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TOKYO (Reuters) - The U.N. refugee agency has urged Japan to resettle more asylum seekers, its chief said on Monday, pressuring the country to help solve a global crisis after giving refugee status to just three people in the first half of the year. Japan is one of the developed world s least welcoming countries for asylum seekers. It accepted 28 in 2016, despite applications from a record 10,091 people. It has since 2008 given home to limited numbers of refugees through a so-called third-country resettlement scheme, resettling a total of 152 people - mostly ethnic Karen people from Myanmar living in Thai and Malaysian camps. That program is very small, about 20-30 refugees a year, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told a news conference in Tokyo. I have asked the government to consider whether it could be expanded. Japan s reluctance to accept refugees mirrors a wider caution towards immigration in a nation where many pride themselves on cultural and ethnic homogeneity. Its record at home has drawn sharp criticism from international human rights groups, and has been at odds with its traditional status as a major international donor on refugees. But Japan s donations to the UNHCR have slipped: in the year to Oct. 2, it was the fourth-largest donor, giving $152 million, compared to the second-largest four years ago. Contributions from the government to the UNHCR have been declining a little bit every year since 2013, Grandi said. What I asked the government to consider is that the needs of refugees and displaced people are increasing. More than 2 million people fleeing wars or persecution have joined the ranks of the world s refugees this year. At the end of last year, the latest figure available, 17.2 million refugees fell under the UNHCR s mandate. Japan says that many people claim asylum in Japan to find work, encouraged by access to renewable work permits for people applying for refugee status. It officially rejects unskilled migrant workers, even as a fast-shrinking and ageing population blunts the potency of government efforts to rouse the economy from over two decades of sluggish growth and deflation. The Justice Ministry, which oversees refugee recognition, is weighing steps including restrictions on work permits for asylum seekers to curb what it deems abusive applications. | 1 |
ALMATY (Reuters) - An Uzbek dissident who was detained this week on return from exile has been charged with two public security crimes that each carry a possible five-year sentence, news website Gazeta.uz quoted police as saying on Thursday. Nurulloh Muhammad Raufkhon, the first prominent dissident to return to Uzbekistan since the death of its long-time leader Islam Karimov, was detained on arrival on Wednesday, raising questions about the new president s efforts to change the country s image. Doniyor Tashkhojayev, deputy chief of Tashkent police, told local media Raufkhon had been charged in absentia and put on a wanted list after a criminal investigation launched in May. The charges include making public calls for unconstitutional change of the state order and producing and disseminating materials containing threat to public security and public order. Each is punishable by up to five years in prison. The interior ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Raufkhon was in exile in Turkey after publishing in the spring of 2016 a book critical of Karimov who had run the former Soviet republic with an iron fist since 1989. The authorities then raided Raufkhon s house and put him on a blacklist of potential extremists and dissidents, which forced him to stay abroad. Karimov died last September and his successor, Shavkat Mirziyoyev, last month ordered the removal of 16,000 people, including Raufkhon, from the blacklist, as part of a broader liberalisation campaign. But Raufkhon s detention and possible conviction could indicate that Uzbekistan s powerful security apparatus is putting limits on such reforms. According to privately-owned Gazeta.uz, deputy chief of police Tashkhojayev said police would investigate Raufkhon s case and also see if his alleged crimes could fall within the scope of an amnesty. | 0 |
Man loves saying things are 'al dente' 02-11-16 A MAN uses the expression ‘al dente’ wherever possible, it has emerged. 25-year-old estate agent Julian Cook uses the term a lot because it makes him feel refined and clever, even if he does not know what it means and just thinks it is a general term for luxury. He said: “This pasta is perfectly al dente. So are the accompanying vegetables. “This glass of wine is al dente too.” Cook has also described his car and his dog as being al dente. His girlfriend Emma Bradford said: “It all started when he seriously undercooked some pasta and I said it was al dente so that he wouldn’t feel bad. I could see from the way he looked at me it was like a lightbulb had gone on in his head. “Last night he told me his wants to start a nightclub called Al Dente. I just said it sounded really good.”
Share: | 1 |
Monday on CNBC, former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-FL) said due to the sexual misconduct accusations leveled against former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, he should step aside in his campaign for the U.S. Senate.Bush said, This is not a question of innocence or guilt like in a criminal proceeding, this is a question of what s right and what s wrong. Acknowledging that you re dating teenagers when you re 32-years old as assistant state attorney is wrong. It s just plain wrong. Breitbart NewsWatch:Texas woman Roslyn Corrigan claims that former President George H.W. Bush groped her when she was just 16 years old.According to Corrigan, the groping occurred in November of 2003 at an event in The Woodlands, Texas. This is the sixth woman to publicly accuse the 41st president of grabbing her butt without consent.Speaking to Time magazine, Corrigan, who is now in her early 30s, said, My initial action was absolute horror. I was really, really confused. The first thing I did was look at my mom and, while he was still standing there, I didn t say anything, she said. What does a teenager say to the ex-president of the United States? Like, Hey dude, you shouldn t have touched me like that? Like the other five incidents, Corrigan claims it happened when she was posing with Bush for a photograph. Bush was then 79 years old. As soon as the picture was being snapped on the one-two-three he dropped his hands from my waist down to my buttocks and gave it a nice, ripe squeeze, which would account for the fact that in the photograph my mouth is hanging wide open, Corrigan told Time. I was like, Oh my goodness, what just happened? Breitbart | 0 |
Wow! These women are incredibly brave. Paula Jones, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey are role models for women everywhere who are afraid to demand justice for their rapists. I hope they never go anywhere alone. And I m not kidding! | 0 |
A conservation group and Democrat Congressman have filed a lawsuit to demanding an environmental study is performed before construction of Trump s wall on the border between the US and Mexico. Biologist Jeff Corwin paid a visit to MSNBC to breathlessly warn viewers about the dangers of the wall President Trump plans to build on the Texas-Mexico border national security purposes. He warned viewers of the unprecedented environmental catastrophic consequences Trump s wall on wildlife. The MSNBC host responds to his highly dramatic warning by asking drama queen Jeff Crowin, At the risk of sounding ignorant or foolish the birds specifically Wouldn t they be able to fly over that wall?' HILARIOUS!Not surprisingly, there was no mention of wind turbines in Texas during the interview.Watch:Meanwhile in America, Democrats remain silent about the bird holocaust caused by wind turbines every year. An estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds are killed every year in N. America by these green energy bird blenders.Instead of worrying about Trump s wall killing birds how about addressing these wind turbines in oil-rich Texas that liberal federally-funded NPR promoted while using a picture of turbines on top of a huge wall of dirt? NPR Another record was set for wind power generation this week, according to the group that manages much of the state s power. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas(ERCOT) says Wednesday evening, wind power generation on the grid reached10,296 megawatts (MW), or enough to power 5 million Texas homes during times of regular demand. That beat the previous record of actual generation by 600 megawatts, roughly the equivalent of a medium-sized fossil fuel power plant.Here s the real danger to birds in America that few Democrats are willing to address:In 2010 David Newstead, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field biologist, visited the Gulf shoreline of Laguna Madre, Texas, to survey skimmers, terns, and egrets. But it was a flock of 15 American White Pelicans that caught his eye, flying toward the nearby Pe ascal wind farm. As he watched, a pelican at the flock s tail end was swiped by a massive turbine blade and literally erased from the air, Newstead wrote afterwards. This in itself isn t surprising wind turbines are notorious bird killers but this specific farm was supposedly equipped with radar that could detect approaching birds and halt the blades. The radar had failed to do its job.Watch as what appears as this bird that appears to be an eagle, is killed as it s chopped by a blade on this powerful wind turbine:Wind turbines kill an estimated 140,000 to 328,000 birds each year in North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy. And yet, it s also one of the most rapidly expanding energy industries: more than 49,000 individual wind turbines now exist across 39 states. Audubon | 1 |
Jut when you didn t think the hosts on the Fox News channel couldn t get any more despicable, they do. On Tuesday s edition of Fox and Friends, the hosts of that silly show decided to take aim at a high school athlete who just happens to be transgender. They misgendered her and called her a boy, and also said that she was gender bending, and confused. The athlete is a track star at her high school, and instead of praising this brave young woman as they should have the hosts said that she was confusing kids who are already pretty confused in this culture. They went on to wonder: Are girls who identify as boys, are they going to be the running backs for the football is that going to work out well? How s that going to work out? Here is the transcript of the conversation, via Media Matters:STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Laura, we talk about popular culture and society. How about this story this morning. There s a high school track athlete who was born male, identifies now as female LAURA INGRAHAM: No.DOOCY: Competed with the girls track team. And finished I think third at the state competition. I think we could have seen this coming. What do you make of this?INGRAHAM: Well, it s another first, right? We re all into firsts so that s a first. Then it will be the first field hockey player and pole vault star. Let me just say this, and Brian will love this story. I was in field hockey in Glastonbury, Connecticut. And at the end of the season one season we had the boys soccer team play us. We were ranked number one in the state so the boys decided they were going to pick up sticks, the soccer team and play against us. Well, sadly for us the boys, who have never played field hockey, creamed us, okay? They killed us. We were number one in the state. They were faster. They were stronger. And they I mean, it made me really mad, but they had better hand/eye coordination and never picked up a stick before. So is this fair to the other girls competing? I mean, I don t think it s really fair.BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Of course it s not.INGRAHAM: And I think it s just more gender bending. This is gender bending this is the next frontier until there s another frontier that the you know, those who want to mix up the traditional social mores want to take us to. So it doesn t surprise me. It s not fair. Until parents make their views known, this is just going to keep getting worse.KILMEADE: Hey, Laura, in an environment where people are taking performance enhancing drugs to do better in sports you know we re going to be in the situation where, well, we d like to win our first state championship so let s let a few men excuse me, some boys play with the girls team and then take the controversy and also take the trophy.INGRAHAM: Hey Brian, do you think it will go the other way though? Are girls who identify as boys, are they going to be the running backs for the football is that going to work out well? How s that going to work out? Let s go the other direction and see how successful that works out. I mean it s just, I have no I really have KILMEADE: I just shrug my I don t know what to say.INGRAHAM: Well, it s only the current conversation, but remember we ll be on to the next issue and then the next and the next. This is a current litmus test. You re not a human being with real feelings and empathy unless you re cheering this on and bowing down to this new movement. Look, that s the way they want to frame it. It s up to the regular Americans to say, look, I m a good person. But I don t think this is fair and I think most people don t develop their understanding of their own, you know, sexuality until frankly later in life. You know, I think it s I think it s confusing kids who are already pretty confused in this culture.KILMEADE: I m confused, and I m a grown-up. Laura Ingraham, I pretty much have reached my maximum in maturity. Laura. Thanks so much.This is really just too much, even for the imbeciles at Fox and Friends. They can have their opinions, sure, no matter how absolutely ignorant they may be. But attacking a private citizen, a high school student no less, on national television over her gender identity is truly beyond the pale. These people need an education, not a platform to spread ignorance.Watch the video below, again via Media Matters:Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans struggling to agree on healthcare legislation to overhaul Obamacare obeyed U.S. President Donald Trump’s orders to try to swiftly reach a deal but were unable to resolve their differences in a long, late-night meeting. Earlier on Wednesday, Trump took Senate Republicans to task for failing to agree on how to dismantle Obamacare, as a new report showed 32 million Americans would lose health insurance if senators opt to repeal the law without a replacement. Trump gathered 49 Republican senators for a White House lunch after a bill to repeal and replace the 2010 Affordable Care Act collapsed on Monday amid dissent from a handful of the party’s conservatives and moderates. After Trump’s exhortation to keep trying, party members met with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price behind closed doors on Wednesday night to try to finally come together on a major Republican promise of the past seven years - undoing former Democratic President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, popularly known as Obamacare. There was no immediate breakthrough. “We still have some issues that divide us,” said Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative who has proposed letting insurers offer cheaper bare-bones plans that do not comply with Obamacare regulations. Republicans attending the late meeting sent their staff away in order to talk frankly and Senator John Kennedy said everyone was negotiating in good faith but he added he did not know if they would reach agreement. Almost all the other senators rushed off after the meeting without comment. As it was getting underway, the nearly two dozen Republican senators were shaken by news that their colleague, veteran Senator John McCain, had been diagnosed with brain cancer. McCain’s absence from the Senate makes the job of passing a healthcare bill more difficult because leaders need every Republican vote they can get. “Obviously, I think more people are worried about his health than thinking about the math. You understand the math. Obviously it makes things difficult,” Senator Bob Corker said as he left the meeting. Trump had taken a hands-off approach to the healthcare debate last week and suggested on Tuesday that he was fine with letting Obamacare fail. Then on Wednesday he switched course and demanded senators stay in Washington through their planned August recess until they find common ground on healthcare. “We can repeal, but we should repeal and replace, and we shouldn’t leave town until this is complete,” Trump said at the meeting. Trump made the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, which he has called a “disaster,” a central promise of his 2016 campaign. Even with Trump’s new push, Republican leaders in the Senate face a difficult task getting moderates and conservatives to agree on an overhaul that can pass. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had planned to hold a straight repeal vote next week, but several Republican senators have already said they oppose that approach. Thirty-two million Americans would lose their health insurance by 2026 if Obamacare is scrapped without an alternative in place, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported on Wednesday, while 17 million would become uninsured next year alone. At the same time, premiums on individual insurance plans would rise 25 percent next year and double by 2026. The CBO’s estimates were unchanged from a previous report that assessed the impact of a 2015 bill to repeal Obamacare that passed the House of Representatives and Senate and was vetoed by Obama. Democrats were swift to highlight the CBO’s assessment, while Republicans remained silent. “President Trump and Republicans have repeatedly promised to lower premiums and increase coverage, yet each proposal they offer would do the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer said in a statement. Insurers and hospitals have lobbied against straight repeal, saying the limbo would increase uncertainty and their costs. “CBO projects half the country would have no insurers in the individual market by 2020 under the new repeal bill. That’s a true death spiral,” tweeted Larry Levitt, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, a healthcare research group. Republicans say Obamacare is a costly intrusion into the healthcare system. But the party is divided between moderates concerned the Senate bill would eliminate insurance for millions of low-income Americans and conservatives who want to see even deeper cuts to Obamacare, which boosted the number of Americans with health insurance by 20 million through mandates on individuals and employers, and income-based subsidies. Moderate Republican Senators Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Shelley Moore Capito said they opposed McConnell’s plan for a repeal that would take effect in two years. All three attended the lunch with Trump. With Democrats united in opposition to repeal, McConnell can only lose two votes from the Republicans’ 52-48 majority in the 100-seat Senate to pass healthcare legislation. Opponents of repeal protested throughout Senate buildings on Wednesday afternoon, leading to 155 arrests, police said. Demonstrators returned in the evening to yell as senators arrived for the meeting. Party fractures also emerged in the House of Representatives. The chamber passed a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare in May. But on Wednesday, the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Party’s conservative wing, filed a petition to vote on a straight repeal. House Speaker Paul Ryan’s spokeswoman, AshLee Strong, said: “The House passed an Obamacare repeal-and-replace bill we are proud of and we hope the Senate will take similar action.” | 0 |
You are here: Home / political cartoon / What Marketing Obamacare Really Looks Like [Cartoon] What Marketing Obamacare Really Looks Like [Cartoon] October 28, 2016 Pinterest
C.E. Dyer reports that the disaster that is Obamacare is about to get worse for many people enrolled in the health insurance marketplace. On Monday, the Obama administration confirmed that premiums will skyrocket for many people next year, according to the Associated Press .
The AP reported:
Before taxpayer-provided subsidies, premiums for a midlevel benchmark plan will increase an average of 25 percent across the 39 states served by the federally run online market, according to a report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Some states will see much bigger jumps, others less.
Moreover, about 1 in 5 consumers will only have plans from a single insurer to pick from, after major national carriers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and Aetna scaled back their roles.
In some states, the premium increases are striking. In Arizona, unsubsidized premiums for a hypothetical 27-year-old buying a benchmark “second-lowest cost silver plan” will jump by 116 percent, from $196 to $422, according to the administration report.
But HHS said if that hypothetical consumer has a fairly modest income, making $25,000 a year, the subsidies would cover $280 of the new premium, and the consumer would pay $142. Caveat: if the consumer is making $30,000 or $40,000 his or her subsidy would be significantly lower.
Larry Levitt, who follows the health care law for the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, said of the increases: “Consumers will be faced this year with not only big premium increases but also with a declining number of insurers participating, and that will lead to a tumultuous open enrollment period.”
Donald Trump’s campaign spokesman, Jason Miller, said in a statement on Monday: “This shows why the entire program must be repealed and replaced.” Miller added, “While (Hillary) Clinton wants to expand the failed program known as Obamacare, Mr. Trump knows the only way to fix our nation’s failing health care system is complete and total reform.”
Reports have warned that this was coming down the pike for some time; however, HHS’s confirmation ahead of open enrollment beginning Nov. 1 — one week before the election — is likely to cause major headaches for many people.
This debacle is not unexpected either — it’s exactly what President Obama and Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton wanted to happen.
Obamacare was never the end goal. Rather, it was a stepping stone toward single-payer, government-run healthcare. That is a big reason why Obama wants Clinton to become president — his legacy is at stake.
Obama’s legacy is largely wrapped up in Obamacare and what it leads to. Clinton tried to push this first step during her time as first lady and failed, but the conditions will be ripe for her to go even further should she be elected.
If Clinton becomes president, there’s no doubt that her next step will be to move to single-payer healthcare. Obamacare is bad, there’s no doubt about it, but single-payer government healthcare would be even worse. | 1 |
You remember that one company that used to stuff your mailbox full of coasters installation discs every single goddamn day of the week, your only reprieve from the madness being Sunday? Well, America Online finally discovered what it takes to be relevant: apparently Mike Pence uses it.On Thursday, the Indianapolis Star revealed that not only did the Vice President use private email something for which Donald Trump s opponent, Hillary Clinton, was demonized but he conducted state business on an insecure, almost-forgotten service that was presumed dead long ago. Unlike Hillary Clinton s private email server, Pence s AOL account was hacked.Clinton was spotted on a flight from Boston to New York on Friday and a passenger managed to catch the very moment the former Secretary of State saw the USA Today headline about Pence s private email. The passenger sent the photo to friends via Snapchat, and one of them saved it to share with the world:@jdawsey1 Hillary just checking the daily news. "Pence used personal email in office." The irony is palpable. pic.twitter.com/oia1ARiZ0g Pere Noel (@RealSaintNick6) March 3, 2017The what in the fuck? look on Hillary s face is priceless. It s OK, we know what she s going through. We watched the Right froth at the mouth over what Ted Cruz would call a nothingburger if Clinton was a Republican for what seems like forever.It is not against the law to use a private email in Indiana, but officials are expected to retain the exchanges to fulfill public records requests. Documents released via a records request shows us that Pence discussed national security and other matters with his top advisors via his private email, but an unspecified number were withheld because the state considers them confidential and too sensitive to release to the public. Once again, these are from an account that was hacked last summer. The Star notes that the scammer sent an email to his contacts claiming Pence and his wife were stranded in the Philippines and in urgent need of money. He responded not by increasing his security, but by creating a new AOL screen name.We will not be seeing calls to LOCK HIM UP from the Right, nor will we see GOP politicians calling for endless hearings and investigations. Normally, this would be fine but at this point there seems to be one set of rules for Democrats and one for Republicans in an administration that is easily outpacing even the accusations they leveled at Clinton.This photograph serves as a reminder of what Americans who knew better but decided that voting their conscience was more important than literally saving America from a despot and people who are too stupid to operate a fork without adult supervision yet figured out how to vote caused us to lose. We could have had a competent leader who isn t perfect, but she was at least smart enough to warn us about Donald Trump s cozy relationship with Vladimir Putin. And, of course, she isn t a walking human rights crisis.It s heartbreaking.Featured image via Twitter | 1 |
This week, liberals have been repeating their frequent claim that voter fraud doesn t exist. A recent Salon article argues that voter fraud just isn t a problem in Pennsylvania, despite evidence to the contrary. Another article argues that voter fraud is entirely in the imagination of those who use voter ID laws to deny minorities the right to vote.Yet as the election approaches, more and more cases of voter fraud are beginning to surface. In Colorado, multiple instances were found of dead people attempting to vote. Stunningly, a woman named Sara Sosa who died in 2009 cast ballots in 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. In Virginia, it was found that nearly 20 voter applications were turned in under the names of dead people.In Texas, authorities are investigating criminals who are using the technique of vote harvesting to illegally procure votes for their candidates. Harvesting is the practice of illegally obtaining the signatures of valid voters in order to vote in their name without their consent for the candidate(s) the criminal supports.These are just some instances of voter fraud we know about. It would be silly to assume cases that have been discovered are the only cases of fraud. Indeed according to a Pew Research report from February 2012, one in eight voter registrations are significantly inaccurate or no longer valid. Since there are 146 million Americans registered to vote, this translates to a stunning 18 million invalid voter registrations on the books. Further, More than 1.8 million deceased individuals are listed as voters, and approximately 2.75 million people have registrations in more than one state. Numbers of this scale obviously provide ripe opportunity for fraud.Don t Let Data Contradict My Narrative Yet in spite of all this, a report by the Brennan Center at New York University claims voter fraud is a myth. It argues that North Carolina, which passed comprehensive measures to prevent voter fraud, failed to identify even a single individual who has ever been charged with committing in-person voter fraud in North Carolina. However, this faulty reasoning does not point to the lack of in-person voter fraud, but rather to lack of enforcement mechanisms to identify and prosecute in-person voter fraud.The science of criminal justice tells us that many crimes go unreported, and the more victimless the crime, the more this happens. The fact is, a person attempting to commit voter fraud is very unlikely to be caught, which increases the incentive to commit the crime.The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a sophisticated, comprehensive effort to catalog the number and types of crimes not reported to law enforcement authorities. However, it tends to deal mostly in violent crimes. As complex as the NCVS is, gathering accurate data for unreported victimless crimes such as voter fraud is even harder, since 1) outside of the criminal, no one may know a crime has taken place, and 2) there is no direct victim to report the crime in the first place. Yet we are expected to believe that, unlike violent crime, voter fraud is limited only to the cases that are actually reported and prosecuted? This is a senseless position. Further, the Brennan Center report argues that because prosecutor Kris Kobach s review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states found only 14 instances of fraud referred for prosecution (which amounts to a 0.00000017 percent fraud rate), voter fraud is so statistically small that it s a non-issue. Let s follow this logic. Does the fact that 109 people were cited for jaywalking in Seattle in 2009 mean that only 109 people jaywalked in Seattle that year? Does the fact that 103,733 people were cited for driving without a seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015 mean that only that many people were driving without seatbelt in Tennessee in 2015?Absolutely not. This can be proven easily because in 2014, the previous year, only 29,470 people were cited. The disparity is largely due to increased enforcement efforts in 2015. In other words, increasing enforcement of the crime revealed a much larger number of people committing the crime.The exact same is true for voter fraud. We have no reason to believe that the low number of prosecutions means only that exact amount of voter fraud is happening. Rather, it could mean a lack of enforcement is failing to reveal the bulk of the violations that are occurring. Thus, as with many types of crimes, especially victimless crimes, the real number of cases is likely significantly higher than the number reported.How to Effectively Target Voter Fraud So now that we know voter fraud is a serious issue, what are some solutions to this problem? States like Michigan have Poll Challenger programs, where observers from both parties may be present at voter check-in tables at precincts. They check each voter s ID against a database of registered voters for that precinct to ensure the person attempting to vote is actually legally qualified to vote in that precinct. If there s a discrepancy, the poll challenger may officially challenge the ballot. Other states should implement similar programs.Read more: FOX | 0 |
You just can t make this stuff up The leftist rag, Daily Kos actually wrote a story about how President Trump will disproportionately harm blacks after Hurricane Harvey attacks them in Texas.Here is the actual tweet pushing their insane story about a racist Hurricane Harvey:Hurricane Harvey poised to disproportionately impact blacks in Texas, but no one is talking about it https://t.co/A6JrT6CYUp Daily Kos (@dailykos) August 25, 2017Here s an excerpt from the article:As Texas braces itself for Hurricane Harvey, the Trump administration remains woefully ignorant and unprepared. The current FEMA director is working to rewrite the Federal Flood Insurance Program so that the federal government bears less of the cost when disasters strike and flooding occurs. On the surface, that might sound like a fiscally responsible move. But it s loaded with inconsistencies and will most certainly not work out well for local cities, states or residents. Additionally, since Trump seems to be firing people weekly but taking his sweet time in hiring them, no one has been appointed to lead both the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). DHS oversees FEMA and the Coast Guard so it s almost guaranteed that the response to this storm will be chaos. This is shaping up to be another Hurricane Katrina complete with a devastating impact on black and brown communities.Southeast Texas and the coastal bend regions of the state are expected to be the hardest hit. While Hispanics make up about 40 percent of the state s population, Texas has one of the largest black populations in the country. And they live concentrated in the areas that are predicted to be hardest hit. For example, several counties have already been declared a state of disaster by Republican Gov. Greg AbbottNoteworthy also is the high percentage of people in poverty [in Texas] who are African American women, especially single parents. Of the 24% of African Americans below poverty level, single mothers make up 65%. Daily Kos | 0 |
MADRID (Reuters) - Eight former Catalan cabinet members currently in custody awaiting trial will appear before the Supreme Court on Friday, after requesting their release ahead of a regional election Dec. 21 in the wake of a disputed independence referendum. Sacked regional vice-president Oriol Junqueras, one of his ERC party s main candidates for the election, has asked to be allowed to leave jail in order to campaign in the vote which was called by Madrid. Junqueras and seven other former members of the Catalonia regional cabinet were jailed on Nov. 2 pending trial on charges of sedition, rebellion and misappropriation of funds after the Catalan government declared independence from Spain. The Oct. 1 referendum, declared unconstitutional by Spain, and the subsequent proclamation of independence by the wealthy northeastern region pushed Spain into its worst political crisis in decades and led Madrid to impose direct rule on Barcelona. The eight jailed cabinet members, whose original hearing was at the Spanish High Court, had their case moved to the Supreme Court after the presiding judge argued the different Catalan cases should be tried in the same court. Earlier November, the Supreme Court released Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell on bail of 150,000 euros after she agreed to renounce any political activity that went against the Spanish constitution. All the eight former cabinet members have said they would abide by a ruling giving Madrid control over the region, according to their lawyers, although some of them said they did not agree with this unprecedented move stripping power from the rebel administration. Campaigning for the Dec. 21 election, seen by pro-independence parties as a de facto plebiscite on secession from Spain, starts on Monday at midnight. The former leader of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, in self-imposed exile in Belgium and subject to an arrest warrant from Spain for rebellion and misuse of public funds, has called the elections the most important in the region s history. Barely a quarter of Catalans want to continue with the project of creating an independent state, a recent survey by pollsters Metroscopia showed. However, polls show the vote split evenly between parties seeking independence from Spain and those wanting to remain part of a united country. The leaders of Catalan civic groups Asamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) and Omnium Cultural Jordi Sanchez and Jordi Cuixart - who were imprisoned last month - also testify before the Supreme Court over their role in the independence drive. | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Senator Marco Rubio signaled his support for a sweeping tax bill on Friday, saying changes that had been made at his urging to increase the refundability of a child tax credit marked “a solid step toward broader reforms.” “Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker,” Rubio, who had threatened to vote against the bill, said on Twitter. | 0 |
Asher Edelman inspired the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone s 1987 film, Wall Street, played by Michael Douglas. The infamous stockbroker, who made a fortune buying and selling companies in distress, was recently asked on CNBC s Fast Money, who he would endorse for Bernie Sanders. His answer was surprising, but his reasoning is not: Bernie Sanders, no question, said Edelman. , I think it s quite simple again. If you look at something called velocity of money That means how much gets spent and turns around. When you have the top one percent getting money, they spend five-ten percent of what they earn. When you have the lower end of the economy getting money, they spend a hundred, or a hundred and ten percent of what they earn. As you ve had a transfer of wealth to the top, and a transfer of income to the top, you have a shrinking consumer base, basically, and you have a shrinking velocity of money. Edelman argued redistributing wealth, especially at the point we are at now with levels of income and wealth inequalities continually growing, is what is best for the economy. Greed and corruption may allow the wealthiest to gain short term profits, but as the middle class disappears and the working class becomes ever burdened, the economy begins to sputter into stagnation.Senator Bernie Sanders economic policies aren t radical, socialist, or unrealistic. They are simply what is needed to be implemented to fix a broken, rigged economy. Edelman may be a member of the top one percent, but he is intelligent enough to realize trickle down economics doesn t work, and the Republicans who insist on perpetuating economic policies surrounding that myth continue to damage the United States economy.The rich getting richer don t create jobs, customers do. If there aren t any customers to purchase goods and services, such as a middle and working class who earn enough to have disposable income, the economy will falter.Featured image via Addicting Info archives | 1 |
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia said on Tuesday it will introduce reforms by the end of the year to combat foreign interference and covert political influence, which could pose a threat to the economy and political system. The decision to improve safeguards follows a review of Australia s espionage and foreign interference laws and will include legislation to ban foreign political donations, Attorney-General George Brandis told Parliament. Espionage and covert foreign interference can cause immense harm to our national sovereignty, to the safety of our people, to our economic prosperity, and to the very integrity of Australian democracy, Brandis said. Policies modeled in part on the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, requiring individuals or institutions to make a declaration if acting on behalf of a foreign power to influence the political processes, would also be introduced, he said. While Brandis did not mention any countries targeted by the legislation, there has been growing concern about China extending its influence. In June, Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Fairfax Media, publisher of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers, reported there had been a concerted campaign by China and its proxies to infiltrate the Australian political process and institutions to promote their interests. China dismissed the accusation as totally unfounded and irresponsible . This week, one of Australia s largest independent publishers said it decided to delay the publication of a book that alleges widespread Chinese government influence in Australian institutions due to legal concerns. | 1 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain s foreign minister Boris Johnson is expected to meet Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Sunday to discuss bilateral and regional issues, a UK Foreign Office official said on Saturday. Johnson held talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif and other officials in Tehran on Saturday, where he stressed Britain s support for Iran s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and raised concerns about dual national consular cases between the countries. | 1 |
Donald Trump and his entire administration seem to be nothing more than Russian stooges. And no, this is not merely rumor; after all, even the intelligence community is so sure that the Kremlin has infiltrated Team Trump that they are withholding key intelligence from the White House. Now, it seems that things have gotten so hot that Trump s loyal and treasured national security adviser, Retired General Michael Flynn, has resigned.This move comes after a flurry of reports concerning Flynn s pre-inauguration contacts with Russian officials. At first, the Trump team including Mike Pence went on national television and gave the whole nothing to see here speech regarding the phone calls. Flynn even flat-out denied speaking about important matters, such as sanctions, with the Russians.Then, within the last few days, it was revealed that there were transcripts of the calls, and indeed, they reveal that Flynn discussed the sanctions that the United States had leveled against Russia in retaliation for interfering in the presidential race in order to help elect Trump. Apparently, Flynn lied to Pence about this, thus forcing Pence to lie to the American people. All of this seems to be too hot to handle for the Trump White House, so late Monday night, the news that Flynn was gone broke via CNN:CNN: Two sources tell CNN Michael Flynn has resigned.@SaraMurray @GloriaBorger Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) February 14, 2017 Here is a tweeted copy of the resignation letter from Flynn:Breaking: text of Flynn's resignation letter pic.twitter.com/KGue1cJFzL Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) February 14, 2017This administration is clearly compromised by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. There needs to be a thorough vetting of everyone in the Trump White House, and if there is evidence of criminal activity of any kind, those people need to prosecuted and yes, that includes the president, Donald Trump. Our very security and lives and the survival of the republic depends on it.Featured image via Mario Tama/Getty Images | 0 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A proposal to convene a congress of all Syria s ethnic groups is a joint initiative which is being promoted by Russia and others and is now being actively discussed, the Kremlin said on Friday. It is premature, however, to discuss the time and venue for the congress, which is seen as a mechanism to assist Syria s post-war development, Putin s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call with reporters. Putin mentioned the idea of holding such a congress at a forum with foreign scholars on Thursday. | 0 |
Na, na, na, na na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey go-o-o-d bye!On April 25, 2015, Al Sharpton said Donald Trump would be his choice for the Republican Presidential candidate. He d be my choice for the Republicans. It would assure four more years of the Democrats. Run Donald run.Al Sharpton, February 25, 2015: If Donald Trump is the ah nominee, I m open to support anyone while I m also reserving my ticket to get out of here if he wins. Only because he d probably have me deported anyway.Reporter: bizarre laugh erupts . To his credit now, he s always been a right-winger. I do not see any way that we could agree on things | 1 |
Hillary Clinton When They Asked Her What She Thinks of Hillary Clinton, They Never Expected Her to Say THIS!
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Kids say the darndest things… ADORABLE! "My dad told me that Hillary Clinton LIES A LOT, so if she wins she might take over the country! " @realDonaldTrump #VoteTrump pic.twitter.com/cHrP8lkPbS | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Interior Department on Monday finalized a contentious rule to protect streams and forests from the impact of coal mining, one of the Obama administration’s last major environmental regulations that the incoming Trump administration is likely to target. The Stream Protection Rule, which the coal industry strongly opposes, updates 33-year-old regulations with stronger requirements for responsible surface coal mining. The Interior Department says the rule will protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests over the next two decades. “This updated, scientifically modern rule will make life better for a countless number of Americans who live near places where coal is being mined,” said Joseph Pizarchik, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, which crafted the rule. Pizarchik said his office received over 150,000 public comments on the proposal. The Stream Protection rule requires companies to avoid mining practices that could pollute streams and drinking water sources, restore streams, and promise to return mined areas to their original form. It also requires mining companies to replant these areas with native trees and vegetation in certain cases. The rule also requires testing and monitoring of streams near coal mines before, during and after drilling to ensure that miners can detect increased levels of pollution. Industry groups like the National Mining Association have been vocal opponents of the proposal, saying it places too much of a burden on mining companies. The rule is likely to be reversed by President-elect Donald Trump, who said that in his early days in office he would reverse a number of regulations targeting the coal industry, which he has promised to revive. The Republican-majority Congress could use the Congressional Review Act to block the rule with a simple majority vote. Trump would likely not veto it. Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, who represents coal-mining state West Virginia, called the Stream Protection Rule a “last-ditch effort” by the Obama administration to burden her state’s struggling coal industry. “The decision by voters last month makes today’s announcement by the Office of Surface Mining an exercise in futility,” Capito said in a statement. “Working with President-elect Trump and our Republican congressional majority, I am confident that we will be able to use the Congressional Review Act to stop this rule from taking effect.” | 1 |
We Are Change
Wikileaks helped celebrate Hillary Criminalton’s birthday Wednesday by gifting Hillary and the American people another glimpse into Clinton land. Corruption, dirty tricks all to get the Presidency the tactic hasn’t changed since Arkansas. Do whatever it takes. Wikileaks has now proven the Clinton’s past allegations of corruption likely to be true, all those talks over the years of Hillary claiming Bill’s sexual assaults were fraudulent are now bluntly obvious Hillary’s ill attitude towards staff is also confirmed the “right wing” conspiracy is clearly seen and it’s one against the American people to rig the election. Now Wikileaks may have something in the works a potential birthday surprise for Mrs. Clinton according to Kim DotCom a friend of Julian Assange.
Kim Dotcom tweeted out a series of mysterious tweets today that suggest Wikileaks could potentially have a Birthday wish for Hillary Clinton containing her 33,000 work related emails later this evening.
Does @Wikileaks have 33,000 explosive candles for Hillary's birthday cake? Maybe?! ?
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 26, 2016
Ring Ring ??
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 26, 2016
Oh no! @wikileaks pic.twitter.com/HcHRNl3pMq
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 26, 2016
Bleachbit(ch) can't bleach it ?
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) October 26, 2016
Kim Dotcom additionally hinted in an interview in May, 14th, 2015 that “Julian Assange and Wikileaks would be Hillary’s worst nightmare in 2016,” prior to Guccifer 2.0 prior to the DNC leak, Collin Powell’s emails, Podesta’s emails, Obama’s emails and the list goes on and on..
Either Kim Dotcom knew what Wikileaks had or he’s the new age Nostradamus. The next keypoint is that Kim DotCom knows Julian Assange they talk as seen in the video below Kim Dotcom is asked by Bloomberg reporter, Ali Elkin , “How often do you talk to Julian Assange.” Dotcom responds, “Why is that important to you? Look I like these guys I look up to them I think they are very brave they are going through a very hard time you know and they chose to do that for the betterment of all of us so yeah I love to talk to them.”
Later on in the interview DotCom was questioned about another previous tweet that “he would be Hillary’s worst nightmare in 2016.” Dotcom then went on to correct himself saying “I have to say really it’s more Julian but I am aware of some of the things that are going to be roadblocks well he has access to information I don’t know the specifics.”
Is it possible that Kim Dotcom was tipped off by Julian Assange that a birthday gift from Wikileaks the international whistle-blower organization to Hillary Clinton may drop later on tonight? We will soon find out, If these tweets were just Dotcom trolling or if he was serious and a massive leak is about to happen that could potentially end the campaign presidency of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Stay tuned to we are change we will keep you up to date and will break news if Wikileaks leaks “explosive candles” as Dotcom put it for Hillary Clinton.
The post Is A Birthday Surprise Coming For Hillary Criminalton? Kim Dotcoms Mysterious Tweet. appeared first on We Are Change .
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(Before It's News)
What is Vitamin E? Vitamin E is an important fat-soluble antioxidant compound that aids the body in neutralizing the harmful after-effects of oxidation of fats. Current research is even looking into the important role that this vitamin plays in stopping free-radical production, a key method of preventing the development of chronic diseases and aging. It is also a vital element in the overall maintenance of a healthy immune system.
Some studies are even looking into its role in preventing degenerative mental imbalances such as dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. And while many of us may do well in taking extra vitamin E supplements, we can use an organic diet to get a large amount of the daily requirements for this powerful antioxidant lipid. In fact, there are many common foods with vitamin E. You probably have a few in your house right now.
Foods With Vitamin E
Here are fifteen foods with vitamin E that you should strongly consider adding to your diet.
1. Almonds
Almonds are one the best vitamin E foods. Just an ounce of almonds offers a whopping 7.4 milligrams of vitamin E. You can also get your vitamin E needs in the form of almond milk and almond oils. We would recommend eating raw almonds, if possible.
2. Raw Seeds
Select raw seeds , such as sunflower, pumpkin and sesame, are another common food with vitamin E. In fact, eating just ¼ of a cup of sunflower seeds gives you 90.5% of your recommended daily value, making them one of the best vitamin E foods you can eat daily.
3. Swiss Chard
Swiss chard is easily one of the healthiest vegetables you can eat on a daily basis. Commonly known to be high in vitamin K, vitamin A and vitamin C, Swiss chard is another food high in vitamin E. Just one cup of boiled swiss chard greens will provide you with almost 17% of your daily recommended values.
4. Mustard Greens
Similar to swiss chard, mustard greens are very nutrient dense and will provide a variety of health benefits. Not only are they one of the best vitamin E foods, but mustard greens are also high in vitamin K, vitamin A, folate , and vitamin c. Eating just one cup of boiled mustard greens contains about 14% of your daily dietary requirements. We would recommend eating organic mustard greens, if possible.
5. Spinach
Spinach may not be your favorite veggie, but it is one of the best leafy greens you can add to your diet. Not only is it one of the best calcium foods and naturally high in folate, it’s also one of the best vitamin E foods as well. Just one cup of boiled spinach will provide you with approximately 20% of your daily needs. Try adding fresh spinach to your sandwiches to make them extra healthy.
6. Turnip Greens
While turnip greens may have a slightly bitter taste, they are very high in many essential nutrients. Like the rest of the leafy greens on this list, just one cup will provide you with plenty of vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C and folate. Not to mention approximately 12% of your daily requirements of vitamin E.
7. Kale
Kale is another great cruciferous vegetable you should eat as often as possible. Kale is very high in many nutrients, in fact, just one cup of boiled kale can give you almost 6% of your daily vitamin E requirements. We would recommend eating organic kale, if possible.
8. Plant oils
Most plant seed oils are very good sources for Vitamin E as well. The best oil with vitamin E is Wheat germ oil. In fact, one tablespoon of this oil holds 100% of your daily Vitamin E requirements. Sunflower oil is another excellent option, as it provides over 5 mg of the vitamin, and can easily be be used for cooking. Other great Vitamin-E-rich oils include hempseed oil, coconut oil, cottonseed oil (with almost 5 mg of vitamin E), olive oil and safflower oil. We would recommend only buying oils that are cold pressed unrefined and organic.
9. Hazelnuts
A perfect snack during a long workday, eating just one ounce of hazelnuts can provide you with approximately 20% of our daily requirements of vitamin E. For an alternative to eating nuts, try drinking hazelnut milk in your morning coffee instead of milk or flavored creamer.
10. Pine Nuts
Add an ounce of these nuts to anything you please! One serving contains 2.6 mg of vitamin E. You can also use pine nut oil for added health benefits.
11. Avocado
Perhaps one of the tastiest foods with Vitamin E, avocados represent natures creamiest, oil-rich food. Just half of an avocado holds more than 2 mg of vitamin E. Avocados are very easy to incorporate into your diet. We would recommend adding sliced avocados to your salad, a sandwich, or mashed up as guacamole!
12. Broccoli
For generations now, broccoli has been considered one of the best detox foods , but it’s also one of the healthiest foods high in Vitamin E. Just one cup of steamed broccoli will provide you with 4% of your daily requirements. Broccoli may not be as nutrient dense as other Vitamin E foods on this list, but it is definitely one of the healthiest foods you can eat daily.
13. Parsley
An excellent spice, parsley is another great Vitamin E food. Try adding fresh parsley to salads and dishes for an extra Vitamin-E kick. Dried parsley will also provide you with this important vitamin, but the fresher the better.
14. Papaya
This popular fruit is most commonly known as one of the best vitamin C foods , but it’s also high in Vitamin E. Just one papaya will give you approximately 17% of your daily needs. Try adding fresh or frozen papaya to fruit smoothies, along with other fruity vitamin E foods on this list for an extra healthy snack!
15. Olives
From the oil to the fruit, eating olives is an excellent way of getting your daily needs for vitamin E. Just one cup of olives can give you approximately 20% of your daily recommended amount.
These are just a few examples of foods with vitamin E. There are plenty more that aren’t listed here. Which vitamin E food is your favorite? Let’s hear your thoughts below.
The post 15 Foods That Contain The Most Vitamin E appeared first on The Sleuth Journal . | 1 |
21st Century Wire says President Obama is once again appearing on info-tainment programming on Comedy Central but his appearance is clearly not to entertain or inform the viewer. In the final days of the President s time in office he is going on comedy shows to push the Russian hack effect on the U.S. Presidential election outcome. He does so without a shred of evidence nor a mention of the Podesta emails, the collusion of the media with the Clinton campaign or the questionable practices of the Clinton Foundation.The Duran asks some good questions and provides further analysis Alex Christoforou The DuranObama has gone all in to blame Russia for Hillary Clinton s loss and the DNC hack that exposed Hillary Clinton for the corrupt cheat that we all knew, deep down inside, she truly was.Notice how Obama talks only about the DNC hack and not the Wikileaks Podesta email leak. Also notice how Obama tries to justify his conveniently timed call for an investigation, by throwing it back onto Donald Trump.Obama never states that he has irrefutable evidence that Russia hacked the DNC emails, and never even mentions once the Podesta emails We determined and announced in October that it was the consensus of all the Intelligence agencies in law enforcement that organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence were responsible for the hacking of the DNC materials that were being leaked. FYI China, Israel, Germany, etc also hack US institutions. US intelligence agencies hack governments all over the world.Obama s above assertions are based on James Clapper s statement that The Duran reported on in October consider the statement US intelligence published last week on the subject of alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of other US agencies involved in the election. It reads as follows: The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there.We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities. (bold italics added)The statement is an implicit admission that US intelligence has no evidence to back its allegations of Russian hacking.It is merely confident not sure that it is the Russians who are behind the hacking, and it is clear from the statement that it arrived at this conclusion purely through inference: because the hacks supposedly were consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts .US intelligence assumes the Russians were behind the hack not because it knows this to be so but in part because of what it believes Russian motives to be.The statement backs its claim with a textual trick. It says the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia . It then immediately follows these words with the words for example .These lead to the expectation that an actual example of such Russian tactics and techniques is about to follow. Instead what is provided are the fact free words to influence public opinion there .The words for example lend nothing to the meaning of the statement, which would be exactly the same without them. These two words as used in the statement are actually meaningless. That is a sure sign that their presence in the statement is intended to confuse the casual reader, and that this is true of the statement as a whole.The words are designed to create a subliminal impression to a casual reader that the Russians have been caught doing this sort of thing before, without however providing a single actual example when this was the case.Demonstrating how thin the case of Russian government actually is, the statement then goes on to say: Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government. (bold italics added)In other words US intelligence admits the mere fact servers operated by a Russian company may have been used for scanning and probing and presumably also for hacking is not in itself proof of the involvement of the Russian government.The Daily Show s Trevor Noah, who is not a journalist, and not even American, is the perfect useful idiot to conduct this interview and help spread Obama s political spin.No tough question, no follow up questions just giggly gushing glances of admiration and awe from Noah.Remember when Obama told Trump to stop whining about a rigged election and focus on getting votes. This was when Obama, and the entire Hillary liberal elite establishment, were certain that Trump had no chance to win the US Presidency.How things change, and how Obama is now changing his tune doing everything in his power to undermine Trump and undermine US Democracy, while risking escalating, already high tensions with Russia.Continue reading this story at The DuranREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 1 |
(In Sept. 13 item, updates to correct spelling of the last name of Michael Beason from Benson, in 19th paragraph and throughout) By Andrew Innerarity and Ricardo Ortiz HOLLYWOOD, Fla./SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Reuters) - Florida Governor Rick Scott vowed on Wednesday that the state would aggressively investigate how six people died at a nursing home that lost power when Hurricane Irma rampaged through the region, as millions coped with another day without electricity. The death toll from the storm approached 80 as officials continued to assess the damage after Irma powered through the Caribbean as one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record and slammed into the Florida Keys archipelago with sustained winds of up to 130 miles per hour (215 km per hour). Irma killed at least 36 people in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina, according to officials. Some 4.2 million homes and businesses, or about 9 million people, were without power on Wednesday in Florida and nearby states. Police opened a criminal investigation at the Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills in Hollywood, north of Miami, where three elderly residents were found dead at the facility and three later died at a nearby hospital, officials said. I am going to work to aggressively demand answers on how this tragic event took place, Scott said in a statement. This situation is unfathomable. Every facility that is charged with caring for patients must take every action and precaution to keep their patients safe. More than 100 patients at the nursing home were evacuated on Wednesday along with 18 patients from a nearby facility that was cleared due to the criminal investigation, Hollywood officials said. Most of the patients have been treated for respiratory distress, dehydration and heat-related issues, Randy Katz, a spokesman for Memorial Regional Hospital, told reporters. Memorial Regional is located across the street from the nursing home. Police were first called to the facility at about 4:30 a.m. but did not arrive until after 6 a.m., officials said. The center had been without air conditioning, Broward County Mayor Barbara Sharief told reporters on Wednesday. The building has been sealed off and we are conducting a criminal investigation inside, Hollywood Police Chief Tomas Sanchez told reporters on Wednesday. It was very hot on the second floor. Florida Power & Light said it had provided power to some parts of the Hollywood nursing home but that the facility was not on a county top tier list for emergency power restoration. Irma caused about $25 billion in insured losses, including $18 billion in the United States and $7 billion in the Caribbean, catastrophe modeler Karen Clark & Co estimated on Wednesday. The Florida Keys were particularly hard hit, with federal officials saying that 25 percent of homes were destroyed and 65 percent suffered major damage when Irma barreled ashore on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane. Most residents had left by then and police have barred re-entry to most of the Keys to allow more time to restore electricity and medical service and bring water, food and fuel. I don t have a house. I don t have a job. I have nothing, said Mercedes Lopez, 50, whose family fled north from the Keys town of Marathon on Friday and rode out the storm at an Orlando hotel, only to learn their home was destroyed, along with the gasoline station where Lopez worked. President Donald Trump is due to visit the region on Thursday. Irma wreaked total devastation in parts of the Caribbean, where at least 43 people have died. People who fled their homes in hard-hit islands including St. Martin and the U.S. Virgin Islands that were all but cut off from the world for days arrived in San Juan late Tuesday. Michael Beason, 65, of St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands, said he lost everything. My house, my business, both my vehicles, everything is gone, said Beason, who was stopping in San Juan before continuing to Boston to seek refuge with his wife s brother. But we have life. We rode out that horrible storm in a shower that I had reinforced after Hurricane Marilyn, Beason added. I told the man (who installed the shower), I told him, If the hurricane takes the rest of my house, I want this shower sticking up out of that slab like the last tooth in the mouth of a bum. And sure enough that s what s left. Irma hit the United States about two weeks after Hurricane Harvey plowed into Houston, killing about 60 and causing some $180 billion in damage, mostly from flooding. | 0 |
Note to Target CEO: When you endanger the safety of little girls and women in your stores, you re giving placing a target on your back a whole new meaning. Only two days ago in women s bathroom in Chicago, an 8 year old girl was choked by a man until she was unconscious. He proceeded to drag into a bathroom stall. Fortunately, her mother overheard her screams and was able to come to her rescue. Is this really the kind of America we want? Is Target ready to accept responsibility for crimes against women and children in their bathrooms and changing rooms?UPDATE: Target is facing a nationwide backlash for its support of transgender rights.More than 1.2 million people have signed a pledge to boycott the retailer after it announced last month that it would welcome transgender customers to use any bathroom or fitting room that matches their gender identity.Critics have been holding protests and demonstrations at stores across the country, and they are showing no signs of dying down.Many are demanding access to bathrooms of the opposite sex to support claims that perverts can now prey on children and women as a result of the policy.The boycotters goal is to force Target to reverse its policy, or at least make the retailer suffer for it by spending their money elsewhere. Breitbart NewsThe CEO of retail giant Target is zig-zagging between the many customers who are angered by his decision to open single-sex bathrooms to the other sex, the gender-identity progressives who pushed for the disastrous transgender policy, and the Wall Street stock-pickers who have chopped roughly $4.5 billion off the company s value. We re going to continue to embrace our belief in diversity and inclusion, just how important that is to our company, CEO Brian Cornell said in a May 11 appearance on CNBC s Squawk Box business show. But we re also going to make sure our focus on safety is unwavering, he added.To mollify the public angered by his removal of single-sex restrooms and changing rooms, the company will add family bathrooms to all of its stores, he said.We re committed over the next few months, to make sure every one of our stores has that option, because we want to make sure that our guests be welcomed in our stores. But if there s a question of safety, I can tell you and others, our focus on safety is unwavering, and we want to make sure we provide a welcoming environment for all our guests, one that s safe, one that s comfortable.But Cornell did not offer to return single-sex changing rooms, which is likely the most unnerving element in the company s new open-door, pro-transgender agenda.The company can t easily add family changing-rooms without using up scarce space in their retail stores and can t reestablish single-sex changing-rooms without angering many progressive professionals in the media and fashion industries. Those progressives professionals would likely claim the company is unfairly gender policing its customers, even though transgender advocates say only 1 in every 300 Americans are transgender. Other estimates say the ratio is only 1 transgender for every 2,400 Americans.So Cornell tried to reassure and flatter progressives about the justice of his company s brand-damaging, revenue-reducing April 19 decision. We took a stance, Cornell said, as he suggested that single-sex bathrooms are just like a racist refusal to use African-Americans in commercial advertising in the 1960s.We ve had a long history embracing diversity and inclusion. A couple weeks ago, one of our team members sent me a note reminding me that if we went back to the mid-60s, our company was one of the very first to use African-American models in their advertising, and back then, it wasn t well received.In the company s initial April 19 statement, the store said, we welcome transgender team members and [customer] guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity. The statement came as Americans were recognizing and rejecting the revolutionary political agenda behind the push for transgender status.Since April 19, We had a lot of tough feedback. But sitting here today, we know we made the right decision, Cornell insisted.That tough feedback includes a consumer boycott that now has 1.2 million supporters, much damage to the company s brand, and a massive sell-off on Wall Street that has chopped the company s share price from almost $84 on April 19 to $75.70 on May 11.That s a loss of $8.30 per share, or 10 percent, or almost $5 billion since April 19. Of course, some part of that loss is due to President Barack Obama s weak economy but no company is helped by many management decisions that anger so many customers. Via: Breitbart News | 1 |
(Reuters) - Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s provocative proposals on immigration, trade and other issues have drawn attention and verbal attacks - as well as some praise - well beyond the United States’ shores. Here is a sampling. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have often praised each other. Last December, Putin described the New York businessman as “a very flamboyant man, very talented.” Trump, who lauded Putin in return, also spoke well of him in September, saying at a televised forum with Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton that Putin had been a better leader than Democratic U.S. President Barack Obama. Some of the strongest criticism of Trump from abroad has come from Mexican officials because of his verbal attacks on illegal Mexican immigrants and his promise to build a wall on the southern border and make Mexico pay for it. Following talks in Mexico City between Trump and Enrique Pena Nieto, the Mexican president said the American’s policy stances “could represent a huge threat to Mexico, and I am not prepared to keep my arms crossed and do nothing.” Earlier this year, he likened Trump to dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. In April, Chinese Finance Minister Lou Jiwei called Trump “an irrational type” because of the candidate’s proposal that tariffs on imported Chinese goods be increased to up to 45 percent. “If he were to do this, that would be in violation of the rules set by the World Trade Organization,” Lou said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. Then-British Prime Minister David Cameron in May called Trump’s initial proposal for a temporary ban on Muslim’s entering the United States “very dangerous.” In December, Cameron had called Trump, potentially the leader of Britain’s closest ally, “divisive, stupid and wrong” for calling for the ban. Nigel Farage, a politician who played a key role in the successful campaign to get Britain out of the European Union, lent his support to Trump in August, appearing with the candidate at a rally in Jackson, Mississippi. Farage said Trump represented the same type of anti-establishment movement that he had masterminded in his own country. London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, said in May that Trump had an “ignorant view of Islam,” referring to Trump’s initial proposed ban on Muslims. {nL2N18709R] In September, during his first U.S. visit, Khan expressed support for Clinton. French President Francois Hollande said in August that a Trump victory could make politics more conservative around the world and that the New York businessman made people “feel nauseous.” A Trump win could also affect France’s spring 2017 presidential election, said Hollande. Germany’s European affairs minister, Michael Roth, said in August that Trump’s assertion that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door refugee policy had resulted in a huge increase in crime was incorrect. Roth said it was important to correct campaign statements in other countries that were based on “fears, lies and half-truths,” given the importance of the U.S. election for the world. In April, the German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, criticized Trump’s “America First” policy, which the candidate had unveiled in a speech that week. Steinmeier said world security could no longer be ensured unilaterally and that international conflicts could only be solved nowadays if heavyweights like the United States and Russia and others joined forces. The “America First” stance - which included a portrayal by Trump of longtime ally Japan as a free rider on security - also came in for a veiled swipe from Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Kenichiro Sasae, in May. Without mentioning Trump by name, Sasae said he did not want to see an isolationist United States. “I want to see the United States to be strong and come with a strong robust position, not really thinking of the United States only,” he said. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al Hussein said on Wednesday that the world would be in danger if Trump became president. He cited Trump’s views on vulnerable communities, including minorities, and his talk of authorizing torture in interrogations, banned under international law, as “deeply unsettling and disturbing.” | 0 |
If Lewis Black really does have a ticket to the inauguration, Donald Trump is probably trying to revoke it right now.Because during Wednesday night s Daily Show, the comedian roasted Trump, taking particular aim at Trump s inauguration problems.For weeks, Trump and his team have been desperately trying to find an A-list celebrity to perform at the inauguration. For the most part, Trump has failed, so he has resorted to hiring a reality show contestant and a has-been band, while forcing the Radio City Rockettes to perform because they can be fired for saying no.Black informed Trump that if he wants to know why many celebrities died in 2016, it s because they didn t want to perform at the inauguration either. You want to know why so many celebrities died in 2016? It was to get out of playing the goddamn inauguration, Black quipped.Then Black pointed out that Trump is pretending he doesn t really care if A-list celebrities show up, even going so far as to claim that he s the one who rejected them and not the other way around.The so-called A list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016Black was able to get a ticket, however, and he intends to show up on Friday whether Trump likes it or not. I ve got my tickets, and I m going to go no matter what, Black said. Because I want to be there when Trump touches the Bible and his hand catches on fire. Black went on to break the news to Trump that even Richard Nixon was able to land A-list talent for his inaugural ceremony by getting legendary entertainer James Brown to sing. All Trump has been able to get so far is Jackie Evancho, who didn t even win America s Got Talent.To make matters worse, Trump s team literally humiliated themselves by bragging about the participation of the Caisson Platoon and the famous army horse Black Jack. The problem is that Black Jack has been dead since 1976. Trump is tweeting a dead horse, Black quipped.Black then revealed Trump s inauguration them is soft sensuality which Black says is good because at least Trump is going to f*ck America gently. Here s the video via YouTube.With an embarrassment like Trump in office, comedians like Lewis Black are definitely going to have plenty of material over the next four years.Featured Image: Screenshot | 1 |
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has launched more rigorous investigations into the activities and finances of rights lawyers and law firms that take on politically sensitive issues, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday, in its multi-year campaign to stifle dissent. China has arrested, jailed or detained thousands of rights lawyers and activists since President Xi Jinping launched a sweeping crackdown in the summer of 2015. Judicial officials and police are investigating the cases and finances at seven law firms that often work on rights abuses, lawyers at the firms told the New York-based Human Rights Watch. With unusually high-level officials performing scrutiny on site for days, the duration of investigations has exceeded that of previous regular checks on such firms, it added. While China s human rights lawyers are no strangers to official harassment, these sudden, invasive probes send an alarming message, Sophie Richardson, the group s Washington-based China director, said in a statement. China s justice ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment from Reuters. China has defended the new measures against critics by saying it is a country with the rule of law, and that those found guilty are criminals who damaged social stability and endangered national security. There has been an open attack on rights lawyers under Xi, and the probes should be considered in the context of the attack, said Maya Wang, a China researcher for HRW based in Hong Kong. It is meant to tell lawyers that this is not over, that they had better be on their best behavior for the 19th Party Congress, Wang said, referring to a five-yearly leadership reshuffle of the ruling Communist Party set to begin on Oct. 18. Political checks and requirements for law firms have also been tightened under Xi, making it harder for lawyers to take sensitive cases, activists say, especially as law firms can be held jointly accountable for individual violations. Chinese law firms are required to explicitly support the party and to set up an internal party branch, while lawyers are banned from expressing opinions that endanger national security or reject China s political system. In the run-up to the party congress, Xi has also urged public security officials to ensure stability and maintain the party s authority and unified leadership. [nL4N1M11EY] | 1 |
As Obama begins his campaign for UN General Secretary on the US taxpayer s dime, keep a close eye on the many responsibilities of our federal government he ll be ceding to a corrupt body of human rights violators and political whores. Remember when people used to laugh at Americans who talked about a one world order? It s not so funny anymore, is it? The Obama administration is turning to the United Nations to help screen migrants fleeing violence in Central America, senior administration officials said Tuesday, and to help set up processing centers in several Latin American countries in the hopes of stemming a flood of families crossing the southern border illegally.Designed to head off migrants from three violence-torn countries in the region before they start traveling to the United States, the new refugee resettlement program will be announced by Secretary of State John Kerry on Wednesday in Washington. Under the plan, the United Nations refugee agency will work with the United States to set up processing centers in several nearby countries, where migrants would be temporarily out of danger.As it does in other places, the United Nations will determine if the migrants could be eligible for refugee status. The administration officials said thousands perhaps as many as 9,000 migrants each year from the three countries, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, could eventually settle in the United States. But some refugees would also be sent to other countries in the hemisphere, officials said.For entire story: NYT | 1 |
Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I. ) said Trump “did not tell the truth” based on what he said during the campaign and what he has done so far as president of the United States. “Let’s be clear. I mean, the point here is that, I think, all over grassroots America, whether they’re Democrats, independents or Republicans, people are perceiving that Trump did not tell the truth in his campaign in terms of what he would do as president of the United States,” Sanders said. “He was going to drain the swamp. Well, he’s, in fact, appointed more billionaires to his Cabinet than any president in history, etc. etc. So, what I think has happened now, in Kansas, it is true that the Democratic candidate lost. It is true that the Democratic Party should have put more resources into that election. But it is also true that he ran 20 points better than the — than the Democratic candidate for president did in Kansas. ” “So, what you’re seeing in Kansas, what you’re seeing in Georgia, I believe you’re going to see it in Montana, I believe you’re going to see it all over this country, is the many red states, working people are going to wake up and say, wait a second,” he continued. “Republicans want to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and education, and they want to give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the top 1 percent. No, that’s not what we elected Trump to do. Yes, climate change is real. It’s not a hoax. We got to move to sustainable energy. I think, all over this country, in red states and in blue states, people are beginning to stand up. They’re beginning to fight back. They’re demanding a government which does not just represent the billionaires, but represents the working class of this country. Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, a senior U.S. official said on Friday. U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that as the 2016 presidential campaign progressed, Russian government officials devoted increasing attention to assisting Trump’s effort to win the election, the U.S. official familiar with the finding told Reuters on Friday night, speaking on condition of anonymity. The president-elect’s transition office released a statement that exaggerated his margin of victory and attacked the U.S. intelligence community that Trump will soon command, but did not address the analysts’ conclusion. “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction,” the statement said. “The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.’” Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are calling for a full investigation into Russia’s election year activities. “Protecting the integrity of our elections is hindered when President-elect Trump and his transition team minimize or dismiss the intelligence assessments themselves,” Representative Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said in a statement issued on Saturday. Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Washington Post reported on Friday that intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks. U.S. President Barack Obama has ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 election and deliver a report before he leaves office on Jan. 20, the White House said on Friday. Obama’s homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, told reporters the report’s results would be shared with lawmakers and others. “The president has directed the intelligence community to conduct a full review of what happened during the 2016 election process ... and to capture lessons learned from that and to report to a range of stakeholders, to include the Congress,” she said during an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. As summer turned to fall, Russian hackers turned almost all their attention to the Democrats. Virtually all the emails they released publicly were potentially damaging to Clinton and the Democrats, not Republicans, the official told Reuters. “That was a major clue to their intent,” the official said. “If all they wanted to do was discredit our political system, why publicize the failings of just one party, especially when you have a target like Trump?” A second official familiar with the report said the intelligence analysts’ conclusion about Russia’s motives does not mean the intelligence community believes that Moscow’s efforts altered or significantly affected the outcome of the election. Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election. A Central Intelligence Agency spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the matter. The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency. U.S. intelligence analysts have assessed “with high confidence” that at some point in the extended presidential campaign Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government had decided to try to bolster Trump’s chances of winning. The Russians appear to have concluded that Trump had a shot at winning and that he would be much friendlier to Russia than Clinton would be, especially on issues such as maintaining economic sanctions and imposing additional ones, the official said. Moscow is launching a similar effort to influence the next German election, following an escalating campaign to promote far-right and nationalist political parties and individuals in Europe that began more than a decade ago, the official said. In both cases, said the official, Putin’s campaigns in both Europe and the United States are intended to disrupt and discredit the Western concept of democracy by promoting extremist candidates, parties, and political figures. In October, the U.S. government publicly accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Obama has said he warned Putin about consequences for the attacks. “I don’t believe they interfered,” Trump told Time magazine about Russia in an interview published this week. “That became a laughing point, not a talking point, a laughing point. Any time I do something, they say, ‘Oh, Russia interfered.’” | 0 |
This is in such poor judgement by the teachers of this school. You have to wonder what they were thinking!A number of teachers in a Texas school district are being disciplined after naming a student most likely to become a terrorist. Lizeth Villanueva, a seventh grader, received a certificate during a mock awards ceremony Tuesday at Anthony Aguirre Junior High in Channelview, Texas, near Houston. Lizeth said the teacher who signed it handed out certificates to a number of students while other teachers watched and laughed. They just found it as a joke, said Lizeth, 13.The awards were given out a day after the suicide bombing at the end of the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England. She said that some people might get offended, but she doesn t really care about our feelings, Lizeth said. She was laughing about it. It s no laughing matter to Lizeth s mom. I read it twice. I m like, What is this?! said Ena Hernandez.Hernandez said her daughter is in an advanced academic program and has never had a discipline problem.Read more: USA Today | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Senate Leader McConnell said he expects to move on legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare as soon as his there are enough votes to pass the Republican-controlled chamber. The Kentucky Republican, speaking to reporters at a news conference, added that he does not expect to get much initial cooperation from Democrats, whose votes Republicans need to gain the 60 needed to pass bills. | 1 |
ZACHARY, La. — For Linda Fernandez, this summer has been one long disaster tour. In July, her daughter died in Baton Rouge, while her infant mysteriously ailed in Houston. It was at a hospital there, a week and a half ago, where Ms. Fernandez learned she had lost her home, too, to flooding. She explained this to President Obama on Tuesday afternoon as he walked through that house, emptied of all the furniture except for what was too heavy to haul outside. He hugged her four times and they had their picture taken. Others may have debated the timing of Mr. Obama’s visit and whether he was too late in coming to this state, but Ms. Fernandez wiped tears from her eyes and said she had not been following any of that. “Really I don’t have time to think when I go home — I mean, go to my place in the corner,” said Ms. Fernandez, who turned 69 on Saturday and is staying at a friend’s house. “I’ve been busy. I haven’t watched the news. I’ve been doing all this by myself. ” Nearly 11 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, Mr. Obama came to meet with flood victims in a visit that required him to navigate a delicate mix of compassion and politics. The president landed in Baton Rouge to see the devastation left by flooding in the last week, and to demonstrate, in part by his presence, that the federal government will deliver help to those who lost everything. Standing amid rubble in front of flooded homes, he lamented that so many people’s lives were “upended” by the floodwaters that swept through communities with devastating force. But he praised the disaster relief response and expressed optimism that the people of Baton Rouge would recover and thrive. “I know how resilient the people of Louisiana are and I know you will rebuild again,” Mr. Obama, dressed in a blue shirt with the sleeves rolled up, said after touring several homes. He pledged that the federal government would support the victims of the community for the long run. “These are some good people down here,” he said. “They got a lot of work to do and they shouldn’t have to do it alone. ” Local and state officials from both political parties have praised the federal response in Baton Rouge, drawing a sharp contrast with the delays by the Federal Emergency Management Agency after Katrina. Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, a Republican who frequently criticizes Mr. Obama, said in an interview that federal officials had done “an excellent job” responding to the floods. “They actually do care,” he said. But Mr. Obama arrived four days after Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, visited areas around Baton Rouge. In a Twitter message on Tuesday, Mr. Trump mocked the president for failing to cut short his Martha’s Vineyard vacation last week. “Too little, too late!” he wrote. Some Republicans and distraught locals have also criticized the president for waiting more than a week to visit the tens of thousands of residents affected by the floods. More than 7, 000 people were forced into 37 shelters across a vast stretch of the state by the rainfall, which has been blamed for 13 deaths. The Advocate, a local newspaper, mocked the president in an editorial last week. And on Tuesday, Representative Charles Boustany, a Louisiana Republican, added, “It’s a shame it took the president so long to come to Louisiana, but we are glad he is here. ” Frustration over the president’s absence, merging with a widespread sense that the disaster has been unjustly overshadowed in media coverage of the Summer Olympics and the presidential election, has ranged from the hot anger of The Advocate editorial to a more subdued disappointment. Some here said the president had been callously detached for vacationing during a catastrophe, while others said he was respectfully keeping his distance during rescue efforts. But for those most intensely affected, the political debate is a luxury they can hardly afford. “I didn’t even know he was here,” said Nita Case, 75, sitting wearily on a folded camp chair inside her gutted home, 11 miles from the neighborhood Mr. Obama had just visited. Florence Lucas, 79, had lost everything in Hurricane Betsy in 1965, lost her home during Hurricane Katrina and then had her home flooded this summer. She stood in the kitchen as a contractor discussed the rebuilding timeline, a needlepoint Home Sweet Home sign still hanging above the door to the hallway. “Politics should be out of this,” Ms. Lucas said, adding that an earlier visit by the president would have just complicated the work of local responders and the police. “What can he do? He can’t come and get rid of the water. ” The president praised W. Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, for overhauling the agency to make it work better, and he announced that the federal government had already distributed $127 million in aid to the flooded communities. Still, Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, issued a statement after meeting with the president saying that he had formally requested additional help for his state. Mr. Edwards, who had urged the president not to visit the state when the rescue operation was in full swing, said the federal government so far has been “responsive to all of our requests. ” Mr. Obama was in Baton Rouge for about three hours before heading back to Washington. White House officials said the president also planned to meet briefly with the family of Alton B. Sterling, the who was shot while being held on the ground by Baton Rouge police officers, as well as families of officers killed and injured in an ambush in July. In the long run, the success of Mr. Obama’s visit will be judged in two different contexts: first, the political imagery that has become a vital part of White House planning since President George W. Bush was photographed gazing down on New Orleans from Air Force One, and second, the gritty reality on the ground for people struggling to rebuild. As a candidate in 2008, Mr. Obama was eager to focus on the politics of Mr. Bush’s flyover, denouncing him during a rally for being “a president who only saw the people from the window of an airplane instead of down here on the ground, trying to provide comfort and aid. ” Now the spotlight has shifted to Mr. Obama’s actions. After touring the damage, Mr. Obama pledged continued help “even after the TV cameras leave” and waved aside questions about politics. “I guarantee you,” he said, “nobody on this block, none of those first responders, nobody gives a hoot whether you’re Democrat or Republican. ” He could have been referring to Nita Case’s husband, Dennis, 78. A fan of Bill O’Reilly, the conservative talk show host, he had few good words for the government, saying, it “ain’t never done enough. ” But he also said he had paid little attention to the politics surrounding Mr. Obama’s visit on Tuesday. “I haven’t watched the news for two weeks,” he said. “I’ve been busy. ” | 0 |
License DMCA In a recent advancement, 12 men are in the process of going legal against the state of Utah in the Federal court challenging a law which allows mothers to put their babies up for adoption without the biological father's consent, or knowledge.
Our family court system must re-access this provision and make amendments in a way that establishes the fact that fathers are an integral part of a child's life. Every other weekend and one night a week is not a parent child relationship for sure and hence, cannot be considered as equal parenting. Until the courts cease ordering visitation and start affiliating the fathers with the same rights as mothers, children of divorce will continue to suffer.
Children's best interest lies in equal parenting. Even after a couple goes through a divorce, equal parenting must be advocated for children's best interest. Some reasons for this are listed below; Fatherless children are at a dramatically greater risk of drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness, suicide, poor educational performance, teen pregnancy, and criminality." Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics, Survey on Child Health, Washington, DC, 1993. "Teenagers living in single-parent households are more likely to abuse alcohol and at an earlier age compared to children reared in two-parent households." Source: Terry E. Duncan, Susan C. Duncan and Hyman Hops, "The Effects of Family Cohesiveness and Peer Encouragement on the Development of Adolescent Alcohol Use: A Cohort-Sequential Approach to the Analysis of Longitudinal Data", Journal of Studies on Alcohol 55 (1994). "The absence of the father in the home affects significantly the behavior of adolescents and results in the greater use of alcohol and marijuana." Source: Deane Scott Berman "Risk Factors Leading to Adolescent Substance Abuse", Adolescence 30 (1995) Researchers in Michigan determined that "49 percent of all child abuse cases are committed by single mothers." Source: Joan Dotson and Sharon Shay, "A Study of Child Abuse in Lansing, Michigan", Child Abuse and Neglect, 8 (1984).
Such studies and reports as mentioned above are many and we will provide additional data in future articles. We started Fathers4Justice in an effort to garner Father's rights against the corrupt courts and address the concerns regarding the family law, including child custody and child support that affect fathers and their children. There is a serious need for a change of the law since a decision about a child's future, its well-being cannot and should not be taken by the mother alone. It's high time that equal parenting rights must be brought into implementation. - Advertisement - | 1 |
Wow! What a commie putz! After lifting the arms restrictions on Vietnam, Obama gleefully gets a photo right in front of the bust of Ho Chi Minh. That s some rich symbolism right there! | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The top Democrat in the U.S. Senate said on Sunday it was unlikely that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch would be able to clear a procedural hurdle to a final vote, even as a third Senate Democrat threw support behind the pick. Senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat from Indiana, said he would vote in favor of Gorsuch, calling him in a statement a “qualified jurist who ... is well-respected among his peers.” Donnelly joined Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota as the only Senate Democrats to announce support for President Donald Trump’s court pick. If confirmed to fill a vacancy created by the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, Gorsuch, 49, an appeals court judge, would restore the nine-seat high court’s conservative majority, fulfilling one of Trump’s top campaign promises. Most other Democrats have made their opposition clear and 37 senators have indicated support for a filibuster of the nomination, which would force Republicans to come up with 60 votes to move forward. Republicans control the Senate 52-48. “It’s highly, highly unlikely that he’ll get to 60,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” On Sunday evening, Democratic Senator Jon Tester declared he would vote against Gorsuch. In a statement, the Montana lawmaker said Gorsuch was “smart” but added: “That doesn’t make him right for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.” If the planned filibuster holds, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell would only be able to advance the nomination of Gorsuch by changing long-standing Senate rules so it could be approved by a simple majority. McConnell, who also appeared on “Meet the Press,” declined to rule out that option, which the Republican president has urged, and vowed the Senate would confirm Gorsuch one way or another. “What I can tell you is Neil Gorsuch will be confirmed this week. How that happens really depends on our Democratic friends,” he said. The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to vote on the nomination on Monday, setting the stage for what McConnell has said will be a vote in the full Senate on Friday. McConnell declined to say if he had sufficient support among his fellow Republicans to change the Senate’s rules. | 0 |
What pushed Democrat Congressman John Conyers to resign instead of just announce he would retire at the end of his term?The Detroit Free Press reports another accuser came forward just last night:The most recent, Elisa Grubbs, made accusations against Conyers on Monday night, saying in a statement that Conyers put his hand up her skirt at a church, among other allegations.As late as Tuesday morning, there were reports that Conyers would fight on, choosing to remain in office til the end of his current term and then retire in early 2019. But speaking on Mildred Gaddis show on WPZR-FM (102.7), Conyers said he was resigning.FORCED TO RESIGN:Facing a rising chorus of voices demanding he step down because of sexual harassment claims, U.S. Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Detroit, resigned the seat he has held for more than five decades, a swift and crushing fall from grace for a civil rights icon and the longest-serving active member of Congress.ENDORSES HIS SON TO REPLACE HIM:Saying he was finalizing his plans for retirement, Conyers added he would endorse his son, John Conyers III, to replace him Congress. My legacy can t be compromised or dimished in any way by what we re going through now. This too shall pass. My legacy will continue through my children, Conyers told Mildred Gaddis on her Detroit radio show.As for the accusations against him, Conyers said, They re not accurate, they re not true and they re something I can t explain where they came from. Conyers, 88, resigned two weeks after an article on BuzzFeed.com detailed a secret settlement of more than $27,000 with former staffer, MARION BROWN who accused him of making sexual advances toward her and paying her out of funds from his taxpayer-supported office.MARION BROWN CAME FORWARD WITH SHOCKING DETAILS:The descriptions below of what went on at the office of Rep. John Conyers will make your blood boil. He felt entitled to treat the women in his office like he owned them in every way. It s pretty disgusting.We re still waiting to hear what s going to happen with Conyers. Democrat leaders have called for him to resign but his lawyer has been pushing back trying to make the accuser look bad. He treads a fine line with his threats to the accuser and to others in D.C. We re hoping he spills the beans on the others who have used our tax dollars to pay off sexual harassment victims.Marion Brown, a former staff member whose accusations have sparked the scandal surrounding embattled U.S. Rep. John Conyers, described in an interview Thursday how the Detroit congressman allegedly created a hostile work environment for his female staffers and, at times, pressed her for sexual favors, particularly when his wife was away. He owns you when you are there, Brown said in the interview with Stephen Henderson, host of Detroit Today on WDET-FM (101.9) and editorial page editor at the Free Press. At one time, it was said amongst staff members females that he thinks that his initials, J.C., stand for Jesus Christ, she said.Brown said Conyers would invite me to a hotel in the guise of business, and then it turns into something else. And this happened too often. And that was throughout. She said the sexual advances intensified whenever his wife, Monica Conyers, was out of town. He seemed to have taken on the attitude that I m gonna go for it now. My wife s away, and I have these needs and I m going to call you up in the middle of the night, Brown said. I know it s because he decided that he wanted to stop the hunting game, Brown said. He had no more interest in trying to persuade and seduce me into, you know, sex or being his side piece. During that interview, she shared details of Conyers alleged sexual advances toward her, including how Conyers in 2005 allegedly invited her to his Chicago hotel room and, while in his underwear, pointed to his genitals and asked her to touch it. | 0 |
When Trump began his disinformation campaign and then started trying to muzzle federal agencies, employees of some of these agencies went to Twitter to openly defy him. They call themselves AltGov, and there are dozens of these accounts that are making a point of pushing out the very facts that Trump wishes would disappear, as well as openly fighting his alternative facts, and overall disinformation campaign. Many have been verified by Snopes, who now keeps a running list of trusted AltGov accounts.However, no matter who they are, they are all very clear about the fact that they are not doing this on behalf of their agencies. They re operating these accounts independently and are not official U.S. government Twitter accounts, and they re dedicated to maintaining the flow of information from the government to the people that we enjoyed under previous administrations (Please note: Their work does not appear to include any sensitive information, and they appear to be very careful to keep it that way).Below are some of the agencies and departments where members of AltGov work, have inside knowledge of, or can otherwise speak the truth about what the government is doing:There are also two alternate accounts dedicated to sending out facts under the name Alt. Sarah H. Sanders (@altUSPressSec), and Alt. Alt. Press Sec (@altaltPressSec). In addition to directly and loudly calling out the Trump administration on its lies, Alt. Alt. Press Sec speaks truth to power for those who block @altUSPressSec, who has been blocked by none other than Trump himself. Back when Sean Spicer was still Trump s press secretary, @altUSPressSec tweeted out a short description of what AltGov stands for.We are not scientists. We are civil servants and Federal contractors united for the preservation of democratic norms. We support our #altGov Alt. Sean Spicer (@AltUSPressSec) January 26, 2017This is an anti-Trump resistance movement within the United States government that caught on like a wildfire in a forest canopy shortly after he decided to muzzle the Department of the Interior and the National Park Service back in January. There are also many, many supporting accounts who aren t government, but who support the movement and have ways to help. What we see here is the backbone of the federal government, along with concerned contractors and friends, telling Trump to fuck right the hell off with his alternative facts and muzzling bullshit. They will not be silenced.Featured image by Andrew Harrer via Getty Images | 1 |
The media is in an all out frenzy today, as they attempt to help pump up the sales of the horribly flawed presidential candidate and Benghazi liar, Crooked Hillary, while attempting to trash our beloved president. Does the media, or Hillary really believe we re going to buy into their latest attempt to prop up America s biggest loser s book sales, while trying to paint President Trump as some sort of creeper ?Here are just a few of the usual suspects who jumped in with this nothing burger story in an attempt to help Hillary sell her book: Cosmopolitan, the former fashion and beauty magazine, also chimed in on the nothing burger story to show their support for the crooked female who set the woman s movement back at least 50 years: Hillary how quickly you forget about the creepy people you ve surrounded yourself with for most of your adult life. Do you seriously think any American will take you seriously when you call President Trump a creep for standing to close to you, after your husband, who s been accused of rape and sexual assault by many women, had oral sex with a 19-year old intern in the Oval Office? What about serial creeper Joe Biden, who you just can t seem to get enough of?From the Trump-hating The Hill: Hillary Clinton writes in her new book that Donald Trump s attempts to intimidate her during the presidential debates made her skin crawl and that she wanted to tell him to back up, you creep. What would you do? Do you stay calm, keep smiling and carry on as if he weren t repeatedly invading your space? the 2016 Democratic nominee asks in her new book, What Happened, excerpts of which were released by MSNBC s Morning Joe early Wednesday. Or do you turn, look him in the eye and say loudly and clearly Back up, you creep. Get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can t intimidate me, so back up. Listen to the phony Hillary read an excerpt from her new book that will likely end up where the last book did, on a bargain basement shelf at Walmart.Coming up, we'll have a Morning Joe Exclusive on Hillary Clinton's new book, and here is a first look of Clinton discussing a debate. pic.twitter.com/xRkgcoTnKw Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) August 23, 2017Or this Was Hillary s poor health the reason for Joe Biden s awkward embrace while they campaigned together in Pennsylvania, or was it simply just another perfectly acceptable creeper moment from the former Vice President. | 1 |
PARIS (Reuters) - France s prime minister, whose government has vowed to clean up politics, was forced on Wednesday to defend his decision to hire a private jet for 350,000 euros ($415,000) to fly back from Japan. Opposition politicians decried Edouard Philippe s use of the private charter, and a non-governmental agency that pursues financial wrongdoing in high places accused him of ignoring his own government s pledges of exemplary behavior. President Emmanuel Macron came under fire earlier this month for celebrating his 40th birthday in the grounds of a royal palace. His office sought to play that down, saying the event had been paid for by Macron and his wife. Philippe acknowledged on RTL radio that he and his delegation flew back to Paris from Tokyo, after an official trip to New Caledonia, at a cost of 350,000 euros, but said he had been obliged to do so. I totally understand the surprise and the questions of the French people, Philippe said. We knew there was no commercial flight at the time we needed to return, and we knew we had to return because the President was leaving on the Wednesday morning of our return for Algeria, he said. The rule is that, whenever possible, (either) the Prime Minister or the President must be on national territory ... I take full responsibility for this decision. Karim Bouamrane, spokesman for the Socialist Party, said on Twitter that the flight pointed to amateurism regarding the organizational skills of Philippe s team. Macron put financial and ethical probity in public life at the heart of a presidential election race he won last May, and his new government passed a law to tighten up on ethical standards in French politics. He has struggled nonetheless to shake detractors charges that he is a president of the rich after reforms including the scrapping of a wealth tax and reductions in housing benefit - moves Macron says will boost investment and social mobility. In August, social media commentators and political opponents criticized the French president after it emerged he spent 26,000 euros on makeup during his first 100 days in office. Anticor, a non-governmental agency that focuses on financial corruption and profligacy in politics, said use of a private jet was at odds with Macron and his government s declarations that financial probity was a priority. ($1 = 0.8450 euros) | 1 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan on Tuesday disavowed Donald Trump’s criticism of a Hispanic judge, saying such remarks were the “textbook definition of a racist comment.” Ryan, speaking at an event to unveil U.S. House Republicans’ policy proposals, said the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s comments were absolutely unacceptable and indefensible. | 1 |
(Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency resigned as chairman of the Rule of Law Defense Fund in November, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing a financial disclosure report filed with the Office of Government Ethics. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a critic of federal environmental regulation, has been questioned by environmental activists and Democrats on the U.S. Senate’s environmental panel about his ties to the energy industry. After resigning as chairman in November, Pruitt resigned from the board of the Rule of Law Defense Fund in December, Bloomberg said. (bloom.bg/2ilrlLa) The Rule of Law Defense Fund describes itself as a “public policy organization for issues relevant to the nation’s Republican attorneys general.” The Rule of Law Defense Fund and Trump’s transition team did not respond to a request for comment. Pruitt could not immediately be reached outside regular business hours. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the report with the Office of Government Ethics. | 1 |
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “America’s News HQ,” Sen. Rand Paul ( ) said while he supports repealing the Affordable Care Act, it must be replaced immediately or “within months of repealing it, you will lead to further bankruptcies in the insurance industry. ” Paul said, “Well here’s the interesting thing about Obamacare, they wanted to provide insurance for everybody, even if you were already sick, preexisting conditions, but they could only pay for it if they forced all of the healthy people to buy insurance through a mandate. It’s not working so well. What is happening is not enough healthy people are buying insurance and the rates for individual insurance went through the roof and yet insurance companies are still failing and threatening bankruptcy. ” He added, “Here is the problem. If you repeal the individual mandate that forces young people to buy insurance less young healthy people buy insurance and the system will spiral quicker. I’m for getting rid of the mandate. I am for repealing Obamacare, but you have to replace it. If you don’t replace it, my prediction is within months of repealing it, you will lead to further bankruptcies in the insurance industry. ” Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN | 0 |
Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) criticized his party for a lack of ideas Wednesday in a wide-ranging and occasionally combative interview with The Washington Post’s editorial board.
Kasich, who sees the April 26 primary in Maryland as a way to increase his delegate total, argued that neither of his rivals could win the presidency, because of their negativity.
“If you don’t have ideas, you got nothing, and frankly my Republican Party doesn’t like ideas,” Kasich said. “They want to be negative against things. We had Reagan, okay? Saint Ron. We had Kemp, he was an idea guy. I’d say Paul Ryan is driven mostly by ideas. He likes ideas. But you talk about most of ’em, the party is knee-jerk ‘against.’ Maybe that’s how they were created.”
[Read the transcript of John Kasich’s interview with the Washington Post edtiorial board]
After Tuesday’s New York primary, where weeks of campaigning landed Kasich half a dozen delegates, the governor repeatedly emphasized his conservative credentials while taking care to define what “conservative” was.
“I’m gonna kill the Commerce Department,” Kasich said. “I don’t know why you don’t have an Education Department tied to the Labor Department.”
Kasich derided the idea of a carbon tax — “I’m not big on tax increases” — and when challenged on the math behind his tax-cut plan, which many analysts say would increase deficits, he mocked the pretenses of experts.
“The Center for a Responsible Budget — what have they ever balanced?” he asked. “When there is certainty, both on the regulatory side, on the tax side, and on the spending side, you basically get economic growth. And look, if we find out that we’re getting off the path, then we’ll have to adjust.”
For more than a month, Kasich has been mathematically eliminated from winning the Republican nomination with the pledged delegates awarded in primaries. Tuesday’s result in New York came close to slamming the same door on Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), something the senator addressed in an impromptu news conference Wednesday. While Cruz went on to call Kasich a “spoiler,” the Ohio governor agreed with him on one point: Front-runner Donald Trump was not entitled to the nomination if he failed to reach a simple majority of 1,237 delegates.
“One time I made an 83 on my math test, and I did better than everybody else, and I asked the teacher: How come I don’t have an A?” Kasich said. “The teacher said, ‘An A is 90.’ I said, ‘Oh, I get it.’ Say he gets in there with 1,100 — go get the rest of ’em.”
Kasich went on to imagine a convention where he could appeal to Trump voters by respecting them. Citing his work in Ohio to calm tensions after a police shooting in Cleveland, Kasich said he’d advanced past his “bombast years, where I was pounding on everybody.” He boasted of Ohio’s fracking boom but emphasized that the state had probably “the most” regulation of the natural gas industry in the country.
He also rejected the idea that he had moderated by opposing “birthright citizenship” when he was a congressman and endorsing it as a governor.
“I probably signed onto some bill,” shrugged Kasich. “Somebody probably walked up to me on the floor and said, ‘how ’bout putting your name on this?’ ”
At other points, Kasich vigorously defended his record. He said that changes to Ohio’s early voting law, opposed by Democrats, were simply fair and had been requested by local officials.
“Do you think 28 days of voting is restrictive?” Kasich asked. “How many other states have 28 days of early voting?”
Kasich made a few stabs at populism, criticizing the President Obama-era Federal Reserve for its multiple rounds of quantitative easing. To Kasich, that only resulted in companies “buying up more of their stock and making the rich richer.” He was otherwise light on criticism of the Obama administration.
On the District, Kasich dismissed the idea of statehood or a vote in Congress.
“I just don’t see that we really need that, okay?” Kasich said. Referring to the Republicans who have stopped such proposals, Kasich said that “they know that’s just more votes in the Democratic Party.”
But as he pondered the question some more, Kasich softened.
“They send me a bill, and I’m president of the United States?” he said. “I’ll read your editorials.” | 0 |
Why you should vote for me.
For 17 months, I’ve traveled this country and met countless Americans from every walk of life. Your hopes have become my hopes and your dreams have become my dreams.
I’ve been inspired on this journey by the millions of you who came to cheer a simple idea: that we can make America great again.
Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing job-killing Obamacare — Americans are experiencing soaring double-digit premium hikes, insurers are leaving, doctors are quitting, jobs are fleeing, and deductibles are through the roof.
It also means immediately fixing our terrible trade deals, which have killed American jobs and crushed American incomes. This means renegotiating Bill and Hillary Clinton’s disastrous NAFTA and China deals that have deindustrialized the United States — importing unemployment and exporting our wealth.
It means we don’t have to keep kids trapped in failing schools — that we can give every parent the right to send their kids to the school of their choice, including millions of low-income African-American and Hispanic children who have been failed for generations by Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton.
Real change also means draining the swamp of corruption in Washington. We must fix a rigged system in which political insiders can break the law without consequence and where government officials put special interests above the national interest. If we want to make America great again, we must clean up this corruption.
Hillary Clinton has been the subject of an FBI criminal investigation into many crimes against this nation. Were she ever to be elected, it would trigger an unprecedented constitutional crisis — Hillary is likely to be under investigation for a long time, grinding our government to a halt.
America has too many problems, too many things to fix, to mire our government in years of sordid corruption and criminal investigation.
It is time to cut our ties with the failed politicians of the past, and embrace a bright, new future for all of our people.
That’s what I’m offering in my Contract with the American Voter, a 100-day action plan to clean up corruption and bring change to Washington. It’s there for you to read at www.TheTrumpContract.com.
In my Contract with the American Voter, I offer a historic pro-growth plan to create 25 million good paying jobs. We will cut taxes on middle-class Americans by 35%. We will eliminate every needless job-killing regulation. We will repeal and replace catastrophic Obamacare with new reforms that dramatically expand choice, substantially lower costs, and significantly improve the quality of care. And we will end the offshoring of American jobs.
In my contract, I also offer a detailed plan to immediately secure the border, stop illegal immigration and keep radical Islamic terrorists out of our country. Hillary has pledged “open borders,” mass amnesty, and a 550% increase in Syrian refugees. America’s immigration officers described Hillary’s extremist plan as “the most radical immigration agenda proposal in U.S. history.”
I will restore the constitutional rule of law and nominate Supreme Court justices who will do the same.
Finally, I pledge to fight for the right of every child in American to grow up in safety and peace, and undertake a national effort to bring jobs, security and prosperity to our inner cities.
I am asking for your vote, and to be your champion in the White House.
Together, we will take our government back from the special interests — and we will Make America Great Again.
Donald J. Trump is the Republican nominee for president.
You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @USATOpinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To submit a letter, comment or column, check our submission guidelines. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three Republican U.S. lawmakers called on Friday for Robert Mueller to resign as special counsel investigating Russia and the 2016 U.S. election, the latest in a series of conservatives’ criticisms of the FBI and Justice Department during the probe of how Moscow may have influenced the campaign. Representatives Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs and Louis Gohmert accused Mueller of a conflict of interest because he was director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation when former President Barack Obama’s administration approved an agreement allowing a Russian company to buy a Canadian company that owned 20 percent of U.S. uranium supplies. President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans have been calling for an investigation into the Uranium One deal, amid news of Mueller’s first indictments of Trump associates as the special counsel investigates allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Moscow. Moscow denies any effort to influence the election, and Trump has dismissed the investigation as a “witch hunt.” On Monday, the day the indictments became public, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly said a special counsel should be appointed to investigate Democrats over the uranium deal. Another group of Republican lawmakers, including House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte launched an investigation last week to examine issues including the role of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Trump’s 2016 opponent, in the uranium deal. Democrats have dismissed the Republicans’ activities as a partisan effort to distract from Mueller’s probe and from efforts to ensure that a foreign government, Moscow, does not influence future U.S. elections. Gaetz, Biggs and Gohmert are all members of the House Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the FBI and Department of Justice. Gaetz has called for investigations of issues related to Clinton previously, including accusing former FBI Director James Comey of colluding with Mueller on the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s emails. | 1 |
Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump s adviser, says that all information about Russia s interference in the U.S. presidential election and the president-elect s Russian ties should be kept secret. Not because Trump has something to hide, but to protect the public. Conway appeared on Fox and Friends Sunday morning and when she was asked about FBI Director James Comey, she spun the conversation around to whine that classified information should not be handed out to the public. In other words, she s upset the world found out about Trump s Russian pee pee party. I m always disappointed how public and sometimes political some of these figures can seem to be, Conway said. I m very concerned, very concerned. You realize it is the Trump team, only us at this time, that is not divulging what occurred in a classified briefing. Ladies and gentlemen, she continued. It s called a classified briefing for a reason. You had the vice president of the United States making a comment about it the other day. You have intelligence officials confirming or denying. This classified information, it s top secret. Why is it top secret? It s not top secret to keep it from the public, but to protect the public. That s right folks, you shouldn t know anything about Trump s Russian escapades. The American people should be kept totally in the dark about the foreign government meddling in the highest levels of our democracy. And it s for your own good, dammit!Conway then added that Trump is going to do all the things he promised to do, including building his stupid wall and snatching health care away from millions of Americans.Watch Conway insist we should keep Trump s pee party top secret to protect the public, here: Featured image via video screen capture | 1 |
Run, yes run, to the nearest gun store and buy a gun to protect your family. This may sound extreme but we are in extreme times because of a very divisive president who s condoned domestic terrorism from a group hell bent on destruction. You can choose to be a sitting duck or not A multi-block neighborhood in north Milwaukee erupted into rioting, looting, and arson after minority residents affiliated with Black Lives Matter used the death of an armed violent criminal to justify a crime spree. The rioting, looting, and arson followed the officer-involved shooting death of 23-year-old gang-affiliated felon named Sylville K Smith. Smith turned towards a black police officer with a stolen gun in his hand and was fatally shot.The criminals who rioted in Milwaukee last won t get another chance to to wage war against civil society without a fight.Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has activated the National Guard to help police should further rioting erupt in a predominantly black Milwaukee neighbourhood where police killed an armed suspect.The Sherman Park neighbourhood, which has a reputation for poverty and crime, appeared calm hours after businesses were burned, cars set ablaze and gunshots fired overnight by demonstrators angered by the police killing.Seventeen people were arrested in the disturbances, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said.Four police officers were treated for injuries and released from hospitals.Chief Walker said the Guard would be in a position to aid local law enforcement upon request. Unfortunately, the response comes almost 24 hours too late.One of the terrifying realities of an interconnected digital age is that radicals can easily and quickly organize flash riots. They can descend on an area with little or no warning in large numbers, commit significant felony acts in a short amount of time, and then disappear before law enforcement can mount a significant response.This new reality leaves citizens in a position where virtually any urban or suburban neighborhood community can find itself turned into a flashpoint for a riot within hours, before local authorities have the opportunity to recognize an escalating threat, much less mobilize, equip, and deploy their forces in effective numbers.Now more than ever, you may find yourself and your neighbors forced to band together and defend your homes, businesses, and lives, just as Korean shopkeepers famously did in the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and residents, storekeepers, and Oathkeepers did in Ferguson in 2014.A Ferguson store owner prepared to defend his store during on of the recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri.It probably won t come as a surprise to anyone that the firearms best suited for keeping these violent mobs at bay are the very firearms that anti-gun Democrats are so fervently attempting to ban.AR-15An AR-15 is among the most effective possible firearms against murderous, arson-minded rioters in suburban and urban situations.Equipped with a low variable-power scope to help discern threats, a bright tactical light to clearly identify threats, and 30-round magazines, a law-abiding citizen is well-equipped to take on mobs primarily armed with handguns, impact weapons, and molotov cocktails.The same general rules of engagement apply during riot as they would at any other time. You may not use deadly force upon another human being unless they pose an imminent deadly force threat to you or a third-party.That noted, the willingness of these rioters to use deadly force is unquestioned. They have fired shots at police and citizens, and they have shown that they are willing to torch buildings with little or no thought to the lives inside those structures.This creates a plausible scenario where a citizen sees rioters about to put lives at risk up to several block away, justifying a much-longer-than-normal third-party self defense shot of dozens to hundreds of yards.If you do not yet own a quality AR-15 (or similar rifle) with good low-powered scopes or a red dot optic, a decent weapon-mounted light, other required accouterments and the training to use these carbines for the defense of your family and community, you may want to consider if you re making a mistake.Increasingly, it may be the responsibility of armed citizens to save their communities from violent mobs when law enforcement cannot mobilize fast enough to prevent attacks that are nothing more or less than domestic terrorism.Be prepared.Via: Bearing Arms | 1 |
The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate on Wednesday for the fourth time since 2008. The central bank says it is targeting a range between 1 percent and 1. 25 percent for overnight borrowing between banks. [“Job gains have moderated but have been solid, on average, since the beginning of the year, and the unemployment rate has declined,” the Fed said in its analysis of current economic conditions. It noted that inflation has recently declined. The Fed’s expectations for future rates suggest that there will be one more hike this year, in line with what the market had been expecting. Neel Kashkari, the head of the Minneapolis Fed, dissented from the Fed’s decision. He would have refrained from raising rates. The Fed also announced detailed plans for how it will unwind the large balance sheet it built up by buying bonds during the financial crisis and in the years that followed. Questions over how and when the Fed would shrink its balance sheet have been foremost in the minds of investors and monetary policy mavens for some time. The Fed said it would reduce its holdings later this year by not reinvesting some of the funds received when bonds it holds mature. Currently, the Fed reinvests all of the proceeds from maturing bonds. It was the Fed’s third consecutive rate increase, signaling a definitive end to the Fed’s old economic stimulus scheme. The move indicates the Fed’s confidence in the stability of the economy, although it does not necessarily indicate that the Fed is attempting to slow economic growth. Monetary policy makers believe that low rates support economic growth by lowering the cost of borrowing for businesses, homebuyers and consumers raising rates is believed to reduce central bank support for the economy. The Fed’s move came after several disappointing data points appeared to indicate that the economy may be softening and hoped for tax cuts may be delayed longer than expected. Job creation in May came in lower than expected, at just 138. 000 jobs. Retail sales in May fell 1. 6 percent from the prior month, the biggest decline in 16 months. Economists had expected sales to increase in May, following a 0. 4 percent increase in April. Prior to the Fed announcement on Wednesday, consumer price data revealed that inflation unexpectedly fell in May. Core CPI, an economic indicator closely watched by the Fed because it excludes volatile food and energy costs, rose 1. 7 percent . That was lower than expected and short of the Fed’s announced target. The dollar was weaker prior to the Fed’s announcement but following the release of the soft economic data. Yields on Treasuries, which are thought to reflect investor’s expectations of the path of future rates, fell. Falling yields indicate that investors are lowering their expectations for future rates. The yield on Treasuries was down 10 basis points to 2. 11 percent earlier Wednesday. | 0 |
It didn t take long for conservative Christians to jump to the defense of Roy Moore.Not long after the Washington Post published a story containing detailed accusations from several women who claim that Moore sexually assaulted and abused them as teens, conservatives disgustingly continued to back him despite having the opposite reaction to allegations against several high profile Hollywood actors and producers.And that s not to mention the reaction conservatives had when right-wing websites pushed a conspiracy claiming that Hillary Clinton ran a sex trafficking operation inside a pizza restaurant, a conspiracy that was immediately and thoroughly debunked.Conservatives STILL believe that conspiracy, but refuse to believe the very real victims who have come forward about Moore.Rather than call for Moore to step aside, conservative Christians are more rabid than ever, and that includes Jerry Falwell Jr., who along with the rest of his anti-gay friends still supports Moore just like they continued to support Donald Trump despite Trump saying on tape that he likes to grab women by their genitals without their consent. It comes down to a question who is more credible in the eyes of the voters the candidate or the accuser, Falwell said. The same thing happened to President Trump a few weeks before his election last year except it was several women making allegations. He denied that any of them were true and the American people believed him and elected him the 45th president of the United States. And I believe the judge is telling the truth. So Falwell Jr. is making Moore s guilt contingent on whether voters elect him or not. In other words, he s telling Republican voters that electing him is the equivalent of a jury verdict of not guilty. But that s not how the justice system works. And it s not how we should be judging political candidates.It should be pointed out that the race in Alabama has turned into a dead heat according to a poll taken after the bombshell story dropped, so clearly voters must not think Moore is very credible.These are credible allegations that should be taken seriously. Seriously enough that Moore should be forced to withdraw his candidacy. The fact that conservatives are using the Bible to defend sexual abuse and assault proves that they are nothing more than fake Christians. They would support a pedophile rather than vote for a Democrat. That s how far conservative Christians have fallen. They are literally supporting a man who claimed that homosexuality causes pedophilia, the same man who is being accused of predatory sexual behavior involving a 14-year-old girl. Only Moore is a straight white Christian so conservatives think his pedophilia is acceptable.Hillary Clinton was right. These people are deplorable.Featured Image: Scott Olson/Getty Images | 1 |
On Monday evening, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders both sat down with Rachel Maddow for a town hall style interview to try to pick up any undecided voters who may be left before Tuesday s primaries. During Clinton s interview, a protester interrupted to yell out a question, but instead of becoming irritated, Hillary and Rachel handled the protestor with the dignity they deserved.A female protester stood up and yelled something about women in immigration detention. Now, if this had happened in a Republican town hall meeting, the women would have been immediately escorted out and possibly beaten if Trump s supporters were there. None of that happened here. Rather than treat the women like an annoyance, Maddow repeated the woman s question and Clinton answered it.The transcript from MSNBC documented the incident:QUESTION: (OFF MIKE) the lives of the women that are (inaudible) right now?MADDOW: This is outside of our forum (ph). Let me just rephrase the question for you. Tell me if I get it right. Asking about women and families in family immigration detention facilities.CLINTON: Yes, I m against that. Absolutely I m against that. I ve been against it for a long time. I ve said we should have family detention. We should end private prisons and private detention centers. They are wrong. We should end raids and roundups, and when I am president we are going to get comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. So we will end all of these problems at the time we are successful.By taking the protester seriously and not becoming angry, Hillary Clinton showed the audience (both at the venue and at home) that she cares about the issues that are weighing on the voters in this country. She could have just ignored this woman, but she showed her the respect she deserved by giving her an answer to the question she yelled out. And it wasn t a bullshit answer just to shut her up, it was clearly something she has thought about and wants to fix.Hillary Clinton acted presidential last night and it was great.Watch:Featured image via video screenshot | 1 |
Loretta Lynch is head of the DOJ and is opening for Deray McKesson of Black Lives Matter tomorrow in Detroit. Is this an endorsement of the radical domestic terrorist organization that calls for looting and violence in the name of social justice? The Department of Justice has lost any remaining credibility it might have had. Loretta Lynch is a political hack and a radical racist! | 0 |
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain said North Korea was behind the WannaCry cyber attack that infected computers around the globe earlier this year on Tuesday, joining the United States in blaming Pyongyang for the ransomware incident. Britain s National Cyber Security Centre had assessed it was highly likely that North Korea s Lazarus hacking group was behind the one of the most significant cyber attacks to hit the UK in terms of scale of disruption, the Foreign Office said. We condemn these actions and commit ourselves to working with all responsible states to combat destructive criminal use of cyber space, Foreign Office minister Tariq Ahmad said. The indiscriminate use of the WannaCry ransomware demonstrates North Korean actors using their cyber program to circumvent sanctions, Ahmad said. | 1 |
Before he got to repealing ObamaCare, before he got to dumping Common Core, before he got to abolishing the IRS, Ted Cruz talked about Jesus.
In kicking off his presidential campaign Monday at Liberty University, Cruz began with his father, a Cuban immigrant who washed dishes in Texas for 50 cents an hour, who drank too much along with his wife, who left home when Ted was 3 but came back because “God transformed his heart … Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom.”
That introduction, part of a passionate speech delivered without notes in Lynchburg, Va., helps explain why many in the mainstream media don’t quite know what to make of the Texas senator — or view him as a fringe figure.
On the “Today” show, Kelly O’Donnell said “he’s 44, only been on the national scene a couple of years.” MSNBC’s Jonathan Alter, while not counting him out, also said “he’s only been in the Senate for two years.”
Perhaps they had forgotten that Barack Obama was 45 and had spent just two years in the Senate when he kicked off his presidential candidacy?
Cruz is a hero to the Tea Party right, and his speech hit many of its themes: against same-sex marriage, protecting the right to bear arms, reclaiming the Constitution. But the very things that make him popular could, in the media’s telling, be campaign obstacles.
“Cruz's down-the-line appeal to the GOP base may prove to be his calling card in the primary battle to come, but it's also led him to pick fights with the party brass that could ultimately undermine his candidacy. His ability to raise money, secure endorsements, and build the kind of infrastructure necessary to win a national primary may be hampered by his lack of support among the establishment. And his ideological rigidity has sown doubts among some Republicans about how competitive Cruz would be in a general election.”
In the two-minute NBC report, there were sound bites of Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” (from his 21-hour filibuster that preceded the government shutdown) and warning “the world is on fire” (prompting a question from a 3-year-old girl).
I wrote last week that the many in the MSM went way overboard in using that incident to portray Cruz as a frightening figure, despite the fact that the girl’s mother said she wasn’t scared at all.
Look at how the Huffington Post frames its setup piece for the Cruz kickoff:
“Much of the rest of the country (including Republican leaders in Congress) viewed Cruz as a vaguely scary renegade, and the GOP establishment’s official grumpy grandpa, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), dismissed him as a ‘wacko bird.’
"But the Young Americans for Liberty loved his loathing of the party elders, and his determination to shove a stick between the spokes of the System …
“Uncorked anger doesn’t usually win presidential nominations, let alone presidencies. People want hope and uplift in the White House and not just expressions of outrage. The president is the person who is supposed to make things work. To some, the 44-year-old Cruz gives off a vaguely scary aura of cheerful menace.”
Uncorked anger. Cheerful menace. You might get the impression that HuffPost just doesn’t like the guy.
And this happens to reflect the line of the Democratic Party, which in an email calls Cruz, in bold letters, “really, really scary.”
Politico also emphasizes the theme that Cruz ticks people off:
“His own colleagues in Washington have frequently been disdainful of Cruz since he helped instigate the 2013 government shutdown. And his hardline views and uncompromising style have disqualified him even in the eyes of more conservative elements of the political class who are concerned about electability.
“But Cruz is embracing that outsider status, just as he did in Texas, where in 2012 he beat out the presumed Republican Senate nominee, former Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, and became a hero to that conservative state’s tea party.”
The Washington Post says this is one of five things you need to know about the senator:
“Cruz's often tells the story of his father, Rafael -- also the senator's given name -- leaving Cuba as a young man with $100 sewn into his underwear. Rafael Cruz, an evangelical pastor, has a history of making headline-grabbing statements. They include telling an audience that President Obama should be sent ‘back to Kenya,’ asserting that the Bible ‘tells you exactly who to vote for.’”
So his dad’s an issue too.
Slate says that Cruz spouts “bizarre nonsense” on climate change:
“In case you haven’t heard, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is not a fan of reality.
“The reality of science, that is. He has a history of saying global warming–denying talking points and used some of his political power just this past week to pressure NASA into downplaying its role in measuring the effects of global warming on the planet.”
Just for good measure, "Morning Joe" panelist Donny Deutsch likened Cruz to Sarah Palin.
My take is that the mainstream media always gravitate toward establishment candidates, in part because these politicians excel at fundraising and endorsements, which journalists highly value. That’s why the media consistently underestimate such insurgent candidates as Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum before they catch fire.
But recent history suggests that the establishment Republican prevails in the end: Mitt Romney, John McCain, George W. Bush, Bob Dole. The question for 2016, up against Hillary, is whether this time could be different.
How about a conservative view? Here’s Allahpundit on Hot Air:
“The problem with finding a path for Cruz next year, though, is that as the field narrows and losers drop out, the primaries inevitability become a referendum on electability and acceptability. I can see Walker stumbling; I can see Jeb flaming out from voters’ Bush fatigue; I can see Paul stuck at 20 percent, unable to add to his libertarian base; and I can see Rubio never quite contending because he can’t scrape the votes he needs from the center and right. What I can’t see is all of those things happening, and realistically, they’d all have to happen to make Cruz the nominee.”
It’s a crowded field, to be sure. The thing that brought Cruz national fame was the filibuster and his leading role in the 2013 shutdown. To his supporters, Cruz was fighting for conservative principles against ObamaCare. To his critics, Cruz was pursuing a kamikaze strategy that could never have succeeded because the Democrats controlled the White House and the Senate.
The coming campaign will be a test of whether Cruz can break out beyond his evangelical base. But it will also be a test of the media establishment that views him mainly as a bomb-thrower.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz. | 0 |
Rush Limbaugh was cheering for Trump and how he handled the abortion question that was asked in last night s debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Do Catholics and other pro-life groups truly understand the significance of this election? Do they know how many Supreme Court Justices our next President will likely replace in the next 4 years? In addition to the abortion issue, our religious freedoms are at serious risk. The Left has been attacking Christianity and Judaism for years, while protecting the Muslim faith like their lives depend on it. Rush mentioned on his radio show today how shocked he was by Trump s unabashed support for the life of the unborn. He said that there has never been a presidential candidate in history who has so bravely stood up for life during a debate with the Democrat opponent, like Donald J. Trump did last night. Here is his brilliant analysis Rush: Let me ask you a question. When Chris Wallace asked this abortion question, did you people start cringing? Oh, no, jeez, every time this comes up we get smoked, oh, my God. And he turned it to partial-birth abortion on a dime, which was either brilliant or instinctive or combination of the two, because she had no defense for what he was alleging, and she didn t even try. Her only defense, when he brought up, They want rip babies out of the womb a day before they re born, a week before they re born. And she doesn t deny it. All she can say is, I have seen these women. I have met these women, and I m telling you it is one of the hardest things, I m telling you it is one of the most difficult things. She s therefore on record as supporting partial-birth abortion last night. I will guarantee you that s the last thing anybody on the Democrat Party side ever factored would happen. That s why she wasn t prepared for it.And it was, I don t know, as I say, either brilliant or instinctive or a combination of the two, but to take that question on abortion, which has traditionally been a nail in the coffin for a Republican candidate, turn that around to a winning issue for him, a losing issue for her, and you ll note that nobody in the Drive-Bys is talking about that exchange. They don t want to go anywhere near it.And then she lied about Planned Parenthood and all these mammograms they do and all these precancer checks. They don t do a single mammogram, folks. They do not do them. They don t do checks for cancer. Their solution to everything at Planned Parenthood is an abortion. She lied through her teeth. I don t know if Trump knows that or not. Most people who, Oh, great work, mammograms, care for women. They don t do anything of the sort. They harvest baby parts and sell them! We now know that.But the partial-birth abortion thing, he turned it around on her. She didn t have a denial and the Drive-Bys aren t talking about it, and it s things like that in a debate you ll never hear any public reaction, no polling on it, but could have a huge impact. We ll never know. We won t know until the elections. Via: Rushlimbaugh.com | 0 |
Ivanka Trump decided on Tuesday evening to send out a tweet in honor of World Refuge Day, and once again, she apparently forgot who her father is. On #WorldRefugeeDay we remember the plight & courage of the 22 million+ refugees globally. We must work to restore peace & end this crisis, she wrote, seemingly oblivious to the cruel and bigoted stance her own father has taken against refugees.On #WorldRefugeeDay we remember the plight & courage of the 22 million+ refugees globally. We must work to restore peace & end this crisis. https://t.co/CMMn8zno10 Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) June 20, 2017Not surprisingly, Twitter users everywhere were ready to remind Ivanka that her father has made it his mission to ban refugees from entering the United States as part of his unconstitutional Muslim Ban.Your father retweeted this, hon. Your own father. pic.twitter.com/AsZWgge4XL Iskandrah (@iskandrah) June 20, 2017I mean yeah, you re right but based on everything you and your dad have done I guess I would just say shut up? Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) June 20, 2017Please tell me this is a joke. Impeach Donald Trump (@Impeach_D_Trump) June 20, 2017 By going to the Supreme Court to ban them from AmericaIf you care, DO SOMETHING, because like your purses, were just not buying this Orli Matlow (@HireMeImFunny) June 20, 2017But not too hard, and definitely lets not open our doors to them. pic.twitter.com/vakBX4YLb0 AMBER (@NineteenPercent) June 20, 2017So have we figured out what the hell is going on then? Justin (@JustinDecker) June 20, 2017R u kidding me, ur father is trying to get a travel ban to keep refugees out. This just makes me laugh stay at home with ur kids. WH NOT 4 u RUTKRU (@MSKRUM) June 20, 2017Oh the irony. Alan Davis (@Socialism4Jobs) June 20, 2017Did you just lap yourself in the race for most self deluded? pic.twitter.com/OQBVRmubPj Dana Resigns (@frreigns) June 20, 2017 We remember the plight and courage of the 22M+ Sadly remembering them is ALL you re doing. Elaine (@emac66) June 20, 2017When you say WE must work, who exactly are you talking about? Jerry Mathers (@HandsAtlanta) June 20, 2017This is a joke right? I mean you know @POTUS , your father, disagrees with this and is attempting to block all refugees, right? Right? Paul Dickinson (@prdickinson) June 20, 2017Are these the same refugees your daddy wanted to keep out of our country? #Complicit Mandy E (@amandaJeberly) June 21, 2017Are you serious right now?! You tweeting you care about refugees while your father is actively screwing them pic.twitter.com/PxF1IGmUMw AE ?????? (@iamchefapple) June 20, 2017Sorry, Ivanka. No one is buying it. Your words are empty and hollow, just like your father s soul. You had to see this response coming, right?Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 1 |
WASHINGTON -- Forty-three years after the Supreme Court established the right to a safe and legal abortion in Roe v. Wade, the stakes have never been higher for those on both sides of the abortion debate. States have enacted 288 new abortion restrictions in the past five years that have shut down a slew of clinics across the country, and the next president could nominate Supreme Court justices who will determine the fate of legal abortion for decades to come.
But even as abortion access for millions of women hangs in the balance, the issue has somehow been neglected by presidential debate moderators, causing the issue of reproductive rights to fade from the 2016 race. The Democratic candidates haven't been asked about reproductive rights at all in any of their four debates, and the Republicans have only been asked about abortion and funding for Planned Parenthood in the first two of the six debates they've participated in so far.
Advocates working for and against abortion rights are baffled by the silence.
“There are real and important differences between candidates here, and it's a loss for American women that they haven't been explored,” said Jess McIntosh, a spokeswoman for EMILY’s List, a group that helps elect pro-choice women to office.
NBC moderators did not ask how Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) new health plan, released just two hours before the Democratic debate the network hosted Sunday, would handle public funding for abortion, and did not press Hillary Clinton on her view that federal restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion should be repealed. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) haven't been asked in the past four GOP debates about their opposition to allowing victims of rape or incest to get abortions, a position that is significantly more conservative than those held by prior Republican presidential nominees.
The only abortion-related question GOP frontrunner Donald Trump has fielded during a debate was back in August, when Fox's Megyn Kelly asked him about his 1999 comment that he was "very pro-choice." His stance on abortion is much murkier these days, but no other moderators have chosen to ask him about it.
Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group, wants candidates on both sides to explain whether they support public funding for abortion or the kinds of clinic regulations that conservative states have passed to make it difficult for abortion providers to stay open.
“Pro-life Americans would love to know whether candidates support health and safety standards for women who are exposed to great risks in abortion clinics,” said Kristi Hamrick, a spokeswoman for AUL. | 1 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian finance ministry wants to find a solution on how Venezuela will fulfill its debt obligations to Moscow by the end of this year, a senior ministry official said on Friday. Konstantin Vyshkovsky, head of the state debt department at the finance ministry, told Reuters that Venezuela owed Russia more than $3 billion. Venezuela borrowed from Russia in late 2011 but failed to keep up with payments on the debt in 2016 as the South American state faced a full-blown economic and financial crisis. For now we consider it to be a liquidity crisis but not a crisis of financial solvency, Vyshkovsky said. Vyshkovsky said that the finance ministry hoped to agree on new conditions for how Caracas would honor the debt by the end of 2017. What the conditions would be like and how quickly we would find a compromise remains to be seen. But our partners speak about a strong desire to reach an agreement quickly, Vyshkovsky said. Vyshkovsky declined to say when he would expect Caracas to pay back its debt. Venezuela s unraveling socialist government is increasingly turning to ally Russia for the cash and credit it needs to survive, according to a Reuters special report published last month. | 1 |
Liz Heron, executive editor at The Huffington Post, tweeted out a photo from their editorial meeting on May 20, and it has Twitter in an absolute uproar. Can you see why?Notice anything about this @HuffingtonPost editors meeting? ?????? pic.twitter.com/7sg4SyraPa Liz Heron (@lheron) May 20, 2016The emoji she s got on there clearly show that she s touting girl power with this photo, but there is, in fact, a major problem with it that brought Twitter s wrath down upon her, and The Huffington Post itself. It s diversity, or a lack thereof. Where s the racial diversity?The editorial staff is primarily white, like most executive staffs at most companies, and Twitter was kind enough to point that out, along with a couple of other problems: An Ed table full of white women, and @HuffingtonPost s 2016 readership is in the toilet. Shocker https://t.co/mJ830qbtmG Joe Knight (@MoneyJKnight) May 22, 2016.@lheron it seems that the @HuffingtonPost has a few kinks left in the cloning process? MennoKnight (@Menn0knight) May 22, 2016 .@lheron @HuffingtonPost I m a suburban Harvard-educated white guy named White and that room makes me look like Shaft Popehat (@Popehat) May 21, 2016Even Adam Baldwin weighed in on the diversity problem: @seanmdav @lheron @jtLOL pic.twitter.com/p4dAX9gz5u Adam Baldwin (@AdamBaldwin) May 21, 2016@bunkerwsmith @Cernovich @lheron @Soylentopia @HuffingtonPost found the token asian minorities pic.twitter.com/o16XQ9HiuX peppercats (@_peppercats) May 22, 2016 @lheron @HuffingtonPost White Power! Soz I meant girl power! pic.twitter.com/F8uuriczSq O.E.P. (@PyramidPorts) May 22, 2016@lheron @HuffingtonPost The fact that you don t notice what apparently half of the people in the world do says a lot about your POV. All Bass, No Treble (@tiffmc1013) May 22, 2016This next one is needling HuffPo over the fact that it loves painting itself as the liberal answer to conservative media. However, it behaves like a typical, profit-mongering corporation that would support conservative business policies to enhance its bottom line, and engages in questionable practices to that same end, like having thousands of writers work for free.@lheron@HuffingtonPost What I notice is that nobody there is more than 3 years out of college. Ignorant, but cheap as dirt to hire. Robert Tracinski (@Tracinski) May 20, 2016In going through these tweets, one will see some predictably sexist tweets about how it s just as sexist for a company to have an entirely female leadership staff as it is for them to have an entirely male leadership staff. That s male privilege talking, though we still live in a man s world here. Women have it much harder in the workplace, including climbing that vaunted corporate ladder, than men do.An all-female editorial team in a man s world is great. However, for a supposedly liberal outlet, whatever attempts they re making at racial diversity suck. We have to wonder whether their HR department screens out resumes of people with black sounding names like many other HR departments do. We also have to wonder whether they consider black people to automatically be less qualified, like many other companies seem to.Perhaps they re afraid they ll lose readers if their readers know they have black people on their editorial staff.Yes, companies should absolutely put the people they believe to be the best qualified in open positions. Oftentimes, however, black candidates are judged more harshly than other candidates, especially white candidates, due to racial biases in a variety of areas. HuffPo, this is extremely disappointing.Image via screen capture from embedded tweet by Liz Heron | 0 |
The Democrats just keep on pushing the FAKE NEWS of Trump colluding with the russians to win the election. The striking thing is the coordination in talking points. Unreal! They must email every person to push over and over the same words so we re all brainwashed to believe the lies:Earlier in the week, the line was crisis of confidence The Democrats are way too predictable!CNN decided it was a good time to declare a crisis in confidence with the trump administration What a joke! The firing of Comey was nothing of the sort! when Democrats called for coney s firing for months and then Trump finally fires him, how can that be a bad thing for Democrats? It s not they re just playing politics:CNN Reported: A president who thrives on crises has created the biggest one yet of his presidency.President Trump s decision to fire James Comey creates a crisis of confidence around the federal government on a level that most likely hasn t been seen since Watergate. With the tangled threads of Russian influence, last year s presidential election and an active FBI investigation, Trump s move will test loyalties and force a moment of truth for his Republican allies and his Justice Department.No one is seriously questioning whether the president acted within his authority, and the White House s official explanation for what transpired is straightforward enough. According to that version of events, the attorney general and deputy attorney general recommended Comey s ouster, and the president quickly agreed and acted accordingly. | 1 |
Wall Township High School in Wall, New Jersey, has recently come under fire from the parents of three students for erasing references to Donald Trump in the school s most recent yearbook.Whether it was cropping or photoshopping items of clothing with Trump s campaign slogan in student photos or refusing to print statements by the president submitted by another student as her yearbook quote, the parents of those affected are claiming their children s first amendment rights have been violated, although they are acting more like it was they themselves who have been silenced. The school has not only been accused of censorship, but the parents of three students want the yearbooks to be reprinted with an apology or, at the very least, an explanation.One such student is Grant Berardo, a junior at Wall High, who wore a TRUMP: Make America Great Again t-shirt for his school photo, only for the slogan to be digitally removed from his yearbook picture. He was disappointed. This was the first election he has been interested in, said Grant s father, Joseph Berardo. I want the yearbooks to be reissued and I want a letter from the administration explaining why they are reissuing the yearbook Grant Berardo was probably only interested in an election for the first time simply due to his age and it also sounds like his father is trying to push his own political agenda, but Grant wasn t the only student affected. Another junior, Wyatt Dobrovich-Fago, had his photo cropped so the Trump logo on his vest was cut out and his sister, Montana, had a Trump quote removed from her photo as freshman class president. Montana Dobrovich-Fago wanted to have printed under her picture the Donald Trump quote, I like thinking big. If you are going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big, but when she opened the yearbook, the space below the photo was blank. I want to know who thought it was okay to do this, said Janet Dobrovich-Fago, mother of the two teenagers and another parent who appears to be living vicariously through her kids. I want the school to seek disciplinary action and to be held accountable. Parents received a letter from Wall Township Public Schools Superintendent Cheryl Dyer on June 9, stating that she was looking into the matter because, although the school s dress code does prohibit references to illegal activities such as drugs, alcohol, and weapons, there is nothing stating that students can t show political affiliation.Featured image via Wall High School/Joseph Berardo | 0 |
.@IngrahamAngle: The ’ ’ parts of Obamacare reform are not in this new bill from the House GOP pic. twitter. During Tuesday’s “Fox Friends,” conservative talker Laura Ingraham discussed President Donald Trump’s proposed Obamacare reform, saying the new bill is missing the elements that Trump said it would have. “The of the health care reform, the parts of it were transparency and pricing, competition across state lines, and even on the edges, repealing the McCarran — Ferguson Act … where is that?” Ingraham said. “I don’t see any transparency and control of skyrocketing prices of health care. I certainly don’t see competition across state lines. And the drug companies, no provisions about that as far as I can see. ” Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent | 0 |
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - At least one person was killed and three others injured when a car bomb went off in Somalia s capital Mogadishu on Monday, police said. The bomb was concealed in a car parked on Al Mukaram street in the capital, Mohamed Hussein, a police officer, told Reuters. | 0 |
MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian court on Monday rejected a request to release classified documents about Swedish World War Two hero Raoul Wallenberg, whose fate remains a mystery seven decades after his reported death, Russian news agencies reported. Wallenberg, a former Swedish diplomat, helped save thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War Two before being captured by Soviet forces in 1945. A Russian report claimed he died in 1947 in the Lubyanka prison in central Moscow run by the Soviet security service, but no definitive proof of his fate has been put forward. Relatives of Wallenberg filed a lawsuit against Russia s Federal Security Service (FSB), seeking access to uncensored documents which they said could provide clues to Wallenberg s fate. But a Moscow court rejected that lawsuit out of hand on Monday, saying the documents could not be released because they contained personal information about other individuals, Russian news agencies reported. Wallenberg s relatives were cited as saying they would appeal. | 0 |
Duterte Calls US Admin ‘Monkeys’ for Halting Arms Sales November 02, 2016 Duterte Calls US Admin 'Monkeys' for Halting Arms Sales
(MANILA) - Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte chided the United States on Wednesday for halting the planned sale of 26,000 rifles to his country, calling those behind the decision "fools" and "monkeys" and indicating he might turn to Russia and China instead. Duterte's tirades against the former colonial power are routine during his speeches and he said on Wednesday he once believed in Washington, but had since lost respect for what is the Philippines' biggest ally. The U.S. State Department halted the sale of the assault rifles to the Philippine police after U.S. Senator Ben Cardin said he would oppose it, Senate aides told Reuters on Monday. Aides said Cardin, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was reluctant for the United States to provide the weapons given concern about human rights violations in the Philippines during Duterte's bloody, four-month-old war on drugs.
"Look at these monkeys, the 26,000 firearms we wanted to buy, they don't want to sell," Dutertesaid during a televised speech.
"Son of a b***h, we have many home-made guns here. These American fools."
More than 2,300 people have been killed in police operations or by suspected vigilantes as part of Duterte's anti-narcotics campaign, which was the lynchpin of his election campaign.
Duterte has vented his anger at the United States for raising concerns about the extra-judicial killings.
"That's why I was rude at them, because they were rude at me," he said.
According to procedures in Washington, the State Department informs Congress when international weapons sales are in the works. Aides said the State Department had been informed Cardin would oppose the deal during the prenotification process, thus halting the sale.
U.S. State Department officials did not comment.
The Philippine police chief, Ronald dela Rosa, on Tuesday expressed disappointment that police would not get the M4 rifles, which he said were reliable.
Duterte reiterated that Russia and China had shown willingness to sell arms to the Philippines, but he would wait to see if his military wanted to continue using U.S. weapons.
"Russia, they are inviting us. China also. China is open, anything you want, they sent me brochure saying we select there, we'll give you.
"But I am holding off because I was asking the military if they have any problem. Because if you have, if you want to stick to America, fine.
"But, look closely and balance the situation, they are rude to us." Article by Doc Burkhart , Vice-President, General Manager and co-host of TRUNEWS with Rick Wiles Got a news tip? Email us at Help support the ministry of TRUNEWS with your one-time or monthly gift of financial support. DONATE NOW ! DOWNLOAD THE TRUNEWS MOBILE APP! CLICK HERE! Donate Today! Support TRUNEWS to help build a global news network that provides a credible source for world news
We believe Christians need and deserve their own global news network to keep the worldwide Church informed, and to offer Christians a positive alternative to the anti-Christian bigotry of the mainstream news media Top Stories | 1 |
Next Swipe left/right This is how a newspaper covered the story of a car smashing into their office
@Wizbates over on Twitter says, “Best headline ever. The splash is that a car drove into the newspaper’s office” | 1 |
Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, knows exactly what’s at stake if President Trump shuts down an Obama administration program that has given work permits and protection from deportation to some 752, 000 young undocumented immigrants. In 2012, in her previous job as secretary of Homeland Security, she signed the document — nothing more than a policy memo — that created the program. So when alarm spread among immigrants on college campuses following Mr. Trump’s election, Ms. Napolitano moved quickly to determine what the California system could do to shelter its students if he carried through on his pledges to cancel the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. The university estimates that almost 3, 800 among its 190, 000 students are undocumented, many but not all with DACA. Ms. Napolitano, retaining her law enforcement instincts, does not mention the word “sanctuary” when describing what the university could offer. “Sanctuary is such a vague term, we don’t use it,” she said crisply. Instead, the university has published detailed principles of support for undocumented students, including assurances that campus police would not question students solely about their immigration status or join any cooperation agreements with federal immigration authorities under the Trump administration. Through the Davis campus law school, the university is organizing legal help for students detained for deportation. Another worrisome prospect, Ms. Napolitano said, is that students could lose the permits that allow them to work. Undocumented students, including any losing DACA, will continue to pay tuition and be eligible for state financial aid and for a revolving loan program funded, in part, by the university. “We want to do everything we can so students are safe on our campuses,” Ms. Napolitano said, “so they can focus on what they are there to do, which is to study. ” Students at dozens of college campuses, galvanized by Mr. Trump’s depictions of immigrants as criminals or potential terrorists, have pressed administrators to provide sanctuary for those without legal papers. But universities have had differing ideas about what that would mean in practice, and most leaders have been careful to say they would not defy the law. Some institutions have flatly rejected sanctuary plans as encouraging lawbreaking. At New Mexico State University, the president, Garrey Carruthers, said that banning federal agents from campus might imperil its federal funding. One of the first presidents to declare a sanctuary campus explicitly was Michael S. Roth of Wesleyan, who announced in November that it “will not voluntarily assist” any efforts by federal authorities to deport students (a policy he reaffirmed on Jan. 29). Soon after, John Coatsworth, the provost of Columbia University, said that it would not allow immigration agents on campus without a warrant. Some administrators point out that student information, including their immigration status, is already protected under privacy laws requiring the authorities to show a warrant or court order before any data can be released without students’ consent. In Georgia, Emory, which is a private university, considered but ultimately decided against protective measures. “Emory is not seeking to establish itself as a sanctuary campus, for which there is no legal definition,” the university said in a Jan. 4 statement. Taking a tougher line, the University System of Georgia said that any call for sanctuary was “unacceptable” and added, “We expect our institutions to follow the law. ” In his first formal briefing, on Jan. 23, Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, suggested that canceling DACA would not be a priority for the new administration, but he did not provide any explicit reassurance that the program would continue. Ms. Napolitano is still contemplating the bitter possibility that Mr. Trump will sweep away her most significant immigration accomplishment. She hopes to persuade him that the program is a good use of executive power, emphasizing that DACA immigrants pose little security risk because they pass background checks to get into the program. Her message for Mr. Trump: “Why waste resources trying to deport good students who’ve done everything right?” | 0 |
Patrick Henningsen 21st Century WireHere we go again. There seems to be no end to the escalation of tensions between North Korea and the United States and its allies.Yesterday, Pyongyang s state broadcaster came out declaring what it claims is another successful test , this time with a hydrogen bomb, which they say could be mounted on to their still as yet nonexistent intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).Seizing the moment, state news anchor Ri Chun Hee proudly announced that the test was a perfect success, and symbolises the country s final step on the long road to attaining a state nuclear force. All very exciting.Still, there has been no independent verification of the claim, but why let that get in the way of a promising international security crisis? Kim Jung Un: Looking at shiny objects, pointing, generally looking busy. North Korea s alleged test is said to have happened just hours after Pyongyang state-run media released images of leader Kim Jong Un inspecting (looking, pointing) something which looks like it could be a hydrogen bomb, but no one is really sure.We re also told that this was ready to be placed on top of an ICBM, however no one has actually seen a real operational ICBM yet. That s kind of an important detail in this grand plot, but one which is routinely overlooked by legions of western mainstream experts on CNN and NBC. So far, the DPRK only has a series of botched tests of their short-range Hwasong-12 rockets (glorified Scud missiles) to show the world. Still, the western media insist that this constitutes a potential threat to the US.So confident was this mainstream media outlet, that they ve seemed to have hedged their bets on the authenticity of the DPRK state claims, leaving the offending H Bomb in quotes SEE ALSO: North Korea and The Unintended Consequences of TrumpThis wouldn t be the first time North Korea exaggerated its WMD credentials. Last January they exaggerated claims of a successful H-bomb test. Despite their dodgy record, the western media, and politicians who are fed by defense contracts are lapping up Pyongyang s latest pig s breakfast.Whatever this latest test was, it s hardly an act of war. Meanwhile, South Korea wasted no time retaliating by showing off its new toys purchased out of its US dollar reserve account, launching multiple missiles for the cameras. Seoul insists that it s ready to activate four Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile batteries. It also carried out a major joint drill (likely pre-planned anyway) with F-15K fighter jets and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. This posturing by South Korea has excited the western media to no end. Everyone is loving it, because nothing brings eye balls and ratings like a good crisis.Guardian reporter Justin McCurry confirms: South Korea has carried out a simulated attack on North Korea s nuclear test site in a huge show of force in response to Pyongyang s detonation of what it claims is a hydrogen bomb.Seoul has also approved the complete deployment of a US anti-missile system in another sign that it intends to address North Korean provocations with reminders of its own military firepower, while keeping the door open to dialogue. You can be certain that CNN absolutely loves this latest crisis too, wailing this morning: South Korea strengthened the deployment of a controversial US-made missile defense system and launched a huge show of military might on Monday in response to North Korea s hydrogen bomb test. Naturally, not a word of condemnation from the western media about South Korea s real provocations broadcast in colour around the world.How Serious is the Threat?At the time of publishing this piece, members of the UN Security Council are already convening emergency sessions about what to do next. In the final analysis, there will have to be some clear and present threat in order to justify some harsh response from the UNSC.Can such a rational evaluation be made with so much theatre on both sides?Washington s UN Ambassador Nikki Haley gave a predictable hawkish speech claiming that, He is begging for war. Of course Haley is all too eager to oblige.Once again, western media outlets are treating claims by North Korea s state-run KCNA media agency as good as gold (ratings gold, that is).For the US, this latest move by North Korea has been PR gold. It s helped to revive and reenergize the dying conversation of a nuclear standoff between The Good Guys and The Bad Guys. And to deal with those bad guys, you need tough guys.Enter US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who swiftly moved in with tough new sanctions against the DPRK, warning that this isn t the time for just talk. A novel approach.Eager to win back some approval points and stop the political hemorrhaging that seems to be draining all of the mojo Trump had when he whipped-up the campaign trail crowds promising to drain the swamp, the President took to Twitter, to do what he thinks his base wants, which is to be Kim s bad cop .Kim and The Donald, two iconic frontmen, both being played like a marionette by the generals off camera.Cue Trump North Korea has conducted a major Nuclear Test. Their words and actions continue to be very hostile and dangerous to the United States, wrote Trump.Tough. North Korea is a rogue nation which has become a great threat and embarrassment to China, which is trying to help but with little success. South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! Tougher.Trump also tries to slam the door shut on any chance of bilateral negotiations:South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 3, 2017Toughest.Of course, Trump s comments appear to be winding up Pyongyang. A vicious circle of fighting talk. Are there any adults left in the room?Not to be outdone, here comes a good cop. Enter US Defense Secretary James Mad Dog Mattis, who is still earning his nickname meant to resemble an unstable, rabid house pet. After his meeting with President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday, the Mad Dog, wearing a purple tie (the same colour as Hillary s revolution), read his military decree on the White House lawn: We have many military options, and the president wanted to be briefed on each one of them. We made clear that we have the ability to defend ourselves and our allies, South Korea and Japan, from any attack, and our commitments among the allies are ironclad, said Mattis.What a relief, he sounds moderate compared to Trump. But wait Before exiting the podium, he said: We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so. This is a unique breed of lunatic.Talking tough, and talking of options for annihilating a country. Normal people would say this is an idiotic proposition because the fall-out would be much worse than any of Kim apocalyptic sabre rattling. All this looks very familiar. Quite simply, what we are seeing here in Washington is Neoconservativism reasserting itself through one of its flagship planks the preemptive strike. Above all other military strategies, this is always the most favorable for the Pentagon because it doesn t require any real justification or accountability for a preemptive action. All that s required is a sufficient amount of media fear-mongering and political hype about the threat we all face and how we must act and then simply fire away and sift through the rubble, reforming the narrative afterwards. In the meantime, the ruling parties can call it a success, and claim that many lives were saved by this valiant action etc. It s clean and straightforward, albeit in the short term, but extremely messy in the long term.As much as hawks in Washington would love to test out their new toys right now, a conflagration is not likely to happen by the hand of the US in the Pacific Rim. There are too many powerful players in the immediate vicinity (South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Philippines and Russia, too) and the fall-out from any rash US-led geopolitical pissing contest, surgical or kinetic action could be detrimental to all parties. Better to get someone else to start it for them, but that s not easy either.There was a time when people had high hopes for Mattis. He was affectionately referred to as the warrior monk, with many FOX News pundits drooling over his apparent Sun Tzu prowess, as was rumoured that he has actually read some historical books and was really smart and really wise apparently a rarity in Washington military circles these days. But no matter how many books people think he s read about the Peloponnesian Wars, it s should be pretty clear by now that Mattis, like his predecessor Ash Carter, is acting as kind of an executive sales rep for the military industrial complex. That s essentially what the position of Defense Secretary has become in America. It s a straightforward deal: you ll keep your job, as long as you do and say what s required to keep international tensions high at all times. This translates into profits, and shareholder dividends for industry stakeholders. If you re not with the program, then you ll have to tender your resignation. Just ask Chuck Hagel.What Americans should really understand is that the generals with whom Trump is so enamored, and who he trusts with all our bombs and silos have left nothing but a string of military failures in their wake. Between Generals James Mattis and Major General H.R. McMaster, you have a collective 30 plus years and two of the worst military and foreign policy boondoggles in US history, Afghanistan and Iraq, underscored by successive failed surges. Add to these, a total defeat in Syria, blowing billions of US taxpayer dollars on a proxy war that s arguably created a new generation of Islamist extremists (although no one will admit it). Impressive, isn t it? So why do the media continue to elevate the military brass? Not every General is a good general. As with any other position or profession, some are good, and some are corrupt, and many are incompetent, or promoted for playing ball. General David Petraeus is a good example of this. The media can t get enough of him. He was the architect of the surge we re told, which means he was around when Obama-Bush ordered up another 30,000 troops for Iraq in a futile effort to fix what they broke. Still, the media will bend over backwards in an almost worshipful mode whenever his name is mentioned, forgetting that Petraeus was found guilty of the same crime for which half of America wanted Hillary Clinton locked-up. Despite bringing his name and his office into disrepute, Petraeus was rewarded board positions with mega Wall Street firms like KKR, and a perennial seat at Bilderberg.Men like Mattis, McMaster and Petraeus can, and will run rings around this President who has already signaled his weakness for those chevrons on the shoulder. And,this President will happily defer everything to these men. Should we be surprised if they keep getting it wrong?Let s just pray that they don t get it wrong with North Korea, too.*** Patrick Henningsen is an American-born writer and global affairs analyst and founder of independent news and analysis site 21st Century Wire and host of the SUNDAY WIRE weekly radio show broadcast globally over the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR).READ MORE NORTH KOREA NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire North Korea FilesSUPPORT OUR WORK BY SUBSCRIBING & BECOMING A MEMBER @21WIRE.TV | 1 |
The White House is beginning to panic. At least that s the most logical conclusion from their latest jaw-dropping move. In an order that s pretty much unprecedented (wouldn t it be nice if we had just one day without something unprecedented coming from this White House?), the Trump White House has told various government departments that they are not to cooperate with Democrats period.Reportedly, this has been happening since Trump took office. They have formulated a policy that says that agencies are only allowed to respond to committee chairs. Republicans hold both houses of Congress, so every committee is chaired by a Republican.The declaration amounts to a new level of partisanship in Washington, where the president and his administration already feels besieged by media reports and attacks from Democrats. The idea, Republicans said, is to choke off the Democratic congressional minorities from gaining new information that could be used to attack the president. You have Republicans leading the House, the Senate and the White House, a White House official said. I don t think you d have the Democrats responding to every minority member request if they were in the same position. A White House spokeswoman said the policy of the administration is to accommodate the requests of chairmen, regardless of their political party. There are no Democratic chairmen, as Congress is controlled by Republicans.Source: PoliticoThe information blackout, at least according to White House officials, isn t toward every request from Democrats, just the requests from oversight committees. Whew, that should make us all feel so much better. It s only the agencies that are tagged with making sure laws are followed that are being hobbled.While Obama s White House didn t answer every request from Republicans (admittedly, many are meant to back the opposition into a corner), there was never an explicit policy.Now, of course, while the agencies are under the executive umbrella, they work for the office of the presidency, not for the president personally. For Trump, though, that seems to be far too nuanced a distinction. While agencies are legally free (and some would argue ethically obligated) to abide by oversight requests, even from the minority party, Trump has proven that he will fire anyone who steps out of line.This could certainly backfire, though. If Trump is still in office by the time midterms roll around, and if he keeps destroying the Republican Party, we could see a Democratic takeover of at least one house of Congress. That would give Democrats committee chairs. While the White House could still ignore Democrats requests, there would be no way around the word obstruction. Featured image via Pool/Getty Images | 1 |
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The human rights situation in Turkey is unacceptable, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Thursday, adding European Union leaders had asked their executive arm to look at cutting pre-accession aid to Ankara in a responsible way . Merkel urged her fellow leaders on Thursday to cut European Union funds to Turkey that are linked to Ankara s bid to join the bloc. She was supported by Belgium and the Netherlands. But speaking to journalists after the a dinner at which leaders discussed relations with Turkey, Merkel said she wanted a common EU position on the accession talks and said dialogue with Turkey had to continue. She also said she did not foresee talks with Ankara on expanding a customs union with the EU. | 1 |
Trey Gowdy asked a pointed question of former CIA Director Brennan: Did you have evidence of a connection between the Trump campaign and Russian state actors? Brennan replied: As I said, Mr. Gowdy, I don t do evidence. BOOM! ANOTHER EPIC FAIL FOR THE DEEP STATE AS TREY GOWDY MAKES A COMPLETE FOOL OF JOHN BRENNAN:ANOTHER EPIC FAIL For the Resistance as Trey Gowdy makes a complete fool of John BrennanAGAIN, ZERO EVIDENCE Trump Colluded w/ Russia pic.twitter.com/iCzNaEMT9C STOCK MONSTER (@StockMonsterUSA) May 23, 2017 BRENNAN WAS ASKED BY ADAM SCHIFF AND REPLIED THAT TRUMP NEVER PRESSURED TO HAVE THE FLYNN INVESTIGATION DROPPED: EX-CIA Chief John Brennan testified today before the House today and dropped a bomb of truth that President Trump didn t pressure the intelligence community to drop the Flynn investigation: Adam Schiff: With respect to the allegations made recently that the President or his aides may have sought to enlist the member of the IC or Director Comey himself to drop the Flynn investigation, uh have any members of the IC shared with you their concerns that the President was attempting to enlist the help of the people in the intelligence community to drop the Flynn investigation? Brennan: No, sir. Adam Schiff: Are you aware of any efforts the President has made who enlist the support of the intelligence community personnel to push back on a narrative involving the collusion issue that Mr. Rooney was asking about? Brennan: I am unaware of it. NOT A GOOD DAY FOR POLITICAL HACK JOHN BRENNAN! | 0 |
Michelle Obama Promotes Lewd Rappers
From Gerald Celente’s Trend Alert
Michelle Obama’s ‘rap’ more disgusting than Trump talk
KINGSTON, NY, 26 October 2016—Hitting the campaign trail for Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire, Michelle Obama made headline news lashing out at Donald Trump’s boast on a 2005 tape that as a star he could “do anything to women.” Calling Trump’s statements so “shocking and demeaning” that “I can’t stop thinking about this; it has shaken to me to my core,” Ms. Obama said she was campaigning against “hateful language about women.”
Ms. Obama also chastised Mr. Trump for “speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior,” and “using language so obscene that many of us were worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.”
Bad Rap
While Trump’s statements were offensive to women, they pale in comparison to the loud chorus of rappers’ filth and denigration of women that Michelle and Barack Obama have continually promoted, championed, wined and dined at the White House. And, while she has condemned Trump’s lewd remarks – including how “loving fathers are sickened by the thought of their daughters being exposed to this kind of vicious language” – the Obamas have hosted in the “The People’s House,” where their two daughters reside, rappers who obscenely rap about date rape and sexual predatory behavior.
Indeed, it is not the presidential race that “little girls” are tuned into to hear “about who they should look like, how they should act,” or hearing “language so obscene that many of us worry about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV,” as Obama claimed in her speech. Young people are not watching TV with mommy and daddy. They tune into the music/entertainment world that promotes “hateful language about women” performed by White House guest rappers such as:
Rick Ross, “U.O.E.N.O.”
Put Molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it
I took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it…
(Molly is a street name for ecstasy, a ‘love drug’)
Big Sean, “Mona Lisa”
I believe in God and rubbers
Even if we sex you are not my lover
Hit you on the couch and not the covers
And if you bring you friend then we got to f#ck her…
When they go low, we go high
Beyond the rappers, Michelle Obama also has elevated Beyonce´ – a performer who dresses and dances in sync with her sexually explicit lyric library – as a “role model for young girls around the world,” and is “proud to have my daughter grow up in a world where she has people like you, to look up to.”
Thus, while the first lady continually brags about raising the moral bar of integrity while condemning Trump’s words and deeds, the media have ignored the far greater of two evils: The blatant hypocrisy of Michelle Obama, who supports a deplorable, debased entertainment industry drenched in debauchery that is poisoning the planet.
Publisher’s Note: We are political atheists and support neither presidential candidate.
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Shawn Helton 21st Century WireEarlier this week Apple CEO Tim Cook publicly rejected an unprecedented US Federal Court order that would force the company to decrypt an iPhone linked to one of the San Bernardino shooters a move that would have vast implications PRIVACY & PROTECTION: Apple CEO Tim Cook challenges FBI court order to unlock private data of users (Image Source: Iphoneitalia)Breaching Public Privacy In a published open letter entitled, A Message to Our Customers, Apple CEO Tim Cook strikingly opposed a recent federal court ruling that would unlock a phone that s been connected to the San Bernardino Mass Shooting case.The FBI ruling stipulates that Apple must provide access for one time only. However, cyber security experts and technology companies insist this is a virtual impossibility and a guarantee that cannot be made.In theory, the decryption of the phone would be opened via a newly created operating system that would give the FBI a backdoor into the device. But according to many skeptics, this type of backdoor feature could set a very dangerous precedent, while possibly making it much easier for invaders (either government, or hacker) mining for data well into the future.In addition, the new iOS (not yet in existence) proposed in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting would give US law enforcement agencies broader access to consumer communications and other private information according to many in the tech industry. This reality was confirmed by Apple s chief executive Cook, who outlined the staggering privacy implications this past Tuesday: The FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software which does not exist today would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone s physical possession. In essence, the FBI s court order demand appears to bypass basic privacy rights, and when seen in a bigger picture outside of the San Bernardino case, it could be viewed as a violation of the public s 4th Amendment.Challenging The RulingOver the past 48 hours, there s been a social media frenzy, as Facebook, Twitter and Google have all expressed their support for Apple s court battle with federal authorities. This has also included the often entertaining if not perplexing, self-proclaimed cybersecurity legend John McAfee of McAfee Inc., who wrote an op-ed published with Business Insider, that dissects the potential fallout of the federal court ruling in similar fashion to that of Cook.Here s some of what the controversial cyber guru turned libertarian presidential hopeful had to say about the dire security circumstances facing Apple and the world at large: Using an obscure law, written in 1789 the All Writs Act the US government has ordered Apple to place a back door into its iOS software so the FBI can decrypt information on an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. It has finally come to this. After years of arguments by virtually every industry specialist that back doors will be a bigger boon to hackers and to our nation s enemies than publishing our nuclear codes and giving the keys to all of our military weapons to the Russians and the Chinese, our government has chosen, once again, not to listen to the minds that have created the glue that holds this world together. Continuing, cyber expert McAfee, offered up a glimpse what could transpire in the event of a blackmail scenario if such a digital backdoor were to exist: In spite of the FBI s claim that it would protect the back door, we all know that s impossible. There are bad apples everywhere, and there only needs to be in the US government. Then a few million dollars, some beautiful women (or men), and a yacht trip to the Caribbean might be all it takes for our enemies to have full access to our secrets. ANTIVIRUS PIONEER John McAfee, well-known American computer programmer. (Photo businessinsider) McAfee then summarized his op-ed with a ready-made-solution to the FBI s demands by offering his services, I will, free of charge, decrypt the information on the San Bernardino phone, with my team, over a three-week period.On the surface, a sensational gauntlet has been thrown down, calling for the court of public opinion to weigh in on a very important topic concerning privacy rights. But there s much more to it This latest privacy crisis might be viewed through a more cynical lens, should readers choose to view this drama as a story featuring controlled opposition especially when considering the pedigree of those supposedly opposed to the FBI s recent court order.Is it possible that Apple and others have staged opposition to this court decree as a way to bolster their public image, before eventually allowing the rights of private citizens to be abused? Both Cook and McAfee have direct links to companies plagued with security baggage such as Lockheed Martin and IBM, both of which have had their ethics put to question over the years.While there is nothing conclusive here, the public should consider this other side to the story and eliminate inconvenient possibilities in an effort to find the reality of the present circumstances, even if high profile tech leaders may appear to be saying the right things in public, purportedly in the interest of the general population.In an article featured here at 21WIRE from January of 2015, we learned of another privacy threat that should concern the public regarding biometric IDs as facial and emotional recognition software has already been rolled out without public consent: More Orwellian technology is being rolled out, not just to make you into more of a commodity than you already are, but also to profile your emotions. With no regulation on this issue, corporations are basically writing the privacy rules as they go along. Do you trust them? Where is this really heading? In realty, they have no control over how third parties using their software might use images of people s faces and digital signatures of your emotions , storing, sharing and selling that data across macro platforms. Sure, it s just another new wing of Big Data. Even social media data trawlers like Facebook has already begun moving into facial recognition of their users. So while it is compelling, and quite welcome to hear tech giants calling out the FBI s overreach, it appears that many in the technology sector have already pledged support for a growing police state apparatus by virtue of developing privacy invading software. For the moment though, it appears technology innovators Cook and McAfee, along with other social media companies, seem to be working on behalf of the public s interest, even though it could be out of concern for marketability rather than true worry about where the field of technology has been heading.Apple s iPhone and tablets introduced a biometric ID system with its thumb print login scan in 2013 a system which will store millions of biometric identifiers on Apple cloud servers. It wasn t long after the system was launched before hackers cracked the security for this biometric entry point, exposing another unspeakable privacy breach.If nothing else, it has caused a sharp debate over this pressing subject. DIGITAL DANGER The battle for consumer privacy hangs in the balance over the recent FBI court order. (Photo vibratingupdate)Problem, Reaction, SolutionAccording to the Guardian: For months, the FBI searched for a compelling case that would force Apple to weaken iPhone security and then the San Bernardino shooting happened. This carefully planned legal battle has been months in the making, US officials and tech executives told the Guardian, as the government and Apple try to settle whether national security can dictate how Silicon Valley writes computer code. This past December, those of us at 21WIRE, pointed out a number of inconsistencies relating the heavily dramatized San Bernardino shooting attack. In fact, the media driven shooting attack said to have taken place at the Inland Regional Center had a laundry list of details that didn t add up.After a week of whitewashed reports regarding the shooting, a media scripted ransacking of the alleged shooters home (tampering with a potential crime scene) and eyewitness accounts that directly contradicted the official narrative from law enforcement, we learned that in the very room where 14 people were reportedly killed (along with 21 injured) at the Inland Regional Center, there was an active-shooter training drill/rehearsal, involving some of the victims almost a year before December s attack to place.Incredibly, a critical component that should be mentioned in the encryption battle involving Apple and the FBI, is that there were multiple eye-witness accounts that directly contradicted the terror-tale blamed solely on Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik. In other words, we have an event largely hinged on a barrage of convoluted and conflicting accounts concerning the San Bernardino attack.The eye-witness accounts near the scene of the shooting, never mentioned anything about seeing a female shooter, which 21WIRE also noted this past December: In fact, authorities did apprehend a third suspect but that aspect of the case, has seemingly gone down the memory hole, as has the very detailed eye-witness testimony from Sally Abdelmageed, (an Inland Regional Center employee) in a CBS interview with Scott Pelley, which clearly states that there were three white men in tactical gear dressed in black involved in the shooting event. Abdelmageed s account, echoed that of Juan Hernandez, who was interviewed shortly after the shooting incident by a local NBC affiliate, where it was described that three white men in military fatigues, had fled the scene in black Chevy Impala or SUV. Despite all of this, CNN, ABC, FOX and all other media outlets on the scene all pivoted, in unison, to validate authorities (the FBI) revised official Jihadi Bonnie & Clyde story of only 2 shooters a husband and wife . Additionally, a close colleague from Inland Regional Center, Chris Nwadike, stated that Farook had been acting normal and that he was quiet, and that he had not had a disagreement with anyone at the center the day of the shooting. Furthermore, the FBI themselves revealed that both Malik and Farook had not posted radical messages on social media which had previously been reported by authorities (and dutifully repeated across the mainstream media).Even though the media eventually admitted that there were no radical posts , the idea of social media postings became a central story line suggesting that Malik had somehow influenced Farook into participating in the attack. Regardless of what really happened, it seems that the FBI had the opening it needed to try to force open direct access into personal devices.Is it also possible the security agency wants access to the encrypted phone so they can plant an additional back story to a shooting case that never made any sense?Food for thought to chew on in today s digital age As the privacy vs. security battle moves forward, Reuters news agency reports: The U.S. Department of Justice filed a motion on Friday seeking to compel Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to comply with a judge s order to unlock the encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters, portraying the tech giant s refusal as a marketing strategy. The future of privacy hangs by a thread, as more and more divide and rule policies are being implemented at the expense of public freedoms.More to come on this story here at 21WIRE READ MORE SCI-TECH NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Sci-Tech FilesREAD MORE DAILY SHOOTER NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire Daily Shooter Files | 0 |
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday that there was no alternative to a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians and that Jerusalem was a final-status issue that should be resolved through direct talks. I have consistently spoken out against any unilateral measures that would jeopardize the prospect of peace for Israelis and Palestinians, Guterres said after U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. In this moment of great anxiety, I want to make it clear: There is no alternative to the two-state solution. There is no Plan B, he told reporters. I will do everything in my power to support the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to return to meaningful negotiations. | 1 |
Topics: anthony weiner , presidential politics , American Politics , Donald J. Trump , Groping , Clinton's emails Friday, 4 November 2016
[ Associated Press, Washington, D.C. ] FBI Director James Comey informed members of Congress this morning that he was expanding his investigation into e-mails, based on materials found on the laptop of disgraced former Congressman Anthony Weiner.
The materials include an e-mail from Trump to "Carlos Danger," the on-line pseudonym which Weiner used, in which Trump bragged about groping then-Senator Clinton when she and former President Bill Clinton attended Trump's third wedding, to Melania Trump, at the billionaire's Mar-a-Lago estate in 2005.
"There she was, her and Bill, smiling for the cameras, and all the time I had my hand on her ass," boasted Trump, according to Comey.
Comey went on to state that Weiner's laptop contained "sext" messages from Weiner to Trump, containing photos of a bulge in the former Congressman's tidy whiteys, and messages back from Trump to Weiner, containing photos showing Trump's tiny hands gripping a large zucchini.
Comey added that he, also, would be a subject of the ever-expanding investigation, because there were several selfies of himself on the laptop, including one in which he is posed sitting naked on a white horse with a garland of laurel on his brow, one of him dressed up to look like J. Edgar Hoover, in a dress, with the caption, "Infallible ME!" and a third one of him engaged in self-flagellation with a Cat'o Nine Tails.
"I deserved it," Comey explained. Make Philip J. Moss's | 1 |
Barack Obama and the Democrat party would like us to go the way of the Swedes. Do Americans have the fortitude to fight back against a government hell-bent on putting political correctness before national security?The Swedes see the welfare systems failing them. Swedes have had to get used to the government prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. There are no apartments, no jobs, we don t dare go shopping anymore [without a gun], but we re supposed to think everything s great. Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men. You Cabinet Ministers live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants [and] have to use public transport. Laila, to the Prime Minister. Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence Unite everyone. Do not make it a racism thing. Anders, to the Prime Minister. In all honesty, I don t even feel they [government ministers] see the problems There is no one in those meetings who can tell them what real life looks like. Laila, on the response she received from the government.The recent double murder at IKEA in V ster s, where a man from Eritrea who had been denied asylum grabbed some knives and stabbed Carola and Emil Herlin to death, letters and emails poured into the offices of Swedish Prime Minister (PM) Stefan L fven. Angry, despondent and desperate Swedes have pled with the Social Democratic PM to stop filling the country with criminal migrants from the Third World or, they write, there is a serious risk of hatred running rampant in Sweden. One woman suggested that because the Swedish media will not address these issues, L fven should start reading foreign newspapers, and wake up to the fact that Sweden is sinking fast.During the last few decades, Swedes have had to get used to the government (left and right wing parties alike) prioritizing refugees and migrants above native Swedes. The high tax level (the average worker pays 42% income tax) was been accepted in the past, because people knew that if they got sick, or when they retired or otherwise needed government aid, they would get it.Now, Swedes see the welfare system failing them. More and more senior citizens fall into the indigent category; close to 800,000 of Sweden s 2.1 million retirees, despite having worked their whole lives, are forced to live on between 4,500 and 5,500 kronor ($545 $665) a month. Meanwhile, seniors who immigrate to Sweden receive the so-called elderly support subsidy usually a higher amount even though they have never paid any taxes in Sweden.Worse, in 2013 the government decided that people staying in the country illegally have a right to virtually free health and dental care. So while the destitute Swedish senior citizen must choose between paying 100,000 kronor ($12,000) to get new teeth or living toothless, a person who does not even have the right to stay in Sweden can get his teeth fixed for 50 kronor ($6).The injustice, the housing shortage, the chaos surrounding refugee housing units and the sharp slide of Swedish students in PISA tests all these changes have caused the Swedes to become disillusioned. The last straw was that Prime Minister L fven had nothing to say about the murders at IKEA.Gatestone Institute contacted to the Swedish government, to obtain emails sent to the Prime Minister concerning the IKEA murders. According to the principle of public access to official documents, all Swedes have the right to study public documents kept by authorities with no questions asked about one s identity or purpose. The government, however, was clearly less than enthusiastic about sharing the emails: It took a full month of reminders and phone calls before they complied with the request.What follows are excerpts from emails sent from private citizens to Prime Minister Stefan L fven:From Mattias, a social worker and father of four, a dad who wants my kids to grow up in Sweden the way I had the good fortune of doing, without explosions, hand grenades, car fires, violence, rape and murder at IKEA : Hi Stefan. I am a 43-year-old father of four, who is trying to explain to my children, ages 6-16, what is going on in Sweden. I am sad to say that you and your party close your eyes to what is happening in Sweden. All the things that are happening [are] due to the unchecked influx from abroad. You are creating a hidden hatred in Sweden. We are dissatisfied with the way immigration is handled in Sweden, from asylum housing to school issues. And it takes so long to get a job, many people give up before they even get close. Mattias Marcus, 21, wrote: Hi Stefan, I am one of the people who voted for you. I live in Helsingborg, still with my parents because there are no apartments available. I can see where I live that as soon as an old person moves out, eight foreigners immediately move in: they just bypass us young, Swedish people in line. With all that is going on in Sweden rapes, robberies, the IKEA murders and so on why aren t non-Swedes sent back to their countries when they commit crimes? Of course we should help refugees, but they should be the right kind of refugees. I m sorry to say this, Stefan, but the Sweden Democrats should be allowed to rule for four years and remove the people who do not abide by the laws, and who murder or destroy young women s lives. It is horrible, I have a job that pays poorly because there are no jobs. Sweden has more people than jobs. Peter wrote: Esteemed Prime Minister. I am writing to you because I am very worried about the development in Swedish society. I am met daily by news of shootings, exploding hand grenades/bombs, beatings, rapes and murders. This is our Sweden, the country that, when you and I grew up, was considered one of the safest in the world. You, in your role as Prime Minister, have a responsibility to protect everyone in the land, regardless of whether they were born here or not. Unfortunately, I can see that you are not taking your responsibility seriously. I follow the news daily, and despite our now having suffered another act of madness, this time against a mother and son at IKEA, I do not see any commitment from you? You should emphatically condemn the violent developments we see in this country, allocate resources to the police, customs and district attorneys to slow and fight back (not just build levees and overlook) criminal activity. Sebastian wrote: Hi Stefan! After reading about the horrible deed at IKEA in V ster s, I am now wondering what you are going to do to make me feel safe going to stores and on the streets of Sweden. What changes will there be to make sure this never happens again? Will immigration really continue the same way? Benny wrote: Hi, I m wondering, why is the government quiet about such an awful incident? The whole summer has been characterized by extreme violence, shootings, knifings and explosions. The government needs to take vigorous action so we can feel safe. Laila s subject line reads: Is it supposed to be like this? Are we supposed to go outside without arming ourselves? Rape after rape occurs and no one is doing anything about it. I was born and raised in V rby G rd, but seven years ago, we had to move because we couldn t take the dogs out in the evenings due to the non-Europeans driving on the sidewalks. If you didn t move out of the way, they would jump out of the car and hit you. If you called the police, they do nothing in a suburb of Stockholm. When my brother told some of these men off, a rocket (the kind you use at New Year s) appeared in his mailbox. You can imagine how loud the blast was. Women and girls are raped by these non-European men, who come here claiming they are unaccompanied children, even though they are grown men . It is easy to get weapons today, I wonder if that is what we Swedes need to do, arm ourselves to dare to go shopping. Well, now I am getting to what happened at a major department store: Two people were killed and not just killed, there is talk online of beheading. The Prime Minister will not say a word, but resources are allocated to asylum housings, a slap in the face for the relatives who just had two of their kin slain. Swedish newspapers will not say a word, but fortunately, there are foreign newspapers that tell the truth. We Swedes can t change apartments, we live five people in three bedrooms. Two of us are unemployed, looking, looking and looking for work. The only option is employment agencies. I m 50 years old, on part-time sick leave because of two chronic illnesses, I cannot run around from one place to another. But more and more asylum seekers keep coming in. There are no apartments, no jobs, we don t dare go shopping anymore, but we re supposed to think everything s great. Unfortunately, I believe the Prime Minister needs to start reading foreign newspaper to find out that Sweden is going under. I found out that the mass immigration costs billions every year, and the only thing the immigrants do is smoke waterpipes in places like V rby G rd. This is happening in other places too, of course. Now it s starting to spread; you will see that in the opinion polls, next time they are published. Soon, all Swedes will vote for the Sweden Democrats. They are getting more and more supporters every day. You Cabinet Ministers do not live in the exposed areas, you live in your fancy residential neighborhoods, with only Swedish neighbors. It should be obligatory for all politicians to live for at least three months in an area consisting mostly of immigrants, the car should be taken from you so you d have to use public transport. After three months, you would see my point. I am scared stiff of what is happening in this country. What will the government do about this? Anders wrote: Hi Stefan, why don t you, as our Prime Minister, react more against all the violence that is escalating in our country? [Such as] the double murder at IKEA in V ster s. Add to that the bombings and other things happening in Malm . Instead of torchlight processions against racism, we need a Prime Minister who speaks out against the violence, who says that it s wrong no matter which ethnic group is behind it or at the receiving end of it. Because all the people living in Sweden are Swedish, right? A torchlight procession against racism only highlights the fact that it s immigrants committing these crimes. What we need now is a clear signal from our popularly elected [officials] that violence needs to stop now. Sweden is supposed to be a haven away from violence. I m asking you as our Prime Minister, take a stand against the violence. Unite everyone in Sweden into one group and do not make it a racism thing. Some of the people received a reply from Carl-Johan Friman, of the Government Offices Communications Unit; others have not received any reply at all. A typical response goes: Thank you for your email to Prime Minister Stefan L fven. I ve been asked to reply and confirm that your email has reached the Prime Minister s Office and is now available for the Prime Minister and his staff. It is of course not acceptable that people should be exposed to violence and criminal activities in their everyday life. Many efforts are made to counteract violence, and quite correctly, this needs to be done without pitting groups against each other. Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views, they are important in shaping government policies. Via: Zero Hedge | 0 |
The whole world is talking about Donald Trump, over which he is no doubt preening because any attention is good attention as long as it s focused entirely on him. But besides the obvious problems with this, there s one tradition that s very important among international leaders and diplomats. Trump is getting dangerously close to destroying it.The tradition is this: You don t trash-talk a foreign country s political candidates.That might seem silly. It might seem trivial. It s not. This is a very old tradition that was actually turned into policy at the 1961 Vienna Convention. While different countries interpret Thou shalt not interfere in foreign countries elections differently, most are careful to keep their mouths shut, at least publicly. Even in 2004, when the whole world hated George W. Bush for the fiasco that was Iraq, foreign diplomats and leaders mostly kept quiet.Not so now. Trump is testing everyone s patience, and many find that they just can t keep it to themselves: If you represent one of these countries that has been insulted or attacked, you tend to react. We are very passionate, and our blood is pretty hot. But we have to play it cool and understand that this is a campaign, and an election, and that we are diplomats. This week, thousands of foreign diplomats are gathering in New York City for the U.N. General Assembly. Trump has insulted a great many of them in one way or another. What the Latin-American diplomat said to Politico is true around the world: Adding to the complications is that U.S. elections are increasingly followed intensely by people overseas, whether it s via Facebook or CNN International. So when a U.S. presidential candidate slams a foreign country as Trump has so often (with Mexico, Japan, China, members of NATO, and on and on) representatives of those countries feel unusual domestic pressure to respond. Wars of words could easily escalate into more serious wars with Trump. He s proven that with his threats against both Ted Cruz and John Kasich for the 2018 midterms he can t let a slight go.As another example of how he goes after everyone who pisses him off: He s busy trash-talking a Scottish whiskey company for daring to give an award to a neighbor of his who criticizes his golf course. In retaliation, he s banned every brand of whiskey from William Grant & Sons for that affront, because really, how dare they?He should have more important things to worry about than petty personal slights, but they re actually the centerpiece of his whole existence. When foreign leaders won t play ball his way, and go on record with nothing but what he thinks are insults, what s he going to do? Two guesses what he ll do, but you ll only need one.He hasn t even been elected yet and foreign leaders and diplomats are openly attacking him. Some of these people probably held their tongues when George W. was running for re-election, however hard that might have been. This would be hilarious if it wasn t so frightening.Featured image by Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 0 |
Gallup Polling recently had Donald Trump s approval rating at a dismal 45 percent the lowest for any newly inaugurated president in modern American history. Similarly, the poll also had Trump s disapproval rating 45 percent, the highest for any newly inaugurated president in modern American history.It s safe to say that Trump is not off to a good start.And his ratings are only falling further.According to a new Quinnipiac University poll, Donald Trump s approval ratings stand at a disastrous 36 percent, which is, as stated above, the lowest for any new president in modern history. Furthermore, 44 percent of Americans have a negative view of him. That s a net negative eight points.At this same time in his presidency in 2009, Barack Obama had a 59 percent approval rating, and a 29 percent disapproval rating.If there s one thing that Donald Trump cannot stand, it s being hated or mocked. We learned that after his fury over the size of the Women s Marches, and his need to Photoshop the size of his hands.The poll also found that the majority of Americans do not think he has the right qualities to lead the nation, nor do they think he will be good for country. However, the majority of respondents are somehow optimistic about his presidency, and think he will be good for the economy (they probably haven t heard about his 20 percent tariff on Mexican imports).Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said: Stumbling out of the blocks, President Donald Trump is considered a divider not a uniter, flunking on honesty, empathy and level headedness, while his predecessor sees his legacy burnished by better and better numbers every polling cycle. But voters are optimistic in general and confident he will help the economy. Being unfavorably compared to President Obama will no doubt hurt Trump s fragile, thin-skinned ego.The American people are not liking what they re seeing from the authoritarian-in-chief. Judging by how it s going right now, it will only continue to get worse. So far, Trump has signaled that he has no desire whatsoever to change his ways. We re stuck with a fact-suppressing, executive-order signing, loudmouthed fascist for the foreseeable future.Featured image by Alex Wong via Getty Images | 1 |
This is the greatest clip from a meeting with President trump by a group of teens from North Carolina whose project was to build a rocket. He asked how they came up with the name Trump The answer is great!Trump: Why did you call your project name, Trump ? Student: Because it conquers all. Trump: Watch, they won t put that on television. pic.twitter.com/pmCATDlsmS Alex (@SoCal4Trump) May 12, 2017 When students from Charlotte s Victory Christian Center School decided to revive a rocketry team tradition of naming their rockets, one of the groups christened their rocket Trump.And if there s anyone who likes seeing his name on things, it s the president. So when the team went to Washington, D.C., on Friday to get ready for the national competition, they ended up showing their entry to President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. That s a mean-looking machine, huh? the president said as the team set down their sleek black projectile with his name in gold letters. Simply because it conquers all, one student replied, drawing a handshake from the president and cheers from his classmates. They re never going to put that on television, Trump said.Two teams from the south Charlotte private school advanced through earlier contests to earn a place in this weekend s Team America Rocketry Challenge national competition. They knew they would meet with congressional leaders and industry officials on Capitol Hill, but it was not immediately known how the presidential photo op shaped up.GREAT KIDS!Read more: CO | 0 |
Welcome to Watching, The New York Times’s guide. We comb through releases big and small to email readers twice a week with our timely recommendations. You can browse previous guides here, and to receive recommendations straight to your inbox, sign up here. Stay tuned for our coming website. Dear Watchers, Toss the confetti, pop the champagne, put on the nice sweatpants: We’re in for a great TV week. New shows, returning favorites, a bird documentary — heaven is a place on earth. And that place is within our televisions (and computers and tablets and whatnots). If you find yourself in need of some TV guidance, I’d love to answer your questions, or settle your disputes. I am, as I ever was, and ever shall be: watching@nytimes. com. And a “1776” fan. Happy watching! Watch “Gomorrah,” Wednesday, 10 p. m. SundanceTV. First came Roberto Saviano’s 2007 nonfiction book about Neapolitan organized crime. Then came the 2009 movie. Now there’s this Italian 2014 airing weekly in chunks. If you’re looking for romantic, sweeping Italian vistas, try “The Wine Show. ” “Gomorrah” is violent and bleak, almost suffocating. There are some familiar beats here, but the cinematography alone is worth tuning in for. Watch “Halt and Catch Fire,” Season 3 premiere, Tuesday, 9 p. m. AMC. The new season of this drama transplants the show to Silicon Valley from Texas — sort of a bummer, unless you are dying for another show about how people in California are just a little different from the rest of us. Thank god enough of the show’s emotional core — Donna, mostly — is still intact. This premiere highlights the strengths and shortcomings of “Halt. ” (The first episode is available now on AMC.) “Mad Men” is superficially about advertising, but more deeply it’s about constructing identity. “The Americans” includes tales of espionage, but foundationally is about defining truth. When it’s its best, “Halt” is about the need for human bonds, and how that need will override all other behaviors. Too often, though, it’s just about how computers and the internet worked (or didn’t) in the ’80s. Watch “The Profit,” Tuesday, 10 p. m. CNBC (Previous episodes are on Hulu). The entrepreneur Marcus Lemonis travels the country and invests his own money in struggling small businesses, on the condition that he be “100 percent in charge. ” If you like shows like “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover” or “Kitchen Nightmares,” but wish they were more supportive and had better messages, “The Profit” is for you. Lemonis is calm and direct, and he doesn’t yell at anyone or look to humiliate people anyone who comes across poorly does so on their own. This week’s Season 4 premiere is another venture (the show has included several such businesses) but more important, Lemonis seems to have retired his Hermès belt. Watch “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team,” Thursday, 9 p. m. CMT. Warning: The season premieres of “Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” tend to be the worst episode of the season. The early auditions include too many aspiring cheerleaders who clearly have no chance of making the team, and too many randos weighing in. (Being married to a football player does not make you an expert in dancing.) But once the show into gear, it’s one of the most absorbing, brutal reality shows going. The level of drive and athleticism on display is staggering, and if you’ve ever wondered just how extrinsic one’s image can be, this is the show for you. Everything is up for scrutiny: Are her eyes just too intense? Is that smile a little forced? Do her breasts seem natural enough? Hair: too severe? Every inch of the women’s bodies is critiqued candidly and often, which can be galling, but it’s almost refreshing to hear these narrow constraints articulated so openly. Watch “Toucan Nation,” Wednesday, 10 p. m. Animal Planet. Warning: This doc contains very sad footage of an abused toucan. But Grecia survives! And inspires the nation of Costa Rica! Viva Grecia and his new beak. On Monday at 8 p. m. ESPN2 has “Pin Kings” — wrestling, not bowling, alas. It’s the true story of high school wrestling teammates whose lives took different paths: One became a D. E. A. agent, one a cocaine kingpin. On Tuesday at 10 p. m. the tattoo contest show “Ink Master” returns to SpikeTV. And Thursday at 8 p. m. on Logo, it’s the premiere of the new season of “RuPaul’s All Stars Drag Race. ” Get swept up in the drama and passion of the dancers María Nieves Rego and Juan Carlos Copes in the recent Argentine documentary “Our Last Tango. ” Once a renowned couple from the Buenos Aires tango scene, the two split professionally after their marriage fell apart. Now the veteran dancers reflect on their life’s work and tumultuous relationship before a reunion. “Our Last Tango” goes a step further than the standard memoir doc, creatively reinterpreting moments from Rego’s childhood and her relationship with Copes into stylish modern and tango dance numbers. Between the couple’s colorful anecdotes and impressive choreography, the movie makes it easy to get caught up in its bittersweet story. (Watch on Netflix) — Monica Castillo | 0 |
On the National Day of Prayer, Donald Trump lashed out at South Korea and North Korea, while his administration wants Congress to attach aid for victims of Hurricane Harvey to a bill that would increase the federal debt limit. So, Trump is now at war with an influential group of House conservatives who have warned GOP leaders not to connect the two funding initiatives. This move might cause a looming conservative uprising. Usually, with Republicans, they want a debt limit increase tied to spending cuts but now, with an entire city underwater and thousands in shelters and at least 45 dead, Conservatives will have to battle it out.On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said that he and the former reality show star believe that raising the U.S. debt limit, which Congress must do within the next few weeks in order to avoid defaulting on its bills, should be tied to disaster relief funding for Hurricane Harvey. Without raising the debt limit I m not comfortable that we d get the money we d need this month to Texas, Mnuchin said on Fox News Sunday. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin revealed the administration s approach Sunday morning when he was asked whether the White House could guarantee that funding for the disaster would not be attached to the fight over the debt ceiling. No, I can t. Quite the contrary, Mnuchin said, adding, The president and I believe that it should be tied to the Harvey funding. Watch:NEW: Sec Mnuchin tells Chris Wallace on @FoxNewsSunday that if the debt limit isn't raised, it will interfere w/ the #Harvey relief effort. pic.twitter.com/EfxtOowH8C Pat Ward (@WardDPatrick) September 3, 2017Mnuchin warned of a delay in recovery funding for Texas if the debt ceiling is not raised, according to the Washington Post. Our first priority is to make sure that the state gets money, it is critical, and to do that we need to make sure we raise the debt limit, he said. Without raising the debt limit, I m not comfortable that we will get the money that we need this month to Texas to rebuild. In 2011, congressional Republicans brought the country to the brink of default after refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless Democrats agreed to a series of future spending cuts. And now, Conservatives and Republicans will have to slap fight each other in order to get aid to Texas.Featured image via Alex Wong/Getty Images | 1 |
Donald Trump should not be lashing out like this. It s embarrassing.After months of boycotts and protests, Nordstrom and several other retailers have dropped Ivanka Trump s product line from their inventory.The Grab Your Wallet campaign has only been growing since Trump won the election the Russians rigged in November. The campaign began as a protest against Trump over his grab them by the p*ssy remark. This is a sharply divisive subject, Nordstrom co-president Pete Nordstrom said. No matter what we do, we are going to end up disappointing some of our customers. Every single brand we offer is evaluated on their results if people don t buy it, we won t sell it. And so, Americans across the country listened and stopped buying from Nordstrom, forcing them to make a choice. They can die as a company defending the Trump brand, or they can survive by dumping it.Nordstrom made the smart choice, and now Donald Trump is pissed.My daughter Ivanka has been treated so unfairly by @Nordstrom. She is a great person always pushing me to do the right thing! Terrible! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 8, 2017If Trump didn t want his daughter s business to be negatively affected by his campaign and presidency, he should have stayed out of it to begin with. Now his family is paying the price and Twitter isn t shedding a single tear.@realDonaldTrump you put the brief in briefing. pic.twitter.com/E9B0ti2EYt Erick Fernandez (@ErickFernandez) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump Calm down, dear. She s got a new job all lined up manipulating you via her husband. Erich McElroy (@erichmcelroy) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump are you saying you usually choose the wrong thing and she stops you? Asking for a friend/planet. pic.twitter.com/9GJLyTFtnA Adam Mordecai (@advodude) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom By being treated unfairly do you mean Ivanka is on of the seven countries BANNED by Nordstroms? Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom Also, you have managed to tweet to a department store but have yet to acknowledge the tragedy in Quebec. Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 8, 2017.@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/qrQAA6JBkV Lee ?? (@RejectTrump) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom she should have pushed you to drop out. Sahil Lavingia (@shl) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom also this is clearly a conflict of interest. ??? Sahil Lavingia (@shl) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom Free market, Orange man. Jeffrey Guterman (@JeffreyGuterman) February 8, 2017@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom is there a point when you re going to start acting like a President? Andy Cohen (@Andy) February 8, 2017.@realDonaldTrump @Nordstrom yes the president just publicly bitched about his daughter losing income streams Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) February 8, 2017Donald Trump should not be using the office of the presidency to attack a company for dropping his daughter s product line. That s a clear conflict of interest.But Nordstrom is far from being the only retailer to ditch Ivanka. As Raw Story points outs, Home Shopping Network, Retailers Belk, Neiman Marcus, Jet and ShopStyle have all dropped her this week.Donald Trump is truly pathetic. It s one thing to criticize companies for outsourcing jobs, it something entirely different, however, to criticize a business for deciding what products to sell. And Trump is definitely trying to punish Nordstrom for not continuing to sell Ivanka s product line. Of course, Ivanka s products are made overseas, which makes Trump a hypocrite, too.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 1 |
Kuala Lumpur (Reuters) - Malaysia s growing ties to Saudi Arabia - and its puritan Salafi-Wahhabi Islamic doctrines - are coming under new scrutiny as concerns grow over an erosion of traditional religious practices and culture in the multi-ethnic nation. A string of recent events has fueled the concern. Hostility toward atheists, non-believers and the gay community has risen. Two annual beer festivals were canceled after Islamic leaders objected. A hardline preacher, accused of spreading hatred in India, has received official patronage. The government has backed a parliamentary bill that would allow the shariah court wider criminal jurisdiction over Muslims in the state of Kelantan. And after religious officials supported a Muslim-only laundromat, Malaysia s mostly ceremonial royalty made a rare public intervention, calling for religious harmony. Marina Mahathir, the daughter of Malaysia s longest serving prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, publicly lashed out at the government for allowing the Arabisation of Malaysia. Marina, who heads the civil rights group Sisters in Islam, told Reuters Saudi influence on Islam in Malaysia has come at the expense of traditional Malay culture . Her father, 93, now heads the opposition alliance. Saudi Arabia s fundamentalist Wahhabi beliefs have strongly influenced Malaysia and neighboring Indonesia - for decades, but have strengthened considerably since Najib became prime minister in 2009 and began cozying up to the kingdom. The relationship came under a harsh spotlight when nearly $700 million wound up in Najib s bank account in 2013. Najib said it was a donation from the Saudi Royal family, rebutting allegations it was money siphoned from the 1MDB state investment fund he had founded and overseen. Malaysia s attorney-general cleared him of any wrongdoing. The trend toward a politicized brand of Islam in Malaysia, a middle-income emerging market, has alarmed Malaysia s non-Muslims, including ethnic Chinese who comprise a quarter of the population and dominate private sector commerce. It is also a concern for foreign investors, who account for nearly half the local bond market and have invested $8.95 billion in project investments in the first nine months of this year. The government denies actively promoting Wahhabi-style Islamic conservatism. Najib has been largely silent about the recent religious controversies. Critics have accused the prime minister, whose governing coalition lost the popular vote in the last general election but retained a simple majority in parliament, of playing on fears that Islam and Malay political power will be eroded should the opposition win. An election is due by mid-2018. Militancy has also been on the rise in Malaysia, which from 2013 to 2016 had arrested more than 250 people with alleged ties to Islamic State, many of whom were indoctrinated with hardline interpretations of Islam. After the visit of the Saudi monarch this year, Malaysia announced plans to build the King Salman Centre for International Peace to bring together Islamic scholars and intelligence agencies in an effort to counter extremist interpretations of Islam. The center, which is being built on a 16-hectare (40-acre) plot in the administrative capital of Putrajaya, will draw on the resources of the Saudi-financed Islamic Science University of Malaysia, and the Muslim World League, a Wahhabi Saudi religious body. Saudi Arabia has long been funding mosques and schools in Malaysia, while providing scholarships for Malaysians to study in the kingdom. Many of them find employment in Malaysia s multitude of Islamic agencies, said Farouk Musa, chairman and director of the moderate think-tank, Islamic Renaissance Front. One of the most worrisome doctrines they preach in multi-cultural Malaysia is al-w ala wa-al-bara or allegiance and disavowal , Farouk said. This doctrine basically means do not befriend the non-believers (al-kuffar), even if they are among the closest relatives. We have never heard of Islamic scholars forbidding Muslims to wish Merry Christmas before, for example. Now, this is a common phenomenon, he said. The adoption of Arab culture and interpretations of Islam is a result of greater exposure to Middle Eastern people and universities, said Abdul Aziz Kaprawi, a member of the Supreme Council of Najib s political party, the United Malay National Organisation. The extensive usage of social media also accelerated the external influence on the locals, he told Reuters. The government is not promoting Wahhabism but rather the doctrine of wasatiyyah , or moderation and balance, to accommodate Malaysia s multi-cultural society, said Abdul Aziz, who is also a federal deputy minister. Karima Bennoune, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for cultural rights, expressed concern in a report after her September visit to Malaysia about the deepening involvement of religious authorities in policy decisions. She said this was influenced by a hegemonic version of Islam imported from the Arabian Peninsula that was at odds with local forms of practice. She also expressed concern about the banning of books, including some about moderate and progressive Islam, in the country when the government extols these very concepts abroad . Marina Mahathir said religious departments, staffed with Saudi graduates, are now consulted on absolutely everything, from movies to health and medicine to insurance, all sorts of things that they do not necessarily have any expertise in . The kingdom also exerts leverage over Muslim-majority countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia through the quotas it gives to countries for the number of pilgrims they can send on the Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam that all capable Muslims must perform at least once in their lives. This could all start to change if Saudi Arabia s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman succeeds in returning the Saudi kingdom to a moderate Islam, which he says was practiced before 1979. He has already scaled back the role of religious police, permitted public concerts and announced women will be allowed to drive. The kingdom has also set up an authority to scrutinize uses of the hadith accounts of the sayings, actions or habits of the Prophet to prevent them being used to justify violence or terrorism. (This story has been corrected to clarify bill on Islamic law and remove reference to stoning and amputations in paragraph 3) | 0 |
Many Republicans have expressed the opinion that Donald Trump is an absolute idiot, but this new diss from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell gives new weight to that harsh truth.Yesterday, in speaking on Bloomberg Politics Masters in Politics podcast, McConnell basically said that Trump needed to have a Vice President that was more qualified than him, because it is pretty obvious that Trump doesn t know a lot about the issues. Ouch!McConnell said: He needs someone highly experienced and very knowledgeable because it s pretty obvious he doesn t know a lot about the issues. You see that in the debates in which he s participated. It s why I have argued to him publicly and privately that he ought to use a script more often there is nothing wrong with having prepared texts. McConnell has previously criticized Trump for several things, his blatant racism being just one of them. More recently, the Senate Majority Leader called Trump s controversial comments about Judge Gonzalo Curiel not being fair in overseeing the fraudulent Trump University case because of his Mexican heritage totally inappropriate. McConnell added on the podcast: I object to a whole series of things that he s said vehemently object to them. I think all of that needs to stop. Both the shots at people he defeated in the primary and these attacks on various ethnic groups in the country. Unfortunately, despite the fact that McConnell practically admitted that he thinks Trump is an idiot and incapable of running the country, he still found it in himself to say, I m comfortable supporting him. I m not going to speculate about what he might say, or what I might do. But I think it s pretty clear and I ve been pretty clear publicly about how I think he ought to change direction and I hope that s what we are going to see.For all of his obvious shortcomings, Donald Trump is certainly a different direction, and I think if he is in the White House he ll have to respond to the right-of-center world which elected him, and the things that we believe in. So I m comfortable supporting him. They may be on different sides of the political spectrum, but Trump s incompetency is something that McConnell and our President can actually agree on. McConnell s comments about Trump not knowing anything about the issues that America s commander-in-chief would face is something that Obama has previously said about the business mogul.At a nuclear summit in Washington D.C., Obama called out Trump s ignorance on nuclear proliferation and global politics. In a statement that was clearly directed at Trump, Obama said: [The statements] tell us that the person who made the statements doesn t know much about foreign policy, nuclear policy, the Korean peninsula or the world generally. You can watch that diss below:Noting that the rest of the world was closely watching the U.S. election, Obama added: What we do is really important to the rest of the world. The president of the United States needs to know what s going on around the world. Honestly, it doesn t matter who would be Trump s VP he s proven time and time again that he doesn t listen to anyone but himself. The only way to keep this country safe from Trump s idiocy is to make sure he doesn t get into the White House.Featured image via Alex Wong / Getty Images | 0 |
Conservative filmmaker Dennis Michael Lynch has made some shocking and eye-opening movies that address our nation s failure to properly secure our borders. Lynch s They Come To America III: The Cost Of Obama s Legacy is his most compelling and shocking movie to date. There are some terrifying moments when Lynch exposes Muslim training camps right here in America. In addition to training camps in the US, Dennis Michael Lynch takes us to our northern border to show just how easily Islamic terrorists can cross into the United States. Lynch s interview with an undercover US Border Agent exposes the cover-ups and lies our previous administration used in an attempt to make us trust that our government was sufficiently protecting our borders. As Lynch proves in this short clip, nothing could be further from the truth.WATCH this shocking trailer, as it shows how vulnerable our nation is to terrorists entering the US from Canada: | 0 |
Leave it to our Community Organizer In Chief to bully nuns who ve committed their lives to helping the poor in our country over a contraception mandateIf Obama s rules apply to these nuns why don t they apply to the tens of millions who are living in the United States illegally? Pope Francis paid a short visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor community in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday to support them in their court case over the contraception mandate, the Vatican s spokesman revealed.It was a short visit that was not in the program, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, said at an evening press conference during the papal visit to the nation s capital. This is a sign, obviously, of support for them in their court case, he affirmed.The sisters have filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration for its 2012 mandate that employers provide insurance coverage for birth control, sterilizations, and drugs that can cause abortions in employee health plans. The sisters have maintained that to provide this coverage would violate their religious beliefs.Even after the Obama administration modified the rules as an accommodation for objecting organizations, the sisters held that the revised rules would force them to violate their consciences.The majority of a three-judge panel for the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in July that the Little Sisters of the Poor did not establish that the mandate was a substantial burden on their free exercise of religion, and thus ruled they still had to abide by the mandate.The papal visit was not on the official schedule for Pope Francis Washington, D.C. visit, which included Wednesday visits to the White House, a midday prayer service with the U.S. bishops at St. Matthew s Cathedral, and the canonization mass for St. Junipero Serra at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.It was a little addition to the program, but I think it has an important meaning, Fr. Lombardi said.He added that the visit is connected to the words that the Pope has said in support of the position of the bishops of the United States in the speech to President Obama and also in the speech to the bishops. Pope Francis, with President Obama at the White House, called religious freedom one of America s most precious possessions and had hearkened to the U.S. bishops defense of religious freedom. All are called to be vigilant, precisely as good citizens, to preserve and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or compromise it, he had said.In response to the news of the visit with the sisters, Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, president of the U.S. Bishops Conference, said that he was so pleased to hear of the visit. As you know the last thing the Little Sisters of the Poor want to do is sue somebody. They don t want to sue in court, he insisted. They simply want to serve people who are poor and elderly, and they want to do it in a way that doesn t conflict with their beliefs.Via: Catholic News Agency | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he will ask the Republican-controlled Congress to further speed up its efforts to overhaul the U.S. tax code, citing the potential impact of Hurricane Irma as a reason to hasten reforms. I think now with what s happened with the hurricane, I m going to ask for a speedup. I wanted a speedup anyway, but now we need it even more so, the president said at the outset of a Cabinet meeting at Camp David. The White House released a video of his remarks. Trump urged Congress in a Friday tweet not to wait until the end of September for tax legislation. | 1 |
If you listened much to Ted Cruz over these last furious months, you heard him talk frequently about “the abyss,” as in what this country was teetering on the edge of. If you listened to him over these last furious hours, you heard him mention the “yawning cavern of insecurity” that motivates Donald Trump and other bullies. Cruz should take up spelunking. He’s obviously fascinated by unfathomable depths, and with his loss in Indiana on Tuesday, his candidacy for the presidency is finished, giving him a whole lot of extra time. A new hobby is definitely in order. As we bid Cruz adieu, we should give him his due: He took a mien and manner spectacularly ill suited to the art of seducing voters about as far as they could go. He outlasted the likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. He outperformed Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008. Like him, Santorum and Huckabee won the Iowa caucuses and built from there, courting the religious right with particular fervor. But they lacked the intensity of Cruz’s professed disdain for Washington, which was his other big sales pitch, made at its moment of maximum potency. He peddled extravagant piety and extreme contempt in equal measure. If that sounds paradoxical, it is, and the tension between contradictory Cruzes is what ultimately did him in. He spoke out of both sides of his scowl, itching to be the voice of the common man but equally eager to demonstrate what a highfalutin, intellect he possessed. He wed a populist message to a plummy vocabulary. And while the line separating smart and smart aleck isn’t all that thin or blurry, he never could stay on the winning side of it. He wore cowboy boots, but his favorites are made of ostrich. Two peacocks in a pod, he and Trump, and what ghastly plumage they showed on Tuesday. Trump somehow saw fit to bring up a National Enquirer story linking Cruz’s father to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Cruz exploded, branding Trump a “pathological liar” and “serial philanderer. ” He also brought up an interview from many years ago in which Trump told Howard Stern that his effort to steer clear of sexually transmitted diseases was his “personal Vietnam. ” Where was this rant six months ago, when the Republican field was crowded and Cruz played footsie with Trump? Back then he was wagering that Trump would fade, and he wanted to be in a friendly position to inherit the billionaire’s supporters. But by Tuesday, Trump was the main obstacle between Cruz and the Republican presidential nomination, and Cruz has just one true compass: his own advancement. The nakedness of his vanity and transparency of his ambition were always his biggest problem. He routinely excoriated other politicians for while repeatedly hogging center stage, his remarks interminable — after his Iowa victory, for example, or when he presumptuously introduced Carly Fiorina as his running mate — and his pauses so theatrically drawn out that you could watch the entirety of “The Revenant” during some of them. He trashed “the establishment” and wore its rejection of him as a badge of honor only until it stopped rejecting him and its help was his best hope to wrest the nomination away from Trump. At that point he did dizzy cartwheels over every prominent endorsement that came his way. He took great pride in an adversarial relationship with the media, decreeing us irrelevant, until he went in hunt of a fresh excuse for losing to Trump and decided over the last few days that it was all our fault. We didn’t matter and then we did, depending on which estimation flattered him. He purported to be more than his peers but pettily mocked Michelle Obama for urging schoolchildren to eat leafy greens. When Heidi Cruz is first lady, he pledged, “French fries are coming back to the cafeteria. ” Heidi Cruz is not going to be first lady, so she’ll need some other platform for the promotion of calorie bombs and second chins. And where in her husband was the humility that a Christian faith as frequently proclaimed as his should encompass? It wasn’t evident when he stormed into the Senate in early 2013, an upstart intent on upstaging the veterans. There were flickers of it on Tuesday night, as he conceded defeat not just in Indiana but in the presidential contest, announcing that he was suspending his campaign “with a heavy heart. ” He articulated gratitude to those Americans — no small number of them — who had buoyed him. He went overboard in his praise of Fiorina, merely reminding us all of what an odd and oddly timed alliance theirs was. “An incredible, phenomenal running mate,” he called her, as if they’d been on some epic journey. It was less than a week long. How many phenomena could she accomplish in that time? He left Trump out of his remarks. There were no congratulations. There was no indication of whether he’d publicly back Trump in the months to come. There was nothing to purge the memory of what he’d said earlier Tuesday, when he described Trump as “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. ” Yes, we have, and so has he, every day, in the mirror. That’s why he’ll undoubtedly be back to try for the presidency again. But this bid is moribund. It’s time for Cruz to rest in peevishness. | 0 |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Erik Prince, who founded a private military contractor that has faced lawsuits for shootings and other misconduct in Iraq, is considering challenging a Republican Senator from Wyoming in a primary next year, the New York Times reported on Sunday. Steve Bannon, U.S. President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, had urged Prince to run for the seat now held by John Barrasso, an ally of Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as part of an effort to shake up Republican leadership, the paper said. Prince, a former Navy SEAL and the brother of U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, founded the company formerly known as Blackwater. Some of its guards had been convicted of killing 14 unarmed Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad traffic circle in 2007, an incident that outraged Iraqis and inflamed anti-U.S. sentiment around the world. Prince has told DeVos that he would like to run against Barrasso, a person with knowledge of the conversation told the Times, and he traveled this weekend to Wyoming to investigate how to attain residency. Efforts by Reuters to reach Prince and DeVos for comment were unsuccessful. North Carolina-based Blackwater was sold and renamed several times after the Baghdad incident. It is now called Academi and is based in northern Virginia. Prince later co-founded FSG, a separate logistics, security and insurance provider. A company spokesman had no comment on the Times report. | 0 |
More Migrants Pitch Tents on Paris Streets as Calais Camp Shuts Ingrid Melander, Reuters, October 28, 2016
The number of migrants sleeping rough on the streets of Paris has risen by at least a third since the start of the week when the “Jungle” shanty town in Calais was evacuated, officials said on Friday.
Along the bustling boulevards and a canal in a northeastern corner of Paris, hundreds of tents have been pitched by migrants–mostly Africans who say they are from Sudan–with cardboard on the ground to try and insulate them from the autumn chill.
While the presence of migrants there is not new, it has grown substantially this week, Colombe Brossel, Paris deputy mayor in charge of security issues, told Reuters.
“We have seen a big increase since the start of the week. Last night, our teams counted 40 to 50 new tents there in two days,” Brossel said, adding there was now a total of 700 to 750.
This means there are some 2,000-2,500 sleeping in the area, up from around 1,500 a few days before, she said.
{snip}
After years as serving as an illegal base camp for migrants trying to get to Britain, the “Jungle” at Calais was finally bulldozed this week and the more than 6,000 residents of the ramshackle camp near the English channel were relocated to shelters around France.
{snip}
Ama, a 24-year-old Sudanese who is six months pregnant, said she had come to Paris from Calais, but that was months ago.
“I was in Calais before but I did not find the route (to Britain),” she said. “I couldn’t stay over there being pregnant, it was too hard.”
Deputy Mayor Brossel said it was up to the central government, and not city authorities, to act.
“These people must be sheltered,” she said.
{snip} | 1 |
Andrea Tantaros, a former Fox News host, charged in a lawsuit filed Monday that top executives at the network, including the man who replaced Roger Ailes, punished her for complaining about sexual harassment by Mr. Ailes. The suit by Ms. Tantaros, filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan, is the latest round in a contentious volley that began in late winter, when Fox claimed she had breached her employment contract by writing a book without receiving network approval. “Fox News masquerades as a defender of traditional family values, but behind the scenes, it operates like a Playboy cult, steeped in intimidation, indecency and misogyny,” Ms. Tantaros’s suit says. Fox News said it would not comment on pending litigation. Mr. Ailes, the network’s founding chairman and guiding force for two decades, resigned last month after a former anchor, Gretchen Carlson, said in a suit that she was fired for refusing his sexual advances. Mr. Ailes has denied all allegations of harassment. In April, the chief lawyer for Fox charged that Ms. Tantaros had concocted sexual harassment claims to gain leverage in the contract dispute her lawyer, Judd Burstein, said the book dispute was a pretext that Fox was using to silence her. During arbitration, Mr. Burstein said, Fox News offered to pay her a sum “in the seven figures” if she renounced claims against Mr. Ailes and others at the network, including the host Bill O’Reilly. According to the lawsuit, Ms. Tantaros said she had been subjected to unwelcome advances from Mr. O’Reilly, whom she had regarded as a friend and adviser. “Ailes did not act alone,” the lawsuit states. “He may have been the primary culprit, but his actions were condoned by his most senior lieutenants, who engaged in a concerted effort to silence Tantaros by threats, humiliation and retaliation. ” Ms. Tantaros also claimed in the lawsuit that she was the subject of humiliating posts by pseudonymous accounts on Twitter known as “sock puppets” that she says were instigated by the Fox News publicity department. Ms. Tantaros joined Fox as a contributor in 2010, and a year later was named of “The Five,” which aired at 5 p. m. She said in the suit that she was repeatedly told by Fox executives that she could not wear pants on the air because “Roger wants to see your legs. ” The lawsuit goes on to say that on Aug. 12, 2014, Mr. Ailes called her into his office and asked if she was planning to marry and have children. “Ailes then started complaining about marriage in general, and also made jokes about being married,” the lawsuit states. It describes Mr. Ailes as speculating on the sexual habits and preferences of 10 Fox News personalities. He asked Ms. Tantaros to turn around “so I can get a good look at you,” the lawsuit charges, adding that Ms. Tantaros refused. Soon after, she was moved from “The Five” to a show, “Outnumbered,” that aired at midday. Mr. Ailes called her back for similar sessions in December 2014 and February 2015, the lawsuit charges, and when she continued to rebuff him, she encountered hostility from the Fox News publicity department. In the February meeting, she said, Mr. Ailes talked about how she would look in a bikini, and accused her of ending a relationship because she had been merely using the man. The episode brought her to tears, the lawsuit states. She said the sole interview arranged by the publicity department during that period was with a writer for a blog controlled by Fox, who asked about her breasts and if she was difficult to work with. In April 2015, the lawsuit states, Ms. Tantaros met with Bill Shine, then a senior news executive and close aide to Mr. Ailes. She said that she told him about the meetings with Mr. Ailes and asked if he had told the head of publicity for Fox News, Irena Briganti, to go after her. The lawsuit claims that Mr. Shine “told Tantaros that Briganti is like a rabid dog on a chain that we can’t control. Sometimes that dog gets off the chain. ” Then, pointing to a picture of Mr. Ailes on a magazine cover, the lawsuit charges, Mr. Shine told her that “this powerful man has faith in Irena Briganti” and that Ms. Tantaros “needs to let this one go. ” Mr. Shine, through a spokeswoman, has said that Ms. Tantaros never approached him about Mr. Ailes harassing her. Mr. Shine was named of Fox News after Mr. Ailes departed. | 0 |
FBI releases Bill Clinton pay-to-play investigation November 02, 2016 U.S. President Barack Obama (L) listens to former president Bill Clinton during an event marking the 20th anniversary of the national service program AmeriCorps at the White House in Washington September 12, 2014. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
On Tuesday, the FBI released documents related to a 2001 closed investigation into a pay-to-play scheme between former President Bill Clinton and Marc Rich, a man he granted a last-mine pardon. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, donated more than $1 million to various Clinton and Democratic entities, including the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate campaign and the Clinton Foundation. Release reminds voters that the Clinton White House and Clinton Foundation were embroiled in an investigation concerning pay-to-play allegations. New files include one entry which shows that “the required pardon standards and procedures were not followed” prior to the Rich pardon. Roger Adams, the U.S. Pardon Attorney at the time, testified to Congress in Feb. 2001 that “none of the regular procedures were followed” ahead of the Rich reprieve. Former Attorney General Eric Holder is also mentioned in the file. It cites Holder’s testimony that he was the only person who worked at DOJ — he was deputy attorney general at the time — about the Rich pardon. Clinton campaign press secretary Brian Fallon: “Absent a FOIA litigation deadline, this is odd. Will FBI be posting docs on Trump's housing discrimination in '70s?” FBI: “The FBI’s Records Management Division receives thousands of FOIA requests annually which are processed on a first in, first out (FIFO) basis.”
(WASHINGTON, DC) The FBI on Tuesday released documents related to a now-closed federal investigation of an alleged pay-to-play scheme involving Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.
The documents, which are heavily redacted, regard the investigation of Clinton’s last-minute pardon of Marc Rich, a billionaire fugitive who was wanted in the U.S. for tax evasion.
The Jan. 20, 2001 pardon sparked the last controversy to befall the scandal-plagued Clinton administration. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise, donated more than $1 million to various Clinton and Democratic entities, including the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate campaign and the Clinton Foundation.
The release provides little in the way of information that has not already been publicized. But the dump is noteworthy for two reasons. It reminds voters that the Clinton White House and Clinton Foundation were embroiled in an investigation concerning pay-to-play allegations. The Clinton Foundation is reportedly being investigated at the present by multiple FBI field offices.
The FBI issued a statement late Tuesday afternoon saying that the file was released in response to a FOIA request.
“The FBI’s Records Management Division receives thousands of FOIA requests annually which are processed on a first in, first out (FIFO) basis,” the statement reads.
“By law, FOIA materials that have been requested three or more times are posted electronically to the FBI’s public reading room shortly after they are processed. Per the standard procedure for FOIA, these materials became available for release and were posted automatically and electronically to the FBI’s public reading room in accordance with the law and established procedures.” | 1 |
After Donald Trump s first disastrous hot mic moment was revealed through an Access Hollywood audio tape, it was hard to believe that his presidency could be further soiled by another audio scandal but all of that changed today.On Wednesday afternoon, Trump gave a commencement address to graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, where he chose to complain about how unfairly he was treated compared to other presidents (some of which he seemed to forget were assassinated). It looked as if it couldn t possibly get any worse than Trump throwing a temper tantrum about the media instead of inspiring the graduating students but that wasn t the only insanity that occurred.Apparently, Department of Homeland Security secretary John Kelly had no idea he was being recorded, because he got caught on a hot mic making a disgusting joke to Trump, and of course, Trump was laughing right along in agreement with him.During the ceremony, Trump was presented with a saber another instrument that should never be placed in the hands of a man baby. Fortunately, no one was hurt. When Trump went back to his seat next to General Kerry, the DHS secretary leaned in and joked that Trump should use the ceremonial sword on reporters. In the recording below, you can see Kerry lean toward Trump and say, You can use that on the press sir. Trump giggled with glee and said, Yeah, that s right. It was an unbelievable moment that proved that there are children in the White House now:Gen. Kelly tells Pres. Trump you can use that on the press after he s presented with ceremonial saber at Coast Guard Academy commencement. pic.twitter.com/xj73oHxUdZ ABC News (@ABC) May 17, 2017Trump and his team have made no secret that they all hate the mainstream media for its negative coverage, but this joke was absolutely disgusting. Apparently, Trump and his team have learned nothing from Trump s first hot mic incident, in which he praised himself for sexually assaulting women.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 |
An ice cream parlor in Orange County, California, turned down money from a Muslim-bashing customer after he insulted a Muslim woman in the store who was sitting and enjoying ice cream.22-year-old Nura Takkish was the target of the bigot.Takkish was sitting with two of her friends at Andrew s Ice Cream and Dessert in Orange County, California, on Monday, May 23, when they noticed a commotion at the counter. A customer was being asked to leave for saying racist and nasty things, the shop s baker, Jessie Noah, later told The Huffington Post.Takkish s friend Malaak Ammari started to record the incident on her phone.When you just trying to eat your ice cream but trump supporters won't let you live pic.twitter.com/rW3MI8a2pn palestina (@itsdatnunu) May 24, 2016The baker handed the bigot back his $3, telling him, You can give somebody else your business. Cindy Ramsay, wife of the shop owner added, If you can t be nice, we don t want you. On his way out, the defeated bigot yelled again:As he heads to the door, the man points a finger at the two women in headscarves and says, I don t want them near my country. Too bad, we re here, Ammari replies, still filming. Sucks for you. Sucks for me? You ll see what happens, the man replies threateningly. Then Noah walks to the door and closes it as the man walks away.Donald Trump has made anti-Muslim bigotry one of the centerpieces of his presidential campaign. He issued a call for Muslims to be barred from travel to the United States, and repeated the message in a press release and a live media event.The attacks on Muslims have been repudiated by civil rights organizations and leading politicians like President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders. Even some Republicans have said Trump s attack on Muslims is beyond the pale and not reflective of American values.The Trump campaign, after winning the nomination, has attempted to step away from some of those comments. But his most ardent supporters, and a majority of Republicans according to multiple polls, share the same view of Muslims as the bigot in the ice cream parlor.Featured image via Twitter | 1 |
A Georgetown University associate professor had a month-long meltdown after a Muslim woman explained why she voted for President-elect Donald Trump.Asra Q. Nomani, a former Georgetown journalism professor and Wall Street Journal reporter, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post Nov. 10 explaining why she, as a Muslim woman and long-time liberal, voted for Trump. I support the Democratic Party s position on abortion, same-sex marriage and climate change, Nomani wrote. But I am a single mother who can t afford health insurance under Obamacare. Here is a portion of Nomani s op-ed explaining why she s supporting Trump:A lot is being said now about the silent secret Trump supporters. This is my confession and explanation: I a 51-year-old, a Muslim, an immigrant woman of color am one of those silent voters for Donald Trump. And I m not a bigot, racist, chauvinist or white supremacist, as Trump voters are being called, nor part of some whitelash. In the winter of 2008, as a lifelong liberal and proud daughter of West Virginia, a state born on the correct side of history on slavery, I moved to historically conservative Virginia only because the state had helped elect Barack Obama as the first African American president of the United States.But, then, for much of this past year, I have kept my electoral preference secret: I was leaning toward Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.Tuesday evening, just minutes before the polls closed at Forestville Elementary School in mostly Democratic Fairfax County, I slipped between the cardboard partitions in the polling booth, a pen balanced carefully between my fingers, to mark my ballot for president, coloring in the circle beside the names of Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence. WPJust prior to the election Nomani explains why she s voting for Trump:C. Christine Fair, a previously friendly colleague, went on a 31-day screed against Nomani spanning across Twitter and Facebook. According to Nomani s Dec. 23 follow-up complaint to the university, the Peace and Security Studies professor called her a wretch, clueless dolt and a fame-monger.Fair also compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and asserted that Nomani s vote for Trump helped normalize Nazis in DC. She didn t clarify if she was referring to Trump supporters or actual Nazis marching the streets.She again attacked Nomani Dec. 6 with an open letter on Facebook, in which Fair told her to f*ck off and GO TO HELL. It s unclear why Fair announces that she s a slut. Nomani told The Daily Caller News Foundation that Georgetown professor Bruce Hoffman replied to her original Dec. 2 complaint on Dec. 3. He told her he forwarded her complaint to professor Irfan Nooruddin. Nooruddin is the faculty chair of Georgetown s School of Foreign Service.Nooruddin told Nomani in a Dec. 4 email that, I shall follow up directly with Professor Fair. Fair posted her Facebook rant about Nomani two days after Nooruddin said he would speak with her. Additionally, she threatened Nomani in an email Dec. 6 with legal action. Your attempt to silence my opinion or force a dialogue by involving my employer is unacceptable and any further action on your part to involve Georgetown will be met with legal action, Fair wrote. Your social media and email appeal to my employer with the intent or threat of damaging my employment status is a form of cyber bullying, which will not be tolerated. Daily Caller | 0 |
He s a Republican. He s anti-gay. He s all about family values. So of course he just got busted for having a sex video of himself on his work computer.Nebraska GOP state Senator Bill Kintner is being urged to resign by Republican Governor Pete Ricketts after the Nebraska State Patrol discovered a sexually explicit video of Kintner on the government computer he uses for work.According to the Lincoln Journal Star,A source familiar with the situation said Kintner told investigators about the video when he asked the Nebraska State Patrol for help with computer problems in July 2015.The patrol confirmed Friday that Kintner had sought help for what he believed to be a potential internet scam that occurred while the senator was in Massachusetts using his state computer. Having such a video on his work computer is a violation of Nebraska law, but it appears that Governor Ricketts and Kintner both ignored the law and hid the investigation from the public since last November when the discovery of the video was made.Only on Friday did Ricketts actually publicly call for Kintner to resign. Due to the ongoing investigation of this issue, I have been unable to say anything publicly. If the allegations are true, Senator Kintner needs to resign. The violation and the cover-up has Democrats calling for more than just Kintner s resignation. It is not enough for Sen. Kintner to resign in shame. Anyone that knew this information and continued to let him sit in office must also resign, Nebraska Democratic Party chair Jane Kleeb said in a statement. Did Gov. Ricketts or his staff look the other way so they had (Kintner s) vote in the Unicameral? This is so serious, in fact, that the State Patrol has turned out their findings to the Accountability and Disclosure Commission and and ethics investigation is underway.This is also incredibly hypocritical considering Kintner constantly brags about being a conservative Christian who has urged Christian-owned businesses to provide gay customers bad service on purpose and once told the Journal Star that his parents taught me the moral absolutes of Christianity, and I just applied those to everything. Except himself, apparently.Featured Image: YouTube | 1 |
An owner of a propane dealership in Maine is refusing to deliver gas to anyone who voted for President-Elect Donald Trump.Michael Turner, owner of Turner LP Gas in Skowhegan, Maine, recorded a voicemail greeting that leaves little question as to his feelings for those in his community who supported Trump. Thank you for calling Turner LP Gas. If you voted for Donald Trump for president, I will no longer be delivering your gas please find someone else, the message states.Turner isn t the first person to refuse to do business with Trump voters in late November, Mathew Blanchfield, CEO of an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based marketing firm, issued a statement saying he would no longer work with Trump supporters.But unlike Blanchfield, who lives in a county that voted solidly for Hillary Clinton, Turner lives in a county that overwhelmingly supported Trump. Trump won Somerset County, Maine in which Skowhegan is located 57.73 percent to Hillary Clinton s 35 percent.In Skowhegan specifically, where Clinton performed better than Somerset County at large, Trump still received over 50 percent of the vote and had a 10-point lead on Clinton, according to rough figures published on Skowhegan s town website. Turner is apparently so distraught over Trump s win he is willing alienate more than half of his community and possibly sacrifice his livelihood. Lifezette | 1 |
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