members of the American Communist Party.Robert Treuhaft ran a law firm in California, and Hillary spent one of her summers doing a legal internship at his firm in Oakland. Treuhaft thought that she might object to his Red ties. But at the time she didn t care. In her autobiography, however, she was embarrassed enough about the association to try and minimize her work there: I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein researching, writing legal motions and briefs for a child custody case. Treuhaft s firm was notorious not only for its Red associations but also its unapologetic defense of cop-killers. That Hillary would devote a summer to working for such creepy subversives reveals the depth of her radical instincts. It is not hard to imagine her signing off on cartoons in the Yale Review caricaturing cops as pigs conjuring up the foulest racist thoughts as they walked the streets.This ideology creeps into Hillary s remarks, even at moments when she is straining to appear irenic. In her speech to an African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia last week, she uncorked the claim that implicit bias exists even in the best police departments. While claiming to detest profiling, Hillary gives herself the right to profile good police officers as racist. She adds implicit to dilute the insult and to build herself up as the omniscient central planner who will reorganize police departments so perfectly that not even implicit racism will shape their policies. How these central planners are immune to the implicit racism Hillary sees everywhere is never made clear. She says it exists across society but somehow it doesn t touch her.The upshot of this ideology is that as long as police officers arrest minorities for committing crimes they will fall under suspicion and face resistance. They can only escape the charge of racism by abdicating their duties. Hillary doesn t want to reform police departments but castrate them. Her cop-bashing these days is more circumspect and subdued than it was in the 1970s, but it is no less ideologically crass. She is no longer romanticizing the Black Panthers, but she is romanticizing their heirs. Even after a jury found that Trayvon Martin had died after trying to smash George Zimmerman s head into cement, Hillary still casts him, as she did last week, as a cherubic angel struck down by society s sinister forces. White Americans, she said, need to do a better job of listening when African Americans talk. If they did, she said, they would understand why black people say a prayer when their baby goes to a store to buy iced tea and Skittles. American SpectatorIf there is to be a social explosion every time an incident occurs, like the deaths of Trayvon Martin, shot while beating a neighborhood watch coordinator, and Michael Brown, shot in Ferguson after trying to grab a cop s gun, America is going to be permanently polarized.And there is no doubt where the majority will come down, and who will be the near-term beneficiary.Monday, Donald Trump declared himself the law and order candidate, and added: America s police are what separates civilization from total chaos and destruction of our country as we know it. And Clinton? On Friday, she said, I m going to be talking to white people. I think we re the ones who have to start listening. Prediction: If Black Lives Matter does not clean up its act, Obama and Clinton will have to throw this crowd over the side, or the BLM will take her down. Real Clear Politics

Thanks to Ben Shapiro of Breitbart News, we now know the answer to that question:Tuesday night s debate featured a master class on lying from the lying liar who lies about her lies, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.She spoke for approximately 24 minutes, and aside from her opening statement I m Hillary Clinton virtually every word that exited her mouth was untrue. But because Hillary appeared to be lady with mild socialist depression in a full-blown socialist insane asylum, nobody laid a glove on her.Thus it is left to us to debunk her various obfuscations and untruths. Here we go. I have spent a very long time my entire adult life looking for ways to find the ways for each child to live up to his or her God-given potential. Well, unless you re an unborn child. Then, get ready for a trip down the sink. Yes, finally, fathers will be able to say to their daughters, you, too, can grow up to be president. Technically, you ll have to marry a president first, however. Actually, I have been very consistent. Anderson Cooper asked Hillary about her shifting positions on issues ranging from the Iraq war to same-sex marriage to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. She then dropped that whopper. Hillary has been one of the least consistent major party candidates in American history. She then dropped a series of lies about her own positional changes. And then she finally concluded that she had a range of views, but they are rooted in my values and my experience. Those values are becoming president and her experience is reading the polls. I did say, when I was secretary of state, three years ago, that I hoped it would be the gold standard. It was just finally negotiated last week, and in looking at it, it didn t meet my standards. This is plainly untrue. Here s what she said in 2012 about the TPP: This TPP sets the gold standard in trade agreements to open free, transparent, fair trade, the kind of environment that has the rule of law and a level playing field. She didn t hope it would be the gold standard. It was the gold standard. Naturally, PolitiFact labeled this statement half-true. That means it s a huge, glaring lie. I m a progressive. But I m a progressive who likes to get things done how to find common ground, and I have proved that in every position that I ve had, even dealing with Republicans who never had a good word to say about me, honestly. Nope. As Senator from New York, Hillary accomplished virtually nothing. Her name was attached to exactly zero legislation. Her only major impact on policy came in the form of Hillarycare, which drove Republicans to massive electoral victory in 1994. When I think about capitalism, I think about all the small businesses that were started The media drooled over the exchange between Hillary and Bernie over capitalism. But there is no distinction between the economic philosophy of Sen. Bernie Sanders and that of Hillary Clinton. She said she wanted to use government to force companies to share profits with the workers a line straight from the Marxist playbook. She said she wanted the wealthy to pay their fair share which meant everything. She said she wanted paid family leave, universal college tuition availability, and a bevy of other free goodies. It was pretty straightforward to me that [Sanders] was going to give immunity to the only industry in America. Everybody else has to be accountable, but not the gun manufacturers. There is no special immunity for gun manufacturers. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 was designed to prevent ultra-leftist jurisdictions from twisting tort law to make gun manufacturers liable for public nuisance in the way that manufacturers are liable for their pollution. The law does not stop lawsuits against manufacturers or dealers from being sued if they knowingly sell a product to a criminal. They can still be sued for design flaws, or negligence. Well first of all, we got a lot of business done with the Russians when Medvedev was the president, and not Putin .There s no doubt that when Putin came back in and said he was going to be President, that did change the relationship. Nonsense. Putin was always the leader of Russia, even when Medvedev was his puppet. Hillary knew Putin ran the country when Medvedev was president; Medvedev, for example, was president when Russia invaded Georgia in 2008. Hillary handed the Russians a reset button anyway. Hillary also advocated for taking on Bashar Assad the same man she once called a reformer. I think while you re talking about the tough decision that President Obama had to make about Osama bin Laden, where I was one of his few advisers, or putting together that coalition to impose sanctions on Iran Glomming onto the kill of Osama Bin Laden in order to explain her vote for the Iraq war was simply nonsensical. But the idea that she put together the coalition to impose sanctions on Iran is simply untrue. International sanctions against Iran have been on the books for decades. And Hillary was integrally involved in negotiating the end of those sanctions, as well as letting Iran enrich uranium. We had a murderous dictator, Gadhafi, who had American blood on his hands, as I m sure you remember, threatening to massacre large numbers of the Libyan people Our response, which I think was smart power at its best, is that the United States will not lead this. Hillary reportedly manufactured the Libyan genocide story out of wholecloth, and overrode US intelligence in order to push that narrative. If Libya was smart power at its best, it would be incredible to find out what smart power at its worst would be (well, other than Syria, Ukraine, Iran ). Libya became a haven for terrorists because we deposed a dictator who posed no threat to us. The notion that Iraq was a disaster area of American foreign policy but Libya is a great success story is patently insane. Hillary s lies about Libya didn t end there. I ll get to that. Hillary said this with regard to Benghazi. She never did, of course. Her response mirrored her response in Benghazi, by the way: I ll get back to that, she said to our Libyan staff, then proceeded to do nothing. I think it has to be continued threat from the spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear material that can fall into the wrong hands. I know the terrorists are constantly seeking it, and that s why we have to stay vigilant, but also united around the world to prevent that. Hillary said the spread of nuclear weapons represented the chief threat to the United States. She also negotiated the Iran nuclear deal. The statement that people around the world are united to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons is a plain lie, given the acceptance of the Iran deal, which makes Iranian nuclear development inevitable. Well, I ve taken responsibility for it. I did say it was a mistake. What I did was allowed by the State Department, but it wasn t the best choice. And I have been as transparent as I know to be, turning over 55,000 pages of my e-mails, asking that they be made public. And you re right. I am going to be testifying. I ve been asking to testify for some time and to do it in public, which was not originally agreed to. Lies, lies, and more lies. She did not take responsibility for her email scandal any more than she took responsibility for Benghazi: she said she took responsibility but never admitted to having done anything wrong. Her email scheme was not allowed by federal law, but she was the head of the State Department and thus waived rules for herself. She may have been as transparent as she knows how to be, but that transparency involved setting up a private server, loading it with classified information, and then deleting some 30,000 emails. She only asked to testify after Congress demanded she testify. Fortunately, none of this mattered, since Bernie Sanders intervened to hand her his testicles in a jar by saying nobody cared about her emails. This inequality challenge we face, we have faced it at other points. It s absolutely right. It hasn t been this bad since the 1920s. But if you look at the Republicans versus the Democrats when it comes to economic policy, there is no comparison. The economy does better when you have a Democrat in the White House and that s why we need to have a Democrat in the White House in January 2017. If Democrats are so great at economics, why is inequality as bad as it has been in a century? And saying that Democratic presidents preside over good economies seems to neglect the fact that Bill Clinton, for example, presided over a Republican Congress. We have to deal with the problem that the banks are still too big to fail. We can never let the American taxpayer and middle class families ever have to bail out the kind of speculative behavior that we saw. In this debate, Hillary Clinton also backed Dodd-Frank, which legally enshrines too big to fail. Bailouts are now mandated by federal law, thanks to Hillary Clinton and Democrats. And Democratic policy loves bailouts they are huge fans of crony capitalism, endless bailouts through stimulus packages and taxpayer giveaways. I think that it was necessary to make sure that we were able after 9/11 to put in place the security that we needed. And it is true that it did require that there be a process. What happened, however, is that the Bush administration began to chip away at that process. And I began to speak out about their use of warrantless surveillance and the other behavior that they engaged in. Hillary Clinton voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act in 2006. And Hillary s supposed leadership against Bush-era abuses of the Patriot Act didn t stop President Obama from expanding the use of surveillance far beyond what Bush ever did. Well, I can t think of anything more of an outsider than electing the first woman president, but I m not just running because I would be the first woman president .Well, I would not ask anyone to vote for me based on my last name. False and false. California has had a paid leave program for a number of years .And it has not had the ill effects that the Republicans are always saying it will have. California uses employee payroll taxes to finance paid family leave. That means all the costs of the program are hidden, rather than explicit. Businesses leave California and employment declines because of its high tax rates. Businesses hire fewer women if forced to pay higher taxes in order to do so. They don t mind having big government to interfere with a woman s right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood. They re fine with big government when it comes to that. I m sick of it. Republicans want to defund Planned Parenthood. That s not big government. That s small government. Further, it s not big government to protect human life through force of law any more than it is big government to have murder laws on the books. I know we can afford it, because we re going to make the wealthy pay for it. That is the way to get it done. This myth, repeated ad nauseum by Democrats, is truly reprehensible. Rich people cannot pay for all the utopian programs proposed by the left. As John Stossel points out, If the IRS grabbed 100 percent of income over $1 million, the take would be just $616 billion. Both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton worshipped at the altar of Denmark last night, but Denmark has lower corporate tax rates than the United States, and far higher taxes on the middle class. You pay a 200 percent tax on cars in Denmark everyone. Socialism isn t built on the backs of the rich. It s built on the backs of everyone who earns, and that includes the middle class. Well, in addition to the NRA, the health insurance companies, the drug companies, the Iranians. The Iranians are not Hillary s enemies. They love her.For entire list of lies, go to Breitbart NewsHillary s a liar. But Democrats don t care, because liars prosper in a world where hard work and honesty are punished in the name of equality and the Great Socialist Utopia.

CAIRO/AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Arabs denounced President Donald Trump s plan to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem as a slap in the face but few thought their governments would do much in response. Trump phoned allies in the Middle East late on Tuesday to tell them the United States would acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on Wednesday and prepare to move its embassy there. It incites feelings of anger among all Muslims and threatens world peace, said Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, Imam of Egypt s al-Azhar mosque, one of Islam s most important institutions. The gates of hell will be opened in the West before the East, he added, warning of the possible reaction. Israel s sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which it seized in the 1967 war, is not recognized internationally, and under the U.S.-brokered Oslo accords of 1993 the city s status was to be decided in negotiations with Palestinians. Arab governments issued statements of concern or condemnation and emergency meetings of both the Arab League and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have been called. But the U.S. decision has been taken. In a bitterly divided region, backing for Palestinians is often seen as a unifying position, but it is also often a source of internal recriminations over the extent of that support. A cartoon in al-Arabi al-Jadeed, a London-based Arabic news website, showed Trump raising a hand against an Arab as if to slap him, wearing a large glove marked with the Israeli flag. In Lebanon, the Daily Star newspaper ran a full page photograph of Jerusalem on its cover with the headline No offense Mr. President, Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine . Around the Arab world - including Egypt and Jordan, its only two countries to recognize Israel - and across the bitter divide between allies of regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, people denounced the move. Neither I nor my children nor my children s children will give up our right to Palestine and Jerusalem, said Hilmi Aqel, a Palestinian refugee born in Jordan s al-Baqaa camp after his family fled the fighting that accompanied Israel s creation. America does what it wants because it s powerful and thinks it won t feel the consequences ... Jerusalem is the capital of Palestine, not of Israel. It never can be, said Nada Saeed, 24, a property broker in Cairo. This is a provocation for the Arabs, said Mahdi Msheikh, 43, a taxi driver in Beirut s Hamra district. However, few people Reuters interviewed on Wednesday expected their governments to take any real action. What saddens me most about this is that Palestine in the past was an ultimate rights cause for us as Syrians and Arabs ... Palestine has retreated from our priorities, said a lecturer at Damascus university, who asked not to be named. Saudi Arabia, home to Islam s holiest sites, pushed a plan in 2002 offering Israel peace with all Arab countries in return for a Palestinian state including east Jerusalem. But a recent newspaper report suggested it was willing to compromise on several areas that are regarded by Palestinians and some other Arab countries as red lines. Riyadh has denied that and called on Trump not to move the embassy. The current events on the world stage and especially in the Gulf help Trump take this step because the most important thing is that Saudi Arabia is not against it, said Adnan, a 52-year-old trader in Beirut. The kingdom s top clergy issued a mild statement saying Saudi Arabia supported Jerusalem, but did not explicitly denounce Trump s move. Many Saudi Twitter users posting under the hashtag Jerusalem is the eternal capital of Palestine , shared a film clip of the late King Faisal, who launched the 1973 Arab oil embargo against the West, pledging never to accept Israel. But one Twitter user posting with a common Saudi family name said that while Muslims and Arabs would be provoked by the move, its top royals would not be. Instead, they would suppress any move or call to jihad against the Zionist enemy , he wrote. In Cairo, Khaled Abdelkhalik, a lawyer, said: We paraded Trump as an ally of the Arabs, but he turned out dirtier than his predecessors. Jordan, which agreed peace with Israel in 1994 while the peace process with the Palestinians still seemed on track, held a special session of parliament. I call on my colleagues to tear up the treaty of humiliation and shame, said MP Yahya Saoud, referring to the peace deal. Jordan, like Lebanon, is home to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees. This is a conspiracy that is denying us our rights, the first of which is to return. They think we are a branch of thorns that they can step on and break, said Fadia, a social worker with two daughters in Lebanon s Burj al-Barajneh Palestinian refugee camp. But we are a bomb. If they step on it, it explodes, she said. In Israel, analysts said that despite such warnings, they expected little violence or opposition. The moderate camp in the Arab world needs the United States as well as Israel in order to face their main threat, which is Iran, said Efraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies. We may see some public announcements maybe denouncing the American decision, but in substantive terms I don t think much will change.

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar wants to continue working with the United Nations on human rights but its investigator must be fair, the foreign ministry said on Thursday, a day after special rapporteur Yanghee Lee was barred from visiting the country. Myanmar is still cooperating with the special rapporteur mechanism, said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Kyaw Moe Tun. But Ms Yanghee Lee s undertakings don t have impartiality and objectivity, he said, adding that Myanmar had asked the United Nations to replace her with someone who knows Myanmar well and is both fair and impartial. Lee had been due to visit Myanmar next month to assess human rights across the country, including alleged abuses against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, but on Wednesday she said she had been barred from visiting for the rest of her tenure. She called for stronger international pressure to be exerted on Myanmar s military and said in a statement that the ban suggested something terribly awful was happening in the country. More than 650,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh since Aug. 25, when attacks by Muslim insurgents on the Myanmar security forces triggered a sweeping counter-offensive by the army and Buddhist vigilantes. Surveys of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres have shown at least 6,700 Rohingya were killed in Rakhine state in the month after violence flared up on Aug 25, the aid group said last week. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra ad al-Hussein has called the violence a textbook example of ethnic cleansing and said he would not be surprised if a court eventually ruled that genocide had taken place. Myanmar has rejected accusations of ethnic cleansing, blaming most of the violence and torching of Rohingya villages on the Rohingya insurgents who attacked the security forces. Lee had planned to use her visit to find out procedures for the return of Rohingya refugees, and to investigate increased fighting in Kachin State and Shan State in northern Myanmar, where the army is battling autonomy-seeking ethnic minority insurgents. Kyaw Moe Tun, who is director general of the foreign ministry s International Organizations and Economic Department, said a statement released by Lee after her last visit in July was not objective and not impartial . If she comes again and does that, it is not easy to cooperate with us and have a positive attitude, he said. Lee said in July that activists and journalists continued to be followed and questioned by state surveillance agents, and that her visit was beset by official snooping and access restrictions. The office of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi said at the time that it was disappointed with Lee s end-of-mission statement, which contained many sweeping allegations and a number of factual errors . It did not give any details and did not directly address the issues of access or surveillance.

RIMINI, Italy (Reuters) - Italy s anti-establishment 5-Star Movement, riding high in opinion polls, has named 31-year-old Luigi Di Maio to lead it into parliamentary elections next year that could see it win national power. Di Maio, deputy speaker of the lower house, is the party s most prominent and popular politician and had been groomed for the leadership in recent years by 5-Star s founder, the 69-year-old comedian Beppe Grillo. Boyish-looking and usually immaculately turned out in suit and tie, Di Maio presents a moderate image in striking contrast to Grillo, who is famous for his raucous tirades against Italy s ruling elite. You have given me an enormous responsibility ... I assure you I ll carry it out with discipline and honor, Di Maio told supporters on Saturday at the party s annual gathering in the Adriatic coastal town of Rimini. I promise I will form a government team to be proud of for the first time in our history. Grillo, who has so far acted as 5-Star s de facto chief, is now expected to gradually withdraw from the limelight. I will always be like a dad for all of you, but I am old, he told the gathering on Friday. Di Maio, who has taken tough stances on law-and-order and immigration and is widely seen as on the right of the party which says traditional left-right labels have no meaning. He won by a huge margin over seven rivals in an online member ballot, held on Thursday and Friday, that reflected the movement s credo of internet-based direct democracy. His election was considered a formality because the other candidates were all little-known figures, mostly local councillors. However, participation was much lower than the party had hoped, with just over 37,400 people casting a ballot, compared with more than 140,000 eligible. Di Maio won 83 percent of the vote. The only people seen as having any chance against him decided not to run, opening the party up to accusations of failing to run a proper contest. Di Maio will now try to put that criticism behind him in the run-up to elections due by May next year. Most opinion polls, give 5-Star around 28 percent of the vote, just ahead of the ruling Democratic Party. However, that would not be enough to give it a majority in parliament unless it allies itself with another party, something it has so far always refused to do. The right-wing Northern League and Silvio Berlusconi s conservative Forza Italia (Go Italy) each have around 14 to 15 percent. 5-Star, founded by Grillo nine years ago as a protest movement, bases its appeal mainly on a campaign against corruption and vested interests. Its policies include the introduction of universal income support for the poor, boosting green energy and increasing the budget deficit to fund investments in infrastructure. Di Maio will need to broaden the movement s appeal and soothe barely disguised resentment among some 5-Star lawmakers over his dominant role in the party. His first challenge will be a vote in Sicily in November, which offers 5-Star the chance to win control of its first ever region. Victory could be a springboard to national success while defeat would be a major setback after the party spent months campaigning intensely on the island. (This version of the story has been refiled to add dropped words in paragraph 8)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he was unsure whether his top diplomat, Rex Tillerson, would remain in his post for the rest of Trump’s term in the White House and was “not happy” that some State Department staff were not supporting his agenda. In an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News late Thursday, Trump attacked the department under Secretary of State Tillerson and said he alone determines U.S. foreign policy. “The one that matters is me,” Trump said. “I’m the only one that matters because, when it comes to it, that’s what the policy is going to be.” Asked if he planned to keep Tillerson on board for the rest of his term, Trump told Fox, “Well, we’ll see. I don’t know.” Trump left on Friday on a trip to Asia with Tillerson following months of conflict between the two. Trump’s comments drew criticism in Congress, where many fellow Republicans have joined Democrats in objecting to Trump’s plan to slash spending on diplomacy and foreign aid, and his failure to fill key foreign policy jobs. “One would hope that if he’s the only one that matters that he at least gets some feedback from top staff who perhaps can know a little bit more about some of these things than he does,” Representative Eliot Engel, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, told Reuters. Tensions between Trump, a real estate developer and reality television star in office since January, and Tillerson, former chief executive at Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N), resurfaced last month amid reports Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” and considered resigning. Tillerson later said he never considered leaving. Trump said they had a good relationship but criticized Tillerson as weak. Tillerson’s State Department has also been at odds with the White House over global issues including rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear program. Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, said Trump’s comments spelled trouble not just for the current secretary but for overall foreign policy. “It’s not just about Rex Tillerson, it’s about who comes after Rex Tillerson. If the president is not determined to make sure his secretary of state will succeed, the secretary of state can’t succeed,” Haass told CBS News. Tillerson has made overhauling the department a top priority and tightened control by consolidating his authority. Critics have decried the reorganization and unfilled jobs at a time when international crises continue around the world. At a recent meeting of former national security advisers, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security advisor, that the administration was gutting State. McMaster replied that there were people who did not support the president’s agenda, two people present told Reuters. On Thursday, Trump said many of the posts were not needed and he is “not happy” with others already there. “I want my vision, but my vision is my vision,” he said. “Rex is in there working hard ... he’s doing the best he can.” (This version of the story has been refiled to add dropped words in 11th paragraph)

While the Trump administration is up to its collective neck in scandals, Donald Trump just exempted his entire senior staff from provisions of his own ethics rules, thus giving any conflicts of interest a pass. The ethics waivers total more than five times the number granted in the first four months of the Obama administration. This move follows an intense dispute between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics, which had been pushing the Trump administration to stop granting such waivers in secret, the New York Times reports.Trump s executive order on ethics has been waived at least 11 times since the administration came into power. Just before taking office, Trump signed an executive order seemingly in line with his Drain the Swamp rhetoric, to restrict the role of lobbyists in his administration. While that sounded good at the time, he s failing to keep that promise. In fact, he s filling swamp up to an unprecedented level of madness and corruption.The ethics waivers will now permit White House staffers to work on matters that could affect their former employers or clients or involve issues from which the aides would be normally be excluded because of past lobbying work, Politico reports.White House counselor Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon are included among those given an ethics pass.This is not normal:Chief White House strategist Steve Bannon also received a waiver to the rules as part of a blanket exemption for all White House appointees allowing them to communicate with the press. His reported discussions with former colleagues at the pro-Trump site Breitbart News, which Bannon chaired until last year, had raised red flags among ethics watchdogs.The swamp is taking over:The White House waived the rule for Trump energy policy adviser Michael Catanzaro, a former lobbyist for the oil and gas industry. He was given approval to work on energy and environmental policy issues including the Clean Power Plan, the Waters of the United States rule and other environmental regulations.Tax policy adviser Shahira Knight, a former Fidelity executive, was approved to deal with tax, retirement and financial services issues even though she d previously lobbied on those topics. The National Economic Council has been tasked with addressing issues relating to tax, retirement and financial services. The Administration has an interest in you working on matters in those areas due to your expertise and prior experience, the waiver reads.White House economic aide Andrew Olmem was cleared to work on a variety of finance-related issues despite his lobbying for several big insurance companies and banks.What is Trump going to do next, sign an executive to pardon for himself and his administration from any past or future crimes? Or sign an executive order to disallow his own impeachment? We re not sure why some Trump supporters aren t catching on to the level of corruption in this administration. Seriously, Trump could eat a live puppy then wipe his mouth with its tail and his supporters would cheer him on.Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images.

This is great because Hillary Clinton is never asked questions like this one: Um, you said earlier that you wanted to end corruption, but how can you do that after the Whitewater scandals, Benghazi and the deleted emails? Hillary s response: Well, I wish you d go back and read the history of 1990s, because clearly uh, there, there were unfortunately a lot of partisans who uh, thought that the best way to work uh, with my husband s administration was through attacks of all kinds all of which washed out. Soooo it was the vast right-wing conspiracy ? That s a pretty pitiful answer

ORLANDO, Fla. — As the sound of gunfire in the nightclub grew louder, a patron named Orlando and a female friend took cover in a cramped bathroom stall, contorting their bodies on top of the toilet so their feet could not be seen. The gunman burst into the bathroom, went straight to the stall next to them and shot the people inside. “People were screaming, begging for their lives,” Orlando, 52, said in a telephone interview, asking that his last name not be used out of fear of retaliation from terrorist sympathizers. The gunman, Omar Mateen, was silent, then left the bathroom. “He went out and started shooting outside again,” Orlando said. For three sickening hours on Sunday morning, a game of deception played out in a bathroom where the assailant holed up with hostages after killing dozens of people inside the Pulse nightclub. Orlando and his friend desperately tried to avoid becoming two more victims. Orlando said he listened as the gunman warned his hostages not to text anyone, took their cellphones, called 911 to calmly pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State, spoke about a need to stop American bombing in Syria and threatened greater bloodshed if the police moved in. Orlando described moments of surreal quiet as the siege went on and the killer fiddled with his weapon and used the sink and the hand dryer. Mr. Mateen checked on the bodies around him, Orlando said. At one point, Orlando switched positions and played dead, and he felt something poking him. He believed it was the gunman, checking to see if he was dead. Around 5 a. m. the police blew a hole in the wall, enabling some of the hostages to escape, and officers engaged in a fatal final confrontation with the assailant. Much of Orlando’s account corresponds with new information released by the police on Monday, other witness accounts and video evidence, which combined to paint a chilling picture of the hostage crisis that unfolded after the attack. The first bursts of gunfire, around 2 a. m. were captured on video by Amanda Alvear, the footage uploaded to Snapchat. In the video, she is recording herself and others as they dance to the last song of the evening at the popular gay club. Then she turns the camera toward her own face. She is staring into the lens as the first few shots are heard. They do not seem to faze her. But as they continue, unrelenting, roughly 20 rounds, the video abruptly ends. She was listed among the dead on Monday. Just before the shooting began, Ashley Summers and her friends went to their bartender, Kate, at Pulse’s back bar to order one more round — a vodka, soda and lime for Ms. Summers a vodka and Red Bull for one friend and a specialty drink for the other. One of Ms. Summers’s friends was polishing the credit card receipt with all sorts of pleasantries for the bartender — “sexy kitten,” “muah,” “you the best” — when the popping started. For 15 seconds, through the pulsing of the salsa music, they thought it might have been firecrackers, Ms. Summers said in an interview. But they eventually figured out it was gunshots. Ms. Summers said a friend pulled her to the ground. They felt glass shattering over their heads. They were near a back exit and crawled out. Concerned about what might be behind the white privacy fence out back, they turned left, into a storage area. But they heard more gunshots coming from that direction, so they went back out onto the patio and used some furniture to vault over the fence. They dashed to safety. “At that point it was shock, it was disbelief, it was fear, but it was urgency,” said Ms. Summers, a ballroom dance instructor. “There was knowing that we had to get out of there. ” Soon after Mr. Mateen first opened fire, he was confronted by an armed security guard who was an police officer, said John Mina, the Orlando police chief, at a news conference Monday morning. They exchanged gunfire. The security guard was then joined by an unknown number of police officers, the first to arrive on the scene. During these early rounds of gunfire, the police said, many patrons were able to escape. But the assailant retreated deeper into the club, eventually barricading himself in the bathroom, where some patrons had gone to hide. When the shots erupted, Norman Casiano dropped to his knees and crawled to what was apparently a different bathroom, seeking safety in a stall where many people were already crammed together. He tried to call 911, then his mother, shouting, “Mom mom mom mom!” into the phone before the call dropped. As Mr. Casiano, 25, and the others huddled together, a wounded man staggered into the bathroom and dropped to the floor. They urged him to try to stay quiet. At one point, as the gunman approached, Mr. Casiano said, he could hear shells clattering to the floor and the gun reloading. Then Mr. Mateen entered the bathroom. “Just firing, firing, firing,” Mr. Casiano said in an interview at his parents’ apartment, about two hours after he was released from the hospital on Monday afternoon. He was hit once in the back and felt a hot pulse of pain tear into him, as if his leg had been severed. He ended up being shot twice in the back, both bullets passing through his body, he said. Mr. Casiano said the gunman did not say anything, but laughed as people begged him not to shoot and assured him that they did not know who he was and had not seen his face. “All I heard was a laugh,” Mr. Casiano said. “He laughed like an evil laugh, something that’s just going to be imprinted in my head forever. ” It was, he said, “a laugh of like, ‘Ha, I did it. ’” When the gunman left the bathroom, Mr. Casiano tried to urge others to leave, he said, and was able to slip away and escape. He said he was in a hospital bed by about 3 a. m. two hours before the siege ended. Orlando’s escape took much longer. Hiding with his friend, he could hear the gunman drawing closer, the sound of each round getting louder. As he and his friend positioned themselves on the toilet, Orlando said, he also braced one foot against the stall door. Around this time, Mina Justice was asleep at home when she received a text from her son, Eddie Justice, she told reporters. He was also hiding in a bathroom at the club. “Mommy I love you,” the first message read. It came in at 2:06 a. m. “In club they shooting. ” Only two minutes later, he wrote, “I’m gonna die. ” Another 30 minutes would pass before he sent a text begging for help. “Call them mommy,” he pleaded. “Hurry,” he wrote. “He’s in the bathroom with us. ” Orlando said he never looked Mr. Mateen in the eye, but recalled his calm voice. At one point, after noticing that some of the hostages in the bathroom were texting, the gunman ordered them to surrender their phones. He spoke again, according to Orlando, asking the hostages, “Are you guys black?” “He said, ‘I don’t have an issue with the blacks,’” Orlando said. Early in the siege, the gunman called 911 to pledge his allegiance to the Islamic State, Chief Mina said. “He was cool and calm when he was making those phone calls to us,” he said. Orlando could hear the gunman speaking on the phone, presumably to the police. He spoke about how America should stop bombing the Islamic State. “He got mad and hung up,” Orlando said. He never heard Mr. Mateen mention gay people — he spoke only about the Islamic State and Syria, and about the damage he still intended to do. The gunman made several calls, and at one point, Orlando said, he told whoever was on the other line that there were people in the club with bombing vests as well as three snipers outside, ready to take out officers if they advanced on the club. “Our negotiators were talking with him, and there were no shots at that time,” Chief Mina said. “But there was talk about bomb vests, about explosives, throughout, and there were statements made about imminent loss of life. ” Near the end of the siege, Mr. Mateen began to shoot the hostages in the bathroom, Orlando said. By some miracle, he said, he once again avoided detection, but a person in the neighboring stall was not so lucky. A man who had just been shot crawled under the stall, grasping at both Orlando’s and his companion’s legs, pulling them down — and exposing their hiding spot. They played dead, “my face against the toilet bowl,” he said. In those moments, Orlando’s phone would not stop ringing, as friends called to see if he was safe. He worried that the rings would draw attention and give him away. As the final battle with the police began, Orlando could hear the gunman loading his weapon, at one point shouting, “I’ve got plenty of bullets. ” Then there were explosions and chaos. The police had blown a hole in the bathroom wall, but Orlando said his muscles were so cramped he could barely move. “My shoulders got caught,” he said. “A cop grabbed me and pulled me out through the hole. ” His female friend was also rescued. When he looked at his clothes, he was covered in blood, but it was not his own. He does not know if anyone else made it out of the bathroom alive. Mr. Justice, whose last text to his mother was just before 3 a. m. did not survive. His death was confirmed by the Orlando authorities early Monday morning.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baltimore community organizer Perry Hopkins, 55, is looking forward to stepping into a voting booth for the first time in his life this election season. Hopkins lost his never-exercised right to vote when he was convicted for drug and other offenses. He gained it back last month when Maryland joined a growing list of U.S. states making it easier for ex-convicts to vote. “To have the right to vote now is empowering. I’m stoked,” said Hopkins, who spent a total of 19 years in prison for non-violent crimes, and was one of 40,000 in the state to regain his right to vote from a legislative action. “I plan to vote in every election possible. I’m voting for mayor, I’m voting for city councilman in my district, and, yes, I’m voting for president,” said Hopkins. He hopes to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Nov. 8. Hopkins is among some 800,000 Americans who have regained the right to vote in the last two decades as about two dozen states have eased restrictions on felons casting ballots, according to the Sentencing Project, a prison reform advocacy group. The restoration of voting rights has drawn support from both Democrats and Republicans as a way to improve prisoners’ reintegration into society. “The trend is to reconsidering policies and scaling back (restrictions). There are setbacks on the way, but the trend is in that direction,” said Mark Mauer, the Sentencing Project’s executive director. Advocates contend it is also a way of promoting racial justice, as African-Americans are convicted of crimes and sent to prison at about twice the rate of the overall U.S. population. Of the 5.8 million Americans banned from voting, 2.2 million are African-American, according to the group. In three states - Virginia, Florida and Kentucky - more than a fifth of black residents outside of prison are barred from casting a ballot. About 13 percent of the U.S. population is African-American. Wyoming’s Republican-controlled legislature last year restored voting rights to felons convicted of non-violent crimes. A lawsuit before the Iowa Supreme Court aims to strike down the state’s voting restriction. Iowa, along with Kentucky and Florida, have the country’s harshest rules, prohibiting all ex-felons from voting unless they secure an exemption from the governor. In Kentucky, outgoing Democratic Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order in November granting the vote to non-violent offenders who had finished their sentences, including parole. His successor, Republican Matt Bevin, rolled back the order, saying Beshear had acted without approval of the legislature. At least 60,000 California inmates had voting rights extended to them in August when state officials dropped their challenge to a court ruling that allowed newly released felons to cast ballots. “We’re seeing more of these proposals. I do think that change takes time, it’s an issue that we’ve seen people come around to,” said Tomas Lopez, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, who tracks felon disenfranchisement. While the initiatives have seen bipartisan support in some states, that breaks down on the presidential campaign trail. Among Democrats, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a plank in his platform calling for the restoration of voting rights to ex-inmates. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on the campaign trail for felons to get rights back. None of the three Republican candidates - real estate magnate Donald Trump, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich - mention felons’ voting rights in their platforms. The United States has a patchwork of state laws governing felons’ voting rights, many dating from the 19th century. They range from two states - Maine and Vermont - that allow prison inmates to vote, to the lifetime bans. Re-enfranchising felons has drawn uncommon political bedfellows, with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union aligned with Mark Holden, the general counsel for Koch Industries, the conglomerate controlled by conservative political donors Charles and David Koch. Efforts are also under way in Congress, often the scene of bitter partisan divide, to address the issue. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has sponsored a bill that would restore voting rights in federal elections to ex-felons without violent offenses. Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader, is co-sponsor. The American Correctional Association, the Police Executive Research Forum and the American Probation and Parole Association also have backed the trend as potentially helping to reduce crime. A 2011 study by the Florida parole board showed that ex-offenders who were able to vote were one-third as likely to end up back in prison. “To continue to place a scarlet letter on an individual as if they had a life sentence is just wrong,” said Veronica Cunningham, the parole association’s executive director. (This version of the story corrects the last name of counsel to Lopez instead of Perez in paragraph 15)

Has family guy gone nuts? page: 1 link I was watching and they were singing a weird chant something about patriotic weirdness and barbecued human heads. I just brushed it off then 5 mins later some more weird popped in outta nowhere wtf so I recorder it I have no idea why quagmire took Peter back in time so far or what it's supposed to mean. Why would going back in time cause home to that? Or am I missing something Peter: [demonic voice] I see the six stations of the Lord's order, and they will all burn ! edit on 26-10-2016 by ssenerawa because: (no reason given) link That was kind of weird and random. Were they referencing anything? Probably just typical family guy but they have taken part in predictive programming and subliminal messages I am pretty sure edit on 26-10-2016 by GoShredAK because: (no reason given) Oh family guy... There are a lot of references to: a) time travel and its ramifications including multiple timelines. They even have an episode where time flows backward. b) occultic crap. There is another episode where Peter puts on noise cancelling headphones to "be alone with my thoughts". This is all while on a plane, and his "innver voice" begins babbling about blood shed and something about the dark counsel or something along those lines. c) Paranormal in general. Ghosts and spirits speaking through telelvisions etc. One of my personal favorites is when Peter talks to the t.v. as if the people on it can "hear" him. Ironically enough,the people on tv respond to him. To me, the show is some type of op. With american dad included. Afterall, seth macfalane was set to be on the plane that hit the north tower...talk about a splitting of timelines. Addendum: this show has a lot, and i do mean ALOT of references that resonate with my life and experiences to a very close T. edit on 26-10-2016 by OneGoal because: (no reason given)

Apparently, keeping a slave and repeatedly raping her is not against his Islamic faith From International Business Times:A Saudi national who was convicted of keeping his Indonesian maid as a sex slave has refused to attend a mandatory sex offender s course, arguing that his Muslim beliefs do not allow him to look at pictures of scantily-clad women.Homaidan al-Turki, 45, was jailed for 28 years in 2006 after his maid claimed she had been forced to work 12 hour days with no break and then locked in a cellar and abused regularly by the Saudi, who was in the US on an academic scholarship with his wife and five children.Al-Turki s sentence was reduced in 2011 to eight years-to-life but his parole applications have been repeatedly denied because of his refusal to attend a sex offenders course.Al-Turki told prison officials in 2013 that the sex offender treatment programme conflicts with [his] Islamic faith , according to a letter by the then executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, Tom Clements.Eight years for keeping a slave in America. Shameful.Via: Gateway Pundit

Tuesday morning, attendees of a Senate subcommittee hearing were treated to that wonder of wonders, a hot mic episode in which a speaker continues talking without realizing that their microphone is still live. In this case, it was Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine.Collins, noted recently for her opposition to the GOP health care bill currently before the Senate, is known for thinking outside her party. It s not really surprising that she does it s actually surprising that more Republican female members of Congress aren t at least a little concerned with their colleagues behavior. But if Collins bucking the party on Trumpcare made you smile, the exchange she had with the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee she chairs, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, will make you smile even bigger:Collins: I swear, [the Office of Management and Budget] just went through and whenever there was grant, they just X it out. With no measurement, no thinking about it, no metrics, no nothing. It s just incredibly irresponsible.Reed: Yes. I think I think he s crazy. I mean, I don t say that lightly and as a kind of a goofy guy.Collins: I m worried.Reed: Oof. You know, this thing if we don t get a budget deal, we re going to be paralyzed.Collins: I know.Reed: [Department of Defense] is going to be paralyzed, everybody is going to be paralyzed.Collins:I don t think he knows there is a [Budget Control Act] or anything.Reed: He was down at the Ford commissioning saying, I want them to pass my budget. Okay, so we give him $54 billion and then we take it away across the board which would cause chaos.Collins: Right.Reed: It s just and he hasn t not one word about the budget. Not one word about the debt ceiling.Collins: Good point.Reed: You ve got [Budget Director Mick] Mulvaney saying we re going to put in all sorts of stuff like a border wall. Then you ve got [Treasury Secretary Steve] Mnuchin saying it s got to be clean. We re going to be back in September, and, you know, you re going to have crazy people in the House.Then the conversation got funny. On Monday, a Texas congressman was clearly referring to Collins when he blamed female senators from the northeast for holding up Trumpcare. He said if she were a guy from south Texas, he might take her on, Aaron Burr-style :Collins: Did you see the one who challenged me to a duel?Reed: I know. Trust me. Do you know why he challenged you to a duel? Cause you could beat the shit out of him.Collins: Well, he s huge. And he I don t mean to be unkind, but he s so unattractive it s unbelievable.Collins: Did you see the picture of him in his pajamas next to this Playboy bunny?Unfortunately, I must now show you the picture she s talking about:This is the photo Sen. Susan Collins was referring to when she commented on Rep. Blake Farenthold wearing pajamas in 2010. pic.twitter.com/jZYCPC4FYW Beatrice-Elizabeth (@MissBeaE) July 25, 2017 Obviously that last bit caught someone s ear, because the mic was cut off.Seriously, though: It is adorable that, even in what she thought was a private conversation, and even though that slob had talked about literally shooting her, she still says I don t mean to be unkind. The only thing left to make Collins a Democrat at this point is to say this stuff into a mic she knows is live.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images

Home › VIDEO › “CLINTON, INC”: WATCH HOW’S IT PAINS MSM TO REPORT CLINTON CORRUPTION “CLINTON, INC”: WATCH HOW’S IT PAINS MSM TO REPORT CLINTON CORRUPTION 0 SHARES Post navigation

Hillary Rodham Clinton — who has spent much of her campaign embracing the policies of President Obama — signaled clear disagreement with her former boss Wednesday in key areas of foreign policy, suggesting in some cases that he has been too hesitant. Again and again, Clinton pointed to instances overseas where she would have taken a tougher stance than Obama, from arming Syrian rebels to confronting an expansionist Russia. In some cases, she was talking about policy debates she lost while serving as Obama’s first-term secretary of state, or about advice she suggested was not heeded. The critique, delivered as part of a Washington speech focused on the Iran nuclear deal, was in many respects subtle — wrapped inside overall praise for Obama and never targeting him directly. But the differences were nonetheless striking for a candidate who has worked carefully to soften her hawkish national security reputation and who badly needs Obama’s liberal coalition of voters to gain the White House. “Those of us who have been out there on the diplomatic front lines know that diplomacy is not the pursuit of perfection,” Clinton said. “It’s the balancing of risk.” That line was meant to answer Republican critics who say the Obama administration failed to drive a hard bargain in international nuclear talks with Iran. But Clinton echoed some GOP criticism of Obama’s hands-off approach to some world problems. The decision to distance herself from Obama on some foreign-policy issues comes at a difficult time for the Democratic front-runner, who has seen her lead erode amid the rise of an iconoclastic challenger, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and the worsening controversy over her use of a private e-mail server while secretary of state. It also represents a delicate balancing act for Clinton, who has sought to focus on her tenure as the top U.S. diplomat during Obama’s first term as a crucial qualification for becoming commander in chief. Much of the Democratic Party’s progressive wing remains skeptical of her sometimes hawkish tilt on foreign policy, including her now-disavowed vote in favor of the Iraq war. [How Clinton is banking on the Obama coalition to win] Clinton reviewed some of her policy differences with Obama in her State Department memoir, “Hard Choices,” published last year. But Wednesday’s speech at the Brookings Institution was the first time she had gone significantly beyond the mild and often implicit criticisms in that book to question foreign-policy decision-making after she left the administration. The main goal of Wednesday’s wide-ranging foreign-policy address was to support the Iran deal against Republican criticism and make clear that if elected president she will enforce it and seek to strengthen it. Obama deserves praise for his leadership in seeking the deal, Clinton said, and she claimed some credit for helping open the door for the negotiations that produced the accord this summer. “Either we move forward on the path of diplomacy and seize this chance to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon or we turn down a more dangerous path, leading to a far less certain and riskier future,” Clinton said. But Clinton’s support for the deal came with caveats, starting with whether it could lead to rapprochement with Iran after more than 35 years of enmity. Clinton was also blunt in her skepticism that Iran will fully comply with the accord limiting but not ending its nuclear program, but she said there are adequate safeguards built in. She zeroed in on what critics of the deal call a chief weakness — a concession to Iran that allows a delay of up to 24 days before international inspectors could check up on some kinds of suspected violations. “I’d be the first to say that this part of the deal is not perfect,” Clinton said. “But our experts tell us that even with delayed access to some places, this deal does the job.” Jake Sullivan, a top Clinton aide who helped launch the Iran negotiations and is now the senior policy adviser for Clinton’s presidential campaign, said she was not suggesting that the administration caved on inspections. “Acknowledging the imperfections of the deal is not criticism of the deal” but rather an argument that enforcement must be vigilant, Sullivan told reporters after the speech. [How Hillary Clinton is running against parts of her husband’s legacy] Other pieces of direct or implicit criticism flared throughout the speech and during a question-and-answer session afterward. On Russia, Clinton said she had warned of trouble on the horizon with the return of Vladimir Putin as president. “I am in the category of people who wanted us to do more in response to the annexation of Crimea and the continuing destabilization of Ukraine,” she said, referring to Russia’s military moves there. Clinton said she would “sustain a robust military presence” in the Persian Gulf. The Obama administration has acknowledged that there will be a gap of about two months this fall when no U.S. aircraft carrier group will be stationed in the gulf, the first time that has happened in several years. On Syria, Clinton noted that she argued for arming moderate Syrian rebels far earlier than the White House eventually tried to do, and she suggested the United States is not leading as it should in response to an exodus of refugees fleeing the civil war there. She proposed organizing a pledging conference, like one she helped put together after the 2011 earthquake in Haiti, to take in refugees and pay for resettlement. “The United States has to be at the table, has to be leading it,” Clinton said. In response to a question, Clinton also suggested that her former boss had miscalculated by trying to strong-arm Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over dealings with the Palestinians. That tactic was tried during and after her tenure. [For Hillary and Bibi, a long and sometimes fraught relationship] “Well, I think there’s a lot of room for tough love, particularly in private,” Clinton said. “But I just don’t think it’s a particularly productive approach for the United States to take” in public. “In the absence of, you know, some kind of greater goal that we were trying to achieve by doing that, I just don’t think that is the smartest approach,” she said. Clinton was measured but still critical on whether the administration should have pulled back from its request that Congress authorize military force in Syria. It opted instead for a 2013 agreement to remove chemical weapons from that country. “It’s always difficult in hindsight to say what could have happened if something different had been done,” she said of the debate over how to respond to allegations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had launched chemical-weapons attacks on civilians. The vote may well have failed, she noted, which would have left Obama to decide whether to proceed with punitive airstrikes on his own executive authority and over congressional objections. “I do think that not being able to follow through on it cost us. I am certain of that. That still comes back in conversations that people have with me” at home and abroad, Clinton said. “But I do think it was a net positive to get as much of the chemical weapons out as we could.”

For a crash course in why reality television star Donald Trump is unfit to be the next President of the United States, one only needs to look through his Twitter history. Unfortunately, the less intelligent Americans in our country (aka conservatives) have a very different take on the immature attacks that Trump spews on a daily basis with his tiny orange fingers, and their reasoning is painful to listen to.CNN host Chris Cuomo had his brain melted by Rep. Chris Collins (R-NY) on New Day on Wednesday morning when he dared to ask Collins what he thought about Trump s recent onslaught of tweets against the New York Times, who Trump has been blasting for making him look bad.TwitterCuomo asked if this was presidential behavior: Do you think that this is a healthy way for him to govern going forward? Collins, who was the first member of Congress to give Trump his endorsement, gave an answer that took Cuomo by complete surprise when he shrugged Trump s behavior off and said it was just the President-elect s way of relaxing. Well, I can tell you this, the pressure that has got to be on President-elect Trump is immense. The enormity of the job ahead of him, and so I would have to say if this is his way of relaxing, god bless him. Cuomo fired back, Relaxing?! in complete disbelief. Collins said: Absolutely. If this is what he has some fun with and he finds this relaxing, and his entertainment, let him go with it. Uh isn t a President supposed to be more concerned with running a country than entertainment ? Apparently not, according to Collins: I would not second-guess anything he s doing that he would use to make himself call it unwinding, relaxing, and I think that s part of it. It s Donald Trump being Donald Trump. You don t want this stuff all bottled up. So frankly I don t have a problem with this in the least. I think America actually wants to continue to see a real human being in the White House, and I put this in to the you know, this is his way of unwinding, and taking some stress off. So I think it s a good thing. Absolutely terrifying. Trump has already gone back on his promise that he would be very restrained on Twitter now that he s going to be President, making it clear that he lacks self-control. And as expected, Republicans don t have the backbone to stand up to him for the good of the country.You can watch Collins shock Cuomo with his stupidity below:Featured image via screenshot

posted by Eddie Pythagoras was a Greek philosopher, mathematician and founder of Pythagoreanism. He was also a high ranking member in many mystery schools and secret societies, including the Egyptian Priesthood and The Order Of The Magi. Pythagoreanism is a religious movement in which he attempted to merge education, science and religion in perfect unity. The Pythagorean School consisted of nine temples for the different subjects which included- geometry, music, astronomy, philosophy, medicine, politics and especially mathematics. His esoteric teachings were guarded closely and more secretive, candidates were given a probationary period to pass through. This was used to test their mental capabilities and their ability to maintain secrecy. Those who passed through this process were initiated into a select brotherhood in which they pursued religious and ascetic practices he had developed. This group were called Esoterici – The Esoteric. Pythagoras, Phidias and Fibonacci are all names that come up in association to the golden ratio, Phi or the Fibonacci sequence. But Pythagoras was the first to use it on a musical scale. According to legend, Pythagoras discovered musical tones when he walked passed a blacksmiths and was captured by the sounds emanating inside. He thought the harmonies could be translated into a mathematical equations. He later went into the blacksmiths and learnt how the sounds were made by observing their tools. He realised that the hammers had simple ratios to each other, one hammer was half the size of the first, another was 2/3 the size, and so on. This story cannot be validated, however it is fascinating to think that one of the most (if not the most) significant audio scales were discovered in this way. The fibonacci sequence is the number sequence 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13 and so on to infinity. This mathematical formula is found by adding up the two numbers before it in the sequence 0+1=1 1+1=2 1+2=3 2+3=5 and so on. The space between these numbers gives us the golden ratio of 1.618. This sequence unifies the properties of space, time, light, gravity and our genetic makeup within our DNA code. Our faces have this ratio and so do our bodies, you can find this ratio in our upper arm to lower arm and upper leg to lower leg. Even our brains are constructed with this ratio, with our pineal gland (which is thought to be the seat of the souls in many teachings) spiraling with this magical formula. Our pineal gland also produces melatonin and DMT which is thought to cause dreams and spiritual states. This ratio exists within flower petals, trees, seeds, natural foods, shells, the galaxies in the universe, it is truly the mathematical language of the universe. Given the significance of this, you may be able to see why listening to music tuned at this frequency could be a good thing. You can view more information about Pythagorean tuning and in specific the frequency of 432Hz in the video below. source: By Luke Miller Truth Theory From Around the Web Founder of WorldTruth.Tv and WomansVibe.com Eddie ( 8922 Posts ) Eddie L. is the founder and owner of WorldTruth.TV. and Womansvibe.com. Both website are dedicated to educating and informing people with articles on powerful and concealed information from around the world. I have spent the last 36+ years researching Bible, History, Alternative Health, Secret Societies, Symbolism and many other topics that are not reported by mainstream media.

BERLIN/GREIFSWALD, Germany (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, poised to win a fourth term in Sunday s election, and her center-left challenger Martin Schulz urged supporters on Saturday to keep fighting for votes with a third of the electorate still undecided. Merkel is widely expected to cruise to re-election with the Schulz s Social Democrats trailing by double digits but the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) could emerge as the third largest party, complicating the outlook for her next coalition. A new INSA poll published by Bild newspaper showed sliding support for Merkel s conservatives, who dropped two percentage points to 34 percent, and the SPD, down one point to 21 percent - both now joined in an unwieldy grand coalition . The anti-immigrant AfD, meanwhile, rose two percentage points to 13 percent, cementing its bid to be the first far-right party to enter parliament since the end of World War Two. Merkel urged supporters to drum up votes by focusing on conservatives efforts on behalf of families, a pledge to avoid tax increases and emphasis on increasing security in Germany. The Christian Democratic leader also lauded the role of the European Union in providing stability in a troubled world . We want to boost your motivation so that we can still reach many, many people today. Many are still undecided, Merkel said before heading north to her home constituency. In Greifswald, she led a crowd in practicing CPR as loudspeakers blared the Bee Gees song Stayin Alive . I should be in better shape, with the international media here, but I ll give it a try, a smiling Merkel told the crowd. First elected in 2005, Merkel remains popular in Germany but has regularly faced jeers and whistles from left- and right-wing demonstrators during rallies during this campaign. In Munich on Friday, Merkel defended her 2015 decision to admit about one million asylum seekers on humanitarian grounds, but pledged to prevent a repeat of that crisis. In the western city of Aachen, Schulz pledged to fight for every vote until polls close at 6 p.m. on Sunday. He said high voter turnout was vital to offset growing support for the AfD, whom he described as a party of haters. Young people, think about Brexit. Think about Trump, he said. Go vote. Take this right to vote seriously, and use it. Schulz said the SPD overcame resistance from conservatives in their coalition to push through a minimum wage, same-sex marriage and other social priorities. Schulz asserted that Merkel was a world champion in not deciding, someone who simply parroted others ideas. He vowed to push for further reforms, including better elderly care facilities, affordable housing, an end to discriminatory practices that harm children of migrants, and free child care. MOUNTING CONCERN ABOUT AfD Merkel s interior minister, Thomas de Maiziere, told Internet provider t-online.de the government would combat Islamist terrorism by strengthening European borders and bolstering security at home. He criticized the AfD as a wolf in sheep s clothing and said Germany s BfV domestic intelligence agency was studying whether right-wing extremists are seizing power and exerting influence on the party . The AfD was founded in 2013 with the original goal of opposing large bailouts of financially strapped euro zone countries but from 2015 shifted its focus to immigration. Mainstream parties have ruled out governing with the AfD. It has come under increased scrutiny in recent weeks after its top candidate Alexander Gauland said the German integration minister should be dumped in her parents homeland of Turkey, and that Germans should be proud of what their military did in World War One and Two. Jewish and Muslim groups say the AfD s rhetoric has opened the door to more hate speech and anti-Semitism. Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Reuters he feared the AfD s entry into parliament would change the public tone in Germany. I worry that the AfD will aggressively deepen divisions in our country, he said. The AfD, which has already won seats in 13 of 16 state legislatures in Germany, has promised to reenergize debate in the federal parliament after four years of what it calls boring rule by Merkel s grand coalition. AfD executive board member Georg Pazderski told Reuters the party was seeing a huge increase in support. People are no longer ashamed to come to the AfD and to identify with the AfD. Electoral arithmetic might yet nudge Merkel to renew her coalition with the SPD, or she might opt for a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmental Greens. FDP Chief Christian Lindner told a rally in Duesseldorf his party hoped to be the third biggest force in parliament, but would only govern if its demands and conditions were met. We won t govern at any price, he said, suggesting the FDP could potentially have more impact as an opposition force.

Donald Trump s desperate effort to make people ignore the fact that Russia helped him win the election runs contrary to American values and Van Jones ripped him for it.During a panel discussion on CNN this Sunday about Trump s reaction to Russian interference with our political process, Jones chimed in with a searing takedown. This is baffling to anybody with a functioning brain stem, Jones began. We have to be honest about this. Indeed, the CIA and 17 intelligence agencies along with the FBI all agree that Russia launched a cyber attack against our political institutions with one of the goals being to help Trump beat Hillary Clinton.Now Vladimir Putin will have a puppet in the White House for the next four years who refuses to condemn Russia because it would acknowledge that he is illegitimate. Yes, other presidents have tried to say nice things about the Russians, Jones continued. Not in the face of an active attack on the country! It s true. Past presidents have made attempts to be friendly toward Russia, but Trump is doing so after our intelligence community just concluded that Russia committed espionage, which is an act of war, against our country. But Trump is defending Russia instead. Cyber war is real war, Jones explained. So you have an active attack on our country and you have the president-elect who cannot find in himself to say this is wrong and it needs to stop. Jones pointed out that Trump has responded personally and as a partisan to attacks, but has demonstrated an unwillingness to respond as a patriot to an attack on our nation s sacred election infrastructure. This is an attack on our country! Jones said in conclusion. And I just think that everybody sitting here trying to pretend this is normal, this is not normal and it s dangerous. Here s the video via YouTube.Donald Trump recently demanded that China return a United States Navy drone they seized in the South China Sea. He s more upset about that than the attack on our democracy perpetrated by Russia. That s unacceptable and it s why Trump is unfit to be president.Featured image via screenshot

HOUSTON — During his presidential campaign, Donald J. Trump repeatedly hailed the Keystone XL pipeline as a vital jobs program and one that sharply contrasted his vision for the economy with that of Hillary Clinton. “Today we begin to make things right,” President Trump said Friday morning shortly after the State Department granted the pipeline giant TransCanada a permit for Keystone construction, a reversal of Obama administration policy. The pipeline would link oil producers in Canada and North Dakota with refiners and export terminals on the Gulf Coast. It has long been an object of contention, with environmentalists saying it would contribute to climate change and the project’s proponents — Republicans, some labor unions and the oil industry — contending that it would help guarantee national energy security for decades to come. When President Barack Obama rejected the project in late 2015, he said it would undermine American leadership in curbing reliance on carbon fuels. The announcement on Friday said the State Department “considered a range of factors, including, but not limited to, foreign policy energy security environmental, cultural and economic impacts and compliance with applicable law and policy. ” The new secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, formerly the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, had recused himself from the decision. The announcement said the permit was signed by the under secretary of state for political affairs, Thomas A. Shannon Jr. The pipeline still faces hurdles before it can be built. It needs the approval of the Nebraska Public Service Commission and local landowners who are concerned about their water and land rights. Protests are likely since the project has become an important symbol for the environmental movement, with the Canadian oil sands among the most oil supplies. Mining the oil sands requires vast amounts of energy for extraction and processing. In addition, interest among many oil companies in the oil sands is waning amid sluggish oil prices. Extraction from the oil sands, situated in the boreal forest, is expensive. Statoil and Total, two European energy giants, have abandoned their production projects. In recent weeks, Royal Dutch Shell agreed to sell most of its oil sands assets for $8. 5 billion. And Exxon Mobil wrote down 3. 5 billion barrels of reserves, conceding the oil sands were not economically attractive enough to develop for the next few years at least. Nevertheless, Canadian production continues to grow as projects that were conceived when prices were higher begin to operate. And the Keystone effort is central to the future of TransCanada, a major force in the Canadian oil patch. The United States Chamber of Commerce and other business groups applauded the administration’s action. Jack Gerard, the president and chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, the primary industry lobbying arm, said the decision was “welcome news” and was “critical to creating American jobs, growing the economy and making our nation more energy secure. ’’ Opponents say the pipeline is unnecessary at a time when American oil production is soaring and future demand has been put in question by increasingly efficient cars, electric cars and growing concerns over climate change. “The Keystone pipeline would be a straw running through the heart of America to transport the dirtiest oil in the world to the thirstiest foreign markets,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat. Originally planned to open in 2012, the Keystone XL would transport up to 830, 000 barrels a day of Canadian and North Dakota crude to Steele City, Neb. where it would connect with existing pipelines to deliver the sludgy oil to refineries in Texas and Louisiana for processing. Most of the refined product would probably be exported, or it might enable domestic producers to export more oil produced in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. When the project was in the planning stages, the United States was highly dependent on oil from the Middle East. The drilling boom in shale fields in Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Colorado was still in its infancy. But in recent years, domestic production has nearly doubled, and the United States now exports increasing amounts of oil and natural gas. Oil prices have been slashed in half over the last three years, although many analysts predict that petroleum prices will rebound in the next decade, when the pipeline would begin to operate. For Canada, and especially Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the pipeline represents a mixed blessing. The pipeline would most likely raise the price of Canadian oil, which is now even more depressed than other international grades. Mr. Trudeau publicly supports the pipeline as a tool to give Canada’s economy a lift, but an increase in oil sands production could undercut his commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as promised in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. “We are pleased with the U. S. decision,” said the natural resources minister of Canada, Jim Carr. “Keystone XL will create thousands of good jobs for Canadians during construction. ’’ Though Mr. Obama ultimately took a different stand, his State Department concluded in an statement that the pipeline project would not add to carbon pollution because the oil would find its way to market one way or another. Proponents have argued that rail or truck transport is more polluting and dangerous than pipelines. That argument has been weakened somewhat with the fall in oil prices in recent years that has made oil sands production less attractive on oil markets. Protests helped sway the Obama administration to reject the project, and environmentalists have been further emboldened by demonstrations last year in North Dakota, mostly by Native American groups, that have delayed another project, the Dakota Access Pipeline. Environmental groups are already promising to aid local groups in blocking the Keystone pipeline’s construction. “We’ll use every tool in the kit to stop this dangerous tar sands oil pipeline project,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The project would provide for thousands of construction jobs, and it has attracted the support of several labor unions. Mr. Trump has made a centerpiece of his efforts to spur economic growth. “The fact is that this $8 billion investment in American energy was delayed for so long demonstrates how the American government has failed the American people,” Mr. Trump said on Friday as he met with his National Economic Council at the White House. At the beginning of his term, he instructed the Commerce Department to establish a plan requiring that new pipelines be constructed with materials like steel. But the White House has since suggested that the Keystone project would not be subjected to those rules because it is not a new project.

We LOVE this guy! If you re on Twitter and not following us #ShameOnYou! You can find us at: @100PercFEDUP If you re on Twitter and not following @SooperMexican you should!So we have to accept illegal immigrants because "we were all immigrants at one time"?Well, we were all fetuses at one time. El Sooop rr! (@SooperMexican) September 25, 2015

While Trump s Secretary of State was visiting a UN base on the border of North and South Korea on Friday, the former CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. was photographed by a Reuters photographer, while at the same time, a North Korean soldier is seen photographing the top Diplomat covertly from the outside of a window. You can t make this stuff up. And now the picture is circulating on social media.In the image, a North Korean soldier can be seen on the right-hand corner of the picture peering in through a window and photographing Tillerson and a US Army general, Business Insider reports.The photo was taken inside the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), which was created after the Korean War on what is now the most heavily armed border in the world, and obviously the most spied upon.NBC reporter Brad Jaffy tweeted out a version of the photo, which he zoomed in on, calling it Rear Window. Rear Window: North Korean soldier takes a photo of Rex Tillerson at the DMZ pic.twitter.com/EHCIR3Fjo6 Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 17, 2017The original photo can be seen here.Tillerson announced on Friday at a news conference in Seoul that military action against North Korea is an option if the threat from its nuclear weapons program rises to a level that we believe requires action. Tillerson told reporters that all of the options are on the table. According to the Korea Herald, Tillerson cut his recent visit short with South Korean officials due to fatigue. The newspaper reported that Tillerson did not have lunch or dinner with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se and acting President and Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn during his visit there.Tillerson spent several hours meeting with Japanese officials, which included dinner meetings, the paper noted, according to The Hill.The secretary of State reportedly did hold talks with both South Korean officials regarding the threat posed by North Korea s nuclear program.And that must have been before fatigue set in. On Twitter, Trump said that North Korea was behaving very badly. South Korea s Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye in March over a corruption scandal. In contrast, the U.S. has failed to address its newly minted president s growing list of scandals. Tillerson, too, has his own scandal to deal with.As for the North Korean soldier spying on Tillerson, perhaps if he wore spy glasses and a fake mustache no one would have noticed. The soldier has better access to the Secretary of State than U.S. reporters do.Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Lebanon marks its independence on Wednesday with its sovereignty as compromised as ever by the agendas of foreign states that have shaped its history since the French mandate ended in 1943. The crisis ignited by Saad al-Hariri s sudden resignation as prime minister is unprecedented even by the standards of a country where loyalties have been split between countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia regionally and the United States, France and Russia globally. Hariri is due back in Lebanon on Wednesday for the first time since his resignation in a televised broadcast from Riyadh. Many believe Saudi Arabia made him quit and held him in Riyadh because he was not serving its objectives. Riyadh denies this. He will take part in independence day celebrations in Beirut after an intervention by Lebanon s former colonial power France led to him leaving Saudi Arabia for Paris last week. Can Lebanese people act the way they want? Are they free to take a decision and follow it? No they cannot. Because there are foreign powers who decide the way things go, said Antoine Mouawad, a 65-year old charity employee. We do not feel independent, said George al-Basha, 58, an unemployed barber in Beirut s Achrafiyeh district. For some Lebanese, the latest chapter in their turbulent history carries echoes of its independence in 1943, when France arrested the president and prime minister. International pressure and popular protests eventually forced their release. The parallel with Hariri s situation was drawn by one of Lebanon s major TV stations at the start of the crisis. Foreign states have often regarded tiny Lebanon as a theater for their rivalry, exploiting the fissures between Muslim and Christian sects who have also courted foreign intervention to help them in their struggles with each other. For years it was the tussle between Israel, which occupied southern Lebanon from 1982-2000, and Syria, which maintained a big military presence across much of the country from 1976-2005, that played out on Lebanese soil. The Palestine Liberation Organisation also controlled much of the country prior to 1982. Reflecting today s biggest Middle East rivalry, it is competition between Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shi ite Iran that lies behind many accusations of foreign meddling. Critics of the heavily armed Lebanese Shi ite group Hezbollah view it as a tool of Iranian policy. Opponents of Hariri, who was thrust into politics by the 2005 assassination of his father, Rafik, have similarly labeled him as an instrument of Saudi policy. But the demand for his return has united Lebanese across the political spectrum. Politicians close to Hariri say Riyadh held him against his will and forced his resignation to bust a coalition government that suited Hezbollah. Posters of Hariri demanding his return to Lebanon, even in areas dominated by his biggest political opponents, reflect widely felt anger at the perceived foreign intervention. The most important thing in a country like Lebanon is to understand that independence is a battle that does not stop, Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, a member of Hariri s Future Movement, said on Tuesday as he laid a wreath on Rafik Hariri s grave. Saad al-Hariri has also denied being held by Saudi Arabia, and in his resignation speech instead blamed Iran and Hezbollah for Lebanon s present difficulties. Wednesday s independence parade will be held near the central Martyrs Square, where reconstruction from Lebanon s 1975-90 civil war continues. In the nearby seaport are moored naval vessels belonging to the U.N. peacekeeping force UNIFIL which was established after Israeli s first invasion in 1978, and expanded after the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah. What we have seen in the last 10 days or two weeks, this is really crude intervention, said Sami Atallah of the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, a thinktank in Beirut. When you have a prime minister who resigns in a capital not his own, it tells you that someone else is giving the orders. Syria s military presence in Lebanon was brought to an end in 2005 by a wave of popular protests and international pressure following the Hariri assassination. A U.N.-backed court has charged five Hezbollah members over the killing. The group denies any role. Lebanon is tied either to Saudi Arabia or to Iran. It doesn t have the ability to take actions by itself and politicians are to blame for this, said Nohad Chelhot, a retired business owner.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea President Moon Jae-in said he hoped a visit by U.S President Donald Trump would be a turning point in efforts to defuse tensions over North Korea s nuclear program as the two leaders met in Seoul on Tuesday. The state visit in the South Korean capital was billed as an opportunity for Trump and Moon to present a united front, despite differences over how to confront North Korea s nuclear threat, as well as Trump s complaints over the two countries trade agreements. Besides vowing to prevent North Korean leader Kim Jong Un from developing nuclear weapons and missiles that can effectively strike the mainland United States, Trump has also threatened to pull out of a free trade pact between the two countries.

With just three days until Inauguration Day, Donald Trump is desperately trying to convince everyone that it will be the most attended inauguration in history and that everyone likes him.For months, Trump has repeatedly tried and failed to get big-name entertainers to perform at the ceremony, with many even backing out after accepting the invitation. So far, Trump has only managed to get a reality show singer and a has-been band to commit.Experts predict that Trump s inauguration attendance will be smaller than President Obama s but that isn t stopping Trump from trying to convince everyone otherwise.People are pouring into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday and Saturday! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 17, 2017Except Trump is delusional as usual.Not only are experts predicting that Trump s inauguration crowd will be far less than the record set by President Obama in 2008 at 1.8 million, he seems to be forgetting that many of those who are attending are going there to protest against him.In fact, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to participate in the Women s March on Washington, and it s being predicted that the demonstration will be bigger than the inauguration itself while also making history as the largest demonstration ever organized in the United States. Meanwhile, the Bikers for Trump that Trump bragged about are expected to only draw 5,000. And ticket scalpers are struggling to sell tickets to the inauguration. That s how unpopular Trump is right now.So once again, Trump s ego apparently took control of his Twitter account.And Twitter users shattered it.@realDonaldTrump they re protestors Mike Denison (@mikd33) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Do you really believe that your pee-wee band of trump grunts will out number the protesters sweetie? aww thats cute Diva (@sammypolsen12) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Hate to break it to you, but more people will be protesting your inauguration than celebrating it. https://t.co/koIEU3A7iw Al x Young (@AlexYoung) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Over a million less pouring in than Obamas inauguration Tony Posnanski (@tonyposnanski) January 17, 2017.@realDonaldTrump We have a clip pic.twitter.com/aDRpodgIMa Christo Grozev (@christogrozev) January 17, 2017Reminder We the people DIDN T elect his KIDS 2 run OUR country.Actually We the people by a majority DIDN T elect @realDonaldTrump either. pic.twitter.com/bTkzxpoBy0 Lil Kim Ms. G.O.A.T (@killerbee805) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Does it makes you sad to be this historically unpopular? Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) January 17, 2017@realDonaldTrump Oh. pic.twitter.com/wcD06GfHIJ Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) January 17, 2017Featured Image: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Senator Rand Paul appeared on Bill Hemmer s Fox News show to discuss the importance of fighting the FISA law, to prevent the US government from unlawful spying and collection of information on Americans.With tax reform a done-deal and the wind at his back, Senator Rand Paul came out swinging against the Obama administration.Paul said he wants answers as to why Mueller s investigation into alleged Trump-Russia collusion appears so obviously partisan. You have the Department of Justice, where you have a high-ranking official whose wife works for the group doing opposition research on Trump being paid for by the Democrat National Committee, that sounds like a lot of high-ranking people colluding to try to prevent Donald Trump from being president, Paul told Fox News Bill Hemmer from the Hill on Thursday.I'm never a fan of shutting down government so that's not my intention. I am a fan of defending the bill of rights, though. pic.twitter.com/qJ9Sc298Ep Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 21, 2017Paul was referring to last week s bombshell that top DOJ official Bruce Ohr not only met with key players in the creation of the infamous Trump dossier, but his wife Nellie Ohr worked for Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the unproven document. BPRTime to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate!Time to investigate high ranking Obama government officials who might have colluded to prevent the election of @realDonaldTrump! This could be WORSE than Watergate! Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) December 21, 2017

PARIS (AP) — Demonstrators in western France have tried to block buses carrying supporters of presidential candidate Marine Le Pen to a campaign rally. [The incident Sunday in the city of Nantes came after 11 police officers were injured Saturday in skirmishes with activists opposed to Le Pen’s appearance there. No injuries were reported from Sunday’s bus protest. Sebastien Chenu of Le Pen’s National Front party said on BFM television that the protesters were “trying to stop us from delivering our message. We will not back down. ” Critics allege that Le Pen’s campaign is a cover for a racist, worldview. Recent polls suggest she could win the first round of the election, but predict she would lose the ensuing runoff vote.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Wednesday that Congress was working on a package of reforms that would prohibit using taxpayer money for settlements in sexual harassment claims lodged against lawmakers’ offices. “That’s among the things we’re working on right now,” House Speaker Paul Ryan said in an interview with Wisconsin radio station WISN a week after three lawmakers said they were stepping down after sexual harassment or misconduct claims.A wave of sexual misconduct allegations has emerged in recent weeks against high-profile figures in journalism, entertainment and politics. Democratic Representative John Conyers resigned after reports he had used public funds to settle a woman’s claim. Conyers acknowledged his office had settled with a former staffer over harassment allegations, but denied wrongdoing. The congressional office that handles employment disputes also said it had paid settlements on two claims involving sex discrimination allegations and one sexual harassment accusation since 2013. Politico reported that the sexual harassment settlement, which amounted to $84,000, was made on behalf of Texas Republican Representative Blake Farenthold. In a statement after he reached a settlement agreement in 2015, Farenthold denied engaging in any wrongdoing.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Republicans on Tuesday shot down a legislative effort by Democrats to obtain Treasury Department documents that could show any ties between the finances of President Donald Trump, his inner circle and the Russian government. The bill was rejected amid intense sparring with Democrats openly wondering whether or not Trump, a Republican, is compromised by a foreign power and Republicans dismissing it as a political stunt. Representative Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chair of the House Financial Services Committee that rejected the proposal, said the panel would not be spending any time exploring Trump’s financial network. Hensarling cited open investigations by congressional committees and a special counsel into conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election campaign to help New York businessman Trump win. Moscow has denied any meddling and Trump has denied and collusion between his campaign and Russian officials. The bill, known as a “resolution of inquiry,” is a rarely used legislative tool that allows Congress to formally request certain documents from the executive branch. But following Tuesday’s voice vote in the committee, the bill is not expected to receive consideration by the full House of Representatives. Specifically, the bill sought documents that may have been unearthed by the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network that could show any ties between Trump’s finances and Russia. Democrats on the committee have been trying for months to obtain financial records tied to Trump. In particular, they have pressed for information involving his business dealings with foreign banks, and any potential connection to Moscow. “Clearly we have something afoot in this country that leads right to the top,” said Representative Earl Perlmutter, a Democrat. “We need to make sure that this nation isn’t under the thumb of another nation because of financial leverage or whatever it might be.” The resolution asked for any records of loans or credit from a number of banks to Trump, and 22 of his closest associates, including family members and top White House and campaign advisers. The banks include Deutsche Bank AG and Russian lenders Sberbank and Gazprombank. Hensarling chided Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the panel who has called for the president’s impeachment, for pushing the bill. He said it was “frankly and regrettably, a procedural tool that is blatantly political of nature and one that I do not necessarily consider to be worthy of debate.”